by Trina Lane
“That was uncalled for. It’s not like I haven’t seen your cock, lover. There’s no need for modesty.”
Trevor gagged as he felt the man’s erection press against his stomach. The sick fuck was getting off on this! Why that shocked Trevor he wasn’t sure, but it did all the same.
“Now let’s try this again. Do you need to relieve yourself?”
Trevor refused to move a muscle. Trevor finally got a decent breath when his captor climbed off his lap. He savoured the feel of his lungs expanding, even the mildew scented air didn’t bother him.
“You want to be stubborn? Fine. I was trying to be considerate, but now you can suffer. You will not piss yourself, otherwise this will seem as if it were just a love tap.”
A set of knuckles landed in Trevor’s gut. The force behind the punch sent a concussion wave throughout his body. His throat burned with the sound of pain exploding from his chest.
“I’m leaving for now. Don’t worry. I won’t be far away, but apparently you’re not as ready as I thought. Some more time alone is in order before we begin your training. This time however…”
Trevor was trying to catch his breath and therefore was not prepared for the next assault. His captor shoved something in his ears, cutting off all sound. A whimper echoed inside Trevor’s head. He was isolated, with nothing but his sense of smell to feed him input. His heart raced, his breathing turned choppy, and despite being colder than anything he’d ever experienced, Trevor began to sweat.
He eventually got himself under control. The panic attack faded as he forced air in and out slowly. He pictured Matt and Niall. Their voices coached Trevor until his pulse rate slowed to a moderate level. Right, time to get the fuck out of here.
* * * *
“So the uniforms said two of our three suspects have air tight alibis. We haven’t managed to track down the third. We’ve tried both his last known address and the employer listed on his last tax return,” Clay said.
Niall paced around his living room in circles. They’d decided to move the gathering across the channel because there was more space than at Matt’s.
“What about known associates?” Ethan asked.
“His employer said the guy always keeps to himself. He’s due to arrive for a shift at the restaurant tonight. We’ll obviously be on the premises to speak with him, assuming he shows up.”
Ryan heaved out a breath. “We’re closing in on thirty hours.”
“I know,” Clay said solemnly.
“No!” Niall exclaimed. “I will not have you giving up hope. Forget that twenty-four hour statistic. We will find him. We will bring him home! We have to,” he finished softly.
Niall was gathered into Matt’s arms, and a pair of hands rested on his shoulders from behind him.
“We 'ill fend 'imself. 'As anyone been ter 'is apartment lately? Maybe there is sum kind av clue there,” Conor asked.
Niall looked at Matt, Matt stared back. Niall turned to see Logan’s head shaking back and forth.
“Fine. Two of you go check that out. The rest will stay here.”
“I have a key. I’ll go,” Logan said.
Niall and Matt had keys as well, but he could tell Logan needed to do something productive. He nodded then leant up to kiss Matt. “Let me?”
Matt’s hands clasped the sides of Niall’s face and pulled him in for a deeper kiss. Their tongues duelled fiercely, and Niall clung to Matt’s sweatshirt.
“You be safe, you hear me. You come back to me,” Matt ordered.
“I will, I promise.”
Logan unlocked Trevor’s front door. When they entered they froze where they stood. The entire place was trashed. Couch ripped to shreds, curtains in rags hanging from bent rods above the windows. Trevor’s movies scattered to the four corners of the room, many snapped in half and his prize television had what looked like bullet holes in the screen.
Logan pointed at the TV. “Oh, he’s gonna be pissed about that one.”
“Yeah.”
Niall couldn’t tear his eyes away from the spidery round holes. If they were bullet holes then that meant whoever had Trevor was not only armed, but unafraid to use the weapon. Why hadn’t anyone in the building reported the shots? Why hadn’t the police’s fancy bullet tracker system picked up the report?
“Shall we continue the tour?”
They walked back towards Trevor’s bedroom. The floor crunched beneath his feet and Niall peered into the bathroom to see that the mirror was shattered and it looked like the burglar had spilled every household item Trevor kept under the sink all over the floor, shower stall and sink.
