“Oh wow, that’s even better. You’re rolling around in the sheets, and out pops ‘I love you’?”
“No, more like doing it up against the wall and out pops ‘I love you.’”
“Against the wall? Oh my,” Dory sighed. “That is so hot. I’ve never done it against the wall.”
Remembering exactly how the experience against the wall had gone, Maddy felt heat climbing up her neck. “The wall absolutely is an experience that should not be missed. Like seeing the Statue of Liberty, everyone should do it at least once.”
Dory fanned herself with her hands. “Against the wall, and ‘I love you’ on top of it? That’s got to rate at the top of all sexually romantic experiences.”
“It’s at the top of mine, but I don’t think he meant to say it.”
“That’s even better. It shows he truly means it because he couldn’t keep it in.” She fanned her hands over her cheeks. “And ‘keep it in’ conjures all sorts of sexual images that are only going to make me even more frustrated. Focus, Dory. Okay, the important question is, did you say it back?”
“No. I, um,” Maddy hung her head, “I punched him.”
“You punched him? For saying ‘I love you’? Who does that? Maddy, you need therapy.”
“More than likely.”
Dory pulled out her phone to check the time. “You have exactly seven minutes to tell me the rest, because I need to go pick up Adrian. “So you punched him, and then what?”
“We were kind of working our way through that, and I was feeling bad about punching him, and then Jason showed up.”
Dory laughed, long and low. “Oh my god. I bet Jason only has sex, if he gets sex, in the missionary position.”
“That’s unkind. Probably true, but unkind. And the whole thing with Jason was my fault. I should have told him months ago that I wasn’t interested in a romantic relationship. He was hurt when Logan told him we are together. He was already out of sorts because Logan didn’t know who he was and went all special agent on him. He had him up against the car, hands behind his back, and frisked him.”
“Heavens, this keeps getting better and better, but I really have to go.” She pointed a finger at Maddy. “I’m coming back tomorrow for the rest of the story, so don’t forget any of the juicy details. And one more thing. People change. Neither you or Logan are the same people you were ten years ago. You should give him a chance.”
Dory had certainly given Maddy something to think about. After her friend left, Maddy found herself brooding, questioning her resolution not to tell Logan about Lily all those years ago. She didn’t like feeling that she might have made the wrong decision. The anger she’d held on to for so long no longer seemed so righteous.
Her phone rang and she chided herself for the stab of disappointment that it wasn’t playing the Secret Agent Man ringtone. The caller identified herself as Agent Flores, who wanted to make sure Maddy was safe and still planning to spend the night at Police Chief Gallagher’s house. After assuring Flores that she was indeed going to her brother’s home, Maddy couldn’t help wondering if Agent Flores checking on her was at Logan’s direction, or if it was something the FBI would do regardless.
Maddy was putting entirely too much emotional investment in Logan Ross. Time to dial it back.
After the sign had been flipped to “closed” and the cleanup done, she let her crew go, but stayed in the kitchen. Her business always centered her, and baking was her go-to when she felt out of sorts. She could start a dessert pizza dough. A quick look in her refrigerator told her she still had fresh berries, so she decided a blueberry/raspberry Nutella dessert pizza would be amazing.
The display cases were nearly depleted, and her experiment with the Nutella raspberry tart had earned enthusiastic praise from many customers, including the Hensley sisters, who’d ordered a half dozen to add to the holiday goodie tray Maddy was putting together for them. She’d start the dough for the pizza and the tarts. The double batch of tart dough would chill overnight. In the morning, she would roll it out, make the raspberry filling, and…she was out of Nutella. She tapped her chin, staring at the near-empty jar. She had a jar at her cabin. A big jar, and unopened. So she’d get the dough going, then stop at the cabin to pick up the Nutella on her way over to Brad and Emma’s place, and check to be sure everything was okay at her cabin. Sophie was already at Brad’s, hanging out with her new best bud, Emma’s three-legged corgi named Annabelle. Maddy would be at her cabin only a minute. Get the Nutella, make sure the pipes hadn’t burst, and head on over to her brother’s house.
