by Dale Mayer
He had gone through a day and a half of videos prior to her disappearance before Miles recognized the same person twice. And, with that face stilled, Miles slowly zoomed in to see what he was looking at. A man, also a redhead, close enough in resemblance that Miles wondered if he was a family member heading up to Vanessa’s apartment. The second time Miles caught sight of the same redheaded man, he didn’t go into the apartment though. He just stood outside watching.
Miles took a screenshot and then a close-up on his face and sent them to the chat box. Find this one.
Ten minutes later the reply was A cousin.
And details were attached with his age, phone number and address. The cousin’s address was about ten blocks away from Vanessa’s apartment. Miles frowned at that, as he slowly closed his laptop, resting his eyes for a bit. The next thing he knew, the flight attendant was speaking to the passengers, notifying them to get ready to disembark. Then he laughed. Disembarking. It seemed like he’d spent his life traveling. But, as soon as he got into the airport and beyond, he knew somebody would be waiting for him.
Sure enough, he hadn’t gotten more than five steps out into the bright sunlight when the massive swarm of people at the airport clogged up the space and his field of view. Some people’s arrival drew their complete family to the airport. He gave a terse shake of his head and stepped around the large group, almost plowing into somebody right in front of him. He stopped and stared, and it took a moment to register who he stared at.
But, by then, the man had already thrown his arms around Miles’s shoulders and gave him a hug.
“Dammit, Nico,” Miles groaned. “Do you have to give huge hugs every time we see each other?”
Nico stepped back with a laugh. “It’s my Greek heritage,” he said. “You remember my mama? She’d never let you walk out of that house without a hug.”
Miles laughed. “I have such great memories of your mom.”
“Yes. She’s still sorely missed,” Nico said with a sad smile. “Come. Let’s go.”
And then Miles realized Nico was here for him, which meant Nico was part of the Mavericks. Miles studied his old friend, loving the sense of familiarity and the homesickness as soon as he had connected with him. They got into a small and sleek sports car. Miles’s eyebrows shot up. “Wow. Nice car.”
“You know me,” Nico said. “I love my comforts.”
“Yeah,” Miles said slowly. “Does this mean you’re part of the group?”
Nico slid him a sideways glance. “And again you know me. Anytime there’s a sense of danger and action and a chance to be a hero, I’m right there.”
“And what happened to your navy days?”
“Well, I left a good four or five years ago to join a special joint task force, but it was too much desk work,” he said. “When this opportunity came, I couldn’t resist.”
“You were contacted privately?”
“I was, indeed,” he said. “But I’m also here with the blessings of the British government, as I was working on a special job with them.”
Miles chuckled. “Of course. They’re hoping that you’ve come to help them out, aren’t they?”
“Exactly,” he said with an eye roll. “As if they don’t know me by now.”
“You still have to watch it though—still have to follow the rules. We can’t have an international incident,” Miles warned.
“I know. But it was too much bureaucracy and red tape, and all those lovely bosses who sit behind a desk don’t know what it’s like in the trenches.”
“I hear you there,” Miles said. “I believe you were briefed on this case?”
“Another reason why I was tagged. I was investigating the possibility of a serial kidnapper involvement.”
“MI6 is interested?”
“MI6 is interested when it got a call from Scotland Yard. But I’d already been picking up on a series of missing redheads which I believe are all linked.”
Miles stared at him and said, “I didn’t get to the end of the dossier apparently.”
Nico laughed. “They knew I’d fill you in as soon as I picked you up.”
“So, fill me in,” Miles said, swearing to himself. He hated being short on information. It’s one of the biggest complaints he had had when he was in the navy. It seemed like somebody always knew something he didn’t, and that really shaped a big part of how he worked. How was he supposed to do a job if he didn’t have all the information he needed?
“Well, that’s why they left it for me,” Nico said. “It involved one of my cases too.” So he launched into an explanation. “Seventeen redheads have gone missing in the last seventeen years. And I think they are all linked to one kidnapper.”
Miles stared at him in shock. “Seventeen years and nobody was on this? Nobody found this guy?”
“Do you know how many times somebody has to go missing to see a pattern?” Nico asked. He drove fast through the traffic, switching lanes and hitting the roundabouts at a speed that only he would take. His uncle had been a race car driver, and so Nico had spent many a happy day on the tracks with him. But he was also the best and the safest driver Miles had ever been with. He handed him his life on a platter many times when they’ve gone out driving. This was Nico’s forte.
Why he hadn’t gone into the race-car world though, Miles didn’t know. When he’d asked, Nico laughed and said, “There wasn’t enough excitement. Once you knew you were a winner on the track, where else did you go?”
And Miles understood that too. “So, it would have taken three to four or five years maybe for them to recognize a pattern, I guess, what with only one a year going missing.”
“No, a lot longer because they weren’t all taken from the same location or even the same city.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Any bodies shown up?”
At that, Nico shot him a look and shook his head. “None.”
“How about unidentified crispy critters? Or any bodies missing heads and missing fingerprints?”