Logan shook his head. “Now that seems a tad juvenile.”
They kept walking back to Trevor’s bedroom, and Niall immediately saw that Trevor’s mattress had received the same treatment as the couch. Trevor’s clothes were torn to shreds and strewn all over the room. Niall even spied the pair of Armani jeans and shirt he’d gotten from that photo shoot back in the fall in pieces. He walked closer to the mattress. He knew Trevor kept his keepsakes in a box beneath the bed, so he bent down to see if it was still there.
Niall peered beneath the bed, found Trevor’s box and flipped open the lid.
“Wait! We shouldn’t touch anything. We’ve got to call this in and if we get our prints all over everything, it’ll contaminate the evidence.”
Niall held the box in his hand. Something in his gut told him that there was something important inside. It was already compromised. To hell with the cops, he was keeping this.
“Fine. Call it in, but I’m still looking inside the box. I’ll tell them I touched it before we realised it wasn’t a good idea.”
Niall walked back towards the bathroom. He knew Trevor kept a box of rubber gloves in there for cleaning. He snapped on a pair and carried the box out to Trevor’s tiny kitchenette. Trevor’s few dishes had been pulled from the cabinets and now lay all over the floor in a colourful mosaic. The intruder hadn’t destroyed the frosted glass door to the cabinets themselves. Curious, since he’d had no compunction about shattering the bathroom mirror. He shifted through old concert tickets and a faded photo of Trevor as a little boy. He sat between two adults that Niall assumed were Trevor’s parents. There was an open condom wrapper and Niall chuckled, souvenir from Trevor’s lost virginity maybe? Niall’s fingers caressed a photo of him, Matt and Trevor someone had taken on New Year’s Eve. Trevor’s bright blue eyes shone with happiness. The three of them wore silly hats and were blowing some of those shiny fringe noisemakers out at the camera. At the very bottom was a newspaper clipping. It had aged and yellowed, but was still in one piece.
Logan turned the corner from the hallway. He tapped the back of his processor then placed his phone back in his pocket. “Cops are on their way. Both Detective Marks from yesterday and Captain Fredericks. He’s the one I called. What’d you find?”
Niall gestured to the devices behind Logan’s ears. “What did you do?”
“Hmm? Oh I can switch them into a special phone mode. Gives me an extra boost so I can hear the person on the other end of the line easier without any interference from the microphones.”
Niall frowned as he realised how insensitive he’d been to Logan’s disability. “I’m sorry, Logan. You could have told me to make the call. I forget sometimes those things I take for granted are a challenge for you.”
Logan placed his hand on Niall’s shoulder and squeezed. “First of all, thank you. That’s probably the best compliment a person can give me. Secondly, you’re under a lot of stress and not thinking as clearly as you normally would. Finally, I make phone calls all the time. Yes it’s hard, especially if I don’t know the person I’m speaking to but it’s part of our everyday lives, and I’ve learned to compensate.”
Niall shoulders sagged and he rubbed his burning eyes. Warmth enveloped him when Logan’s arms encircled Niall’s back. Niall let himself lean on Logan’s strength for a minute before he stepped out of the embrace and cleared his throat.
&nb
sp; He held up the last item he’d found in the box. “It’s a newspaper article about some house over in East Boston. It says the house was recently purchased after having been abandoned several years ago.”
“Trevor lived in East Boston when he was a kid, before his old man left. Maybe the house in the article is his childhood home. A memory of better times?”
Niall made sure to make eye contact with Logan when he spoke, “Maybe. Can you read this writing on the side?”
Logan squinted and turned his head sideways. “For my pet? Does that mean anything to you?”
Niall frowned. “No. Unless…no that’s too much of a stretch.”
“Stretch away, buddy.”
“Fine. The message under Trevor’s neighbour’s dog said something about runaway pets, this says ‘pet’. What if…what if the person who gave this to Trevor and the person who owns this old house are the one in the same?”
