Visible Threat

by Cantore, Janice

  Magda hung up the phone and looked at Anton. “We must hurry.”

  * * *

  Ivana awoke with Mrs. Caruso’s arm draped over her shoulder. They lay on the filthy couch, huddled together for warmth. They’d been taken from the house wearing only pajamas and robes. There were no blankets in the small room and no heat.

  “You awake?” Mrs. Caruso whispered.

  Ivana sat up and stretched, managing a weak smile for her friend. “I dozed a little. You?” She didn’t feel rested at all. They’d been taken from bed; now it was probably late morning. As she looked around in the dim light, she remembered what she and Mrs. Caruso were facing.

  “The same. I’m hungry; my stomach tells me we missed breakfast.” Mrs. Caruso patted Ivana’s shoulder. “How about we take a look in the bag and see what there is to eat?”

  “I’ll get it.” Ivana stood and went for the bag Simon had left by the door.

  Mrs. Caruso stood and stretched. She walked to the wall and flipped on the single, dirty lightbulb. “That’s a little better than nothing. At least we’ll be able to see what we’re eating.”

  Ivana placed the bag on the couch. Inside, they found some French rolls, sliced cheese, and two bottles of water.

  “Dry, but nourishing,” Mrs. Caruso said as she handed Ivana a roll. Ivana accepted it, amazed at how calm she felt at the moment. When they’d been brought to the warehouse the night before, she’d thought she would die from fear before Demitri had a chance to kill her. But when she saw Mrs. Caruso’s calmness and heard the prayer she prayed, Ivana herself felt infused with peace. As this day began, she believed she could face anything if Mrs. Caruso were there to help her.

  They munched on the cheese and bread, drinking the water sparingly. Ivana’s roll was halfway gone when she heard a car pulling up outside.

  “He’s back,” she whispered, fighting fear.

  “Maybe he’s come to his senses and decided to let us go,” Mrs. Caruso said.

  “I will follow your lead and think the best, good thoughts.” Ivana sat back on the couch and held the older woman’s hand. Together they listened as locks were undone and doors were opened. They could hear two men talking in Bulgarian in the other room. Ivana strained to make out the words. One voice belonged to Simon, she was certain, and maybe the second voice was one of the other men who had brought them to the warehouse the night before.

  The voices became louder, angry all of a sudden. Ivana could hear and understand what was being said. The man whose name she didn’t know wanted Simon to call Demitri for instructions. Simon, on the other hand, didn’t want to tell Demitri anything.

  “What are they saying?” Mrs. Caruso asked.

  Ivana realized her jaw had gone slack. It was a revelation to her that Demitri was out of the country. All this time she’d been anticipating his presence, his cruelty, and now she knew he had no idea what was happening. She turned to Mrs. Caruso and translated what she was hearing.

  “Demitri will send us more men, a plan, money, or better still, he will get us out of here,” the nameless man said.

  “No, no, no!” Simon insisted. “If we tell Demitri what is going on, we will be expendable. We don’t know what Sergei told the police. He could have spilled his guts. With such news, Demitri will send someone here to eliminate us!”

  “Sergei would never betray us. These weak American police could never make him talk.”

  “Without knowing exactly what is happening, telling Demitri anything would be risking suicide.” Simon must have hit or thrown something because his last word was punctuated by a loud bang.

  “Are we even safe in this warehouse? Perhaps we should kill the women and flee. I know people in Florida. That would be far, far away from here.”

  “We are safe here, provided Sergei has stayed silent.”

  The voices got softer as tempers seemed to ease. Ivana could no longer make out what was being said.

  “I did not realize that Demitri was not in the country. I think this is why we are still alive,” Ivana said to Mrs. Caruso. She crossed her arms, suddenly feeling the chill in the room deepen.

  “We are still alive because the Lord is protecting us.” Mrs. Caruso squeezed Ivana’s shoulders. “Never forget that fact.”

  A key turned in the door, and it was jerked open. Light flooded the room and Ivana squinted. Simon and the other man stepped into the room and closed the door behind them. Simon had a gun in his hand.

