Rick knew he was complimenting more than her looks. Not something many brothers would notice anyway. “She’s resilient.”
Michael leaned against the counter in the kitchen, lifted his chin. “She’s tough. Helps that you’re here to be her rock.”
Rick offered a nod. “I’ve assigned Russell to accompany you around if needed while you’re home.” It wasn’t like Rick could play bodyguard while watching over Judy.
Michael shrugged. “I don’t have anything big planned.”
Rick knew that Zach had asked Michael to find a way to get home for a while. Safety in numbers along with a high-profile actor on the other end of a camera was a great way to keep a constant alibi for all involved.
“You sure this isn’t cramping your latest film?”
“Family comes first,” Michael told him.
Translated . . . that meant Michael had told his producers to work without him for a while. The fix was temporary.
Rick felt an answer was close. Now that they’d narrowed their search to players on the game, he could practically taste a break in the case.
The cell phone in his pocket buzzed at the same time the phone in the house rang.
Michael moved to answer the home line and Rick looked at the video feed from Judy’s office. At last glance, he saw her sitting at her desk working, only now she wasn’t there and the cubicle was empty. So why was the monitor sensing movement?
He stood to move to the room housing his monitors when he heard distress in Michael’s voice.
“He’s right here.”
Michael handed the cordless to Rick. “It’s Neil. He says something’s happening in Judy’s office.”
Rick knocked down the immediate feeling of panic and grabbed the phone. “Talk to me.”
“Have you looked at the monitors?”
Rick nearly ran to the monitors and clicked them all on. Judy’s office sat center stage. Her space was empty, but employees ran by the opening of her cubicle. “What’s going on?” He turned up the volume, noticed the strobe light flashing behind where the cameras were hidden.
“What’s happening?” Michael asked behind him.
“I don’t know.”
“The fire alarm is blaring,” Neil told him. Sure enough, the only sound on the monitor was that of the fire alarm and of panicked employees running by.
“False alarms go off all the time. Why the chaos?” Rick asked.
“Hold on.”
While he waited for Neil to get back to him, Rick took the cell in his hand and speed-dialed Judy’s number. As it rang, he heard the ring through the monitors. Had Judy left her cell phone behind as she exited the building?
His gut started to twist.
“There was an explosion,” Neil told him when he got back on the phone. “Fire is responding.”
A diversion . . . chaos . . . Judy would easily get lost in the shuffle. “I don’t like this,” Rick said.
“Neither do I.”
One glance at Michael, and the two of them ran for the door.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Help!” Judy yelled over the blaring alarm, pounding her fists on the door.
The hall outside the office sounded painfully silent, like the building had been evacuated and she was left behind. “Hello!” She pounded again.
She turned toward the desk and moved to the phone right as the door to the office opened.
White smoke billowed in from the hall. “Miss Gardner?”
“Mitch?” Thank God he had heard her.
“There’s a fire. C’mon.” He practically pulled her from the office, running away from the elevator and toward the back of the office where the smoke didn’t seem as thick.
“What happened?”
“Not sure. Sounded like an explosion. I got turned around, heard you yelling.”
A strong cough ripped from her lungs as smoke threatened their path. “We have to get out of here.”
Mitch, who she never saw as a hero type, guided her out of the office down a back stairway she hardly knew was there. Smoke filled the stairs close to the third floor, but he kept them moving forward.
“This doesn’t feel safe.”
“C’mon.” He pushed through the second-floor offices and ran through smoke. He handed her some kind of cloth and helped her cover her mouth to keep from inhaling the smoke-filled air.
They moved in what felt like circles. Judy’s breath came in short pants that brought up a cough. The cloth wasn’t doing a good job of filtering. Each breath felt more difficult than the last.
“We need to find the stairs.” Her head swam.
“This way.”
Only this way wasn’t toward the stairs. At least she didn’t think it was.
Mitch’s grip on her arm was viselike and more menacing than she expected from the shy delivery man.
She removed the cloth from her lips. “We need to go back the other way.”
Mitch pulled her with him.
“Mitch!” She didn’t know of an exit where he was headed.
“I know where I’m going, Judy.” His angry voice shook her. Sounded familiar.
She hesitated, noticed the smoke thinning. She sucked in a breath through the cloth and looked at it.
A pillowcase?
She froze, twisted out of Mitch’s grip.
He turned, looked at her, and she knew.
She acted as if she was going to run, turned into him with her elbow aiming for his torso. They connected and she ran.
A wall of smoke filled her vision, right as a freight train ran her into the ground.
“Stupid bitch.”
Rick and Michael arrived along with the media.
Outside the building, employees gathered in sections, too many unrecognizable faces from every floor. Dressed in full firefighting gear, the fire department personnel filed into the building, pulling hoses. Smoke pushed out of what appeared to be the third floor on the west side of the building. Judy’s office was several floors above toward the east.
Michael turned in circles. “Do you see her?”
Rick peered over the heads of people gathered. “No.”
