by PT Reade
What was going on here?
More curious than ever, I readied myself to step inside. But as I did, the faintest noise from behind made me stop. A footstep. A footstep that was meant to be stealthy.
I turned quickly, but the fist flying my way was faster than my reactions. It caught me just above the jaw, and my teeth crashed together. Thunder blasted through my head, and I staggered back. Luckily, I’d taken far harder punches in my time, and it didn’t take me off my feet.
I stumbled, threw a punch of my own into the dark. Hit something. Mushy, soft. A stomach maybe.
My would-be assailant coughed as he fell to the ground. I dropped to a crouch and drove my knee into his chest. He grunted. I grabbed him by his collar and pulled him to his feet. A swift rabbit punch to his left kidney and I spun him around. Shoving him forward, my hand still gripped his collar as I pulled free my stun gun, then pushed into his back.
The element of surprise was gone. Time to improvise.
“Excuse me,” I said loudly as we entered the garage, “but I seem to have accidentally tenderized one of your employees. Who do I need to see about this?”
Everyone in the shop—all four of them—stopped what they were doing. Their eyes were all locked on me, and I grew uneasy pretty quickly. While these men did look surprised, they did not look scared. They looked pissed.
“Who’s in charge here?” I asked, nudging the man forward to let the others know that I meant business and I was not going anywhere until I’d spoke with their leader.
From the corner of the shop, a large, dark-skinned Asian man struggled out of a chair and rumbled forward. “Not you,” he said with a hint of an Indian accent. “That’s for bloody sure. Now, you have about ten seconds to explain why you’ve attacked poor old Sanj and think you can just wander in here uninvited before I beat you to a pulp.” He picked up a monstrous wrench as he stepped closer to me.
“I’m a detective, looking for two girls.”
“Unlucky,” the large man said. “Try a dating site.”
“No girls here,” said the skinny welder, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He too had a dark complexion and an Indian accent. “The closest I see is you, mate.”
They had a chuckle at this, and that was all it took for me to realize that I could be in some real trouble here.
I had my stun gun loaded and ready to go, but the chances of me hitting them all before getting my ass handed to me were slim to none. The only option I had was to lie.
“I suggest you cooperate,” I said. “I’m looking for two kidnapped girls. The police are a few minutes behind me. So I ask again…who is in charge here?”
The big Asian stepped forward, smiling with yellowed teeth. He hitched the wrench over the shoulder of his grubby overalls. “There are no police. If there were, you wouldn’t have risked coming in here yourself. So…release Sanj, or pay the price. Last chance, fella.”
I was going to have to release the Sanj and rely on my X26. It had the potential to fire rapid rounds that would paralyze even the biggest attacker… if I managed to get the shots off. I longed for the Glock 17—my weapon of choice as a New York cop.
I readied myself to act as the four men started advancing towards me. The welder still held his lit torch—it’s blue-white flame a lance ready to turn me into pot roast.
This wasn’t the plan.
They drew closer. I had no choice. Gripping my arm around Sanj’s neck, I raised my weapon, knowing that there was a very good chance that I’d be badly beaten or even dead within a matter of minutes.
SIX
The charm offensive.
The man with the wrench advanced quicker, raising it, ready to turn my brains into a Jackson Pollock castoff. My finger was on the trigger, my heart thudding. I gripped Sanj in front of me and aimed the weapon.
The odds looked grim. “Sorry, Amir,” I mumbled under my breath.
“Amir?” a loud and authoritative voice boomed from the back of the garage. “Amir Mazra by any chance?”
“That’s right,” I said hesitantly, searching the darkness for the source of the voice.
“Wait, stop it! All of you!”
The men stopped. My pulse slowed. I was extremely tempted to just taze one of the bastards anyway. But the way the crew responded to the voice made me think that whoever was speaking was absolutely in charge. My need for answers was stronger than my need to show some welder who was boss.
A man emerged from the darkness at the back of the garage. From what I could tell in the dim light, he was in his late fifties. Dressed in khakis and a battered old work shirt, he casually carried a cup of what was either coffee or tea—something steaming—and didn’t seem to be all that bothered by the threat of violence in his garage.
“Get back to work, boys,” he said and spoke some words loudly in what I assumed was Hindi, or something close to it. He then looked to me and added, “If you’d like to talk, I suggest you let go of Sanj He’s a good lad…maybe a bit quick to action. But he saw someone lurking around the grounds at such a late hour and reacted. You can’t blame him for wanting to stop a car thief. Now can you?”
“No,” I said, releasing the man in question. He glowered at me but did nothing more than shuffle over to join his mates near the Porsche.
The boss man stepped forward through his crew. “I heard it all,” he said. “So what’s this about Amir? And kidnapped girls? I think you are in the wrong place friend.”
“I don’t. I tracked them here.”
“When did this happen?”
“Earlier tonight…about two and a half hours ago.”
“And who were the girls?”
“I can’t divulge that information,” I said, unsure how this guy knew Amir’s name and whether he could be trusted.