“Son of a bitch,” Logan whispered. “Do you think it’s possible?”
Niall stared at the photo in the clipping. “I don’t know. There’s nothing here that says ‘X’ marks the spot, but in my gut I can’t help but think there’s some kind of connection.”
“I never argue with a gut. Mine saved my ass more than once when I was still in the Rangers.”
“There’s no address listed here. How do we find out where this house is exactly and who owns it?”
Logan smiled, “That my friend is why it behoves us to have a police detective and FBI agent in our back pocket.”
There was a pounding sound at the front door.
“BPD! Callen, you in there?”
“We’re here and unarmed!” Niall shouted.
Logan raised his eyebrow, and Niall shrugged. “Never hurts to be cautious.”
Logan shoulders shook with laughter, and Niall couldn’t help but get caught up. He moved to answer the door and let the cops in. A man in uniform and two in suits piled in and quickly shut the door.
“Damn it cold out there! The snow is starting to pile up as well.”
Logan moved over between the recent arrivals and Niall. “Niall, this is Captain Fredericks, Trevor’s and my boss. Captain, this is Niall Roberge, Trevor’s partner.”
The middle aged man came forwards and clasped Niall’s hand. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Roberge. Be assured that our department is doing everything we can to track down Trevor and whoever took him.”
“I appreciate that, Captain.” Niall held up the newspaper clipping. “This may be a clue. We found it in Trevor’s memento box.”
The captain put on a pair of gloves and took the paper from Niall. “Can’t say I appreciate you poking around before we cleared the scene, but at least you used gloves.”
“The only things I touched in the apartment before donning the gloves are the front door knob and the outside of the box this was found in. Logan was much better behaved.”
The captain looked around at the mess. “I gotta say there’s probably not much we can do here, other than file an incident report. Trevor should be able to claim the break-in under his renter’s insurance once he returns.”
Niall appreciated the captain’s use of language and understood that they were more concerned with finding Trevor than dealing with the mess in Trevor’s apartment.
Detective Marks came back from Trevor’s bedroom with his pen flying away on a small notebook pad. “In Trevor’s absence and in consideration with his relationship with the department, I’ve got the uniform cataloguing the damage for the report. Mr. Roberge, have you noticed anything missing? Small items may be overlooked but significant pieces that could be pawned we can attempt to track down.”
“No, sir. Trevor doesn’t really have a lot of material possessions. His biggest pride and joy was that television,” Niall said, pointing to the corpse of technology.
Detective Mark’s winced, “Is that one of those new four colour, high def LCD sets?” He whistled softly. “That one’s going to hurt. Wait, are those—” He walked over and flicked on his flashlight. The beam shot though the thin screen onto the wall behind the TV.
Niall had been so focused on the screen itself that he didn’t think to look any further. There was a knock at the front door, and Logan went to open it.
“Hey Gale, thanks for taking the call.” Logan gestured for Niall to join him. “Niall this is Gale Benner. She’s one of the CSIs Trevor and I work with.”
Niall offered his hand, “Nice to meet you.”
Detective Marks waved the CSI over towards him. “Gale! Priority one. Get these bullets out of the wall and over to the lab. Have—” Marks looked back over his shoulder at Logan. “Well shit, you’re here.”
Logan went over to the wall and peered through the hole. “I’m going with them. It’s the best way I can help Trevor right now. This one appears to be intact. It looks like the stud prevented any damage to the round. Now that’s a one in a billion shot.”
“Um, guys? If you move, I can do my job and we get this evidence processed.”
Both men stepped away, and Niall turned to see Captain Fredericks still looking at the newspaper clipping. “What do you think, Captain?”
“Your theory is possible. The part that sucks is normally I would give this to Trevor to enhance so we can try to attempt to identify exactly where this house is located.”
“I might be able to help you with that, Captain.”
“What? How?”
“I’m a photographer. I have a complete digital lab set up in my studio.”