“None,” Nico said. “But that definitely reveals your mind-set.”
“No,” Miles said. “I’m a team player. This is very much police detective work, and I feel very out of my element here.”
“Well, it’s because of who she is that we were brought in, and it’s also because of who I am and what I was working on that I’ve been asked to help you out on this case,” Nico said.
“I hate to think that it’s because she’s somebody more important than another redhead,” Miles said slowly. He really didn’t like that philosophy in life. Even with his special connection to Vanessa, he didn’t like this particular kind of hierarchy.
“It’s not that. It’s a personal viewpoint,” Nico said. “We also found photos in Vanessa’s apartment of other redheads. One is her sister. And another one of them belongs to the prime minister’s family.”
“Shit.”
“So MI6 is now involved too,” Nico said in that ever-cheerful voice.
“As long as I don’t have to deal with the bureaucracy,” Miles said, “I don’t give a shit who’s involved.”
“No, we won’t be dealing with them, not directly. And certainly we’re not reporting to them. Beta might have to, but we don’t. We’re the ones in the trenches. MI6 gets to deal with the fallout. But we have to find Vanessa, and we have to stop this guy. Right before he goes after any others on his list.”
“Agreed.” Miles had to keep his emotions in check and focus on the facts. “Did they all disappear at the same time of the year?”
“Yes.”
“Are they all about the same age?”
Nico tossed his head back and forth as he mentally went through the ages of all the women. “Let’s just say, they’re all between eighteen and twenty-eight.”
“And our latest woman is twenty-eight, so she’s at the high end?”
“Yes.”
“And they were all the same kind of redheads, meaning some particular hue of a redhea
d?”
“Yes, and no. Let’s put it this way. All these women were of the orangey-red variety. But, more important, they were all natural redheads. And that is no small feat in today’s world.”
Miles whistled at that. “It’s not as if our IDs state whether we are a natural redhead or not. Imagine asking any woman if her hair color was natural or from a bottle?” He laughed at that, needing a moment of levity here. “So, did a Peeping Tom check that out or what?”
“No way to know at this point, but keep that in mind.”
“And unfortunately that brings up another nasty thought,” Miles said, as he settled into the car, loving the race through town. He didn’t know how the hell Nico didn’t get tickets at every corner. “How many redheads did he take who weren’t natural redheads and did they pay the ultimate price?”
This time Nico’s gaze was hard. “My thoughts too. I tracked down any other missing women who I could confirm that fell into that category, and I came up with three more possibles.”
“They all follow the same pattern?”
“If you mean that they all disappeared at the same time of the year and their bodies were never found, yes. My theory is that the kidnapper thought they were natural redheads when he first abducted them, but later he found out differently. So he disposed of those, I’m afraid, and went right out to get another true redhead for his yearly count. But we have no way to know anything beyond that.”
Miles shook his head. “I presume this happened in his earlier years of this seventeen-year span and counting?”
“Yes, within the first five years, his learning curve. But I may have missed more of these women since this serial kidnapper is working from a lot of different locations.”
Miles’s irritation grew. “And where the hell is he disposing of the bodies where we may find those three possibles along with the sixteen from the prior years?” Or seventeen.
“He must have a killing field that no one has stumbled upon.”
“Or,” Miles added, swallowing, “has some horrific way of getting rid of the bodies.” A picture of Vanessa immediately flashed through his head. Please don’t let this be happening. “I hope I’m wrong here.”
Nico nodded. “The problem we have is not enough info and too many theories. That’s enough to drive anyone mad.”
“Similarities between the women? School? Work? Education? Families? Chess club?” Then thinking of Kerrick’s op, Miles added, “Mensa club?”
“No, no, no, no, no and no.”
He stared at Nico. “So we’re talking just a natural orangey redhead connection. There are thousands if not millions on this island alone.”
“Thousands, for sure.” Nico nodded. “A lot of redheads. Once it hit the news, they dyed their hair black though.”
“That would make sense.”
“Maybe, but we can’t be sure that some of them haven’t gone missing too.”
“So, what you’re saying is, we know of seventeen redheads who we’re putting on this one kidnapper—plus your three rejected possibles—but we don’t know for sure that he’s not done more?”
“Exactly. It could be fifty for all we know. Maybe he kills redheads in the spring and blondes in the winter.”
Miles stared out his passenger side window. “You know what? I’d rather take on a terrorist group than this, right?”
“I know,” Nico said. “Something else I found I think had the Mavericks asking for you specifically for this job.”
“So I have you to thank for this nightmare,” Miles joked.
“Yes. I came up with another theory, and I don’t have very much to back it up yet,” Nico said, “which is one of the reasons why nobody in MI5 would listen to me. Their focus is on domestic matters, not international crimes, like MI6. I think these women are being taken as part of a collection. Like people do with artwork or antiques.”
“Normal people. But this nutcase has been supplying these redheads to somebody or somebodies? Instead of the actual kidnapper collecting them?”
“It’s hard to say. But, yes, I’m afraid that’s a strong possibility.”