  “You.” He pointed the gun toward Rose Caruso. “Come here.”

  Ivana felt her stomach roil and feared that the meager meal she’d just eaten was going to come back up. Was all of Mrs. Caruso’s faith misplaced? Was this the moment when both of their lives would end with a bullet each?

  When Rose started toward Simon, Ivana tried to hold her back.

  “It’s all right.” Mrs. Caruso smiled at Ivana, the peace in her eyes never fading. She removed Ivana’s hands from her arm and continued toward Simon. “Yes?” she said, looking at the man with the gun.

  “You said your daughter is a police officer?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  He held up a cell phone. “Call her. Ask her what I tell you and only what I tell you.” He gestured with his gun. “We saw the police at our house. We know everyone there was arrested. I want to know about Sergei. Where is he, and what has he said? You understand?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “This phone is not traceable. You will say only what I tell you, or I will kill you.” He touched the gun to Mrs. Caruso’s temple, and Ivana held her breath, thinking to herself that if Mrs. Caruso’s God was real, now was the time he needed to show himself and keep her levelheaded and calm.

  53

  BRINNA WASN’T SURE how long she’d been napping when she heard voices. One was Maggie’s—of that she was certain—but the other voice she couldn’t place. She sat up in bed and groaned as grogginess gripped her in a vise. It was only two thirty. She’d slept a bare forty-five minutes. How were you supposed to sleep when your mother’s been kidnapped? The feeling in her gut was the same rigid knot she felt with any abduction, multiplied by ten.

  Sliding off the bed, she stood and stretched, eventually making her way to the bathroom to splash water on her face. Hero wasn’t in the room with her. He must be out with Maggie, she thought. She checked her reflection in the mirror as water dripped off her chin. I look as bad as I feel. There were dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, and her hair was a nightmare tangle. She worked with a brush and tried to smooth it out as best she could. When it was somewhere between Frankenstein’s bride and passable, she gave up, grabbed a towel, and wiped her face.

  “Time for coffee,” she decided and tossed the towel in the sink. On her way to the kitchen, she peered in the living room and saw the source of the other voice—Dave the paramedic. He nodded to something Maggie said, but when he looked up and saw Brinna, he smiled.

  “Hey, Brinna.” He stood and shoved his hands in his pockets. Dave looked smaller out of his blue firefighter uniform, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Brinna knew that every patch of skin on her face turned bright red. She was not prepared for a social visit, especially not a male social visit.

  “Dave, what a surprise.” A glance at Maggie revealed that her friend was amused by her discomfort. Hero, the traitor, was curled up on the couch with his head on Maggie’s lap.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you. I saw the news, and I know what you’ve been going through. I just came by to, uh . . . well, show some support and to see if there’s anything I can do to help.” He glanced from Maggie to Brinna.

  “I’m not sure if there have been any updates,” Brinna said, eyebrows arched at Maggie. “Has anyone called?”

  Maggie shook her head. “You just had a call from Rick, via Molly. They wanted you to know they were praying.”

  Brinna nodded, touched by how Rick, facing a lifetime of paralysis, could be concerned about her mother. “I’m going to make some coffee and then call Chuck.”
She turned back to Dave. “You can stick around if you like.”

  “Sure, I’m off today. And like I said, if I can do anything to help, I’d like to.”

  Brinna continued into the kitchen. She heard Maggie excuse herself, and soon her friend was at her shoulder.

  “He’s really a nice guy,” she whispered as Brinna picked up the phone and punched in Chuck’s number.

  Brinna turned toward Maggie. “He’s all yours. I kind of indicated I might have coffee with him, but romance is the last thing on my mind right now.”

  “And you want Jack, right?” Maggie gave a mischievous grin as Brinna was certain her face registered shock. But there was no time to address the issue of how Maggie knew what she had not yet voiced; Chuck’s phone began to ring.

  “You two mind if I take the dog out to the yard and toss the ball around?” David stuck his head in the kitchen, interrupting.

