“But, Mama,” Had said, his tone subservient. “What happened in here? We thought someone had attacked you.”
“Oh, that?” she asked, chuckling. “I couldn’t find my favorite underwear. Nice frilly black bra and panties. Still can’t find the damn things.”
“Wha… Why?” Had sputtered.
“Why what, turtle?”
“Why would you need…?” Had stopped speaking. Maybe realizing after the fact that he didn’t really want the answer to the question.
That didn’t stop Mama from providing it. “We’re right next to the base, darlin’,” she responded, “and I just love a man in uniform.”
“Ahhhh…” Had said, the sound somewhere between a groan and a cry for help.
At least his mother was safe. Nothing seemed to have happened to her at all.
“So… you haven’t had any trouble since we left?” Sariah asked, trying to sort this all out. “Nothing strange at all?”
“Well, I did have one of the staff try to get me to go back to the storeroom with him. Nice lookin’ young thing he was, too. But I don’t know that I’d call that strange.”
Had’s groan intensified.
But for Sariah, what was important was figuring out what all this meant. Joshua’s instincts were almost always spot on. She didn’t always like the man, but she trusted him.
Could his drinking have caused him to be this off? It must be, as Mama was in no danger whatsoever.
Which meant that they had rushed back to the hotel for nothing. Instead of getting a leap on the bastard, Joshua had led them away from Humpty.
“Okay,” Mama said, “y’all can turn around now. I’m dressed.”
“We’re sorry to have bothered you, Ms. Hadderly,” Sariah murmured, facing the woman once more. “We’ll let you get back to… whatever it was you were doing.”
It was going to be a long time before Sariah would be able to talk to Had’s mother without seeing that image of her stepping out of the bathroom without clothes on. Even longer before she would trust herself to charge into a possible kidnapping situation without checking the bathroom door first.
“All right,” she said to Had as soon as they were out the door. “Let’s grab Reggie and head back to the base. We’ve got some catching up to do.” She pulled out her phone, texting Bailey to let her know that they were on their way back to the base and to meet them there.
At the same time, Had nodded, pulling out his own cell. Selecting Reggie’s number, he held the receiver up to his ear as they moved back toward the elevator.
Letting his arm drop, Had pressed “END” on the call. Then he tried again.
A wait. Then he repeated the action.
“She not picking up?” Sariah asked.
“No,” he answered, a tinge of worry beginning to color his tone.
Sariah shook her head at him. “It’s probably nothing. She’s maybe in the workout room. Reception’s most likely bad in there.”
Had nodded, but worry etched a line in his forehead. Glancing up, he seemed to study the numbers as they descended toward the first floor.
The doors opened, and a group of men in golf shirts and Bermuda shorts stood in front of them. Men returning from the back nine, perhaps? Had and Sariah wove their way through the group, headed toward the gym.
“Gym” turned out to be a bit of a misnomer. There was a small room with a treadmill and a television. In one corner, several dumbbells rested in a haphazard pattern. This was less a gym and more a closet with a small amount of workout equipment.
There was also no sign of Reggie.
They moved on to the indoor pool. There were a couple of elderly women in the shallow end, doing what looked like water aerobics. But again, no Reggie.
“Coop…” Had said, the concern clear in his voice.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, although her own radar was up and a thrill of fear was beginning to spread through her body. “Let’s go to the front desk. See if maybe they’ve seen her. If not, she’s probably upstairs, waiting for us.”
“Without her cell phone?” Had muttered, but followed along behind her.
When they got to the front desk, there was a large group of what appeared to be Asian tourists checking in. Sariah waited for a moment, but then her impatience got the better of her. An image of Reggie’s face, her lips slightly parted, floated in front of her, urging her onwards.
Pulling out her badge, she stalked up to the reception desk, pushing in front of the group. “I’m Special Agent Sariah Cooper,” she stated. “I’m looking for one of the members of my team. Officer Regina Black.”
The woman behind the desk stared at her with a blank face. It didn’t seem to be an expression of either rejection or of recognition. Just one of blankness.
She had the large, teased-hair look that Sariah had seen so much of since she’d been here in the South. The receptionist was attractive, but wore far too much makeup.
Sariah continued, hoping to spark something other than a vapid gaze from the woman. “She’s about five foot, four inches, jet black hair, pale skin.”
And then the light bulb seemed to light up. The woman’s face brightened.
“Oh, I think I did see her.” The woman had a distinct Southern drawl that took the vowel sounds in each word and elongated them to the point that they were almost unrecognizable. “She was with some guy. Seemed like she knew him.”
“Why do you say that?” Had asked.
She turned to Had and shrugged. “I dunno. The way she was acting.”
“Which way did they go?” Sariah demanded.
“Ummm… I’m not so sure about that,” she drawled.
But as Sariah turned to go, the woman stopped her. “Hold on a sec.”
“What is it?”
The receptionist reached down under the desk and pulled out an envelope. “As they were leaving, the guy came back and dropped this off. Said I should give it to the black woman who came looking for them.” She held out the note to Sariah. “That’d be you, right?”