“Sure, but outside of it being a theory, do you have any reason to lean toward that theory versus any other?”
“A hunch. Granted, everybody’s idea of beauty differs, like some art lovers gravitate to Monet’s pastels but others like the darker Degas paintings. But these seventeen women are all beautiful, beyond that even. … It just struck a chord in me. And it could be our kidnapper’s tell. But I know none of that is good enough to go on,” Nico said. “So I’m sorry. Maybe not.”
“Damn,” Miles said. “I really don’t like that idea. We’ve come up against the sex trade in a couple cases. Not that I’ve been personally involved, but I saw enough of it over in Thailand. I would just as soon never have to go over there again and deal with it.”
“Well, my thought is they were keeping the women for a year, and then, after a year, they needed somebody new.”
“And that could be the kidnapper or this purchaser?”
“Yes.”
“You must have had something that triggered you into this line of thought.”
“Yeah. A case a couple years ago of a group of men ordering up what they wanted for a weekend. They had them that weekend, and then the women were tossed back into the hands of the suppliers, and they were moved on to somebody else.”
“But that’s the way the sex trade is set up. Some guy says he wants a black-haired and blue-eyed twenty-five-year-old, and you know they’ll give it to him, even if that woman has her hair dyed.”
“I know,” Nico said. “In this case, they found three women had been kept in his basement.”
“Okay, that’s nasty,” Miles said. “How long had they been kept?”
“One week and they were all still alive.”
“Well, that was a good ending.”
“It sucks though how that shit happens.”
“Because it still leaves us with too many theories and not enough data on our case of seventeen missing natural redheads, aged eighteen to twenty-eight.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here to help.”
“Ha,” Miles said. “Sounds like you’re the one that I’m supposed to be helping.”
“No,” Nico said. “This is your case. We need fresh eyes on it.”
“But it’s a case and not a mission,” Miles said helplessly. “You know this isn’t my forte.”
“But, in a way, it really is,” Nico said. “Believe me. I had already talked to the bosses about a couple of the missions where we had to find who in our friendly teams were killing a lot of the prisoners out on our Desert Storm missions. You were the one who found the killer. None of the rest of us had a clue. That was all you.”
“Maybe. But that’s different from a serial kidnapper.”
“Not at all. That guy killed thirty-two people. You’re just confusing the issue as being a police matter versus some op, like what we’re doing.”
“Since when do black ops deal with serial kidnappers? Unless they think he’s military.”
“Exactly,” Nico said. “That’s where we are right now.”
Vanessa Redburn woke once again. Her senses were completely deprived. She had a bandage over her eyes, something over her ears, plus her hands were tied up and curled in on themselves. She laid in a fetal position, and she thought she had been in the same position the last time she woke up. In the darkness she had no perception of day and night, all her time running together in an endless loop. She didn’t even know if she’d been here a day or if she’d been here several days. She’d been drugged, and her mind was foggy, and it was all she could do to keep her wits about her when she did resurface.
And then, as soon as she awoke, she fell back under again. Her current world held no joy. She had no answers, and she had no idea why she would be held captive.
She detested every single moment of this.
She had been walking on the way to her photo shoot, when, the
next thing she knew, she was here. And that made no sense to her. But here she was. It was so much worse because of the sensory deprivation. Her mouth was parched, and, as much as she tried not to focus on it, the minute she tried not to focus on it made it ten times worse. She was desperate for a drink or anything to ease the parched sensation in her throat.
But the gag was just adding more fibers to her throat every time she took a breath. She’d given up trying to see because the blindfold was dark and impossible to see through. And every time she tried to open her eyes anyway, she came up against folds and folds of cloth that then hurt to close her eyes again.
With her ears blocked, muffled just enough that she couldn’t really hear anything, she kept straining to hear regardless. She didn’t even want to think about the pain at her wrists and her ankles, but it was there nonetheless. She was lying on a bed, and she could roll from side to side, but, since it didn’t give her any advantage, she now lay quiet where she was.
She knew she had been shot several times in the arm with drugs because there was still a sore spot, and her brain was still fuzzy. But no words had been spoken to her. She heard no cries of anger or tears of sorrow. Nothing. Even now she didn’t know if she was alone in this room or if other drugged women were here with her.
Just because she couldn’t hear anybody didn’t mean anything at this point. She couldn’t quite grasp what had happened or why no explanation had been presented to her yet. As far as she knew, she had nobody who hated her. No competitor who would do something like this to take her off her perch as a model. It was a cutthroat business, but she honestly wasn’t at the top.
She was working toward the release of her first nonfiction book on life and spirituality. How the hell was that anything that somebody would kidnap her for? Taking her out of the picture wouldn’t stop the book from being published anyway. If anything, that would make the sales even crazier. How sad was that? She laid here in defeat.
Somebody had been with her maybe a few hours ago, but she dozed off again. Hell, it could have been yesterday, she was so disoriented. She also hadn’t had a chance to empty her bladder, and that bothered her too, yet she didn’t have to go—why not? She moved and felt something ever-so-slightly between her legs. That worried her as well.