  “Oh, thanks,” Brinna said. “That would be awesome. Poor guy hasn’t gotten much exercise lately.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Brinna watched Maggie watch Dave as he took Hero out the back door. “You were saying?”

  Maggie turned back to Brinna. “It’s obvious how you feel about Jack and how he feels about you.”

  “Seriously?”

  Maggie shrugged and nodded toward the back door Dave just went out. “He really is cute, and I feel like a creep even thinking this way at a time like this, but . . .”

  Brinna waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.” I’m not ready to discuss my feelings for Jack. She felt her face flush and hoped Maggie didn’t notice. Biting her bottom lip, she forced her thoughts back to where they should be: the current situation.

  “A time like this.” Brinna considered the words and the surreal feeling of the afternoon. Maybe all of this is just a bad dream, and I’ll wake up soon.

  But as the ringing of Chuck’s phone gave way to voice mail, Brinna knew she wasn’t going to wake up from this nightmare anytime soon. The fear she felt for her mother seemed to have coalesced into a dull ache at the base of her skull. She rubbed her neck.

  “Call me,” she said to Chuck’s voice mail.

  Maggie made the coffee. Brinna sat at the counter to wait for the brew to finish.

  “Look at the bright side,” Maggie said. “Maybe no news is good news.”

  “No news means she’s still out there somewhere with some crazed foreign dirtbag.” Brinna rested her elbows on the counter and held her head in her hands. “Gosh, Mags, for the first time in my life I wish I could pray like my mom. Then at least I’d know how to plead with God for her to be okay.” She pressed her fingertips into her forehead as tears threatened.

  Maggie stepped behind Brinna and hugged her shoulders. “I don’t have the right words to help you. I do know that the whole department is working hard on this.”

  “You’re helping by being here,” Brinna rasped in a ragged voice. “I really missed you when you weren’t returning my calls.”

  “Yeah, well, I needed to figure things out.”

  “And what did you figure out?” Brinna looked up.

  “That I was being too hard on you. Blaming you for Rick.” She folded her arms and leaned against the refrigerator. “We’re cops, so stuff like this is bound to happen in our line of work. Look at all the officers who get killed every year. I guess I never thought bad stuff would happen to my friends.” Her eyes filled. “I don’t want to lose my partner, but it looks like that’s what’s going to happen. He told me himself that I’ll need to move on.”

  Brinna stood. “I wish there was something I could say.”

  The coffee beeped.

  “That’s okay.” Maggie ran a palm across her eyes. “Time to practice what I preach and be a glass-is-half-full person.”

  54

  MAGDA WAS GLAD Anton had suggested they go straight to the police station because she wasn’t sure how to go about contacting the police. She knew time was of the essence, but she’d had so little contact with American police, she didn’t know who would take her seriously. She’d thought about dialing 911, but the first time she’d called 911 was the day she’d come home to find Anton beaten and tied up. The only other time she’d hit the three digits, she’d tried to report a traffic accident and been put on hold for twenty minutes. That wait just wouldn’t work right now, especially given Simon’s odd phone call. And Magda wanted to be certain that the police understood she was not overreacting or imagining danger. She didn’t think she could get her point across to a faceless operator on a phone line without sounding hysterical.

  Without further delay she and Anton jumped into his car. While he drove, Magda dug through her purse for the cards the two detectives who’d visited her shop had given her.

  They arrived at the station in ten minutes, and together she and Anton walked into the downtown lobby. Preceding them into the station was a uniformed police officer escorting a handcuffed prisoner, presumably to jail. Magda watched them pass through a door marked Authorized Personnel Only, and her courage faltered. Would that be her after she told the detectives what she knew?

  She squeezed Anton’s hand and drew strength from his presence. Stepping up to the counter, thick bulletproof glass separating her from the uniformed individual seated on the other side, Magda cleared her throat.

  “Can I help you?” a young Asian man wearing the uniform of a police service assistant asked. His name tag identified him as G. Wang, and his voice sounded tinny through the speaker in the glass.

