“You’d be amazed at what the lovelorn will do to get their victims’ attention.”
She shivered, and he wished he’d left that part out. “Have they found him yet?”
“The officers sent to pick him up for questioning said he wasn’t home. He wasn’t at the two sports bars you said he frequented either. We’ll get him. He’s bound to turn up somewhere.” When she shivered again, he added, “We’ll post someone at your door until we figure out who did it.”
“Is it human blood?”
“Yes. What we need to find out is whose blood it is. If Carlton cut himself, he lost a lot of it. When we pick him up, we’ll test the blood against his DNA.” And against Phaedra’s DNA, but he wasn’t going to introduce that possibility to Olivia. He wasn’t sure this had any connection to the kidnapping, but it was worth checking into.
She jumped up and went for the phone. After pressing three buttons, she said, “This is Olivia Howe. Can you please check on my father right now? Thank you.” After a minute, she said, “Thank God. Please keep a close eye on him. I think someone might hurt him. Don’t let anyone you don’t know talk to him… I’m not overreacting. Just do it.”
Max came up behind her. “What was that about?”
She leaned against the back of the dinette chair. “Earlier today, my father called me. He doesn’t have access to a phone and he often doesn’t even know who I am, so it was very odd. Then I could tell he was on a cell phone and someone was telling him what to say. When I asked who it was, Dad repeated that it was an old friend. That’s why I went to see him today. Unfortunately, he couldn’t remember who was with him. The staff at The Livingston saw no one, so they think I’m just paranoid.” Stress and worry tugged on her expression. She looked in his direction. “Maybe you do, too.”
“I don’t know what to think about all this, but playing on the side of caution is the best course of action.” The volume knob and knives were one thing. When she’d told him about her patio furniture being rearranged and showed him the bruise on her shoulder, he’d wanted to pound the guy. He’d felt sick when he looked at the heavy iron furniture. She could have been hurt much worse. “Maybe you should stay somewhere else for a while. I’ve got an extra room if you need it.”
“Don’t think that I need a bust-down-the-door cop with a hero complex trying to save the poor little blind woman, okay?”
He leaned into her face. “I don’t have a hero complex. Being a hero is the last thing I ever want to be again.”
“Because of your wife and daughter?” she asked in a gentler tone.
“If you’re not comfortable staying here, I’ve got a room, that’s all I’m saying. An officer will be posted outside the building to keep an eye on things. We should be able to track down Terry soon.”
She took a candy bar out of the freezer. “Snickers bar?” She grabbed another one and felt the length of it. “Or a Baby Ruth?”
“No thanks.”
She ripped open the Snickers bar and took a bite. He watched the second hand slide around the clock. Where was the time going? Maybe waiting with Olivia was a dead end, but she was all he had. He finished his coffee and tried to remember where her bathroom was.
“End of the hallway,” she said and then clamped her mouth shut. “You didn’t ask where the bathroom was, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Sorry. I sometimes just know something. I’m not reading your mind or anything. According to Jung’s Collective Consciousness theory, everyone’s minds are connected. My mind merely takes it one more step. I’m not aware of your thoughts or desires. I just respond. The words come out on their own.” She waved it away. “I’ve done it for as long as I can remember. Used to freak out my parents, which made me hide it for a long time. Now I don’t care.”
“Is that how you knew the bookstore employee’s name?”
“Probably.”
Combined with the other times she’d known things, Max was beginning to believe her psychic knowledge. He excused himself and went to the bathroom. As he washed his hands, he heard a thump in the living room. He tore out. She was sprawled on the floor next to the couch. Stasia was making her way to her mistress’s side. He knelt down between the dog and Olivia, holding Stasia away.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “I’ll take care of her this time.”
Stasia sat with a whine, her eyes on Olivia. He moved the coffee table back, but didn’t want to touch her. Her body tensed, and she shook her head. Her mouth bent into a frown, and she murmured something that sounded like, “No, don’t do it. Don’t do it!”
He couldn’t stop himself from taking her hand in his. It was cold and kept contracting in his grasp. Tears trickled down her temples as she rolled her head from side to side. Her pulse raced beneath his finger and her whole body trembled. A glittering sheen of sweat covered her face.
He couldn’t deny it any longer. He believed her. No way could she be faking this connection to Phaedra. A cold chill snaked along his spine and made his eyes water. With the same abduction date, both girls being taken from a toy store, their similarities in age and looks, and what he was doing to Phaedra, it could only mean one thing: his father was alive.
CHAPTER 19
Phaedra stared at the door of the cage. She inched closer. The big steel door was closed. Not a sound. She scanned the area, looking for avenues of escape. The dim light made it hard to see details. The walls were made of large concrete blocks. The ceiling was metal and was sprinkled with lights. In the corner were stacks of plastic bins. A large, steel sink was mounted on the wall, like the kind in Daddy’s restaurants. There were closed doors to the left and right of the bathroom. She could see another room behind her, but couldn’t see what was in it.
Maybe there was another way out in one of those rooms. She pushed out of the cage and made for the hallway at the same time that the metal door opened. She turned toward the spooky silhouette of Father, who stepped down into the room and slammed the door shut.
