Not surprisingly, the four-man team that boarded the plane in Chicago and de-planed at the small Indian Run Airport were tough men, two of which Cameron would have recognized. One was Andrews and the other Aiken who had been sent for his tracking skills. Because there had been an AMBER alert put out on the boy, the FBI also had a team on the way from Bismarck, their main office in the Dakotas. Aiken and his team had those credentials as well as their official government ones.
They were met at the terminal by a limo driver who was Native American but wore jeans, t-shirt, and Carhart jacket. He wore a battered black Stetson and fancy ropers.
“I’m Darren White Deer. I’ll be taking you to the casino and your hotel.”
“No,” Aiken said flatly. “We want to go to the hospital.”
“The hospital is in the Casino,” Darren shrugged. “So we’re going to the same place. Get in.”
Three of the men sat in the back and one in the front passenger seat. Darren frowned, but said nothing other than, ‘seat belts'.
All five of them buckled up and he drove out of the airport and back towards the city. They could see the massive towers that seen in profile against the Black Hills looked like a drawn bow. Though not excessively high, the towers were larger than Aiken expected for such an out of the way place.
“What brings people all the way out here to gamble?” he asked curiously.
“No tax on the winnings and we bank it here where the IRS can’t touch it,” White Deer said. “You’d be surprised at what a draw that is.”
“The IRS doesn’t step in and freeze your assets?” One of the other agents asked.
White Deer snorted. “They’ve tried but according to one of your treaties way back when, we were given the right to manage our lands, monies and assets free from Government control. Your FBI and IRS can walk on this land but are only visiting tourists. Nothing more. You are all subject to our laws and not the other way around.”
“Until you step foot outside your reservation,” Aiken smiled and Darren met his gaze with the look that Custer had seen and dismissed to his regret. White Deer did not say another word as he took them on a scenic tour around the city avoiding the daily gridlock that occurred at lunchtime and prolonged the usual 15-minute drive to half an hour.
Anderson tried to tip him when he pulled up at the front arch of the casino entrance. He went around to the trunk and placed all four bags on the first step.
“It’s part of the Casino’s service, man,” White Deer said and finished with ‘assholes’ in Abenaki. “That’s good luck in my language.” He drove off around the block and parked the limo in the lot reserved for drivers.
The four men stepped inside the lobby and two commented that it was as fancy as Trump Plaza, the women as exotic as Las Vegas. They were met by the Manager who brought them through to the Hotel’s front desk where their rooms were confirmed. 9007 and 9009, on the ninth floor.
Going up in the elevator, Aiken was first out onto the hallway and in the suite. Andrews unpacked and went over the three rooms searching for any recording or listening devices. When he was done, he did the second set of rooms and pronounced both clean. Only then did Aiken outline his plans. He sent Andrews and Ferguson to find the nurse, Sarah Coventry, break in and search her hotel room while he and Martin would check out the hospital. They left the room with electronic key cards safely tucked away in their suit pockets.
The hospital was two floors below the hotel, on the entire seventh floor. The tower had four elevators dedicated solely to its use but every elevator in the complex had a button marked ‘H’,
Aiken was impressed, the entrance looked like any first-rate emergency center yet it wasn’t frantically busy such as Chicago Memorial which treated dozens of GSWs every day.
There was a varied mix of Caucasians, Afro-Americans and Native Americans in the waiting room but most of the staff were Hispanic or Indian. A pretty girl in nurse’s scrubs with chocolate eyes and feathery black hair cut in a pixie asked if she could help them.
Aiken pulled out his wallet to expose his FBI credentials. “Special Agent John Tighe,” he said. “This is my partner, Special Agent Edward Herr. We’re here because someone reported a missing juvenile.”
“Here? In the hospital?” she asked and Aiken read her nametag.
“You’re Penny Bright Star,” he smiled. “Pretty name, Penny. Yes, a nurse reported seeing the child.”
“Do you know this nurse’s name?”
“Sarah Coventry.”
She ran it through her computer and frowned. “Sorry. We don’t have a Sarah Coventry working here.”
“She’s a guest at the hotel,” Aiken said.
“Sorry. I can’t access the hotel or casino computers. What’s the boy’s name and why would she spot him here? Was he in an accident?”
“That’s what we need to discuss with Ms. Coventry.”
“His name?”
“His name is Lake Hamilton. And I didn’t say anything about him being male or female, Ms. Bright Star.”
She flushed. “I just assumed the child was a boy. I heard the AMBER alert, too. It’s been playing on all the TVs since he’s the grandson of the President. How did he escape the Secret Service agents assigned to protect him?”
