But Jack Peterman owned a construction company. And he was working on a site not far from the Harmons’ home. I saw the signs twice, each time I drove up to the Harmons’ home to talk to Brendan’s parents. It was a new residential development, one that boosted large, luxury homes.
Was it possible that Brendan Harmon had taken the Peterman girl? And was it possible that he was hiding her inside of one of the nearly complete homes in her own father’s development?
It seemed too wild to be possible. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I kept digging through the notes and the reports, searching for something to make me believe that my client was innocent of everything the cops were accusing him of. But the more I dug, the more I began to doubt.
There was another report. This one was from the cop who arrested Brendan the night he was caught with the marijuana in his pocket. When they booked him, they made note of all his possessions. In his pocket, Brendan had a pocketknife, his wallet, and a set of keys. What stood out to me, however, were the packets of food they found in his pockets. Small packets of animal crackers and raisins and nuts. The kind of packets that a parent might pack for their child to have for snack time at school. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe Brendan had low blood sugar issues. But it just seemed odd.
There were other odd things, too. I stayed up most of the night looking at maps and reports and things that I never would have thought to look up when I was working this case in my office, surrounded by order and logic. The chaos that my life had suddenly erupted into, and the guy who came to me and beat me for not getting Brendan out on bond, made me want to look closer at the information that was right there in front of my face.
Was Brendan guilty of the kidnapping? Was I helping some delinquent torture a little girl?
Alexander was getting to me. His instincts about Brendan put a bee in my bonnet. And meeting his sister…she was a part of the criminal justice system I’d never allowed myself to consider before. She was the collateral damage that I tried not to see. But I’d seen it now and I couldn’t forget.
I asked Knox for poster board and I began putting it all together, all the evidence the police had collected, all the things that pointed to and away from the possibility that Brendan had that little girl. I felt a clock beginning to tick in the back of my head. If he had this child, if he was holding her somewhere, there was only so much time left to find her and rescue her.
It’d already been twenty-five days.
I no longer cared about the case. I wanted to find that little girl.
Chapter 16
Alexander
David put me on a case following a state senator. His wife, apparently, was concerned that the man was cheating. She paid David twice our usual fee to find proof one way or the other. David argued with her, said that we weren’t private investigators—at least, that’s what he told me—but the woman insisted. And twice the fee? Who could argue with that?
This was my punishment. David was punishing me for falling into bed with Tierney. And I probably deserved it. I knew it was wrong when I did it, but I couldn’t resist her any longer. There was just a need there that wouldn’t be ignored. I was sure David could understand. I’d seen him with his wife. But that didn’t mean he could let me go without some sort of punishment.
So I sat in my car and watched this senator, taking pictures of every woman—and man—who could be a potential lover.
Tierney texted me late in the afternoon, asking what I knew about construction sand. I texted back, telling her absolutely nothing.
Is it a special kind of sand? What do they get it?
Idk, babe.
Is it possible that some other kind of sand could be mistaken for construction sand?
Idk. Wish I could help.
It’s okay. I’ll figure it out.
I studied the messages when they stopped coming, wondering what the hell she was up to. I started to call Knox, but the senator came out of his office building and headed uptown in a hurry. He lived downtown.
Was it stupid to feel elated to catch a man cheating on his wife? The senator drove to a hotel downtown and went straight upstairs, suggesting whoever he was meeting already had a room. I slipped onto the elevator behind him and watched him get off on the ninth floor. I got off on the tenth and ran down the stairs, stepping through the heavy fire doors just in time to see him slip into a room down the hall.
“Got you!”
I went to the door and slipped a teeny camera through the space under the door and moved it around with a little remote until I caught an image. Sure enough, the senator was sleeping with one of his aides. Wouldn’t his wife be thrilled to get these pictures?
I took the photos and headed back to the office. I was nearly done processing the whole thing and forwarding the information to David when my phone rang.
I didn’t recognize the number.
“Alexander Garcia.”
“This is Detective Snider.”
The hair instantly went up on the back of my neck. I found myself wondering if he was calling to inform me that he planned to charge me with assault after our little conversation the other day.
“Look, Detective,” I began, “I was upset the other day. I shouldn’t have come after you like I did.”
“Yeah, you shouldn’t have. But that’s not why I’m calling.”
“Why are you calling?”
“That douche bag, Brendan Harmon? He walked away from county lock up this afternoon.”
I sat up a little straighter, fear rushing down my spine. “What do you mean, walked away?”
“He somehow convinced one of the guards to allow him out on work detail, and he just walked away from the road crew. They didn’t even notice until it was time to take everyone home and tuck them into their cells.”
“Are they looking for him?”
“Of course they are. But we have no idea how long he’s been gone. He could have hours on us.” There was a slight pause. “I just thought you should know.”
