by L. A. Witt
Finally, he whispered, “I’m almost certain it’s Erin’s.”
“Oh Jesus.”
Suddenly the crutches weren’t nearly enough.
As if he knew—and maybe I’d visibly wavered or something—Darren put his hands on my shoulders. His touch was firm. Stabilizing and grounding. Comforting in one of those moments when I didn’t think comfort was possible.
I exhaled. “I should get dressed. We need to get to the station and—”
“Andreas. Listen to me.”
I met his gaze again.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” He said it like he already knew the answer.
“No, but the alternative is sitting here doing nothing.” I nodded toward the bed. “I’ve done enough of that.”
He studied me. And maybe he hadn’t known me that long, but he damn sure knew me well enough that he just said, “Okay. I’ll put some coffee in travel mugs.”
“Thanks.” I paused. “What about you? You’ve been up all night.” It showed, too. His shoulders were sagging, and the dark lines under his bloodshot eyes were alarmingly pronounced. “You need to sleep.”
“I’ve still got some steam.” He pressed a soft kiss to my mouth. “If I need to, I’ll use that couch at the station.”
I took a breath to argue, but damn if I didn’t hear some of my own words coming from him. That undercurrent of stubbornness that had driven my ex-wife, my previous partners, and Captain Hamilton insane. The unmistakable note of The decision is made, so don’t bother arguing.
So I didn’t. “Okay. Let’s get moving.”
The precinct was alive with more activity than I’d seen in a long time. Paula, Thibedeau, and Hamilton were barking orders and sending people in every which direction. People saw us, noticed us, acknowledged us, but didn’t say much or try to get in the way. The usual hostility was gone, though. It was more like the wide berth we gave a fellow cop when he was about to make a break in his case and couldn’t be distracted.
Officer Blaine paused for a quick word of encouragement, but then he and his partner hurried past us, probably not wanting to stick around and find out how pissed Paula could get when people dawdled.
All the activity faded to a dull buzz, kind of like when my ears were ringing after gunfire or an explosion, and everything seemed to be filtered through thick cotton. I was aware of my surroundings, of people moving and talking, but only distantly.
I leaned one of my crutches against a desk to free up one of my hands for my coffee cup, and carefully moved toward the whiteboard in the middle of the bull pen. There was no doubt an identical one in the conference room.
On the board was everything we knew, which . . . wasn’t much. The restaurant. The time of the disappearance. Descriptions of my kids. Names of witnesses. Make and model of the vehicles. The intersections where the vehicles were last seen.
A whole lot of words and photos that added up to a whole lot of nothing.
My gaze shifted to a photo on the end, and I quickly turned away. It wouldn’t do any of us any good for me to scrutinize a glossy eight-by-ten photo of my daughter’s blood.
I sipped my coffee for something to do. The caffeine was hardly necessary. I was wide-awake. It did, however, settle my queasy stomach and keep my head from pounding quite so violently.
Carefully avoiding that one photo, I looked over the board again, and the coffee’s stomach-settling effect pretty much vanished. I was used to the frustration of trying to find and piece together evidence. I was used to a rapidly ticking clock. I was used to lives hanging in the balance while I sifted through files, stared at photos, interviewed dead-ends, and chased wild geese all over the fucking city.
But nothing had ever prepared me for this degree of helplessness. Not even the night Darren had nearly died right in front of me. At least then, there’d been something I could do, even if it was just calling for help and putting pressure on the wound until someone with the proper training took over. Right now, I had no idea where to start. No clue who might be behind this, or why. Not even a hint at where the kids and their kidnappers were. They could’ve been out of the city by now. Out of the state. Out of the country.
My throat tightened. The cotton in my ears and the layer of seminumbness keeping my emotions at bay was almost enough to mute the screams I’d heard from too many parents when they’d learned that a search for a missing child had turned into a homicide investigation. That was one of the reasons I’d stayed in Narcotics for most of my career. No department—not even traffic detail—was completely safe, but I didn’t have the stomach for a department where dead kids were a regular occurrence. It had given me too many nightmares and too much anxiety over my own kids being victims.
