by Greg Herren
“We’re not going to be able to keep his name out of the media forever, Scotty.” Frank sounded tired. “It’s not ideal, but…”
“I just don’t want him to always be the twink that was there the night Eric Brewer was murdered,” I replied. “This could ruin his life.”
“We can only do what we can,” Frank said as we stopped at the light at Claiborne. “He’s a strong kid, Scotty. He can handle it. And it’s out of our control.”
“Maybe…maybe we should get ahead of the story.” I rubbed my forehead. This headache was going to be a bitch. “Maybe we could talk to Paige. She was at the party, she knows Taylor was there—she might even know he left with Eric. She’d be fair, at least.”
“We’d better ask Loren what he thinks. And Taylor. I mean, it’s his decision.”
“I just think it would be smart.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. That worked, sometimes. “I mean, look how fast all of these people will sell each other out. I mean, what’s to stop Serena from going to the tabloids?”
“You think Serena would do that?”
“I don’t know what Serena would do.” I didn’t. I knew her, I liked her, but I didn’t know her well enough to predict her behavior. “I’m going to call Loren.” I pulled out my phone as Frank turned the corner from Decatur onto Barracks. The call went to voice mail. “Hey, Loren, Scotty Bradley here. Can you call me as soon as you can? I think maybe we need to get ahead of the story, you know, with the media. Call me.” I hung up as Frank pulled into our parking garage. As we walked through the shed to the courtyard, my phone vibrated. I pulled it back out. I had a text message from Venus: hey we’re on our way to the Quarter do you mind if we stop by and ask some follow up questions about your accident?
Sure, I typed with my thumbs, although I don’t know what else I can tell you. We just got home.
“Venus and Blaine want to come by to talk about the accident,” I said as we climbed the back stairs.
Frank stopped at our back door and looked back at me. “That’s not good. What other questions could they have? It was an accident.”
“I don’t know. Maybe they want to see if I’ve remembered anything. She said she just had some follow-up questions.”
Frank unlocked the door. “I’m sure the car is totaled. I wish they’d hurry up so we can file the insurance claim.”
“We can just go ahead and get another car,” I said, as Scooter weaved around my ankles, his tail up, purring and rubbing against me. Clearly, he was hungry. I didn’t fool myself into thinking it was affection. He was a very sweet cat—he’d completely won us all over during his time with us and was now a member of the family—and he loved to sleep on us, cuddle with us.
“Taylor?” I called. He didn’t answer. Of course, he could be upstairs. I checked the time. His class wouldn’t get out for another hour. But he must have come home early—Scooter was in our apartment, wasn’t he? The first thing Taylor did every day when he got home was get Scooter and bring him downstairs to our apartment.
If Scooter was down here, then where was Taylor?
“Frank,” I managed to keep my voice calm, “can you go look and see if Taylor’s upstairs?”
I had a really bad feeling about this.
I waited until the door closed behind Frank and tried not to run to the computer in the living room. I pulled up the app for our phone service and clicked on find my phones.
The New Orleans map came up. Two phone icons blinked at our location on Decatur Street, labeled SB (me) and FS (Frank).
The TR phone didn’t show anywhere.
He may have just turned off his phone, I thought, trying not to panic as I typed in a specific search for his phone.
Nothing.
No dot. Just phone not found.
“He just turned off his phone,” I said out loud, my voice shaking a little.
Taylor never turns off his phone.
My fingers starting to tremble, I clicked on Location history and then selected Taylor’s name from the drop-down menu.
He’d come home forty-five minutes ago.
I pulled up his Uber history—yes, I have all kinds of ways of tracking him, yes, I know it’s controlling and smothering, yes, I know I shouldn’t do this, but I rarely ever use them and sometimes it comes in handy, LIKE RIGHT NOW—and I saw the Uber that picked him up on campus had dropped him off forty-five minutes ago and maybe he was stressed and upset and he turned off his phone once he got home but I couldn’t get out of my mind that Friday night I came home and A RUSSIAN AGENT WAS DEAD IN MY LIVING ROOM AND HE’D GOTTEN IN SOMEHOW AND…
Breathe, Scotty. Breathe. He’s upstairs and asleep.