An hour later, she steered her CRV along the winding road to her cabin, mentally making a list of things she could pick up. Besides the Nutella, she would grab her fuzzy socks, the extra bag of Sophie’s kibble, plus a DVD she thought Emma would like. The manhunt for Lazlo Horvath was a pain in the butt. And now going into a full week of staying with her brother, she really wanted her own space back.
She pulled under the carport and parked. Although only late afternoon, the temperature was already starting its nighttime plunge. The days were certainly short this time of year. She tugged up her zipper and crossed to the side door. Wishing she had Sophie with her and they could settle into the cabin for the evening was useless. Pushing open the door, she stepped inside and unwound the scarf around her neck.
The cabin was warm. Really warm. She was sure she’d adjusted the thermostat down when she’d left that morning. The thermostat was set to maintain a high enough temperature to keep the pipes from freezing, but this felt downright balmy. She walked into the kitchen and came to an abrupt halt, heart slamming into her throat and threatening to choke her. The counters were a mess of food debris, the bottle of wine she’d bought before the snowstorm but hadn’t gotten around to drinking sat empty, and the Nutella was open on the counter, a knife sticking out of the jar.
Maddy was already stepping backward, retreating toward the door, when the floor creaked behind her. She whirled around, a scream lodged in her throat. The blow struck her on the side of the head. Pain flashed, sharp and bewildering. Then the world faded to black.
Chapter Sixteen
Logan heaved a sigh of relief when the plane jolted, signaling that the landing gear had made contact with the tarmac at the Reno airport. Flying was part of his job, but he didn’t have to like it, and the plane bouncing and shaking through the impending storm had kept him popping Tums like candy.
Rittenhauer was supposed to pick him up. Logan could update his boss on the drive back to Hangman’s Loss. Apparently the helicopter wasn’t an option on this leg of the trip. He deplaned, walking into the terminal with his phone to his ear. Damn. His call to Maddy went straight to voicemail. He nodded to Rittenhauer, falling into step with his boss as he put in another call. This time the other end picked up. “Brad.”
“Logan. You back on the right side of the mountains?”
“Yeah. Be back in the Loss in two hours or so. Where’s Maddy? She didn’t pick up.”
“She’s supposed to be heading to my place. Hang on while I check.” The noises in the background told him Brad was likely at the command center at city hall.
Logan followed Rittenhauer out of the airport, ignoring the bitterly cold wind that wanted to freeze the skin off his face. Phone to his ear, he slid into the passenger seat of the black Suburban, strapping on the seatbelt one-handed. Brad finally came back on the line. “Emma says Maddy’s not at our place yet, and she didn’t pick up when I rang her cell or the phone at the café. The café will be closed, but I’m heading over there now. Sometimes she’ll work in there after hours with headphones on, so she may not hear the phone.”
The hollow feeling in Logan’s gut had nothing to do with the fact he’d skipped lunch. “Call me when you find her.”
Rittenhauer steered the SUV onto the highway, pushed the speedometer to eighty, and started eating up the miles. Ten minutes later the phone rang again. Maddy wasn’t at the café and still wasn’t answering her phone, so Brad was
starting a search. Officers had been assigned to check at the grocery store, the bank, and the vet’s office (that one made Logan grind his teeth hard enough to crush bullets), while Brad would go to her cabin.
Logan ended the call and caught Rittenhauer’s raised brow. Will Rittenhauer, a solid agent and a good boss, also had the sweetest woman for a wife Logan had ever met. The curvy and feisty Rochelle anchored her husband and tended their two kids, who blended their father’s European ancestry beautifully with their mother’s African American. For the first time, Logan wondered at their secret for a happy marriage and family.
God, he wished Brad would call and tell him he’d found Maddy at her cabin, maybe curled up on her couch, taking a nap. He could chew her out for scaring him later. After he kissed her senseless.
“Going to give me more than what’s in the official report?”
