Taylor put the luminol in her pack and brought out a strange, heavy-looking gizmo with various wires and attachments. Shining her light on the wall, she located a power outlet and plugged the thing into it.
"I'm getting tired of asking," Jude said to her.
"Signal jammer and electromagnetic pulse generator. It will disable all the electrical systems in building, including any alarms, security systems, CCTV's and anything else plugged into the power."
Jude frowned at her. "And where exactly did you get that?"
"A Serbian website. My mom's Serbian...did you not know that?"
Jude shook his head. "You can buy signal jammers off of Serbian websites? Where do you come up with this stuff?"
"It's actually Russian military surplus."
"And how did you find out how to use it?"
She laughed. "There was a manual, silly." She dug in her backpack and handed a small, thick booklet.
"It's in Russian,"
"Which worked out, that's one of the four languages I'm fluent in."
He passed the booklet back to her. "I seem to be learning something new about you every other minute."
"Well, that's one of the reasons you're such a good friend, Jude. You're able to appreciate a complex girl." She looked at Sophia. "Is the cellular link working?"
Sophia nodded.
Taylor turned to Jude. "You remember how you thought Mariana was at dance practice? She was actually coding a mobile app for us to remotely control the jammer."
Jude stared at her. "Just how many people are in on this undercover Connor operation?"
"It's on a need to know basis," she winked at him. She nodded to Sophia. "Let's start the sweep."
Jude's phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket. "It's a text from Lena. Adam's leaving in just a few minutes to come down. We've got to hurry!"
The main areas of the warehouse were empty except for some old equipment, so they were easy to move through. The offices were a bit more challenging as there were quite a few of them, and it took time for Jude to sniff them out thoroughly.
They found an office that had clearly been occupied recently, judging from the trash, some magazines and a chess board. Jude sniffed carefully and shook his head.
The moved up to the second floor. "How many stories are there?" Jude asked.
"Six," Sophia whispered. "This floor has the most offices and our algorithm calculates it most likely for him to be here."
Jude nodded and started sniffing in a room.
***
Connor and Miguel had been tied up for hours again. Connor had been talking to Miguel, trying to reassure and comfort him, unsure if his English was getting through at all. Hopefully if not, at least the tone would. Miguel had stopped crying and was just looking at Connor doe-eyed, clearly trying to understand the words even if he couldn't.
The door opened and the woman entered with their lunch. She was alone again. "They'll be down to untie you in a few minutes," she said.
"Please," Connor said to her. "I'm asking you again to help us. Do you have kids?" He watched her reaction closely. "You wouldn't want them to go through something like this, would you? What they're going to do to him?" He nodded at Miguel. "Maybe he is gay but no kid deserves to get raped by a bunch of men. Would you want that happening to one of your children?"
She lowered her head. "I can't."
"They don't have to know. You can say you came in here and we were already gone. Please, I'm begging you. I'll even go with them if I have to. But let me get Miguel out of here."
She looked at him. Came over and took a knife out of her pants. Sawed through his ropes. "My daughter was raped," she said to him.
"I'm sorry," Connor said tenderly. He jumped up after being freed, and she cut Miguel loose. Miguel stood and looked at Connor hesitantly. "Let's go," Connor said. He went to the door and looked out, and seeing that the coast was clear, snuck out with Miguel following behind him.
***
Sophia, Jude and Taylor were continuing the sweep. They came a longer corridor with a closed door in the middle. Jude stopped outside the door. "Whoa."
"Pheromones?" Taylor asked.
"Definitely pheromones."
Taylor nodded and fished something out of her pack that looked like a cubical, bizarre-looking camera. She jammed it up to the door. "Axion camera," she said to Jude. "It's able to take a picture of what's behind the door."
"Russian military surplus?" he asked dryly.
"No, it was a Kickstarter." She pursed her lips at his look. "I do have multiple sources for equipment."
"Obviously. And to think that James Bond needed Q, and you just do both jobs."
She grinned and looked at the results. "It's okay, we can go in."
Jude opened the door. There was table with some food on it. Chairs, including two that had ropes piled around the legs. Jude went over to one of them, knelt and inhaled. "He was here, probably for a long time. Pheromones are heavy."
"Maybe they're already moving him," Sofia whispered urgently.
They left the room. Jude sniffed the air. "This way, it's a fresh trail." They continued moving down the hallway, but froze as they heard footsteps coming towards them.
***
Connor crouched with Miguel under a desk and waited for the men to pass, aware that they would possibly come back in the same direction—and quickly—once they learned Connor and Miguel had escaped. Connor looked out the door. He wiped the sweat of his arm off on the wall next to the door. He ran down the hall and came to a stairway. He heard some noise down below and started going up, pausing briefly to again rub his sweat on the wall above the stair railing. He climbed up with Miguel following behind.