He hung up, but my thoughts were already spinning. I was already on my feet and rushing toward the door. I dialed Tierney’s phone, but she didn’t answer. I called Knox as I got into the SUV and headed toward the safe house, but she didn’t answer either.
What the hell?
I pulled out of the compound in a rush of spinning tires, panic beginning to build in my chest. Where were they? Why weren’t they answering their phones? They should be at the safe house, sitting in the living room and watching some mind-numbing reality show. That was the most strenuous thing Knox ever did during a safe house watch. But instinct told me that’s not what they were doing.
I was in that place again. Tierney was in trouble and I was going to be too late to save her.
I didn’t think I could survive this again.
Chapter 17
Tierney
I walked into the house, moving slowly so as not to make too much noise. I wished I had worn tennis shoes instead of these damn sandals. They clicked on the laminate floor, giving away my presence despite my attempts to hide it. What if I was right and she was here? What if he had her here all along?
This was one time when I really wanted to be wrong. There hadn’t been many times in my life when I wanted to be wrong, but this was definitely one of them.
I moved deeper into the empty house, relieved when the toe of my shoe found carpet. If I were a kidnapper, where would I keep my victim? Funny, you’d think after all this time of working as a defense attorney, I would be good at thinking like a psychopath. But I wasn’t.
I climbed the stairs one at a time, my movements growing slower and slower the closer I got to the top floor. I thought I heard something at the other end of the hall. I stopped and listened, afraid of what was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. But there was nothing except silence.
I continued up, thinking I should go back to my car, get my cell phone, and call Alexander. He would know what to do. But he was on another
case, unavailable. And Knox…she was CIA. If I needed backup, she would be there. That’s why she was here.
I told Knox that I wanted to check out a crime scene. Told her that I was working on a case and I needed to see where the crime had taken place. She didn’t seem terribly interested in the poster boards I had set up all around my bedroom or the case that I was working on. She didn’t ask any questions. And she seemed just as stir crazy as I was.
I told her to wait in the car because I needed silence to review the scene. She happily agreed.
The housing development had stalled out. That was why there wasn’t anyone around when we pulled up to the block of houses that were completed. Only one of them had anything by way of furnishings. The model house on the corner was partially furnished. And it had electricity running to it. I figured that Brendan would need electricity to run his electronic equipment, and he wouldn’t want to be forced to run a generator. That would attract unwanted attention. So if he was holding that little girl here, it would be in the model house.
This was my best bet. But now…I was so scared. I could feel my heart pounding against my chest. What if I was right? What if I walked into a bedroom and found that little girl dead on the floor? I didn’t know if I could handle that.
I reached the top of the stairs and…I heard the noise again just before my head seemed to shatter and the world went dark.
***
I woke and found myself lying on my side with my hands tied behind my back. The room was dark so it took a moment before my vision adjusted and I could see where I was. It was a bedroom with high windows on two walls. There was a closet, the doors open, but there was nothing inside. And there was no furniture.
I was still in the model house.
I pushed myself back against the wall and then up into a sitting position. It wasn’t just my hands. My ankles were tied together, too. And there was something dry and dusty in my mouth.
“Hey! You awake?”
I turned my head and stars exploded behind my eyes. There was a dull pain throbbing at the back of my head. I vaguely recalled being hit over the head, the pain reinforcing the memory.
“Hey!”
I tried to respond, but whatever was in my mouth was making it nearly impossible to do more than make a few grunting sounds.
“Tierney? It’s Knox. I need you to slide over here by me.”
I turned my head, the pain once again exploding. But I fought through it and found her about two feet to my right. I slowly began to scoot on my butt toward her.
“That’s good,” she said. “Keep coming.”
I pushed myself with my feet, finally close enough that I could feel her side pressed against mine. She reached over, scratching at my chin in an attempt to pull the gag out of my mouth. She finally got it, relief filling my lungs as I drew in a deep breath that wasn’t flavored by the dry fibers of whatever the gag was made of.
“They used cable ties, so we can’t undo them. But maybe if you pull on mine and I pull on yours, we can stretch them enough to get our wrists out.”
“Did you see them? Do you know who did this to us?”
“No. Asshole clocked me from behind. By the time I woke up, we were alone in here.”
“It’s got to be the guy who got me outside the safe house. I don’t know who else it could be.”
“Why did you come here, Tierney?”
I was quiet for a minute, biting my bottom lip to keep from crying out as she tugged at the plastic around my wrist, tearing into my tender flesh. I did the same to her, pulling hard in an attempt to get one of us free.
“Tierney?”
“One of my clients. The cops think that he might have kidnapped a little girl whose father was building these houses. I was looking through my notes on the case and the reports from the cops and I thought—”
“This is an open case?”
“Yeah.”
“You said this was a crime scene.”
“Well, it is now.”
Knox moaned. I wasn’t quite sure if her moan was one of frustration or one of pain. She pulled hard at the plastic on my wrist, and I cried out, too.
