Lost and Found

by Allison Brennan

  The driver took several calls after they’d been on the road awhile, but spoke quietly. She figured out he was driving to a meeting, and that someone—a boss? The leader? Diana Vartarian, head of Armor Plus herself?—wanted to speak to Scarlet. Speak to her. That sounded so… friendly. It wouldn’t be a pleasant conversation. They wanted information, but what information Scarlet could only guess.

  The SUV slowed and stopped. Sped up. Slowed and stopped. Sped up. Turned right. Right. Sped up. Slowed. Stopped. Sounds of traffic, cars. They were definitely in a city. Los Angeles? Santa Ana? Timbuktu? Scarlet had lost all sense of time, but at least two hours had passed. Maybe more. If felt like all day. Her bladder was full and she cursed her decision to buy the venti coffee. Her stomach felt queasy from being jostled in the back of the vehicle. Her head ached, and her eyes burned with the pressure of the blindfold.

  They stopped and the driver opened the door, but didn’t turn off the car. A minute later, he got back in, pulled forward, then got out again. A heavy, metal gate slid closed. A house? A business?

  A moment later, he got back in, drove ten seconds, turned, then stopped the car and turned off the ignition. Scarlet’s head rang with the sudden silence.

  He made no move to come round back and retrieve her. She didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved. She didn’t hear any voices.

  Now was the best time to escape.

  Breaking out of zip ties wasn’t impossible. If they weren’t so tight that her wrists already felt raw, it would have been easier, but it was really just a matter of getting the right angle. She and Krista had practiced a few times—once sober, and once when they’d had a bit too much to drink. It was actually easier drunk, but resulted in far worse bruises on their wrists because they didn’t feel the pain of the ties.

  Why hadn’t they tried this lying down?

  She pictured how she’d broken free before. She didn’t have the ability to bring her arms up and down and slam them against her ass because they’d tied her hands in front of her. She drew them over her head, shifted to get the right angle, and slammed them down over her bent knees.

  Shit!

  Her eyes watered as she bit her lip to keep from crying out. Her wrists hurt so badly she thought she might have broken them as she got free. She pulled off the blindfold and blinked. The sun was high overhead, but the car was tinted; still her vision was blurred. She looked at her wrists, flexed her hands; not broken, but they were both dripping blood. She took the blindfold and wrapped it around her right wrist to stop the worst of the bleeding. Then she stopped and listened. Silence.

  The back doors had no interior handles. She debated waiting here in the back, unrestrained, until the driver came to fetch her, then getting the jump on him. But she didn’t know how many people were here, and while she might be able to take one guy down, if he had backup with a gun, she’d be toast.

  Driving away was the best option. She climbed over the rear seat and looked at the ignition. Dammit, the driver hadn’t left the keys in the car. Okay, Plan B. Slowly, she opened the passenger rear door just enough to slip through.

  She was taking a huge risk, but a bigger risk would be waiting around for them to kill her. She squatted, barely closed the door behind her so it wouldn’t make a sound, then glanced around. The sun wasn’t yet straight overhead; that meant it was probably between ten and eleven in the morning. The SUV was parked at a loading dock at what appeared to be an old warehouse. Possibly abandoned—windows were boarded up. There wasn’t sign of steady traffic. She saw no recognizable landmarks to give her an idea of where she was; she heard vehicles far in the distance, like she was at the end of an unused industrial area near a freeway. If she was in Los Angeles or Orange County, she couldn’t be far from civilization. If she could get away, she should be able to get help quickly.

  A tall, barbed wire-topped cinderblock fence surrounded the property. There were other buildings she couldn’t make out—she only saw roofs. There didn’t seem to be any activity nearby. In the not-so far distance she saw mountains. She couldn’t immediately identify them, but as she thought, she realized they were the Verdugo Mountains that separated Burbank from Glendale—only she was looking at them from a different angle than she was familiar with. She was north of the Verdugos, but since she could see them, that meant she was still south of the Angeles National forest. That would put her in San Fernando or Sylmar or maybe Pacoima. Someplace north of the Burbank airport.

  Okay, that was good. Once she got out, she would head southwest, into the valley. People, lots of people. Houses. Churches. Businesses. She liked having a plan.

  Still crouching, she walked to the end of the SUV and saw the gate they’d come through. The driver—the same short, wiry white guy who had blindfolded her—was talking to a large, burly black guy Scarlet didn’t recognize. She couldn’t see anyone else, though there were two other vehicles. The gate was closed; she couldn’t get out that way. There was a metal security door next to the main gate, but she couldn’t count on it being unlocked. And she’d have to pass the bad guys to access it.

  Well, shit. The plan had been good until she realized that she was in a virtual prison.

  Maybe she could hide. Nope, the place didn’t look big enough to hide—probably not more than three or four acres and very open. Was there another way out? If she could get behind the main building, she might be able to scale the fence. The fence looked too tall to scale, but she could find something to stand on. She might get cut up by the barbed wire, but shredded hands were preferable to death.

  She glanced again at the two men. They were looking at the gate. That’s when she saw a black Hummer coming down the long road, heading for them.