I shuddered and closed my eyes.
Those nightmares hadn’t been close to the real thing. I just prayed like hell I never had to hear that bone-chilling scream from my ex-wife or my ex-girlfriend.
Or myself.
A hand on my shoulder made me jump, nearly sending my coffee tumbling onto the floor.
“Hey.” Paula’s voice was as gentle as her hand. “How you holding up, hon?”
I steadied my coffee cup, not to mention myself on my crutch. “As well as can be expected.”
“‘As well as can be expected’ would mean not being in any state of mind to work.” Her eyebrows pinched together.
I avoided her gaze and stared at the useless board instead. “Either I work, or I accept that my kids are gone.”
She jumped slightly. “Well, then let me give you an update.”
Thank God she didn’t push, and I didn’t know why I’d expected her to. She knew me.
She laid a folder out on a desk beside the board, and ran me through what they’d found in the last few hours. It amounted to the same thing as the whiteboard—not much—but it was good to know the investigation was so wide and thorough. There was a lot of comfort just in knowing there were boots on the ground, eyes and ears all over our jurisdiction, and other precincts working with us, including state patrols in surrounding states and county sheriffs for miles. You never knew when a vigilant cop would pull someone over for a busted taillight and realize something wasn’t right.
“So, basically we’ve gotten nowhere,” she said after a while. “But we’re looking.”
“I know. Good work.” I paused. “What I need to figure out is a motive.”
She nodded. “If you have anything, no matter how out there it might be, let’s hear it.”
“I thought it might be one of the loan sharks fucking with my ex-girlfriend, but I’m pretty sure he was telling the truth. At this point, short of interviewing every inmate in maximum security to figure out who’s got a grudge and someone on the outside . . .” I shook my head.
“I’ll send a couple of uniforms to the pen.”
I blinked. “Seriously?”
“Absolutely. And a pair to medium security. They’ll interview every inmate you’ve collared and see what they can find.”
“Oh. Okay.” I scanned over the information she’d laid out in front of me. “They, uh, might have to put in some overtime.”
“The captain’s authorized as much overtime as we need. Any bean counter gives him shit for it, they’re going to have to explain it to you.”
Another moment where I would have laughed at any other time, but couldn’t muster the energy now. “Okay. That’s . . . that’s great.” I glanced at the whiteboard. “Is it insane that I have no idea what I should be doing?”
“You’re doing it, honey.” She patted my arm. “Let us do the legwork. We need you to figure out the motive.”
I nodded. She gave me a gentle hug, then left to send some officers to the penitentiaries.
Figure out the motive. Fine. I was good at that. Always had been. But what motive would possibly drive someone to hurt my kids?
I had an enemy out there. Someone I’d fucked with badly enough that they wanted to hit me where it hurt the most.
“Okay, Mom. I
know. I know. I’m sorry.” Darren’s voice grabbed my attention as he came into the bull pen, gaze distant and cell phone pressed to his ear. He winced, probably at something his mother had said, and sighed. “I’m doing the best I can. I promise.” Pause. “Okay. I love you.”
After he hung up, he paused to rub his forehead.
My chest tightened. I knew that look. These days, all it took was his mother or stepfather’s ringtone to make Darren’s features pull tight and his eyes darken. Once he’d spoken to them, he was a million miles away, the pain radiating off him so strongly it was almost visible to the naked eye.
Early on, I’d have asked how his brother was, but like he knew better than to ask how I was holding up, I didn’t. Instead, I touched his arm. “If you need to go to your family, we—”
“Don’t.” He shook his head. “We need to focus on—”
“Darren.” I tipped up his chin so he had to look me in the eye. “You know it means the world to me that you’re working so hard on this, but if you need to go see him, go.”