Rittenhauer’s question pulled in Logan’s focus, and he gave the rundown. “The stash house was in Oakland. Six women there, one with her two teenage daughters. The mom didn’t believe us when we told her she and her daughters would have been sold into the sex trade. Was spitting mad because they’ll be turned over to ICE.”
“Horvath?”
“We got Janus, but not Lazlo, and no sign that he’d been there.”
“Nabbing Janus Horvath is big, Logan. But I thought your informant had seen Lazlo. How’d he get that wrong? I want that bastard.”
“My snitch isn’t what you’d describe as reliable.” Logan glanced at his boss, who was running his hand over his thinning hair, a habit when he was tense. “I think Lazlo is still in Hangman’s Loss. He wants me dead, so I think making myself available so he can give it a try might not be a bad idea.”
“He could clear out, lay low in Mexico until things settle down here, but you think he’d stick around to get at you? That you nabbed Janus is sure as hell going to rattle little brother.”
“I think Lazlo is only going to become more erratic now that his brother won’t be around to keep a leash on him, to the extent that he did.”
“Shit.”
“Horvath could have gotten to my informant, set me up.”
“What’s his motivation?”
“To get me out of the Loss. As a distraction.” His blood chilled. “To go after Maddy.” He drummed his fingers on his knee, impatient for the phone to ring.
When it did, he grabbed it and barked into the receiver, “Tell me.”
By the time Rittenhauer pulled the SUV in behind the myriad of other vehicles in front of Maddy’s cabin, Logan felt like the acid in his stomach had eaten clean through the lining and was now working on his other internal organs. Maddy’s small SUV sat under the carport, all of the doors open as an officer leaned over the backseat. The bastard Horvath had Maddy. The ramifications of that fact spun through Logan’s mind like a fucking tornado.
Brad met him at the cabin door, face grim. “Come with me.” He led the way to the kitchen that looked like it had been raided by a band of hungry teenagers. Food packaging and crumbs were strewn across the counters, cupboard doors stood open, and the side door to outside was ajar. The furnace was working full time pumping out hot air. Forensic techs were busy doing their thing.
Logan’s attention immediately zeroed in on a dark stain on the floor. “Is that blood?”
“Yeah.”
Logan whipped around to face Brad. “Where is she? What the hell are you doing diddling around here when that bastard has her and she’s hurt?”
“You know exactly what the hell I’m doing here. My job. Which means processing the crime scene for as many clues as we can find.”
“Fuck that. You know Horvath has her. This is Maddy we’re talking about.”
“Dial it back, Logan. Going off half-cocked will waste time. All indications are that he grabbed her here, pulled her out through the side door. There are drag marks in the mud that end where a vehicle was parked.”
“She wouldn’t have come in if there’d been a strange vehicle parked in front. God dammit, she wasn’t supposed to come here at all.”
“No, she wouldn’t have. She was due at my place to make pizza, so maybe she thought she needed something from here. It looks like she drove up, parked where she usually does under the carport, then came inside. Her purse and phone were still in her car. My guess? He was lying in wait and called someone to pick them up once he had her.”
Brad pointed to the counter. “You need to look at this.”
A sheet of computer paper lay next to an empty wine bottle, red ink used to scrawl out a message. Logan read the scratchy writing, his gut twisting into an oily ball that antacids weren’t going to touch.
He scanned through it, then reread the message more slowly. Asshole agent Ross—I admire your taste in bitches. A little old for me, but she’ll still serve her purpose. I’ll send you a pic—on her knees, blindfolded, sucking me. When I’m done with her, dozens of dudes will pay extra for a blonde. I’ll make sure she satisfies every one of them. It was signed, Your Fucking Nightmare.
Logan forced himself to breathe in and out, slowly, to help him get a handle on the rage. Even as he wanted to put his fist through the wall, he did as Brad ordered and dialed it back.
“He was waiting for her, and knew I wouldn’t be with her because I’d taken the bait and went running around the state looking for him.”
