The Vanishing Point Read Free Page B

was hiring. They especially weren’t hiring people who had no vocational training. Five years in the FBI didn’t qualify you for anything except more of the same. And more of the same was precisely what she didn’t want.
    And now, just to make her day complete, Randall Parton was walking through her office door. Vivian had tried not to let the instinctive dislike she’d taken to Parton interfere with their professional relationship. But it was hard, given the perfect storm of arrogance and stupidity that had been obvious at their first encounter and at every one since.
    ‘Agent McKuras,’ he said with a sharp nod of greeting. He always managed to make it clear that the lack of respect between them was mutual.
    ‘What do you need from me today, Officer Parton?’ Vivian smiled sweetly, knowing it killed him that she was the one with the power to do anything more than prevent someone getting on a plane.
    Parton eyed the visitor chair opposite her desk, torn as always between the desire to sit down without waiting for an invitation that was never going to come and the need to tower over her. ‘We got us a crazy woman. She set off the metal detector, an officer put her in the box to wait for a female assist. We were running a little slow on the box, you know how busy it gets this time of day.’
    ‘I know,’ Vivian said, wishing she didn’t. Wishing this airport and all its internal workings were a mystery to her.
    ‘Out of nowhere, she launches herself out of the box.’ Parton sounded defensive, a man who expected to find himself in the wrong sooner or later. ‘Officers go to intercept her but she’s not ready to be stopped. Next thing is, I’ve got an officer down with a busted nose, blood everywhere and she’s still going forward, yelling something that makes no sense to any of my guys.’
    ‘She’s not speaking English?’
    Parton’s mouth quirked to one side to show his distaste. ‘She’s English all right, but nobody can make out what she’s yelling. So they taser her, like they’re supposed to when they’re met with violent resistance. She goes down but she gets right back up. Like a crazy person. So they zap her with a longer blast and this time she stays down till they cuff her. Lopez took her down to the interview room.’
    Vivian felt a moment’s relief. Lia Lopez might be Parton’s junior, but she had more sense than the rest of her shift put together. ‘Good move,’ she said.
    ‘So that’s when I get called in. And that’s where it gets complicated.’
    ‘Complicated how?’
    ‘For a start, she’s a smartass. Every time I ask her a question, she just harps on about whether she’s legally obliged. Running me around in circles. And then she starts in about how her kid’s been kidnapped. Now, we got no alert in the zone. Nobody saw any kid being abducted. The only unusual thing in my area this afternoon was this crazy-ass woman breaking out of the box. So I was disinclined to take her seriously. I thought she was trying to distract us from doing the search on her that we should be doing.’ Now his chin was up, his self-righteousness to the fore.
    ‘I can see why you might think that way.’ If you were an idiot. ‘So where are we up to now? You want me to talk to her? Get her to agree to a search?’
    Parton folded his arms across his chest. ‘It’s gotten more complicated. Lopez got her name from her passport and checked with Immigration. Turns out she did have a kid with her when she arrived at the border earlier this afternoon.’
    ‘And the kid is missing now?’ Now he had Vivian’s full attention. Whatever this was, it wasn’t the run-of-the-mill that had ground her down.
    Parton nodded. ‘Looks like it.’ His mouth did the wry twist again. ‘And here’s the thing. She’s not the mother. She brought the kid in with British court documents giving her authority to travel with him. So who knows what the fuck is going on here.’
    The sudden rush of adrenalin galvanised