“Oh, I think you can,” the man said. “You claim to have traced them here, which means you believe we have something to do with it. So I think you can divulge that information. And if you want the help of me and my family, I think you will divulge that information.” The boss could have been a politician with those negotiation skills. His smile was charming, but the threat behind it was real.
He had me in a precarious position, and he was speaking calmly as if we were just chatting. He sipped from his cup—from the smell, some kind of spiced tea—his eyes never leaving me.
I weighed my options, knowing that it could be a huge mistake to reveal that Chelsea Hyde—daughter of Andrew Hyde—had been taken. So I had to rely on the hope that Amir would understand if I had to use his situation to save my ass.
“We only know the name of one of them. We’re not sure about the other. We’re looking into it, though. The phone I tracked to this garage belongs to an eighteen-year-old girl named Aisha Mazra. She was taken from a party earlier tonight.”
The older man frowned. “Aisha,” he said. “As in Amir Mazra’s daughter?”
“It is,” I said, a little surprised. “You a friend? Seems half of London knows Amir.”
“Something like that,” he said chuckling. “That crazy bugger. His restaurant did the catering for my cousin’s wedding. Nice guy. Just don’t get him started on his family in Jordan. You will never hear the end of it. So how do you know Amir, Mr. American?”
“We go way back…to his days in New York. It’s a long story.”
“Small world. Is it not?” the man asked, a slight smile forming.
“Too small, sometimes,” I replied, still wary.
The man turned to his employees who looked on cautiously and waved them off. “I’m not paying you to gawk, get that Porsche prepped,” he said. “I’ll handle this one.” He then nodded to me and gestured for me to follow him. “If Amir’s daughter is missing, I will help in any way I can. I can assure you that we have nothing to do with it, but come into my office and I’ll see what help I can be.”
I followed him into his office and closed the door behind me. Sanjay scowled at me from the far side of the Porsche. I shrugged, gave him a wink, and then
shut the door on the workshop.
***
The older man’s name was Yash. When I asked him about his obscure business hours and the bizarre range of vehicles on the property, he was more than happy to explain.
“My father started this place almost fifty years ago,” he began, dropping into a battered leather chair in what seemed to be the main office. “Not long after arriving from India.”
“Not exactly your run-of-the-mill garage,” I said, scanning the pictures dotting the walls. There were signed headshots, thank you notes and a collection of award certificates.
“No sir, we work bloody hard here. Crazy hours too. We have to. Vardy Customs is the number one provider of bespoke vehicles for film and TV.” Yash seemed to swell with pride as he swept an arm out. “Unique models from around the world—replicas and rare marques to supply the ever-growing British movie industry. Since filming often runs at night, this warehouse is buzzing at all hours, repairing and maintaining stunt vehicles and tweaking engines for car chases and action sequences. Every now and then we get special private requests too, well-to-do sorts wanting extreme customizations to limos and Humvees.”
“It’s an impressive operation,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“So this cab that took the girls,” I said. “It’s one of yours?”
“Unfortunately, it would seem that way,” he said, getting up from his desk. “And it was returned about half an hour before you arrived. It’s out in the rental lot right now if you want to take a look.”
“I do.”
He led me back out through a side entrance of the garage past his men. The place held the familiar scent of engine oil and rubber that all garages seemed to carry. All around, the echoes of power tools and machinery clattered. I was reminded of my teenage years, helping out at the local auto shop to earn a few dollars. Life had seemed simple then. No commitments, no worries. Just Long Island summers that seemed to last forever.
Now winter seemed to follow me wherever I went, whatever the season.
Yash took me out the way I had come in and then back behind the building. There, we reached a large lot filled with other cars that now made sense to me. The sports cars, the Jeeps, a yellow school bus, a VW Beetle, and then the cab that I had seen leaving the Hyde party.
I stepped forward and opened the cab door.
“Help yourself,” Yash said sarcastically.
“Sorry,” I replied. “I’m on the clock”
Yash nodded in understanding. “I can’t believe Amir’s daughter is missing. Is there anything else I can do to help?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said as I opened the car and looked around inside. “Can you remember the men that rented it?”
“Pretty unremarkable,” Yash said. “Polish, I think, or from somewhere like that. There’s lots of Eastern Europeans in London these days, you know? Hard to distinguish the accent. Anyway, they paid in cash. Honestly, in better times, I might not have rented to them just because I had no references for them or anything. But it’s hard to turn down a cash offer for a couple of hours’ rental. Sometimes people want my cars for weddings or special events, so I don’t ask many questions…so long as they have the money.”
“I understand,” I said, still sniffing through the car. It didn’t take much looking. I found Chelsea’s cell phone in the back. It had apparently fallen out of her pocket or purse and became wedged between the seat and the back support. I wondered if there had been a scuffle or if the girls had intentionally left the phone for someone to find.
A quick search through the cell phone’s memory and it became clear that there were lots calls and texts from Andrew and even some from Amir in the last few hours, as he had desperately tried getting in touch with his daughter. Otherwise, there was nothing giving away the girl’s current location.