“I’ll search over there.” Michael pointed to a thick crowd of people standing on the opposite side of the street.
“OK.”
Michael jogged away and Rick searched the crowd around him for a familiar face.
The police started to arrive and usher the people away from the building and still Rick didn’t catch a glimpse of Judy.
When a familiar face met his, he took hold of Nancy’s arm and turned her around. “Nancy?”
“This is crazy,” she said turning toward the building.
“Have you seen Judy?”
Nancy shook her head. “No. We heard the explosion and ran. It was nuts in there.”
“Where was the explosion?”
She pointed toward the smoke. “Either the third or fourth floor. Not ours.”
That was something, at least. “If you see Judy, tell her I’m here.”
He’d already lost Nancy’s attention when a second explosion, several floors above the fourth floor, rattled the building and sent people screaming away from the building.
Running toward him through the crush of people was Neil. He looked like a linebacker pushing through a bunch of tight ends.
Rick didn’t give him time to ask. “I haven’t seen her.”
From behind them, Michael joined the conversation. “Her boss didn’t see her leaving.”
Behind Neil’s shoulder, the police were starting toward them. Probably to move them out of the area. He bumped his friend with an elbow. “Distract them. I’m going in.”
She weighed nothing tossed over his shoulder and lifeless as he hid his path with smoke canisters and well-timed bombs. To think the Army didn’t think he was fit enough for the job. Stupid fuckers.
The path joining the buildings was an abandoned corridor in the garage. If the homeless population knew of its existence, it wo
uld be littered with rotting garbage and the stench of urine. But for whatever reason, the vagrants in the area didn’t know it was there. He did.
He relieved the baggage from his back and opened the door to the adjacent building’s empty corridor. With the path clear, he tossed Judy back over his shoulder and down two flights. He twisted a familiar set of halls, the space becoming increasingly dark and obviously unused.
From the look of the old boiler room, it had been abandoned at least a decade before. The space was perfect. Noise from an old shaft that housed the newer ventilation and heating system drowned out much of the noise that would come from the room. Not that he needed to worry about that. Judy’s building would be evacuated, and with the weekend now in full swing, there wouldn’t be any meandering employees around to stumble upon anything.
He dumped her on a pile of blankets he’d placed there earlier, careful with her head only because he didn’t want to ruin his fun by killing her too early. He’d been looking forward to this for weeks.
The chloroform he’d placed on the cloth she’d willingly taken to her mouth was starting to wear off. He wasn’t quite ready for her to be completely aware of where she was, the fun they were going to have, so Mitch found his little helper and cooked up a small cocktail for his guest.
He drew up the solution and flopped down beside her. He wiped the vein in her hand to attention, pierced her skin. She jerked away, but he kept hold of her.
Judy’s eyes opened, the panic sparkling from her lashes wouldn’t be forgotten anytime soon.
He pushed the plunger with her first struggle, slipped the needle away, and waved it in front of her eyes.
“W-what do you . . .” Her words were already slurring, her gaze unfocused.
He let her arm go only to feel the dead weight of it hit his thigh.
He pushed his fingers to her lips. “Shh.”
She moved her head to the side but didn’t have the ability to turn it again before her lids closed and she slumped over.
Mitch stood, rubbed his hands together, and smiled.
Meg pushed through the crowd, Lucas and Dan at her side. She’d just made it back to the house when Lucas and Dan showed up at the gate, informing her about the explosion.
They had to park blocks away from the chaos and run toward the mess of police and fire trucks. As they pushed through the people, they looked for Judy but didn’t see her.
The clearly defined police line left anyone there to watch on the opposite side of the street. Several trucks sprayed water on the flames billowing through one of the top floors. The media was setting up cameras and reporters were applying lipstick before they stepped on their stage.
She had to have gotten out.
Dan pulled her hand, pointed toward a mass of people and several camera crews. “Isn’t that Michael?”
Her relief was temporary as they moved closer and didn’t see Judy at her brother’s side. One look in his eyes and her head swiveled toward the building. “No.”
Michael’s arm wrapped around her shoulders and the cameras around them snapped pictures. He leaned close to her ear. “Rick is inside searching. Neil is casing the surrounding buildings.”
“Is there anyone trapped in there? Do we know?”
Michael shook his head. “We don’t know. From what I can tell, there was plenty of time for everyone from her floor to escape.”
“Then where is she?”
Michael’s hand squeezed her shoulder. “The first explosion was on a lower floor. The second was close to the roof.”
“Do we know what caused the explosion?”
“No one knows.”
A reporter pushed closer, shoved a microphone in their faces. “Michael, have you heard from your sister since the fire started?”
“Go away,” he told the reporter.
Dan and Lucas moved around the two of them.
“Was your sister in the building today?” another reporter asked.
“No comment,” Dan said as he placed his body between Michael and the reporter.
“Friends of yours?” Michael asked Meg.
She nodded and stared beyond the reporters to the activity outside the building. Seemed the fire on the lower floor was contained and the efforts were focused on the top levels.