Sariah stared at the letter in the woman’s hand. This was not good. This was not good at all.
Across the front of the envelope, in handwriting she knew oh-so-well, was scrawled her name. Agent Sariah Cooper. And underneath, “Coop.”
The note was from Humpty.
* * *
Reggie woke up to darkness. Darkness and vibrations. The world seemed to shift, her body moving with a strange sense of sideways movement. Back and forth. And then the vibrating stopped.
The last thing she remembered clearly was… what? She had been down at the pool. She had seen someone she knew.
Who was it?
Memories swam in front of her eyes, hazy and indistinct. Why couldn’t she remember?
They were going to go up to the rooms to get Sariah and Had. That was what they were doing. But with whom? And why was it dark now?
“You should be coming out of it, Officer Black,” a voice murmured in the vibrating dark.
Reggie started to answer, but then realized that she couldn’t. There was something covering her mouth. Something inside her mouth, keeping her from making a sound. She could feel it there, shoved so far back inside that it was almost down her throat.
For a moment, she started to gag, and she had to force herself to breathe. Breathe. Just take the air in, let the air out. The reflex started to diminish, and her throat muscles softened a bit.
“That’s it,” the voice encouraged her.
It sounded like a nice voice, even if it was a whisper. Why would someone be whispering to her in the dark? Had they been making out?
Memories of boys and a couple of girls in the backseats of cars floated up from a deep well of images in her mind. But that had been from high school. She wasn’t in high school now, was she?
No. No, she wasn’t. She was grown up. A cop. The voice had called her Officer Black, hadn’t it?
And not just a cop. She was working with the FBI. In the BAU. With one
of the most amazing teams she could imagine. With Sariah. She was so pretty.
Where were they? Why weren’t they here?
Panic started to well up inside of Reggie. She could feel it, almost like it was a ball that she had swallowed and was now vomiting out.
She struggled to speak once more, but her gag reflex threatened. An attempt to pull whatever it was out of her mouth made her realized that she couldn’t move.
Her hands were bound.
Zip ties attached her wrists to one another behind her back, tugging against her hurt shoulder. More zip ties bound her ankles. Her face pressed up against a hard surface beneath her. There was no way for her to get out.
Squirming, Reggie tried to get her arms out. To move her legs. To speak.
“Stop,” came the voice. “If you keep struggling, you’ll swallow your gag and suffocate. And that would be a real shame.”
Reggie’s mind was starting to clear up, and she recognized the truth of what the whispered voice was saying. Getting herself worked up would do nothing.
Even just the small amount of struggling had caused the zip ties at her wrists to cut into the flesh there. She could feel a trickle of blood begin to drip down.
It was blazingly hot, and the sting of her sweat mingling with her new wounds caused the last cobwebs of the drug to dissipate from her mind. She knew she had been taken.
But the memory of who had done it was still not there.
“I’m going to put you back to sleep in a moment,” the voice rasped. “But I wanted a chance to chat with you before I had to do that. You’re such a lovely young thing.”
Now that the drugs weren’t coating the experience for her, the sound of that voice was no longer quite so nice. Dark and threatening was more like it.
Reggie felt her skin crawl, and she had to force herself into stillness to keep from edging away from the source of that sound. This was the whisperings of a monster. A predator.
Did he want to hurt her? Torture her? Rape her? Kill her? The endless variety of what could happen to her next raced through her mind, and for a moment Reggie almost wished that she could go back to the warm fuzziness of the drugs.
But that would come soon enough.
Right now she had to figure out who this was.
After a pause, the voice whispered again. “You really are lovely, you know. Such beautiful skin.” The back of a hand caressed Reggie’s cheek, and she had to force down the instinct to scream. That would cause the gag to move down deeper in her throat.
She tried not to focus on the end of that rag that was tickling the back of her throat. Tried to keep her muscles from contracting in response. Reggie focused on her breathing instead.
In. Out.
“Oh, such a smart girl,” the whisperer crooned. “So good, to keep yourself calm like that.”
Then the whisper intensified. “Now… let’s see how well you do under pressure.”
The hand that had been caressing her cheek moved down to her neck, her collarbone. And Reggie had to force back a sob.
Breathing.
In. Out.
It was the only thing that would keep her alive.
CHAPTER 8
Had knocked on the door, glancing back at Sariah as he did so. The BAU agent had shown him where Leslie Sands’ room was… right next door to Joshua, it turned out. And now they were supposed to interrupt whatever was going on here.
But that didn’t seem like such a great idea to Had. Clearly, they were going to need Joshua’s help. That was true enough.
With that said, Had’s take on Leslie Sands was that she was not someone he wanted to cross. In pretty much every way possible, she seemed to be the opposite of Mama. But there was something in the woman’s eye that Had recognized. A steel that he had seen way too many times before, staring out at him from his Mama’s face.
Which was why Had was reluctant to knock on the door. In spite of the fact that he was scared out of his mind for Reggie and desperately wanted Joshua to read the note that had been left, Had’s respect for this new sober companion of Joshua’s was almost enough to keep him from doing his duty.
Almost.