Aiken looked pissed. “He wasn’t being watched by Secret Service, he was under the protection of his grandmother, Director Hamilton.”
“She wasn’t too careful about his safety, was she?” Penny retorted smartly.
Aiken said, “I want a list of your ORs and any surgeries scheduled today and tomorrow.”
“You’ll have to ask the DON for that,” Bright Star said. “I can’t give out any information on patients. HIPAA you know.”
“We can get warrants,” he threatened and she smiled sweetly.
“Warrants stop being legal the minute you crossed onto Reservation land.” She rose from behind the counter and disappeared down the hallway towards the cubicles for examining patients.
Aiken shrugged, pulled the computer monitor around and stared at the screen saver that held a message in what he assumed was her native language. He copied it into the web browser and translated. “It says ‘go home, assholes’,” he grinned. “Not good luck.”
They wandered on the floor and checked out every room allowed access and found no trace of the boy. Of the four ORs, two were in use and neither held a 14-year-old boy. Aiken double checked by flashing his badge to the people anxiously pacing in the waiting rooms.
One group were the children of an 80-year-old who had slipped and fallen getting out of his car in the parking lot of a grocery store. He was in for repair of a broken hip. The other couple was parents of a ten-year-old native girl who had fractured her arm falling off a bucking horse.
The parents told him that the other two surgical suites had been empty since Monday, two days earlier and that it had been used for the victim of a hit and run that did not survive. A drunk school teacher from Boston who had left the casino to wander downtown looking for sex and found more than she had bargained for.
Aiken was amazed at the frankness of these people’s information but suspected fear and adrenalin had loosened their tongues. That and the fake Federal IDs. Most people didn’t question the authority behind the FBI badge, they just assumed and went on from there where police credentials were ignored or disrespected. Of course, most of those he talked to were Caucasians and had an innate respect for the badge.
By the time Aiken and Martin had searched the entire seventh floor, Ferguson and Andrews had returned and met them in the hospital cafeteria.
“Her things are still in her room but the desk clerk said she checked out last night. Her reservations state that she booked the room for the weekend, she has tickets open to Denver on Sunday afternoon. We pulled her credit report and phone records from her cell and the room. She called the Chicago office to report the sighting. Someone intercepted her call and called back, offering her $100K to kidnap the boy.”
“One of Chase’s, I assume. Where is she supposed to bring him?” Aiken questioned.
“Don’t know. She must have her cell phone. It would be on there but I haven’t been able to trace that call or cell tower,” Martin returned. “Why are we here, anyway? Is the kid sick, hurt, what? I saw a photo of him, he looks healthy enough.”
Aiken had deliberately kept some information from the team. Now, he outlined the boy’s unique makeup; his relationship and the tracer in his chest. He did not disclose the exact nature of the device or that it was explosive. He fully expected to hear a bomb go off inside the hospital.
What he heard instead and it made him jump, was his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. He answered it; the call came not from Cameron but Dr. Hamilton herself. She brought him up to date on the situation and warned him not to contact Dr. Cameron as he was with Agent Chase and they were searching for Lake.
“There’s no sign he’s been here although I caught a nurse lying to me,” he returned. “And the other nurse has disappeared.”
“She was reported boarding a commercial flight to Denver an hour ago,” Hamilton said. “I have an agent in place ready to pick her up. Find my grandson before Chase does,” she hissed and hung up.
Aiken sighed and wondered who had arranged for the woman to disappear. He would bet his eyeteeth that she wasn’t on the plane. “Search the hospital again,” he decided. “We’re looking for the nurse, Coventry.” He passed around his cell phone with the image of the fair skinned brunette with gray eyes. She was pretty in English peaches and cream way yet her eyes contained a defeated look as if life had beaten her down. Aiken knew she was deep in debt; her car repossessed, her apartment in the process of eviction and her credit cards maxed out. She was living paycheck to paycheck and taking extra shifts anywhere she could to catch up. Yet, she still gambled. The one hundred K would have pulled her up and out of the hole she’d dug herself. If she could bear to use the money to pay off her obligations instead of gambling it into a bigger stake.
They found her in a semi-private room on an IV drip that was keeping her out. She had a large bruise on her face and a black eye. Aiken removed the IV and put Andrews outside the door while he dressed her lax body, lifted her into a wheelchair and casually removed her from the seventh floor to their own rooms. No one noticed or made comments, the staff were busy with the influx of dozens of vomiting tourists.