“I knew you’d disobey me. Come here, Rose. Don’t make me chase you around. I’m bigger than you. Smarter than you. I’ll catch you and you’ll be punished even worse.”
She faltered. When he lifted the knife, she shot forward. But it was already too late. He had a hold on her foot. She scrabbled against the slick, painted floor but couldn’t get away. He jerked her toward him, holding the knife between his teeth. It gleamed dully in the murky light. She screamed. He pinned her down with the weight of his body.
“Shut up, Rose! Shut up!”
Her scream died as he loomed over her. He pulled off her shirt and tossed it aside. He pinned both her small hands with his one big hand and took the knife from his mouth.
“You must be punished.”
She whimpered as the cold tip of the knife touched her left collarbone. She didn’t dare move or even cry. It was only a fine line that he made, but it stung so bad.
He tossed the knife aside and pulled her up. He looked directly into her eyes, the shadows making him look evil. He smiled. And in a Southern accent, he said, “Okay, so I lied about the boat. I couldn’t make it too easy on you, Olivia. You have until tomorrow. Christmas at midnight. And then…time’s up.
Olivia jerked up and right against Max. She was disoriented for a moment, wanting to bury herself against his hard body and never let go. Luckily, she regained her senses before doing anything foolish. When she backed away, she realized he’d been holding her hand. Their fingers were still entwined. She extricated her hand and rubbed her temples.
He leaned closer, studying her face. “Are you all right? What’d you see?”
She wiped the sweat off her face with the sleeve of her shirt. Then she remembered.
“He spoke to me! To me, Max! He said my name. He said he lied about the boat, he couldn’t make it too easy on me.” She clutched at his arm, crunching the material of his shirt. “We have until tomorrow at midnight! That’s what he said! Oh, God, the cop. It was him, Max. He set me up. Se
t us both up. He’s playing with us, the same way he’s playing with Phaedra.”
He sounded stunned. “Bill Williams is my father? I mean, my father pretended to be Bill Williams?”
“Yes.” She crouched on her knees and took hold of his other arm. “You have to believe me. This is real.”
When he spoke, his voice was strained. “I believe you.”
Relief flooded her. She forced herself to let go of his arms because she was only one step away from holding onto him.
He was quiet for a minute, absorbing the information. “Did you get a look at where he’s keeping her?” he asked at last.
“It’s bigger than I thought. There are other rooms off this one. That’s where she tried to go, but she didn’t have a chance. Light green concrete blocks, metal ceilings, and the floor is painted an off-white color. It looks very industrial, with stacks of plastic buckets in one corner, a large steel sink along the wall. Like a restaurant.”
“Could it be one of her father’s restaurants?”
“No, she would have recognized it. Besides, this place is closed. And clean. I couldn’t see any containers of food or signs that it had been used recently.”
He pushed off the floor and took her hand. “Are you ready to stand?”
“I’ll just stay here for a few minutes.”
“I’ll have someone at the station run down all the vacant restaurants in the area. But first, I’ve got to call the sheriff’s office again.” His voice sounded shaky, but a thread of raw determination ran through it now.
She heard his cell phone beep as he pressed the numbers. “Detective Callahan from the Palomera Police Department looking for Stella Stewart.” A pause, and then he introduced himself again. “I need that information on Robert Callahan’s remains.” A pause. “Yeah, sure.” He turned to her. “She’s got the report but hasn’t had a chance to call me back.”
She heard the woman on the other end say something.
Max said, “What I’m looking for are the tests done to prove the remains found in the truck were Callahan’s. … Yes, it’s the same name as mine. What tests were done?” Another pause as the woman apparently looked through the file. “I need that report faxed to me.” He gave her a number. “Are his fingerprints on file? … I see. All right, thanks for your help.” He disconnected. “They assumed it was him. No one was reported missing, and according to my testimony, he wasn’t gone long enough to set up someone to take his place. But he did.”
Those words hung in the air.
“Are you all right?” she asked after a few moments.
“Just great.” He sank heavily to the floor beside her, as though his legs wouldn’t hold him either. He took several deep breaths. “You all right?”
“I’ve had more time to get used to the idea of him being alive than you have.”
“He’s been out there all this time. Living as someone else.”
“I know.” She shivered. “They don’t have his fingerprints?”
“They’re gone, lost, whatever.” She thought he might be rubbing his face in frustration. “What has he been doing all this time? Where has he been? Here, at least for a while. Oh, jeez. If he took you sixteen years ago, and Phaedra now…”
“Maybe he’s been doing it all along,” she finished.
He remained still for a few moments. “How many?” he asked at last. “How many has he taken? We would have picked up a pattern if local girls were disappearing regularly. I’ve already pulled the files for all missing children cases in Palomera and Sarasota over the last twenty years. I’m going to broaden the search. Bobby used to drag us all around this area. If he’s still a trucker, he could be anywhere. And if he’s not…there’s something else I found out about him. He was a cop. He quit when I was two.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
“It’s just a thought, one I don’t even want to put into words.” He paused. “He’s obviously created a new identity, and he’s probably been living with it for years. Most criminals who take another identity eventually go back to what they did before. It makes sense, since they have the knowledge.”