The door opened, and Had was face to face with Leslie Sands.
This close up, he was surprised to see that she looked to be a lot younger than he had anticipated. From a distance, something about her clothing and demeanor caused her to appear to be somewhere in her early fifties. But now that he was right in front of her, it was clear that she was quite a bit younger than that. Probably right around Joshua’s age. Maybe a few years younger, maybe a few older, but in the ballpark.
And she was staring at him, a question written on her face.
Oh, right. She wanted to know why he was here.
But that didn’t seem to be Had’s job at all. So he turned to Agent Cooper, motioning for her to speak.
After giving him a sour look, Coop stepped in.
“We’re so sorry to interrupt, Ms. Sands…” she began.
“Please. Call me Leslie,” the woman stepped in, not quite interrupting the BAU agent, but not really waiting for a long pause to develop either.
“Ah… all right. Leslie,” Coop said. “Like I said, we’re… I’m… sorry to bother you, but we really need to speak with Joshua.”
Leslie pursed her lips. “I’d really rather you didn’t. We’re right in the middle of something, and beginnings are such delicate times.”
“Reggie’s been taken,” Had blurted. “And Joshua’s the only one who knows the killer well enough to help out.”
At that outburst, the sober companion’s expression softened, and she stepped aside to allow them both into the room. Had moved past her with some amount of trepidation, not knowing what to expect.
But there on the bed, his legs folded up underneath him, was Joshua. The former agent was staring at Had and Sariah, and he unfolded his legs and scooted toward the edge of the bed.
“What’s going on? Is your mother--?”
“Joshua,” Leslie’s voice cut through his speech. “Please cross your legs again and try to focus on your breathing. I know this is a distraction, but this is a wonderful opportunity to practice active meditation.”
Joshua’s face curled into a sneer. “Active meditation? More like active bullshit. This is ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous or not, you’re going to do it for thirty minutes a day.”
Shaking his head, Joshua turned his attention back to his two teammates. But Had also noted that he tucked his legs back underneath him and appeared to be breathing deeply in and out. He had listened to his sober companion and was listening to her.
Good call.
“So…?” Joshua asked, and Had realized that he hadn’t answered the former agent’s question.
“Mama’s okay.”
There was so much more that needed to be said, but Had wasn’t sure how to go about it. He knew how Joshua felt about Reggie.
Joshua’s expression seemed to grow puzzled. “Mama was okay?”
“Is okay,” Coop answered him.
There was another pause. “So, what is it?” Joshua pressed them. “I know you two. You didn’t come in here without a good reason.”
Agent Cooper stepped closer to the man, holding out the white envelope in a gloved hand. The moment Coop had pulled out the latex glove before taking the envelope from the receptionist at the desk, Had’d recognized that something was up.
Now Joshua was having the same kind of reaction. Seeing the writing on the front, the former agent stiffened.
“Humpty?”
Coop nodded.
“There’s something else,” he prompted her. “Something you’re not telling me.”
Had looked at Coop. Coop looked back at him.
Finally, she spoke again. “He has Reggie.”
And then all hell broke loose.
* * *
Joshua sprang up and moved toward the door, his eyes and lungs burning with rage and pain.
Leslie moved
to block him, but he was not going to let that happen this time. He raised his arm to sweep her aside.
And then agony burst through every cell of his body. His pores were on fire. His skin sang with pain. What the hell was happening?
He collapsed to the floor, panting, trying to keep from throwing up. That was pain beyond anything he remembered experiencing. And he’d gone through a lot of pain in his life. What could have caused that?
Looking up at the serene face of the woman in front of him, Joshua saw that she was holding something. A little black remote-looking thing.
The woman sighed. “I’m sorry, Joshua, I really didn’t want to do that.”
“Wha…?” he groaned, the residuals of the pain still coursing through his body. He swallowed. “What was that?”
“It’s connected to your ankle bracelet,” Leslie said, her face sad. “It’s intended as a last resort, in case you’re out of control. Which you appeared to be right now.”
“But how did… what was…?” Joshua was having a hard time formulating sentences. His tongue felt thick in his mouth.
“It was an electric charge that went through your body,” she explained. “You appeared to be on the point of striking out at me, so I used it.”
“An electric…?” Joshua stopped, realizing what this meant. He turned to Agent Cooper. “You knew about this.” It wasn’t a question.
The BAU agent nodded, once. There was no obvious expression on her face, but Joshua thought he detected a flicker of something. Remorse?
Didn’t matter. This wasn’t about her. At least not right this moment. He’d talk to Coop about the betrayal inherent in what she’d done later on.
Right now, he had a bully of a sober companion to deal with.
“So you feel like torture is a valid method of ‘working toward sobriety’?” he accused her. “This is how your high-minded approach is going to work? What’s next? Waterboarding?”
But Leslie Sands didn’t seem to react to his baiting. She just continued to stare at him, her face soft and open, with just that hint of sadness that spoke of the deeper hurt inside of her. The one she’d let him see earlier, in the stairwell.
That could all just be an act. Some trick she used to make sure her clients think that she had it worse off than they did.
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