Free The Professionals by Owen Laukkanen

month or so. Specifically north of Chicago, but maybe around Joliet as well.”
    “Kidnappings?” said Taylor. “You want to be more specific.”
    Stevens laid out the Harper case. “I trace these guys to Lake Forest about two weeks ago. They may have tried the same play down there as well.”
    “Don’t think so,” said Taylor. “Most of our kidnappings are drug-related. Anyway, we haven’t seen any reported in over a month.”
    “What was the last case you got?”
    “Drug-related. Unpaid debt in the southeast. Victim wound up dead a week or so later.”
    “Sure,” said Stevens. “That doesn’t sound like my guys.”
    “Nah, it wasn’t your guys. Good luck, though.”
    Stevens thanked him and hung up. He stared at his computer screen, trying to figure out his next move. We’ve got to check out Carew’s residence in Joliet, he thought. And McAdams’s in Georgia and Tarver’s in Maryland. That’s not something I can handle on my own.
    Stevens stood up and walked down the row of cubicles to the row of private offices at the edge of the room. He knocked on Tim Lesley’s door and stuck his head inside the room. His boss looked up from his desk. “Stevens,” he said. “Come on in. What can I do for you?”
    Stevens walked in and sat down. “We’ve made progress on the Harper case,” he said. He laid out the van development and Carew’s home address in Joliet, Illinois.
    Lesley tented his fingers. “So much for the university angle.”
    Stevens shook his head. “They’re too organized to be students, sir. This is big-time. You don’t come all the way to Minneapolis and run a kidnapping job like this just to walk with sixty grand and be done with it.”
    “You think these guys are some kind of crew.”
    “I do.”
    Lesley leaned back in his chair. He fixed Stevens with a stare. “And you want me to hand this over to the FBI, do you? Make the BCA look like we can’t solve a goddamn case on our own.”
    Stevens held Lesley’s stare. “I don’t think we have a choice, sir. We’ve got this kid in Illinois, the girl in Georgia, and his friends in Maryland. If we want to move forward, someone’s got to start breaking down doors.”
    Lesley stared at Stevens for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll hand it off. But Stevens?”
    “Yes, sir?”
    The Special Agent in Charge stood. “You’d damn well better be right.”



seventeen
    B irmingham, Michigan, after dark. The streets were lifeless and black, the only lights visible a few dim reading lamps in upstairs windows. Quiet, too: nothing moving on the sidewalks, the lawns, inside the long shadowy rows of cars on either side of the street.
    Pender brought the van to a stop at the head of the block. He looked over at Marie in the passenger seat. Her eyes met his, expressionless. He glanced back into the rearview mirror, where Mouse and Sawyer sat silent, their mouths drawn tight, one hand each gripping Donald Beneteau’s arms.
    Only Beneteau seemed satisfied. He had been talkative when they left the motel, outlining in painstaking detail the ways his family would take their revenge. Then Sawyer fed him a backhand slap and told him shut up. Now Beneteau sat smirking into his blindfold, humming softly to himself.
    Pender released the brake and the van crept forward, the engine sounding like a nuclear explosion in the silence of the night. He let the van roll down the block, fully expecting Patricia Beneteau and her henchmen to jump out from a parked car, packing heavy artillery and hell-bent on revenge.
    But the street stayed quiet, even as Pender brought the van to an easy stop a few houses down from the Beneteau place. “All right,” he said. “We drop him here.”
    Mouse slid open the rear door, and it sounded like an Amtrak train. Pender flinched, staring out into the darkness, searching out the ambush. Sawyer kicked Beneteau to his feet. “End of the line.”
    Beneteau stood and let Sawyer untie his hands. “You