“You think that not only is he posing as a cop—as Bill Williams—but that he is a cop.”
“He’d have a hell of a time getting through the screening process with a made-up identity, though. Unless he killed a cop and took his identity. He’d have to join another division. Even if he managed to take on the guy’s physical features, he couldn’t fool his friends and colleagues. If he transferred, he’d have his prints taken by the new station. Whether anyone would actually run them is up to speculation. But there’s no way I’d get them to run the prints of every cop in his late forties in our area to see if they matched the ones on record.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “And he was right here in your apartment. That scares the hell out of me. He could have—”
“But he never tried to hurt me,” she said in a rush of words.
He got to his feet, and she let him pull her up. “Could he have moved your furniture around while he was here posing as Bill Williams?”
“No, I would have heard him. His intent wasn’t to harm me here. It was only to discredit me with his so-called vision. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“He called yesterday and wanted me to meet him for lunch. I asked him for his number to call him back. We got disconnected as he started to give it to me.”
“He wanted you out of the apartment where he could grab you.”
“If he’d wanted to grab me, he would have done it already. He could have…”
“Pushed you into traffic,” he finished when she trailed off. “I’m moving in until we find him.”
“Fine, if it makes you feel better.” She knew she didn’t sound very indignant.
Her protector. Even as she rebelled against the idea, she also felt safer knowing he would be around. Okay, a lot safer. She didn’t want to think about her kidnapper being right there in her apartment, couldn’t let that reality sink in.
“What about my father?” she asked.
“I’ll ask the officer who’s supposed to keep an eye on you to watch The Livingston instead.”
“Thank you.”
He took a deep breath. “This changes everything. With you and my father involved, they’ll yank me off the case faster than I can say ‘conflict of interest’. I need to decide how much I should tell my partner and boss.”
“If only I could translate what I can see of his face to the canvas. It’s vague, shadowy. He always has the light behind him and he wears a baseball cap pulled low over his face. If I could just capture something…” She bunched the hand he was still holding into a fist. “But I can’t see what I’m painting.”
He forced her to uncurl her fingers. “Does he look different from the man who took you?”
“I think so, but it’s hard to tell.”
“What I need is his motive. Why did he take you and Phaedra?”
“To punish Rose. Do you remember a Rose, someone your father knew?”
“No.” He absently rubbed her fingers while he talked. “What can you remember about your abduction? Maybe there’s a detail, something he said or did, that will shed light on it.”
“I remember the punishments, but I blocked the details. According to my psychologist, it’s natural for children who suffer traumatic experiences to block out what’s happening.”
She thought the silence meant he was mulling that over. She hadn’t been much help.
“What about hypnosis?” he asked at last. “Those details are in your mind somewhere. Maybe we can unlock them.”
The thought of someone probing her mind unnerved her enough to squeeze Max’s hand. “Whatever we have to do.”
“Dr. Bhatti recommended a doctor in Miami who specializes in hypnotherapy. He’s worked with conversion disorder patients. He’s actually helped people to see again.”
“I don’t want to take the chance of losing my c
onnection with Phaedra.”
“For now we’ll focus on your abduction. I’ll fly him in tomorrow and see what he can do for us. There’s someone I need to see: my father’s sister, Odette. They were close. I’ll bet she’s known about him being alive all this time. Getting her to admit it will be the hard part, but I have to try. And you’re coming with me. I’m not leaving you alone.”
“Your aunt isn’t going to open up if I’m with you.”
He paused. “You’re probably right. Strangers always made her skittish.”
“I can stay in the car. I’ll lock the doors.” When he started to protest, she said, “I’ll be fine. Let’s eat and we can get on our way.”
Max and Olivia threw together some grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. One thing he learned about her was she liked her junk food. She had three kinds of potato chips, all gourmet, and her stash of candy bars in the freezer.
“The nice thing about being blind is never having to see an extra pound or a pimple,” she’d said in her wry way when he pointed it out.
When they walked outside, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. That feeling of being watched crept along his spine. He reached into his pocket for his new shades, which he’d forgotten again. He pretended to look for them as he scanned the immediate area. After seeing nothing suspicious, he grabbed his cell phone and dialed Sam. He didn’t hear the phone ring anywhere nearby or Sam’s voice when he answered.
“Sam, it’s Max. Where are you?”
“Heading back from the bogus lead. What’s up?”
“I need you to pull more missing child cases. This time broaden the search. Pull Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Bradenton, and Lakeland. Go back fourteen years, but focus on December abductions. While the records departments are working on that, start checking every closed restaurant in the area that wasn’t checked in the grid search. And Sam, make it fast.”
“Wait a minute. What’s going on?”
“I’ll fill you in when we reconnect later. You find the girl, and I’ll find the guy who took her.” He wanted to say that the guy had been a cop once. That maybe he was again. The words wouldn’t leave his mouth. “Trust me, Sam. We’re moving in on this.”
Blindsight [Now You See Me] (Romantic Suspense) Page 23