  The meeting. Whoever wanted to talk to her was in that Hummer.

  Now was her chance.

  Hoping the SUV blocked her escape, she ran low and along the dock. She was almost to the end when she heard the shouts behind her.

  No stopping now.

  She ran as fast as she could and rounded the corner of the warehouse. Two beat-up Dumpsters were pushed against the building. The fence here was too high to scale, even if she climbed on top of the Dumpsters. She ran down the path and saw a brick wall completely blocking her path.

  Shit, shit, shit!

  She turned and ran toward the Dumpsters. Maybe she could escape the old-fashioned way—take out her captors. She heard them running, and using her momentum, she ran and pushed the Dumpster, hoping it would knock over both of them, or pin them.

  The Dumpster moved a foot. Two of the wheels were completely broken off.

  The driver caught up with her first. He grabbed her by the arm and slammed her against the Dumpster. “Fucking bitch!”

  The other guy caught up with them. “Knock it off, Ray. The boss needs information.”

  Scarlet’s head was spinning. She spit out blood.

  Dumb ass move, Moreno.

  She’d had no idea where she’d been heading, the flight part of the fight-or-flight in full gear when she got out of her restraints. She should have known the entire property was fenced. Would it have been better to get out and attack when he opened the vehicle? No—there had been no good plan at that point. They had guns.

  A gun. She had to get to a gun. She swallowed. She didn’t want to kill anyone, but dammit, they were going to kill her. She might have no choice.

  Ray, the driver, pushed her forward. “No more chances, Moreno. I’ll put a bullet in you. Again.” He grinned.

  She stopped in her tracks. “You. You’re the one who shot me three years ago?” She didn’t know this guy. Ray? Ray who? Why? Hired to kill her?

  She wanted to shoot him in the elbow and let him know how it felt to have your entire socket rebuilt and reinforced with steel rods. She hated him.

  But he wasn’t the boss. He was following orders.

  “Move it,” he said.

  She walked in front of him. Her head still buzzed, and she wiped her face, came away with a streak of blood.<
br />
  Big Black Bully was in front of her. He walked like he’d been on the job or in the military. What turned a good soldier bad? A good cop? Or were they corruptible from the beginning?

  Ray hadn’t been a cop—she supposed he could have been, but he didn’t have the look, the edge. He was too… soft looking. Maybe he had simply washed out. But he’d shot her. He’d been hired to kill her.

  One of two people.

  When she and Krista were pinned down in the warehouse, there were shooters in two places, effectively cutting them off. Forensics confirmed there were two different calibers of ammunition and from the angles of shots fired, one had come from high up on the catwalk, the other from ground level. The only thing that had saved them was the quick response by the L.A.P.D. patrol officer who’d only been a couple blocks away on a traffic stop. If that cop hadn’t called it in after Scarlet’s radio failed, would Ray and his partner have stayed until both she and Krista were dead?

  She shuddered. Yeah, she was lucky to be alive. And dammit, she would do everything in her power to stay that way.

  How many people worked for the Vartarians? Conspiracies like this would be hard to maintain—Scarlet guessed that while there might be many involved, few knew who they actually worked for. The organization had that compartmentalized feeling… but she could be wrong.

  How many were former cops? That disturbed her more than anything. She believed in the law, believed in the badge, and believed that most cops were good. But L.A.P.D. was a large police force. Even one-tenth of a percent would include dozens of officers.

  “What happened?” a voice asked.

  Scarlet stopped walking and Ray pushed her. “Keep moving,” he said.

  The voice. She knew that voice.

  She had to be wrong.

  The other guy said, “Sorry, sir, she ran.”

  Ray pushed Scarlet around the corner and she saw him—the man with the familiar voice.

  Tall. Lean. Blond. One of the most handsome, smartest men Scarlet had ever dated.

  Three and a half years ago, they’d been engaged. Talking about wedding dates. Living together. Sharing the same bed. Until the ambush.

  “Matt.” Scarlet choked out his name.

  She couldn’t have been more surprised. Well, maybe she could have, but Matt… he was a prosecutor. He graduated from USC law school, one of the best in the state. She’d loved him.

  Matt Hamilton stepped forward, looked at her face and frowned. He touched her cheek and she barely refrained from wincing. Not because her face hurt—it did—but because this man she had shared a bed with for over a year was working for the Vartarians. And she hadn’t known.

  She didn’t know which burned her the most—that he was one of them or that she had been ignorant of his duplicity.

  “I’m sorry it had to end like this,” Matt said.

  She spit in his face.

  He slapped her. She fell to her knees.

  “I saved your life three years ago!” he shouted. “You owe me.” He wiped the spit off his chin, a dark scowl on his face she only half-recognized. Had she missed all the signs? How stupid could she have been? “Jim, take her inside. Stay with her. Restrain her if she becomes a problem.”

  Jim grabbed her bicep and pulled her up, holding her firmly but unlike Ray, it didn’t hurt. He led her to stairs on the other end of the dock. As they walked away, Matt said to Ray, “I told you not to touch her.”

  “She ran.”

