Chasing the Lost Read Online Free PDF

night on the street. His new neighborhood was definitely not an inner city with daily drive-bys. Multi-million dollar houses dotted both sides of the dead-end road that ended at Brams Point. The ones to the east faced Broad Creek, the ones to the west faced the Intracoastal Waterway. Prime real estate, on an island that was prime real estate. And he had a house with tree limbs poking through the roof into his living room. On prime real estate.
    “Why can’t we call the police?” he pressed as he gingerly let go of her and stepped back.
    Sarah ran her long fingers through her short, blond hair, and took a deep breath before speaking. “Walter’s job. What he does.”
    Chase waited.
    “Walter programs and runs the main-frame computer for an off-shore on-line gambling site called SAS,” she finally said. “It’s a very unique one that caters to a handful of high-rollers all over the country, but primarily here and in Savannah. And the Super Bowl is this weekend. The biggest event of the year for gambling. He received a call a little while ago. Someone wants him to shift all the money on bets in the twelve hours leading up to the game to an off-shore account. We’re talking at least fifty million dollars. Maybe more. They’re using Cole—and wanted me—as leverage to get him to do this.”
    “Tell me exactly what happened earlier,” Chase said, already doing the ticking clock. It was late Friday night. The Super Bowl was Sunday evening. So the kidnappers deadline was Sunday morning.
    “Cole was in the back, on the floating dock at the end of the pier. Crabbing.” She took a deep breath. “Too far away. But he likes going out there at night. I looked out the kitchen window when I heard an engine, and I saw a boat pull up to the dock. Two men got off. It was dark, and I couldn’t get a good look at them. They grabbed him, hauling him onto the boat. I started to run to the back door to go after them, but then those two guys you saw came smashing through the front door. I ran out a side door and down the street here, because I knew you would know what to do.”
    “Where’s your husband?”
    “In Antigua, with the main-frame at SAS’s headquarters.”
    “He knew Cole had been kidnapped?”
    “He said he’d just gotten a call, threatening to kill Cole if he didn’t do as instructed. And to not go to the police, or else they would kill Cole.”
    “A call from who?”
    Sarah wiped tears off her cheeks. “Walter didn’t know, but he guesses it’s the Russian mob. They’ve been crashing on-line gambling sites and extorting them over the past couple of years. Pay up or your system goes down. Walter said they had trouble with the Russians a couple of weeks ago during the Conference Championship games. Got shut down for six hours the night before. Cost them a couple of million in lost bets. So they paid out to a bank account in the Caymans, and got the system back running.”
    Part of Chase’s mind was considering the angles to the extortion, and the other part was processing the Russian mob angle. “I was in Afghanistan,” he said. “The Russian mob was running a lot of opium out of that country through the northern border. Pretty—” He paused, biting off the word ruthless. “Pretty much a formidable opponent. But this is America. How does Walter know it’s them?” Even as he said it, Chase thought back to Colorado and how the Russians had infiltrated there.
    “He doesn’t,” Sarah said. “He doesn’t know for sure who it is.” She had her arms wrapped tight around her body as if she were cold. Chase took off his long-sleeve pullover and gave it to her. He only had on his black T-shirt and his MK23 was exposed, but he didn’t think that was an issue right now.
    “Who else could it be?” Chase pressed as she pulled the shirt on. He heard a clatter of metal from the operating room, and figured Erin was cleaning her instruments.
    Sarah sighed and leaned back in the couch. “If it’s not the