He winced. I wanted to encourage him, but I didn’t have to spell out what we both knew. Asher didn’t have much time left. He had even less lucid time left. And if things were bad today, enough that his mother was on the phone with him, then his family needed Darren as much as he needed to be there.
Darren exhaled. “I’ll . . . check on Ben too. Make sure he’s holding up.”
My turn to wince. I should have been with my son. But if I was with him, then who would find his siblings besides every cop in a five-hundred-mile radius?
“Tell him I’ll be there when I can.” My mouth had gone dry. “And he can call me. If he needs to.”
Darren nodded. Meeting my gaze, he said, “That goes for you too, you know.”
“Likewise.”
We held eye contact for a moment.
Then he cleared his throat and glanced at the board behind me. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I know you will.” There was no point in telling him to get some rest.
One last look, and he was gone.
I felt Darren’s absence as acutely as I’d have felt a missing crutch. It fucked with my balance. Made me feel like I didn’t dare take a step. But in a way, I felt better. His family needed him, and my conscience needed him to go to them. What if Asher’s last lucid days or hours happened while Darren was investigating this kidnapping? I’d never sleep again. And Darren would—rightfully—resent me.
So it was better this way. And I still had one crutch, so I wasn’t down for the count.
Hobbling across the worn laminate floor, I went to find Paula.
Paula dropped into the driver’s seat of her car. “Well, that was another dead end.”
I grumbled a few curses as I arranged myself and my crutches on the passenger side. “Whoever did this, it’s not a loan shark.”
“Not a known one, anyway.”
Fuck. We’d just hunted down and interviewed four prominent names from the dirty-money community, and none of them knew anything. Neither of us had any inkling they were lying. They were all good at it, but everyone had their tells, and all four had seemed genuinely oblivious. Of course they’d heard—everyone had by now—but they couldn’t offer anything. If they could’ve, they’d have started by negotiating a price for the information.
“So what now?” I asked.
“Well.” She started the car, but didn’t put it into gear yet. “I think we need to—”
My phone vibrated in my pocket. My heart sped up as I yanked the phone out, but my heart fell as soon as I saw the screen.
Zach.
Fuck. Erin’s boyfriend. I almost ignored the call—I couldn’t cope with giving another hopeless update, and sure as shit didn’t have time for it—but he was probably just worried about her. We all were. I couldn’t begrudge the man for being this concerned about my daughter.
So, I put my phone to my ear. “Hey, Zach. What’s—”
“Erin’s here. At the ER.”
I nearly dropped the phone. “What? Is she all right?”
“She’s here,” he repeated. He sounded like he was walking fast. “She got here about twenty minutes ago. Someone dropped her off.”
To Paula, I said, “Hospital. Now.”
She didn’t hesitate, and the tires were already squealing before I said to Zach, “What’s wrong? How is she?”
He started rattling off some rapid fire medical jargon, but my brain couldn’t process it.
“Zach,” I growled. “English. Is she okay?”
“Yes.”
I allowed myself a heartbeat’s worth of relief, but it didn’t last. Where are my other kids? What’s happening? Talk to me, Zach.
He pulled in a deep breath. “She’s got a concussion. Laceration to the side of her head. They’re taking her up for a CT scan right now, but she’s conscious and mostly coherent. Just really shaken up.”
Eyes closed, I exhaled hard. “Has she said anything about her brother and sister?”
“Not really. I just got down here. She’s . . . she’s a wreck.”
“Shit. I’ll . . . Listen, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Tell her I’m on my way.”
“What’s going on?” Paula asked, gripping the wheel tight as she sped down the street.
“Erin’s at the ER.”
Paula drove faster.
If not for my stupid newly reassembled ankle, I’d have sprinted through that ER like a man on fire. As it was, I moved as fast as my crutches would allow, and in a few long strides, I was at the front desk.
“My daughter is here.” I tried to school the unsteadiness out of my voice. “Erin Ruffner.”
