The Stolen - Jason Pinter [100]
I need to know what Benjamin is going through all this
trouble for. He strikes me as a career thug. The kind of guy
you hire for muscle. Not the kind of guy who orchestrates
a series of kidnappings spanning a decade."
"What's he been doing since he got out of prison?"
Amanda asked.
"That's a good question."
"Ya think?" she said, taking another bite.
"I mean, he's had a massive house in his name, a
minivan in his name. Where's his income coming from?"
I looked at her sandwich. She had one or two bites left.
"What, you want me to leave because you have work
to do?"
"No. I was just wondering if you were going to finish
that."
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She mocked throwing the last piece at me, then shoved
it all in her mouth and swallowed.
"I'll walk out with you," she said. "You heading to the
office?"
"Yeah. But I need to make a few calls and see if I can
track down Raymond Benjamin's employment records. If
the Reeds knew what was good for them, they'd be in
Arizona by now."
"What about Benjamin?"
"If yesterday was any indication, he'll follow them into
hell if he needs to. He was there to kill the Reed family.
His gun was already drawn when he came into the hall at
the hotel. If we don't find out what's going on, it won't
just be another kidnapping to investigate, or having to
deal with at least two people who have already been killed,
but we'd have to live with the murder of an entire family."
38
Raymond Benjamin sat in the black Ford Escape and
finished his third pack of the day. He rolled down the
window and flicked the butt into the wind, where it landed
among a pile of a dozen other butts that had come from
the same vehicle.
Ray's heart had been racing for nearly twenty-four
hours straight. Vince was dead. And though he had no
love lost for the bumbling idiot, there was a huge difference between thinking someone a dolt and wishing them
dead. He still couldn't figure out how Parker, the girl and
the black guy with the gun had found the Reed family. It
should have been quick, easy and relatively painless. At
least for him and Vince. They'd both loaded their guns
with dumdum rounds--hollow-point bullets. There were
four targets: Robert Reed, Elaine Reed, Patrick Reed and
the girl. Caroline Twomey. They didn't want to take any
chances that one or more of them might have gotten away
or fought back. He'd met Robert Reed before, and the
man had some athletic genes.
The dumdum rounds were specially designed to expand
upon impact, the bullets deforming when they entered the
skin, causing a maximum of trauma. That way even if
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they didn't get off a kill shot, the wound would have been
devastating enough to keep the target down. With four
targets, you couldn't take chances.
Now Vince was dead. He'd worked with the man for
going on seven years, and while Raymond never would
have asked him to be on his team for Trivial Pursuit, he
had developed an odd affection for him, like an owner with
a three-legged dog.
When Parker began to investigate Petrovsky, Ray knew
the plan had encountered serious problems. Reporters
didn't just go away. If anything, resistance made them dig
deeper. And especially after he looked into Parker, he
realized that this guy would never quit, wouldn't back
down, even when facing down the barrel of a gun. And to
compound that, Bob and Elaine clearly left the house on
Huntley in an effort to disappear, or at least hide out until
they could figure out how to untangle themselves from the
mess. Raymond had never fully trusted Elaine Reed. It
took too long. Too much effort. When they ran away in that
tin can of a minivan, to Raymond that's when the answer
became clear. It wasn't something Raymond wanted to do,
but it was necessary.
He'd run it up the flagpole. Nothing happened without
the say-so of his employer. And, like Ray, his employer
wasn't thrilled with the option but realized there was no
choice. The Reeds had to disappear, along with Caroline
Twomey.
As far as Ray knew, the Windstar