“Tell me what you’ve gotten me into,” she said after a few minutes.
“This place? It’s a housing development that Jack Peterman was building. I—like everyone else, I suppose—thought he was on top of the world. We see his signs all over the city, right? But it turns out that he’s on the verge of bankruptcy, and he’s had to halt work on this development. And it’s not the first.”
“How was he able to hide something like that?”
“I don’t know. Nobody bothered to look, I suppose.”
“Isn’t he the guy whose daughter went missing?”
“Yeah. Alicia. She’s six.”
“And you think she’s here.”
“I think she’s here.”
“Why?”
“My client, Brendan Harmon. He had construction sand on his boots when they arrested him a couple of days after the kidnapping. And he was seen outside the girl’s house not long before she disappeared. And he had an arrest when he was fifteen for kiddie porn.”
“That’s all circumstantial.”
“Yeah, well, he told me that he’d never had a job, and I believed him because he’s this spoiled rich kid who has three juvenile drug charges on his record. But then I did a search on Jack Peterman’s company.”
“He worked for him?”
“No, but he worked for Jack Peterman’s wife, Leslie. She hired him a little less than a year ago to do some work around her house. Off the books sort of thing. But she paid for it using contributions to her political campaign, so it was listed in the paperwork for her last run for city council.”
“What does that prove?”
“Besides the fact that he’s a liar? That he had a connection to the family.”
“Still circumstantial.”
“I know. That’s why I came here. I thought if I could find the little girl or some evidence that she’d been here—”
“You’re talking about your own client, aren’t you? Isn’t it your job to kind of hide these things to keep the prosecution from finding it?”
“Yeah, well, maybe I’m tired of fighting for the assholes.”
Knox laughed even as she continued to pull at the plastic tie around my wrists and I pulled on hers. I could feel blood sticky on my fingers and could smell its scent filling the room. Hers? Mine? I didn’t suppose it mattered.
“Well, I guess we know that there’s someone trying to hide something here. Now we just have to hope that we can get free before they come back to clean up the loose ends.”
We were quiet for a while, both working at the ties and trying not to moan with the pain. My wrists were actually going numb now, which was almost a relief. I pulled at the ties from my side, too, trying to put pressure on the edges that she had stretched out. I was nearly able to slide my right hand out when the door burst open.
“Isn’t this sexy? Two girls tied up?” a familiar voice said.
Brendan Harmon.
“How did you get out of county?”
He looked at me for a long second. “I think your priorities are seriously screwed up, counselor. You’re tied up on the floor of a bankrupt construction site and you’re wondering how I got out of jail? You might be better off wondering how you’re going to get out of what comes next.”
“What comes next?” Knox asked.
“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you,” he announced.
He reached down and grabbed my arm, yanking me to me feet. I wasn’t able to walk, but I could hop. He seemed perfectly content to allow me to do so.
He pulled me out the door as Knox screamed after him.
“Let her go! Take me instead!”
Brendan ignored her. He took me into a bedroom further down the hall. Inside was a large, canopy-style child’s bed. Sitting in the center of it was a pretty blond girl, who was playing with an iPad.
“A
licia?” I asked.
She looked up and smiled. “Hi,” she said softly.
“She’s fine,” Brendan said close to my ear. “She thinks she’s playing a game on her daddy.”
“What are you doing, Brendan?”
“Alicia’s fine, and she will remain fine as long as mommy keeps paying me my money. That’s more than I can say of you.”
He jerked me back, taking me to yet another room. This room contained a king-sized bed that was covered in silk sheets. The camera and laptop taken from the Smith house was set up beside the bed, obviously ready to record whatever activity might take place on that bed.
“You didn’t…that little girl!”
“No, of course not. I like my women a little bigger, but not much. Just big enough to fight back a little.”
He threw me onto the bed, tugging a knife from his jeans pocket. As he came toward me, I kicked my legs out. I didn’t want him to touch me with anything, let alone that knife. I found myself thinking about Vanessa and the long scar that marred half her face. The first time I saw it, it tore at my soul, making me feel a compassion I’d never known before. But there was this dark side of me that wondered how it happened. What did her attacker use to make such a scar? I knew now, of course. I’d read through her case files. It was a knife, not much different from the one Brendan was holding.
Brendan grabbed my legs and caught them between his own. I tried to rear up and kick him in the jewels, but he was holding me too tight. And then he used the knife to cut the ties off my ankles.
My hand popped out of the tie around my wrist as I fought him. I didn’t even realize it at first, but then he turned to me…that knife held out where I could see it. I screamed, lunging forward. I dug my nails into his eyes, his blood mingling with mine.
“Fucking bitch!” he screamed, wrapping his hands around my throat. I ripped at his face as he choked me, but his tactics were a little sounder than mine. My vision was growing dark, as I lay there, fighting him. He was blinded, but he didn’t need his eyes to choke me.
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