***
Crouching in the air duct, Taylor, Jude and Sophia listened as the men passed.
"Those are two of Rodriguez's known associates," Taylor whispered. Jude and Sophia heard her clearly in their earpieces.
Taylor peered through the duct. When the men came to the room where Jude had hit on the pheromones, they started yelling in Spanish came back, running past the place where the kids were hiding. "They were yelling 'they've escaped,' Sophia said. "Connor and Miguel?"
Taylor nodded. "Let's go before they come back and start searching for them." She kicked out the grill of the air duct and it clattered into the hallway. She crawled out with Sophia and Jude close behind. "We're gonna nix the sweep plan," she said. "From now on it's Jude and his nose." They continued down the hallway. "What does it smell like exactly?" Taylor asked Jude. "The pheromones?"
He shrugged. "It smells like Connor."
"Yes, but if it was bottled like perfume, if you were asked to describe it, how would you?"
Jude scowled. "Slightly musky, hints of vanilla and citrus, something that's difficult to describe...maybe Connor testosterone?" He thought about it as they moved along. "There are at least a dozen different components, it would take awhile to come up with stuff that smells sort of like all of it. It just all mixes together to make Connor scent." He stopped abruptly and sniffed the air. "There's some right here." He sniffed around and moved to the wall, inhaled deeply. "He rubbed himself here. That's what he did when we tried hide and seek."
Taylor grinned wryly at him. "Marking territory?"
Jude nodded. They continued onto the stairwell. He sniffed. "Up," he said, moving to the wall again and inhaling. "Again here."
They climbed the stairs.
***
Adam pulled up and parked about thirty feet in front of the van. He got out of the car, closed the door, walked around to the back and opened the hatch. He got the briefcase out and closed the back. He walked around to the front of the car and stood there, holding the briefcase in front of him.
The side of the van opened and a Hispanic man got out. Adam immediately recognized him as Rodriguez.
"I've got your money."
"Show it to me?"
Adam eyed him steely. "Show me my son."
Rodriguez gave him the faintest of smiles. "We're bringing him out now."
***
The FBI sniper was on the roof of the building opposite the one where Taylor, Sophia and Jude were searching for Connor. He had a clear view of van, the back of Rodriguez and Mr. Stevens. He kept his scope trained on the back of Rodriquez's head, his finger ready to squeeze the trigger in a split-second.
All the sudden the scope veered to the right and the sniper cried out in pain as he was kicked in the face. He jumped up, his assailant jumped and came down on the back of his leg, breaking it. As the sniper crumpled in agony he saw the flash of a knife in the sunlight and the startling sight of his own blood spraying into the air....
***
"Turner to Adams Foster," Stef heard in her ear. She and Mike were stationed a block away from the warehouse in one direction, Turner and his team a block away in the other direction. "There's a problem. Walsh isn't checking in. We're going to move in closer in case there is a compromise."
"Ten-four." Mike followed her as they moved down the block towards the warehouse, stopping just short of going around the corner.
***
Adam stood stoically in front of his car, keeping eye contact with Rodriguez. As minutes passed he started to feel anxious about what the hold-up was.
Finally, Rodriguez spoke to him again. "There's just one problem with this arrangement, Mr. Stevens. You weren't supposed to tell anyone else you were coming." He reached inside his vest and pulled out a gun, and pointed it at Adam's head.
***
Stef ever so carefully nudged her face around the corner enough to see with one eye. She moved back. "Rodriguez has a gun on Adam."
"Are we moving in?" Mike asked her.
"We still haven't seen Connor, and Rodriguez could be in communication with his henchmen. If we move now we could lose both of them."
"I'll try to get another angle," Mike said. He ran back the way they had came.
***
Taylor, Sophia and Jude had climbed up to the sixth floor. Jude sniffed the wall and nodded at Sophia.
"Hit the jammer," Taylor said to Sophia.
Sophia entered a code on her phone. The lights went out and the sound of circulation in the air vents died out.
Taylor whispered to them. "This isn't going according to Rodriguez's plan. Those men were clearly supposed to take Connor out for the money-for-Connor swap. Without Connor, his dad is in jeopardy."
"The most likely hiding place is in the back, near the waterfront side," Sophia said. They walked quietly in the dark, Taylor illuminating the way with her flashlight.
Sophia saw something out of the corner of her eye and stopped. They were right by one of the load-bearing columns of the building. She pointed up at a strange thing hanging from the column close to the ceiling. "Taylor, what's that?"
Taylor looked up at it. Her face turned ghostly white.
"What is it?" Jude demanded.
"I've got to go down and warn Stef and the feds. You two need to find Connor and Miguel and get them out of here as soon as possible!"
Jude grabbed Taylor's arm. "Warn them? Warn them of what?"
Her frightened gaze met his. "That this whole building is rigged to explode."