“No shit? What are we waiting for then? Callen!” Fredericks waited until Logan looked over at him. “You good?”
“Good, sir. I’m taking this slug back to the lab to see if I get a hit in IBIS. I’ll call you and Marks the second I know anything either way.”
“Mr. Roberge, let’s go see if you can wave your magic wand the same way Mitchell can.”
* * * *
Niall clicked the scan button and a digital image of the newspaper clipping slowly appeared on the large monitor in his studio. He’d increased the resolution of the scan so they could enlarge the image, selecting only that portion with the photo of the house. He opened his Adobe Lightroom programme and imported the photo.
Fredericks looked over Niall’s shoulder. “Hey that’s not bad.”
Niall moved his mouse over the screen and set the pixel ratio to one-to-one—this essentially zoomed the photo in the active window. They could now move around and focus on any part of the picture they wanted to.
“That makes things easier on my old eyes,” Fredericks joked.
Next Niall increased the exposure one-third of a stop, which lightened the image to combat the yellowing of the newspaper. He then clicked on the development tab and played with the temperature, tint, contrast and noise reduction. It was a quick, dirty job but sufficient for their needs.
“All right, let’s see what we’ve got.” Niall set the ratio back so they could view the entire image on the active screen. What appeared was a picture as it probably looked the day it was shot.
Fredericks slapped Niall on the back. “Not bad. Not bad at all. Can you zoom in on the house number?”
Niall did, but they couldn’t read it due to a large shadow. He selected his spot brush and did some more manipulation with the exposure and sharpness. The number nineteen appeared in clear contrast to the surrounding image. Niall’s heart raced as the digit leapt from the screen.
Fredericks pumped his fist. “Yes! Now, nineteen what?”
Niall moved the mouse all over the image but there was no indication of street name anywhere. “Sir, you see that truck? If I can get you a license plate can you pull up the DMV file for the registered owner? It might give us a street name.”
“Good thinking.” He removed the radio from his belt. “Dispatch, this is Fredericks three-one-two.”
“Go ahead, three-one-two.”
“I need you to run a plate for me…” Fredericks looked down at the screen to see the spot Niall had enh
anced. “One-Six-Charlie-Victor-two-five.”
Seconds passed until the disembodied female voice echoed through the tiny speaker, “One-Six-Charlie-Victor-two-five. No wants, no warrants. Registered to A. Edelman, number twenty Haynes, East Boston.”
Niall nearly jumped up and kissed the Captain. They had an address! Now all they had to do was find out who owned the house. As Matt had said the night before—they were one step closer.
Niall’s phone rang on the desk, and he looked at the screen to see Rick’s name.
“We’ve got an address,” Niall said before Rick could get a word out.
He heard the clicking of computer keys through the connection. “What is it? I’ll do a reverse address search.”
Niall rattled off the address and waited while the results popped up.
“Got you fucker! The resident is listed as S. Hampton.”
Niall relayed the information to Captain Fredericks who held up his hand.
“Just a minute, Mr. Roberge. So far all we have is a theory. Just because that house is owned by our missing suspect, doesn’t guarantee that he’s the one who has your partner.”
Niall put the phone back up against his ear. “Rick? Can I talk to Matt?”
Niall’s breath stalled in his chest as he waited for Matt’s voice to come through the phone.
“Caro?”
Niall closed his eyes as Matt’s deep voice washed over him. “We’re so close, love. There’s one missing link. Have you heard anything from Logan?”
“No, not yet. Clay’s been on and off the phone with guys from the department. He’s trying to find out if Hampton showed up for his shift at work. Ryan is running a complete background check on Hampton as we speak, that man has some scary information at his fingertips. Conor and Calleigh are making everybody some food. I don’t know what it is, but your place certainly smells delicious.”
“Our place, love. From now on, it’s all of ours.” Niall printed out the image for Captain Fredericks. He saved a copy to both his hard drive and burned a copy onto a CD for the police. “What about Rick?” A loud sound like an explosion on a movie reverberated through the phone.