I stood up and walked into the kitchen. Scooter was howling. I absentmindedly filled his food and water bowls and listened, my ear cocked to the upstairs. I didn’t hear anything.
That was…odd.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when the gate buzzer rang. I pressed the speaker button. “Yes?”
“It’s us, Scotty.” It was Venus’s voice.
“Hey, let me buzz you in. We’re on the third floor.” I pressed the unlock button and heard the gate buzz. I kept the speaker on until I heard the gate close behind them.
Where the hell was Frank?
What could be keeping him?
What’s going on upstairs?
I was torn between running upstairs to make sure everything was okay and needing to wait for Venus and Blaine. The knock on the back door solved the problem for me.
If you wait long enough, sometimes your decisions get made for you.
“Hey.” I opened the door and stood aside for them to enter. A blast of cold wind came in with them, and their coats were wet. “Y’all want some coffee?”
“That would be terrific,” Blaine replied. I took their coats and shut the door, hung the coats on the coatrack, and followed Blaine and Venus down the hallway.
“Make yourselves at home,” I said, detouring into the kitchen. I knew she took her coffee black, and he used a sweetener packet. I filled the coffeemaker with water and set it to brew before heading back into the living room. “What’s going on?” I asked, sitting down in one of the wingback chairs.
“Scotty.” Venus gave me a brittle smile. “Is there anything about your accident you want to share with us? Something you might have left out at the scene, maybe?”
“I…don’t know what else there is to share?” I was confused. I looked from one to the other, but both looked serious. “What’s going on?”
“Is there anything going on in your life that you’d maybe like to share with us but don’t feel like you can, for some reason?” Blaine cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Any, I don’t know, cases you might be working on, you know, things you should tell us about to clear up some things?”
“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied. “The only thing Frank and I are doing is trying to clear Taylor.” I frowned. “You know, the Grande Dames murders?”
Venus nodded. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“So, you can’t think of any reason why there would be a tracking device on your car?” Venus raised her eyebrows and blinked at me, her head tilted to one side, a not-friendly smile twitching the corners of her lips.
“A tracking device?” I gaped at her, hoping they couldn’t hear how hard my heart was pounding. Fuck.
“A highly sophisticated one, at that.” Blaine pulled out his phone, played with it for a few seconds, then passed it over to me. On the screen was an image of a very tiny square box, with a red light in the corner. “In fact, our tech guys say it’s Russian in origin, often used by Russian spies.”
“Russian,” I repeated stupidly. Fuck.
The accident wasn’t an accident.
“Yes,” Venus went on. “Apparently it broadcasts to a satellite, and those broadcasts can be monitored by computers…or even a cell phone.” She folded her arms and smiled. “Modern technology is pretty amazing. So, yes, someone
was tracking your car. It stands to reason that your accident might not have been an accident at all. Still sure there’s nothing we need to know about?”
“Someone—someone deliberately hit me?” I gripped the armrests of my chair, to keep my hands from shaking. “But why…why would someone want to hurt me?”
Russian. The device was Russian.
Colin had been followed by a Russian agent. The guy he’d killed in our apartment on Friday night had been Russian.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
What the hell is going on?
I looked up at the ceiling, my terror growing.
“The car that hit you had been stolen,” Blaine was saying. “The owner last used it Saturday evening and didn’t know it was gone until we contacted him yesterday after the accident. So, there’s no telling how long the car was gone. We also don’t know when that device was put on your car, or how long someone’s been tracking you. At some point, we’d like to check your other vehicles to see if they also have been bugged.”
“Yes, of course.”
Venus cleared her throat. “Naturally, after we found the bug on your car, we turned the vehicle over to the crime lab. Luminol found some traces of blood in the back hatch, but the DNA had been ruined…”
“I cut myself a few days ago.” I replied. “I had a box cutter and I was opening some boxes in the car, you know, so I could just put the cardboard into recycling?”
