She frowned. Well, maybe that last one was a little out there…but was it? Isn’t that what making love to Jack meant to her? After all the time they’d waited? Wasn’t this supposed to mean something?
Are we or are we not a thing?
And tonight Jack had responded—unmistakably—absolutely not. No way. No.
She looked up at the neighboring house next to where Jack went in. It looked like a small bank building. No way a single family lives here. And the house Jack had driven his car to? The one where he parked in the driveway and just waltzed right in the front door like he owned the place? That was a mini-mansion if ever there was a definition of the thing.
She couldn’t remember what her mental status had been as she followed behind Jack to his girlfriend’s house in Buckhead, careful to stay at least two cars back. She knew she’d thoroughly ruined her mascara by crying during most of the drive over. And she knew she could no more resist the urge to follow him than she could stop breathing. She had to know. She had to see for herself.
A car drove by and the driver peered through Mia’s window before pulling into a driveway at the end of the street. Fighting a feeling of brokenness deep in her gut, Mia knew she just needed to see for herself. She focused her binoculars on the front door of Sandy’s house.
Great. I’ve officially reached stalker status. Not sure my self-esteem can take a bigger hit than that. Suddenly her back window was awash in a pulsating blue glow as the police cruiser that had silently pulled up behind her flashed its lights.
*****
Jack appreciated the fact Sandy had finally stopped crying. He watched her hands shake as she bundled the fifty thousand dollars in cash on top of bundles of old telephone directory pages they’d cut to match the size of a bill. But the resolute line of her mouth told him she was determined to get through the next few hours without falling apart.
Don’t record this call. You want to see her alive again, you don’t go to the cops. Tell me you understand. Five hundred Gs in a book bag. You can get your new boyfriend to deliver it. Bring it to where the old Coke sign used to be on Margaret Mitchell Square. Tonight at one a.m. Put it on the ground next to the trash can. There’ll be instructions under the can about where the girl is. Go to the cops and she dies.
Jack played it enough times that he now had it memorized—which wasn’t helpful for trying to hear something in the recording that he hadn’t heard before. His mind now automatically filled in the next words as he listened to the kidnapper’s words—or whomever the bastard had gotten to read his words.
The part where Twyla broke in with her frantic plea had obviously been taped earlier. The background noise for that recording was different from the ransom demand recording, but it was so dominated by Twyla’s hysteria and tears it was impossible to separate the two.
Now if he had access to a police lab or even a recording studio—hell, a good laptop with GarageBand on it would’ve worked. But he had no idea how to work the software, and Sandy was adamant that nobody else be brought into the inner circle of their own private horror show.
He looked at the open book bag with the money and the carefully cut pieces of paper stuffed into it. If the guy opened it at the drop site it was hard to believe even in the dark he was going to mistake the contents for a half a million dollars. A light sheen of sweat popped across Jack’s forehead.
I have a seriously bad feeling about this.
“What do you think, Jack?” Sandy sat across from him on the floor in her bedroom where they’d packed the bag. He still marveled that she kept the money in shoeboxes in the linen closet. Not even a safe. Her eyes were a little too bright, a little too wide, as if she was doing everything in her power to appear in control and strong. As if they both didn’t know she was inches from a total breakdown.
Likely in his arms.
“I think it looks good,” he lied. “What time is it?”
He knew what time it was. Every minute that clicked away in the direction of one o’clock in the morning was carved on his heart.
“A little before eleven,” she said, rubbing her hands against her jeans. He had already become very familiar with that gesture. It was her attempt to stop her hands from shaking.
He zipped the backpack and stood. “I don’t want to be late.”
She stood too and rubbed her hands down her thighs. She looked so vulnerable, it was all he could do not to reach for her. Where the hell was Vernetta?
“You’ll bring her back, won’t you, Jack?” Sandy asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.
“I will.” What else could he say? Don’t get your hopes up? You should have let me get the police involved? Why hadn’t he overridden her insistence not to bring in the cops?
If everything goes south because of it, it will be my fault, one hundred thousand percent my fault.
Sandy put her hand on his arm as he picked up the bag and raised up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. “Godspeed, Jack,” she said. “We are her parents and together we will bring her back.”
While Jack appreciated the gesture, and the fact she seemed to have rallied a little, he couldn’t help but feel like a fraud trying to parade as the parent of a child he’d never met.
“You going to be okay?” he said. “Is Vernetta still asleep?”
“I’ll wake her after you go. I don’t want to take away whatever break she can get from this nightmare. I won’t wake her until I have to.”
He squeezed her hand and shouldered the book bag and left the bedroom. Sandy followed him downstairs without a word. He patted the Fobus holster in the waistband of his pants. While he didn’t expect to meet the kidnapper tonight, if he did he wanted to at least appear unarmed. The Sig Sauer P232 only held seven rounds, but it was perfect for undercover work or any work where you needed a concealed weapon. He tugged on his leather jacket and went to the front door.
“Wake her up,” he said, tersely. “I’ll be back soon.” He left before she could respond. The minute he walked outside, he was aware of the release of tension, as if all the pain and terror of the world were trapped inside the house. He found himself taking a long clearing inhalation of breath as he walked to his car and drove away.