  “I must speak to either Detective Jack O’Reilly or Detective Ben Carney. It’s urgent.” Magda leaned forward for emphasis.

  The young man’s expression never changed. “And what is this regarding?”

  “They’ll know when you tell them it is Magda Boteva asking for them.”

  G. Wang looked bored but picked up the phone and called for the detectives. After a moment he hung up. “Sorry, neither one of those detectives are in today.”

  Magda hadn’t considered this possibility. She had no idea who else to talk to, which detectives she could trust. G. Wang looked around her, his expression saying clearly that she’d been dismissed and he had other people to help.

  “Wait.” Anton spoke up from her right. “Is Detective Darryl Welty available?”

  Magda remembered the name as that of the detective who had handled the break-in of their house. The time Demitri had sent his message by beating and humiliating Anton.

  Wang frowned and picked the phone up again. This time when he hung up, he actually smiled. “He’ll be right down. Please have a seat.”

  Magda couldn’t sit. She paced until Darryl Welty stepped into the lobby. A tall man with thick brown hair and brown eyes, he smiled, and Magda knew they were doing the right thing.

  “What can I do for you two?” Welty asked.

  “Detective Welty.” Magda took a deep breath, wringing her hands. “The two women on the news—the officer’s mother and the girl, the ones who were kidnapped—I know who took them.”

  55

  A COUPLE MUGS of coffee helped Brinna shake the groggy feeling she’d awakened with.

  Chuck phoned a few minutes after she’d left her message. While he’d had nothing to report about her mother, he did say that things were moving forward in the investigation—a good sign as far as Brinna was concerned. When things stalled out and leads dried up was when there was cause to worry.

  The man who’d killed himself when they entered the house was as yet unidentified. The girls knew him only as Sergei. And besides Demitri, the girls could only give them two other first names: Simon and Gavin. Chuck promised composites and BOLOs within the hour. The house itself might eventually lead somewhere, Chuck said, if they could trace a buyer or broker.

  “The house is owned by a corporation,” he’d told her. “It’s most likely a cover, a dummy business, but we’ve found three other properties owned by the same company, in three other counties. Judges are signing search warrants a
s we speak. We’ll find your mother, Brin; I promise.”

  Brinna sighed, wanting to believe that her mother would be found soon and fervently hoping she was still alive.

  After tiring Hero out, Dave shared a cup of coffee with Brinna and Maggie. He and Maggie chatted quite amicably. Brinna stayed out of the conversation using the excuse of being preoccupied by the situation with her mom.

  “Here’s my number,” Dave said to Brinna as he stood to leave. “Call me if you need anything, anything at all.”

  “Thanks, Dave. I appreciate all that you’ve done.” Brinna walked him to the door, truly grateful he was so helpful, but for her own peace of mind, and Maggie’s chances, she needed to be clear with him. “I guess I should probably tell you that I’m kind of seeing someone right now.”

  “I think I got that.” He smiled and held out his hand. “Still never hurts to have another friend.”

  “No, it never does.” Brinna returned his smile and shook his hand. When she closed the door and turned to Maggie, her friend was holding her thumb up.

  “That was nice, gentle.”

  “He is a nice guy.”

  “That he is. But he’s not Jack O’Reilly.”

  Brinna nodded. “I know you don’t care for Jack, but I think he’s proven he’s not the nutcase that you used to think he was. And he and I connect. He’s told me he’s ready to move beyond his wife. But I don’t want to have this discussion right now. It’s Mom I’m worried about, not my love life.” She looked away as her eyes filled. “With every missing kid, I always trust my instincts. But now that it’s my mom, my instincts aren’t telling me anything.” She wiped her eyes with her palms and stood.

  “A lot of good people are on the case.”

  “I know, but I have to do something,” she said, moving to the living room to pace. “I hate sitting and waiting. It’s not raining today.” She flung an arm toward the front window. “I could use Hero to search.”

  Hero sat up expectantly, watching Brinna’s every movement.