“Did you know that a body that was found early Saturday morning in Bayou de LeSaire? Out on Chef Menteur Highway, close to the Rigolets?”
“I think I heard something about it on the news,” I replied. “Why?”
Fuck fuck fuckety fuck.
“Yes, what are you implying, Venus?” This was Frank. I hadn’t heard him come in. He was standing in the hallway, his arms crossed.
“I’m not implying anything,” Venus said. “I know there are any number of ways for blood to wind up in the back of your car. But the fact that there is blood back there, with the DNA ruined, coupled with the bug…” She held up her hands. “And the fact that the body we found out in Bayou de LeSaire had dental work consistent with the kind someone would get in Russia…you see our dilemma here. And I know…” She paused, searched for the right words. “Look. Off the record, okay? We know that Colin works for Blackledge, remember? We know. We were the ones who investigated your uncle’s murder twelve years ago, remember? And got pulled off the case by the Feds? Forced to close the books on it without ever really coming up with an answer?”
“And then Colin was gone, right?” Blaine crossed his legs and leaned back into the sofa. “And stayed gone for several years, and then without warning he turns up again. No questions asked, no problem.” He made a face at me. “Your personal life is none of our business, of course…”
“But we aren’t idiots.” Venus finished for him. “Is there something going on you aren’t sure you can tell us about?” She sighed. “I mean, seriously, guys. Any minute I’m waiting for the Feds to swoop in and tell us we can’t investigate your car accident anymore and to close and seal the damned file, just like twelve years ago with your uncles.” She ticked off the points on her fingers. “So, we’ve got a dead Russian. We got a Russian bug on your car. You got a boyfriend who works for Blackledge. It doesn’t take a goddamned rocket scientist to do that math and come up with Colin.” And then she pointed at the floor. “Did I mention that the Russian found in Bayou LeSaire was rolled up in a rug that I swear I’ve seen here before? A rug that doesn’t happen to be here anymore?”
Blaine gestured around the apartment. “It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to notice you’ve got a new TV, and those frames are new, too. There’s also a bullet hole in that wall right there I’m pretty sure wasn’t there the last time I was here. Now, I can’t swear to that, of course, and it’s been a while since I’ve been here…”
I looked from one to the other. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I am a terrible liar. I always have been, and I could tell by the sour looks on their faces they weren’t believing anything I was saying. “Colin hasn’t been back—I haven’t seen Colin in a while.” It sounded like a lie, even to me.
“Level with us, Scotty.” Venus leaned forward. “I know we don’t always see eye to eye on things, but maybe, just maybe, we can help you.”
“Let me get you your coffee. I’m sure it’s ready now.” I moved into the hallway and could see Frank’s face was pale, his jaw clenched. I gestured him into the kitchen, making noise as I grabbed two mugs down from the cupboard. “Frank, I can tell by your face something is wrong,” I whispered, then called, “You take it black, right, Venus?”
“Yes,” she shouted back.
“Sweet’n Low if you have it,” Blaine also called.
“He’s not up there,” Frank whispered back. “His phone is there—the battery’s dead—and so is his backpack.” He exhaled. “And his keys are there, too.”
“He wouldn’t go anywhere without his phone or his keys,” I whispered back, my heart sinking.
“Nope.” Frank shook his head. “I’m going to tell them everything.”
Finding Taylor had to be a priority. If Russians had taken him…
“We can’t tell them everything,” I whispered back. “At the very least I am an accessory after the fact, Frank. At LEAST. We can’t say anything to them until I’ve talked to Storm. But we can tell them Taylor’s missing.”
That muscle in his jaw was bouncing up and down again. “Fine.”
I followed Frank into the living room and gave Venus and Blaine their respective cups.
“I don’t know what you think is going on, or what you think Scotty and I know, but…” He swallowed. “But that can wait. Taylor’s not here. And he should be.”