The secretary opened her mouth to respond, but a familiar voice spoke first.
“Andreas,” Zach said. “This way.”
I quickly fell in beside him. “How is she?”
“We’re still waiting on the CT results, but her doctor and I both think the trauma is mild.”
Well, there was that.
“How did she get here?”
“That’s the weird part.” He turned a corner and slowed a step while I caught up. “Someone pulled around the side of the building, dropped her off with a blindfold on, and left. No one saw a thing until she came stumbling in through the front door.”
I shuddered, definitely on the verge of getting violently ill.
He stopped outside an open door. “She’s in here.”
I hurried past him.
And oh my God.
Erin.
Her face was pale and tear-stained. There was a bandage on one side of her head. A few bruises on her neck and arms.
But she was here, and she was alive.
“Dad! Oh my God.” She tried to sit up, but the nurse beside her put a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey,” the nurse said gently. “Easy.”
I hobbled to Erin’s bedside and didn’t care when one of my crutches slipped free and clattered to the floor as she threw her arms around me. I didn’t remember ever having held my daughter this tight. She sobbed against my shoulder, mumbling apologies and all kinds of things I couldn’t understand, but words could wait, if only for a minute. I needed to hold her and make sure she was really here and this wasn’t some kind of sleep-deprived, painkiller-induced hallucination.
“God, I am so glad you’re okay.” I stroked her hair, careful not to disturb the bandage. “Jesus.” I kissed her temple and held her tighter. Even as I held her, though, I was aware of Zach, and of things that needed to happen. I turned to him without letting go of Erin. “I need the tapes from every camera in this hospital. My partner Paula’s parking the car, but she’ll be—”
“Where’s Darren?” Erin jerked back, staring at me with fresh panic in her eyes. “Did he get hurt?”
“No. No. He’s fine.” I gathered her up again. “I sent him home to get some sleep.” Not entirely true, but close enough.
She exhaled against my shoulder. “Thank God. After he and Ben
went down . . .” She stiffened again.
“You saw all that?”
“Yeah. After they put us in the car. I was trying to keep Emily calm, but then I heard the guys and the gun, and Casey told me . . .” She shuddered. “Ben’s okay, right?”
“Ben’s fine. He’ll be glad to see you.” I turned to finish explaining what I needed to Zach, but he was gone. Okay. Okay, that was fine. He was smart, and Paula would know what to do, and God knew they could both think more clearly than I could right now. I shifted my attention back to Erin. “We need to talk about what’s going on.”
“I know.” She leaned back against the pile of pillows, rubbing her forehead.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Just . . . my head is killing me.”
I put a hand on her arm. “Baby, I know you’re rattled and scared, but I need to know if—”
“Casey and Emily are okay.” She lowered her hand, and swallowed hard as tears welled up in her eyes again. “They’re scared, but they’re . . . They were okay when I . . .” She covered her mouth. “I didn’t want to leave them, Dad, but we had to—”
“Erin. Shh. Shh.” I squeezed her hand. “We’re going to find them. Just slow down and tell me everything you know.” I took a notepad out of my jacket and hoped like hell I could do this without shaking. “Anything you can give me will get me closer to bringing them home.”
Her eyes lost focus. Then she closed them and took a few slow, deep breaths, and damn if she wasn’t pulling herself together right then and there. Her voice still trembled, but it was much steadier now as she said, “It’s a house. I . . . couldn’t see much. There’s a full basement. That’s where Emily and Casey are.”
“Okay, good.” My heart was going a million miles a minute as I jotted notes. “How big was the basement? Like a single room, or—”
“I think it was one big room. Concrete all the way around.” She paused. “It smelled kind of . . .” She took in a breath through her nose, as if she could somehow smell anything except solvent and disinfectant. “Swampy?”
“Swampy? Like, moldy?”
“No, there was some musty stuff. Mildew, maybe. But there was definitely something like a swamp.”