Chapter 5 - Siren in the Rain
The two real NYPD patrol officers standing in the lobby looked down at the six-digit badge number on the yellow carbon receipt in my trembling hand, and the older sergeant cursed aloud as he grabbed his shoulder radio.
"Central, put out an immediate citywide Amber Alert and an all-points bulletin on a white Ford Transit van bearing fake municipal child-welfare decals, last seen heading west on Fifty-Fourth Street four minutes ago," the police sergeant barked into his microphone.
Caleb Ross backed up two steps toward the marble pillar, his polished, handsome face draining of color as he tried to maintain his innocent expression.
"Officers, I merely verified the court stamp at the loading dock door the way hotel protocol requires, how could I possibly know the paperwork was counterfeit," Caleb protested smoothly.
Dante Moretti did not say a single word as he crossed the twelve feet of marble floor between them.
Before the two patrolmen could even step in, Dante grabbed Caleb by the throat with one powerful hand and slammed the general manager’s spine against the marble column so hard that Caleb’s feet left the floor.
"You used my hotel’s master emergency key to unlock the mezzanine safe room, tased my security officer in the back, and walked a six-year-old girl down the service stairs into the arms of the arsonist who murdered my wife," Dante whispered into Caleb’s face, his voice so deadly quiet that the entire lobby froze in terror.
"Get him off me, I want a lawyer right now," Caleb choked out, his eyes bulging with panic as he clawed uselessly at Dante’s iron wrist.
Vincent Russo stepped smoothly beside Dante, ostensibly pulling his boss’s arm back to satisfy the two nervous police officers, while deftly slipping his hand inside Caleb’s breast pocket and palming the secondary burner phone Caleb had been hiding beneath his handkerchief!
"Put this piece of garbage in the back of your cruiser under arrest for first-degree kidnapping conspiracy, Sergeant, while Missus Lane and I ride with my security detail to cover the West Side Highway," Dante told the NYPD sergeant calmly as he straightened his charcoal cuffs.
Ten seconds later, I was in the back of Dante’s armored black Escalade tearing west through the Manhattan gridlock with a portable magnetic police strobe flashing on the roof and three more black Moretti security SUVs Fanning out across the avenues from Forty-Second Street to Fifty-Ninth Street.
Inside the vehicle, Vincent plugged Caleb’s confiscated burner phone into a military-grade forensic screen mounted on the center console.
"Caleb wiped the call log before he walked into the lobby, Boss, but he forgot that the van’s portable GPS transponder is still slaved to this phone’s Bluetooth relay," Vincent announced grimly as a blinking red dot appeared on the Manhattan street map seven blocks ahead of us on Eleventh Avenue!
"They are stuck in the crosstown tunnel bottleneck at Fifty-Fourth and Eleventh," Dante said, leaning forward between the front seats as his driver jumped the concrete median and roared down the bus lane at seventy miles per hour.
My heart was hammering so violently against my ribs that I could barely breathe, my fingers digging into the leather seat until Dante reached over without looking and covered my cold hand with his warm, steady palm.
"We are two hundred yards behind that van, Marissa, and I swear to you on my life that your daughter is coming back into this car," Dante said quietly.
At the intersection of Fifty-Fourth Street and Eleventh Avenue, two of Dante’s black security SUVs swerved diagonally across the wet asphalt from opposite directions, boxing the white Ford Transit van directly against a steel construction barrier before the traffic light could turn green!
Dante and Vincent leaped out of the Escalade with their weapons drawn under their coats, and I ran right behind them as Vincent yanked the rear steel doors of the white van wide open.
My breath caught in a silent cry as I stared into the back of the van.
The rear cargo bench was completely empty.
A twenty-year-old street kid in a cheap windbreaker sat handcuffed to the steering wheel in the front cab—hired for five hundred dollars cash ten minutes earlier at a gas station simply to drive the decoy van down Eleventh Avenue—and lying in the center of the metal floor was one of Sophie’s little pink sneakers beside a ringing black satellite phone.
Dante snatched the ringing phone off the floor of the van and pressed the speaker button so both of us could hear.
"I told Caleb that a little girl who noticed my wrist scar in a crowded elevator was too smart to leave in a city van for more than two blocks, Mister Moretti," a dry, raspy voice crackled through the speaker over the sound of harbor gulls and lap-water waves.
It was the man in the gray coat.
"If you hurt a single hair on my daughter’s head, I will tear this city down brick by brick until I find you," I shouted into the phone, tears of fury stinging my eyes.
"Your daughter is sitting right here eating her second cherry lollipop and drawing a picture of the Hudson River on my briefcase, Missus Lane, and whether she walks home to you in thirty minutes depends entirely on how fast the two of you follow instructions," the gray-coat man replied calmly.
"What do you want," Dante asked in a voice like drawn steel.
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"Last night on Floor Twelve, I opened your father’s pre-war vault and found that the master bearer certificates for Brooklyn Pier Seven were missing, because you moved them to your personal safety deposit box," the man said.
"You have thirty minutes to bring those original Pier Seven bearer certificates to the abandoned coal terminal at Pier Ninety—and Missus Lane must bring the small brass safety-deposit key that her dead husband Marcus wore on the silver chain around his neck the night I burned Cena D’Oro to the ground!"