“Tell me,” I said as I got out of the cab. “Is there any way to find out where this cab went when it left here?”
“No problem. Each of our rentals has a vehicle tracker installed. I can run it now, but it will take about half an hour to pull the data. Do you still want me to?”
“A half hour? Damn. Ok, Run it, please,” I said.
“Would you like a cuppa’ tea while you wait?”
“Sure. I would—”
My phone dinged, interrupting. I pulled it out and read the brief text. “Actually,” I said, “I can’t. I need to get going.”
“No time for tea, huh?” Yash asked, indicating my phone.
“Not yet,” I said. “First I have a hot date.”
SEVEN
I had a habit of visiting all the beauty spots of London.
The rancid stench of garbage was overpowering. The derelict tunnel flickered in and out of shadow thanks to the broken streetlight at one end. Graffiti decorated the walls, complete with slang, pornographic sketches, and political-themed rants. Somewhere, a rat skittered by, and further down, the intelligible mumblings of a homeless man bounced around the space.
“And they say romance is dead,” Miranda Abbleton said, looking distastefully at the surroundings.
“I personally think it’s beautiful,” I replied sarcastically. “We even have some artwork to admire,” I said, pointing to a crude spray-painted depiction of a large-breasted woman on the tunnel walls.
It had taken me ten minutes to reach the rendezvous point. A place specifically chosen away from snooping security cameras and overzealous surveillance—of which there is plenty in London. After leaving my car on the nearest street, I had found my contact in an abandoned parking lot under the railway bridge, as planned. Abbleton’s car was much less conspicuous than Andrew’s 100 grand Range Rover, so we decided to talk in her vehicle.
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Anyway, I got your email. Thanks, by the way, for sending me a work-related mail so late.”
“Ah, but you responded,” I pointed out, “which means you weren’t sleeping anyway or were doing something else entirely.”
“You’re impossible,” she said.
“I really am. Now…what do you have for me?”
“I pulled the memory card from the camera and downloaded the images. Here.”
She slid a computer tablet over to me and I immediately recognized the images from earlier that night. The snooping pictures she had captured while hanging around outside of the country club. As expected, most were useless, just rich folks getting drunk. Some carried too much glare from the window, others were blurry but as I swiped through the pictures my finger paused.
One image captured Chelsea and Aisha. They were slightly out of focus but alone. They looked relaxed, smiling. I swiped to the next picture.
There.
Not ten feet away from the girls stood the man with the shaven head. He was watching them from the corner of the room, a predatory scowl etched on his face. In one hand he held a glass of champagne, in the other a mobile phone was pinned to his ear. Who was he talking to? The person behind all this? An accomplice?
Abbleton cut in, “Is that what you need? Remember our deal, right? I know something big is happening with the Hydes. You get the pictures, I get the story. Don’t try pulling any shit with me.”
I held up a finger. “Relax. I just need a second.”
I zoomed into the photo. It was blurry but just about visible. A tattoo, some kind of tribal thing, or a serpent, just peeking from beneath the collar of the man with the shaven head. My finger swiped through more images. None showed the man again.
Damn.
“Miranda, there is something serious happening right now. But I can’t tell you just yet—lives are at risk. When it’s over I will give you the story of a lifetime though, like I promised. For now, I need to know, what’s the deal with the Hydes? Andrew and Gordon. Why the friction?”
Abbleton regarded me for a moment, then removed her glasses and began cleaning the lenses.
“That’s dangerous territory you’re heading into Blume. All I can say is that they aren’t exactly simpatic
o. While neither of them has come out and said as much, many people see Andrew as being Gordon’s political rival.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, Andrew is this goody-two-shoes type. And it’s legit, as far as I can tell. He donates money to humanitarian causes and volunteers his time to help others. He spent a week in Haiti a few years back after they had that awful earthquake…and did it in private. He didn’t want the media attention. He’s seen as being honest, hard-working, and genuine. A real good Samaritan.”
“And Gordon?”
“If this were a TV Movie, I’d say Gordon could be Andrew’s evil twin. All he needs is a mustache to twirl. He’s shady and has had some bad press about the company he keeps and his unethical practices.”
“Let’s say I met Gordon earlier, and he was playing nice with Andrew. What would that mean? He’s faking it?”
“More than that, I’d say it was fishy that he was there at all,” She continued. “Gordon usually wouldn’t show up until the media is there…cameras and all. So it’s not in character for him to show up in private.”
“Noted,” I said, becoming sure that there was more at work here than a simple kidnapping. If kidnapping was ever simple. “Anything else?”
She frowned and looked me directly in the eyes. As the soft glow of the dashboard lights touched her long dark hair and liquid brown eyes, it was hard to ignore the fact that, despite her coarse personality, Abbleton was a fantastic looking woman.
“Trust me,” she said. “If Gordon Hyde is indeed involved in this somehow, it makes me wonder what other parties he has involved. While nothing has been proven, it has been speculated that Gordon has links to some nefarious groups. So…well…maybe watch your arse out there? And make sure you give me the first shot at this story. That’s the deal.”