  “Idiot! I told you to secure her and keep eyes on her at all times. Do your job or you won’t be needed anymore. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Whatever Matt said next was lost as Jim pulled Scarlet into the building.

  The place wasn’t empty. The warehouse had been divided; the smaller half looked like a large, open work space—boxes and file cabinets lined the wall down the middle of the structure. She had no idea what was on the other side of the false wall. Two people, a young man and woman, worked at a huge bank of high-end computers in one glass-walled office in the middle of the warehouse. As she watched, the woman motioned for another man who was going through one of the files, and he entered the enclosed room.

  “I found something, Mr. Foster,” Scarlet heard before the door closed again.

  Scarlet didn’t know what the girl had found that got her all excited to show her boss, but she grinned as she handed him a paper.

  “Let’s go,” Jim said and took Scarlet her up a staircase to a row of offices built above windowless rooms underneath. Each upstairs office had a wall of glass that looked out into the warehouse below.

  He opened the door to the first room and pushed her inside. There was an empty desk and a chair. No computer or phone. The window showed that the warehouse wasn’t as full as Scarlet had thought initially. There was the door they’d come in, plus a wall of slide-up doors that went out to the loading dock. Another roll-up door was on the opposite side of the building.

  “Sit,” Jim said.

  She complied.

  He closed the door and stood to the side, his eyes on her. He wore all black and a shoulder holster with two guns, one on each side.

  “You work for Armor Plus,” she said.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “If you help me, I’ll put in a good word with the authorities.”

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t smile or budge or acknowledge that she’d spoken.

  She turned the chair and stared out the window.

  Matt.

  She wanted to hit something. And scream. And ask him why.

  They’d met through her brother, John. John and Matt had played baseball together on a travel team all through high school. Matt was a year older than John, a year younger than Scarlet. She knew Matt then, but it wasn’t until he graduated from law school and started working for the D.A. had he and John started hanging out again, and soon after that, she and Matt started dating. A year later, they moved in together, and then he proposed.

  She’d never forget that night. New Year’s Eve. Scarlet hadn’t wanted to go to the party because she didn’t feel comfortable around Matt’s smart lawyerly friends, but she’d gone anyway because it was important to him. He promised they’d leave early, and lived up to it.

  Much earlier than she thought. They’d bailed before eleven, just as the party started heating up.

  “We could have stayed until midnight,” she’d said. “I’m not a pumpkin.”

  He smiled. “I have a surprise.”

  She smiled back at him, kissed him as he opened the door to his sporty BMW. “Better than the surprise when I got off-duty this afternoon?”

  “I hope so.” He closed the door, went around to the driver’s side. Matt had always been a gentleman. He’d always been the thoughtful one in their relationship. He remembered birthdays and the anniversary of their first date. Instead of flowers, he’d buy her chocolate—she had a weakness for dark chocolate—or take her out for ice cream… or make her dinner. He knew she detested cooking but loved eating, and he enjoyed showing off his culinary skills.

  He told her he loved her often. She said it back, though she wasn’t sure she knew what love was. She enjoyed Matt’s company, really enjoyed the sex, and when she was off-duty and he had to work, she missed him… most of the time. He could be a little bossy and demanding at times, and was fastidious about the condo they shared. Everything had a place and everything in its place. But she adjusted, figured she could deal with trying to be neater than she normally was.

  But love was odd. Her mother had walked out on her dad, her, and John after fourteen years of marriage with the simple comment, “I don’t love your father anymore.” How could that happen? How could you love someone one minute and not love them the next? Her parents had sometimes argued, but rarely fought. Her father had a difficult job, and he told people his ex-wife, Amy, had a tough time being married to a cop, but Scarlet didn’t believe it. That was the excuse her dad used because he didn’t understand why her
mother had left them anymore than she did. And worse, they didn’t understand why three years after she’d left, she’d remarried into a ready-made family to a guy with two kids, a girl and boy, two years apart just like Scarlet and John. And then had another kid two years later. Scarlet rarely saw them, and she didn’t miss them. She had John and her dad, and that was good.

  “Why are you so sad?” Matt asked. He’d driven them up to Mullholland Drive. The night was crystal clear, cold for Los Angeles, but the view from the Santa Monica Mountains was amazing. He parked in someone’s driveway and turned off the car.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “A friend of mine. He’s out of town, told me I could use his house tonight. You didn’t answer my question.”

  “End of the year. Endings. Beginnings. Thinking about my mom.”

  “Are you talking to her?”

  The question irritated Scarlet. She’d told Matt why she had a problem with her mother, and he didn’t seem to think it was that big of a deal. “She’s mad because we didn’t go over to her house for Christmas Eve.”

  “Look, I want tonight to be perfect.”

  She glanced at the house. “We’re staying here tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t have anything to sleep in.”

  “You sleep naked.”

  “It’s someone else’s house.”

  “He won’t be home until next week.”

  “Who?”

  “Jack Boone.”

  “The actor? You know him?”

  “Yes. So, are you coming?” He sounded annoyed, then leaned over and kissed her. “I have the key and the alarm code. We’re not breaking in. I went to college with Jack, helped him with a legal matter. He’s more than happy to let me have his house for one night.”