One way or the other tonight will end this nightmare. It will either end in tears and joy, or tears and unspeakable pain. He glanced at the dashboard. He had a full tank, and from Buckhead downtown was only about fifteen miles. He had plenty of time so he drove down Peachtree Road instead of jumping on I-85. While not that late, the streets were dark. That was partly because of the dense stands of trees that lined both sides of the road. By day, they were dressed in fall colors—a blaze of vermillion and gold that trumpeted Atlanta’s most famous street—but tonight they were just dark shadows that loomed over his car as he sped to his date with the devil.
When he reached downtown, Peachtree Road turned into Peachtree Street. He parked on a side street two blocks away and walked toward the MARTA station that faced Margaret Mitchell Square. It was interesting the kidnapper had mentioned the Coca-Cola sign since that was dismantled in the eighties and only Atlanta natives—or Coke buffs—remembered it. Was Eugene originally from Atlanta? Had he grown up here?
Jack leaned against the Georgia-Pacific Building on the corner of Luckie Street and Peachtree and looked at the drop site. When he first moved to the city in the late eighties, the square housed a storefront that changed every few months and served as a focal point for shoppers and pedestrians. Now, it featured a small marble and stone monument with an artsy waterfall that looked like it was cascading off a set of Roman columns. There was an attractive garbage can front and center.
He glanced at his watch. He was early. Was the kidnapper watching the drop site? Was Twyla somewhere downtown? Probably stashed in a car idling its engine on one of the side streets while the kidnapper watched to see if Jack showed up with the money.
Let’s do this.
He crossed the street and walked quickly to the square where the small monument faced th
e wrought-iron green latticework trash receptacle. He looked down Peachtree Street but there was no one near. A half block away the conference hotels lined up in orderly fashion to be convenient to the Georgia World Congress Center.
Forcing himself to focus on his surroundings, he stood in front of the trash can and lowered the bag to the ground. If he was being watched—and he sincerely hoped he was—he wanted the bag to look heavy. He examined the ground by the trash can. It sat in a bracket that kept it off the ground. There was nothing under the receptacle. Jack’s heart sped up.
The message said there would be instructions under the trash can about how to get Twyla. He looked at his watch again. It was one o’clock straight up.
Was the guy waiting to collect the money before leaving the instructions? Did that make sense? He’d have to know Jack wouldn’t leave without Twyla. If Eugene picked up the money—the most dangerous time for any kidnapper—and no cops jumped out of the bushes to apprehend him—he still had to assume Jack was watching and waiting for instructions.
It didn’t look like he had any other choice. Jack made a visual sweep of the area—even looking inside the memorial—and then retreated to watch from the shadows of the same corner he’d been at earlier on Luckie street. He wasn’t so far away he wouldn’t see when Eugene—or whomever—came to collect the ransom, but not so close he could be seen.
The brisk autumn breeze dropped the night temperatures to the forties. Jack rubbed his arms through his jacket to keep warm, never taking his eyes off the book bag. A few times he was approached by a homeless person asking for money, and once he directed a drunken conventioneer back toward his hotel up the street. Nobody came from the direction behind Margaret Mitchell Square, which was mostly warehousing and parking garages and unpopulated after ten o’clock.
And nobody came near the book bag.
He reran the tape in his head of what the kidnapper had said on the call. He was positive he’d done everything as requested. He checked the time again. Two o’clock. That wasn’t totally unusual, he told himself. Eugene is probably watching the bag same as I am. Waiting to get up the nerve to go get it.
Maybe Eugene had called Sandy to reschedule for some reason?
He pulled his phone out of his pocket but there were no missed calls. He hesitated and then called her.
“Yes?” Her voice was breathless with hope and expectation. Jack felt a tingling in his chest at the thought of smashing that hope to bits. A weight pushed down on his shoulders until he found it hard to breathe. The fact she hadn’t called Jack told him what he needed to know.
“Did the guy call tonight?” he asked anyway.
“What?” He could picture her face trying to understand what Jack’s question could mean.
“The kidnapper,” he said, his eyes still glued to the book bag on the square. “He didn’t call you to say he had to reschedule?”
There was a beat of silence before Sandy responded. “No.” So now she knew without him even having to say a word. But her silence made him feel shittier than if he’d beaten her with a shovel.
“So,” she said, her voice dead and flat. “He didn’t show.”
“I’ll wait another hour. Don’t give up.” He disconnected, not willing to hear her attempt at bravery, to hear the prelude to accepting the greatest pain of her life, the beginning of the end for any mother.
And hour later, his shoulders sagging under the weight of the night’s failure, he collected the untouched bag and drove back to her house.
Chapter TWELVE
Mia dropped her jacket on the chair in her living room. Her shoulder was still tender from where Maxwell pulled her over his hip and onto her mother’s couch in the first of his self-defense tutoring classes that morning after breakfast. Unfortunately he did it without realizing there was an old DVR box on the couch. He’d been profuse in his apologies, but the takeaway Mia received in no uncertain terms—this was yet another thing she was useless at.