“And so,” I went on, improving madly, “given that my car was being tracked, and Taylor isn’t here—and didn’t take his keys or his phone with him, and his apartment was unlocked…”
“Maybe whatever case Colin’s working on…I don’t know, but maybe his cover was blown? And his life here was exposed to people who want to hurt him,” Frank finished for me. “And someone—that someone or something, may have taken Taylor. I mean, if they bugged Scotty’s car…” He exhaled.
“I used phone tracking to make sure he got home from school—he took an Uber and so we know what time he got back here,” I went on, my voice quivering. I hugged myself and took a deep breath. “The first thing he does every day when he gets home from school is he brings Scooter downstairs.” Scooter was curled up in Blaine’s lap, sleeping. “I know we can’t file a missing persons report…”
“Text me a good photo of him,” Venus replied. “And I’ll put out a BOLO. You know it’s possible he just went for coffee—”
“Without his keys or his phone?” Frank replied with a raised eyebrow.
Venus held up her hands. “I know, I know. Millennials never go anywhere without their phones. Did the apartment upstairs seem disturbed in any way?”
We trooped upstairs, shivering in the cold, and the silence of the apartment was scary. It seemed somehow empty, abandoned. Taylor’s backpack was sitting just inside the door, where he always dropped it when he came home. His phone was in the kitchen, plugged into the charger—but the charger wasn’t plugged all the way into the wall. Taylor was always afraid his battery would die on him, so he always recharged the phone as often as he could—if he had access to an outlet, he’d plug it in.
It looked like he’d been interrupted as he plugged it in.
But even more disturbing? His jacket was tossed on the back of the sofa. He’d come in the way he always did, dropped his bag, tossed his coat over the sofa, and started to charge his phone.
But nothing seemed out of place. Nothing was tipped over, no sign of a struggle.
That was promising.
Maybe he had run to the coffee shop and had just forgotten his keys.
But his jacket, too?
I also appreciated the fact Ven
us and Blaine were ignoring the bong sitting on the coffee table.
“We’ll find him,” Blaine said, rubbing my arm.
Chapter Fifteen
Two of Pentacles, Reversed
Possibility of loss
“We’ve got to stay calm,” I said for probably the thousandth time since Blaine and Venus left. “We don’t know for sure he’s been kidnapped.”
Okay, maybe I was babbling a little bit. Saying we had to stay calm wasn’t the same thing as, you know, staying calm. My mind was a gibberish of emotions, thoughts shooting through the gray fog encroaching on the edges of my consciousness. My heart felt like it was going to spring from my chest. I could hear blood thudding through my veins in my arms, my temples, in my throat. I couldn’t sit still. I needed to do something, anything, keep myself occupied, to keep the worst thoughts of what might have happened—what might be happening—to my precious Taylor at bay. I couldn’t bear the idea of him being afraid, being in the hands of people who wanted to hurt him for some reason.
I would have gladly killed them, torn them limb from limb, poured gasoline over what was left, and lit a match.
He’s okay, he’s okay, he’s got to be okay, I kept repeating inside my head.
But thinking it wasn’t the same as believing it, and no matter how many more times I said that rosary in my thoughts, I felt certain I wasn’t ever going to make myself believe it.
I had a gut feeling deep inside that Taylor wasn’t okay, wasn’t safe, was terrified and needed us to come to his rescue.
He may not be my blood child, but that sixth sense parents supposedly have?
I have it in spades.
I knew in my soul he hadn’t just run down to the coffee shop.
Someone had taken him against his will.
Our home wasn’t safe. It hadn’t been since Colin killed that Russian here on Friday night.
We never should have let Taylor come back until we were sure he’d be safe here.
Hell, maybe we should move into Mom and Dad’s for the time being.
“Stop pacing,” Frank said, his lips a compressed thin line, his jaw clenched tightly, “you’re just making me more nervous. And much as I hate to say this, Scotty, we have to consider the possibility that Taylor ran away on his own.”