“You weren’t the one who made the decision for you to go to San Francisco, Logan,” Rittenhauer muttered. “He played the entire agency. And you arrested Janus, and that’s huge.”
Logan turned to Brad. “Tell me the plan.”
Brad gave a curt nod, acknowledging that Logan had himself under control. “We’re continuing to search every cabin in a ten-mile radius. That’s a lot of cabins and it will take time. We have a roadblock on the highway and have been stopping every vehicle leaving the Loss for the past hour. Unless they use back roads, and most are still unpassable since the last snowstorm, he won’t be able to take her out of the area. That means he’s taken her someplace local and is laying low.”
“You’ve searched the homes in the area around her cabin?”
“I’ve got Jack and Warren going door to door. We’ll hear if anyone saw anything.” Brad laid a hand on Logan’s shoulder. “We’ll find her, brother. He’s got no place to go.”
Logan didn’t mention the obvious, that Horvath could hurt Maddy in dozens of ways right here in these mountains. He stepped outside where light from the porch illuminated snowflakes floating from the dark sky in lazy swirls. God, he would give anything if he and Maddy were inside the cabin, sitting together on the sofa in front of the fireplace, and watching the snow come down. But she wasn’t here because of him. Horvath wanted to get back at him, and he’d grabbed Maddy for that purpose.
Logan had taken the assignment that brought him to Hangman’s Loss because he couldn’t live any longer without her in his life, and now her life was in danger because of that decision.
The hours that followed strung together one disappointment after another. One neighbor reported seeing what they described as a gang doing drug deals out of a cabin up the road from their own. Logan had been one of the two FBI agents who had gone to the site only to find that a couple in their mid-twenties had rented the place and invited friends to stay for a few days. That they’d been partaking in some recreational marijuana use had not interested him in the least.
It had taken until nearly midnight for the crime scene at Maddy’s cabin to be processed. He’d gone back to his own place to grab a couple hours’ sleep, but every time he closed his eyes, the image of the bloodstain on the floor of Maddy’s kitchen flashed across his brain. Instead of sleeping, he’d ended up sitting in front of his computer, using the Internet to go down every trail he could think of so he could nail not only Horvath, but anyone associated with the Hungarians.
Brad had called a meeting at Maddy’s cabin at first light. From there he would continue what he’d started, namely by-the-book police work. He’d h
ave teams continue canvassing the area, asking neighbors if they’d seen anyone or anything. Others would continue to methodically search every known structure whether it was a cabin, shack, or woodshed, as well as trailers and RVs, looking for any sign of Maddy or any other girls.
Logan figured Brad was right that Horvath was still in the area, and more than likely he had another shipment of girls he was trying to move. With the heightened police presence, he’d be laying low, and not in a woodshed or similar small structure. He’d need someplace large enough to hide a group of women and not draw any attention, so it would be isolated.
Drinking what felt like his tenth cup of coffee, Logan pulled up a satellite image of the area starting with a two-mile radius of Hangman’s Loss, then zoomed in to look for any place that matched his criteria. There were dozens and dozens. But if he checked off those sites he knew had already been searched, that narrowed it down a bit. Horvath had figured out Logan and Maddy were together, and he’d want to be in a location he could control. That meant not close enough to town or Maddy’s house to risk an accidental meeting.
Logan zoomed in on the area south of Hangman Lake and deeper into the mountains. Once beyond the town and lake, the highway wound past smaller lakes as it rose in elevation, then leveled out in a long valley where ranches dotted the landscape. The van abandoned with the girls in the blizzard had been left near the Broken Arrow Ranch, which made him think that was an area Lazlo was familiar with. The benefit was that the houses were more isolated, but the drawback for Horvath: it was farther from the main highway and a quick getaway. If the location was discovered, they could be trapped by the geography. Logan rested his head in his hands. There were too many goddamned places the bastard could have taken Maddy, and the longer it took to find her, the more likely she’d be dead or traumatized.
He pushed up from the table. He couldn’t let thoughts of what could happen to Maddy consume him, or he wouldn’t be able to function.
Already Gone Page 17