She went to the kitchen and yanked open the refrigerator. She’d forgotten to buy beer but she grabbed a container Jack must have bought a few weeks back before he went to Valdosta. She opened it. Cheese of some kind. She found a loaf of bread in the freezer and pried two slices off to stick in the toaster. Thanks to Jack’s really inconvenient attitude toward processed foods, she thought as she thumped a cast iron skillet onto the stove, there’s nothing to eat in the whole place except whatever scraps that haven’t rotted from his last grocery run.
Wonder if he’s cooking for his girlfriend? That’s a sure thing. She probably has a kitchen manned with sweeper robots and self-loading dishwashers. Mia lit the gas on the stove.
Every time she reran the scene in her head of Jack hopping out of his car and trotting to the front door like some overeager puppy who couldn’t wait to bask in the adorableness of his sucky-rich South Georgia girlfriend, Mia wanted to just…okay, girl, get a grip. She stacked three pieces of cheese on the toast, then buttered both sides and dropped the sandwich into the hot pan with a sizzle.
The stakeout—which sounded so much better than my stalking incident—miraculously had not ended with yet another trip downtown. When Mia saw the cop in her rearview mirror she’d already decided she wasn’t going to call anyone to come get her. She’d just stay in lockup until the cops got tired of looking at her or she died of natural causes. Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary.
The patrolman—who had been called, it turned out, by the nosy hag in the Expedition who’d passed Mia the hour before—just wanted to see her PI license and to request that next time she set up surveillance on a cheating spouse in the area she notify the police first.
Mia grabbed a metal spatula and poked at her sandwich. The sizzling had stopped and now the sandwich didn’t appear to be doing anything. She looked under the burner and saw the flame had gone out.
So that’s why the kitchen smells like gas. She twisted the knob until the burner ignited again. If only there was something in the freezer to put in the microwave, I wouldn’t have to actually try to cook something. On the other hand, what else was there to do? She had no real cases to work on—which was probably just as well since she was going to court for the way she’d handled her last two.
The cheese peeked out of the edge of the sandwich and began to bubble just as she heard her phone ring. She ran into the living room and snatched it up from the couch where she’d dropped it earlier. A quick glance at the screen revealed it was Ned.
“Hey, can you ride this week?” she said before he had a chance to speak.
“Hello to you, too,” Ned said, laughing. “Yeah, I can fit it in if you can.”
“Well, since I’m virtually unemployed, I can totally fit it in.”
“I thought you had a case?”
“I solved it.”
“Well done, sweetheart. Have you and Jack finally done the deed or are you setting dates at this point?”
She groaned. Had it really been that long since she talked to him?
“Uh oh. Tell Uncle Ned. What happened?”
“Well, yes, we did do the deed as you put it,” Mia said slumping onto the couch. “But then his ex-girlfriend from Valdosta asked him to come over to meet…her daughter and basically that was two days ago and he’s still there.”
“No way.”
“Yeah, totally way. It seriously sucks, Ned.”
“So not even a full night together?”
“No, Ned. And you’re making me feel worse, by the way.”
“Sorry. I just don’t get it. That’s so not like Jack.”
“If you say so.”
“Now, come on, Mia. You know Jack. There must be something else going on.”
“You mean like I was crap in the sack and so he’s been lured back into the arms of his redneck girlfriend?”
“Does that sound like Jack? At all?”
“Ned, I’m just telling you what happened. We fell into bed, afterward he hopped up and said, ‘Be right back,’ and two days later all my pho
ne calls go straight to voice mail.”
“It just doesn’t make sense. I mean, he was dying to get you into bed, but he was crazy about you, Mia. I mean, certifiably.”
“Yes, thank you, Ned. You are officially the worst girlfriend ever. I now feel like killing myself. Thank you very much.”
“Sorry, sweetie. What you need is a good ride. Something dependable between your legs that won’t let you down.”
“I’m hanging up.”
He laughed. “I’m just teasing you, Mia.”
“And the worst of it is he came by yesterday to pick up some clothes, and after we had a big fight I followed him.”
“Oh, tell me you didn’t.”
“I wanted to see where she lived. I was hoping she might be outside in the yard or something. Probably wearing some skimpy little sundress with her boobs falling out.”
“Mia, promise me you won’t do that again. Trust me, most men have seen Play Misty for Me too many times to be flattered by that kind of attention. If Jack catches you spying on him, you’ll lose him for good.”
“I think I already have.”
“Promise you won’t go back there.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“So in other news, how goes the self-defense classes?”
“I dropped out.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m learning some basic moves from my mother’s boyfriend—if he doesn’t maim me first. He’s a cop. You met him. Chief Maxwell?”
“Yeah, really not the happiest memory for me, that night,”
Mia was surprised to hear Ned say that. Ned had been such a hero that day—literally saving her life and the life of a friend—so much so that it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d been upset by it. But, of course, who wouldn’t be? Taking another person’s life, even for very good reasons, was traumatic. Ned came off as big, gruff and über capable. But he was also sensitive and, if the kind of guys he dated revealed anything about him at all, an incurable romantic.
Complete Mia Kazmaroff Page 51