Even though the reporters still asked questions, Michael ignored them, his eyes constantly searching over the heads of the crowd.
Waiting for minutes felt like hours. Each one that passed felt more dire than the last.
Neil found them, and pulled them away from the crowd.
They huddled next to a building, Lucas and Dan pushed the reporters back.
“Rumors are already flying. The police think the explosions were deliberately set.”
“What? Why?”
“We don’t know. The only rumor I confirmed was two smoke canisters found in a ventilation shaft and one outside a parking lot.”
Meg started to feel her lungs restricting as panic for her friend set in. “Someone did this on purpose?”
“Looks that way.” A heavy amount of uncertainty sat behind Neil’s eyes. Meg hadn’t known the man long, but he always seemed to guard his emotions.
“Oh, no. You don’t think . . . that Judy . . .”
“Don’t jump to conclusions.”
Meg shook her head. “Why? You have. We have to find her.” She sucked in a breath to find it lacking of oxygen, struggled with the next one.
Michael took hold of her shoulders and helped her sit while she fumbled with the inhaler in her pocket. Two puffs later and the stars in her head stopped spinning. “I’m OK,” she insisted.
“I’m going back over to see if there’s any more information,” Neil told them. He directed his eyes to Michael. “Call Zach and Karen.”
Worry punched her gut harder when with a face full of soot, Rick found them and dropped beside her on the curb. “I made it as far as the second floor.” He coughed. “Too much smoke.”
They all stared at the building, praying that Judy would walk out of it, or up to them and ask what they were all worried about.
Only she never came.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Every high is followed by a hangover. The only hangovers Judy had ever experienced were the alcohol-induced stunners nearly every college student experiences somewhere in their four years at school.
So when she woke, and her head split in two the moment her eyes opened, she identified the roll of her stomach and the cotton lodged in her throat with a groan. She attempted to ball into a fetal position and remember the night before, but found her hands bound by a rope on each side of her body.
She blinked a few times, tried to focus. Stone floor, rusted old machines she couldn’t immediately identify. The sound of a blower forcing air into a shaft filled the otherwise silent room. No windows . . . no doors that she could see, and only a few bare lights that looked like they’d wink out at the first opportunity.
She shook her cloudy head, tried to focus on the bare bulb above.
He’d waved a needle at her, laughed, and for a brief moment, she thought she was dreaming, then there was nothing.
“Oh, God.” Moving her head took serious effort, bringing pain from cramped muscles. She pulled against the rope holding her, felt her own fatigue. She was still clothed, though the cold depth of the floor was seeping into her bones and making her shake.
Or maybe that was pure fear.
The doubled lines of everything around her started to focus. Judy didn’t see him at first, thought maybe he’d left her there.
The hope of that quickly faded as he stepped from the shadows wearing a full set of military fatigues, complete with boots, face painted to blend in with the dank quarters.
Through the black and gray makeup, his sneer met a gleam in his eye.
She pushed her body back from him, noticed her feet weren’t bound, giving her some mobility.
Slow, steady steps brought him to her. He knelt just out of reach of her leg
s. “Nice of you to wake, General.”
“Let me go.”
He laughed. “After all the effort I’ve taken to get you here? I don’t think so.”
He looked nothing like the awkward twentysomething that brought special deliveries to their office. There wasn’t an ounce of uncertainty on his face, or in the way he held himself on the balls of his feet.
“Why? Why are you doing this?”
He blinked a couple of times, as if the question confused him. “Capture the enemy. Much better than just destroying them.” Without words, he stood again, retreated to the corner of the room, back in the shadows, and just watched her.
Whatever his plan was, he wasn’t rushing it. He acted as if he had all the time in the world.
She looked around the room again, didn’t recognize any of it. She thought of her father’s hardware store, the plumbing aisle filled with valves and pipes. Only the pipes she saw weren’t from anything in the last twenty years. A boiler, maybe . . . which would mean they were in a basement of something. From the size of the room, the height of the ceiling, she thought it might be a large apartment complex.
She shivered, wondered if anyone above knew a psychopath lurked beneath.
Her pasty lips stuck together when she attempted to find moisture. She’d never directly dealt with someone who was clearly twisted, wasn’t sure if she could talk sense into him or not.
His dark eyes watched from the shadows, unnerving her. Perhaps that was his goal?
“Mitch?” She attempted to use his name. “It is Mitch, isn’t it?”
He didn’t answer.
The next breath she pulled in made her shiver. The room was cold and an occasional draft blew in from behind her.
“I’m not your enemy.”
Silence.
Then she heard a squeak from the corner of the room followed by something with tiny legs running.
Rats.
Things like that never really bothered her . . . not in a girlie, squeal and jump away kind of way. But she was half-lying on a cold floor without a way to escape the things.
From the corner, Mitch started to laugh, and Judy knew her lack of concern for rats was about to change.
Taken by Tuesday (Weekday Brides Series) Page 24