by Julia Derek
Ian shrugged. “Just being realistic.”
“We can’t train any longer,” I said, not wanting to continue discussing the likelihood that Burt was dead.
Ian tilted his head, looking surprised. “We can’t? Why not?” A light went on behind his eyes. “Wait, don’t tell me. It has to do with Jonah, right?”
I smirked. “Of course. He told me today that he doesn’t approve of me training you any longer. I thought it best not to disagree with him. He’s already a major pain in the ass.”
“Yes, that’s smarter. Do everything you can to keep his mood in check for as long as you can.”
“Did you find out anything useful today?” I asked.
Ian shook his head, his face going dark and a deep wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. “No. I spent the day trying to crack their bloody security. Still no luck. One day I’ll get through though.”
I nodded, tired suddenly. “I really, really hope you will.”
Chapter 4
We arrived at the location where Ian had located Burt’s phone, a run-down neighborhood in the northern parts of Spanish Harlem. The pavement was cracked and dirty, and fishy characters hung around the street corners, surely up to no good. Some of the windows on the old apartment buildings were boarded up, others broken. Graffiti was everywhere. The banged-up cars parked along the sidewalk had seen their best years a long time ago. A Hispanic-looking girl who must still be in her teens walked by our cab, pushing a stroller and holding a toddler in her other hand that struggled to keep up with her brisk pace. The little kid nearly stumbled over a syringe someone had dropped on the ground.
“What could he be doing here?” I hissed to Ian as we left the cab, which sped out of the area like it couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
“Hopefully we’ll soon find out. According to the tracker on my tablet, he’s in that apartment building.” He pointed to a brownstone a few yards from where we stood. “Or at least his phone is.”
We headed toward the building Ian had indicated. The brownstone was not unlike the one he lived in, except this one was no way near as well kept. We walked up the few stairs leading up to the wooden door entrance.
“Can you see which floor it’s on?” I whispered to Ian.
Ian peered down at his mini-tablet. “It looks like it’s on the bottom floor or in the basement. Let’s see if we can get into the building first without drawing unnecessary attention.”
Ian put his hand on the doorknob and twisted it, pushing forward. The heavy door slid open with a light moan. He turned to me with a crooked smile. “Well, that was easy.”
Closing the door behind us, we walked into the quiet hallway that was as shabby as the neighborhood we were in. It smelled of urine and rotten food, the beige, stained carpet under our feet threadbare. I wrinkled my nose and breathed through my mouth.
“It looks like it’s in there,” Ian said and tilted his head toward the apartment door at the other end of the poorly lit hallway.
We walked with soft steps in the direction of that door and stopped when we’d reached it. It was still quiet around us. Ian put his ear against the wood and listened.
“Can you hear anything?” I hissed.
Pulling away, he shook his head no.
He removed his gun from inside his jacket and indicated for me to do the same. We couldn’t count on Burt being in there alone, dead or hurt but still alive and waiting for us to come find him, even if it didn’t sound like anyone was in there. Most likely someone had brought him here against his will and might still be around. Somewhere.
I removed my Glock from my holster and gave Ian a nod to proceed. Taking a step back, he raised his knee high and kicked the door in forcefully. It flew open, slamming into the wall on the other side of it and revealing a medium-sized, dimly lit living room in which there was no one. A whirring fan hung from the low ceiling, producing a faint humming sound. The wooden floor was full of red stains that looked suspiciously like blood that had yet to dry.
Keeping his gun to his chin, Ian walked in first, me following closely behind, holding my gun in the same fashion. There was little furniture in the living room, a beat-up, old couch with more suspicious dark stains on it and two crates placed before it, serving as a makeshift coffee table. The color of the stains was hard to make out since the couch was of a dark green fabric.
As we got farther inside, I noticed that a small kitchen took up one corner of the space. A hallway began at the other side of the filthy couch and I spotted a closed door at the end of it.
Ian and I looked around the meagerly furnished living room. I looked for a light switch somewhere, but couldn’t find one.
“Well, it doesn’t look like Burt is in this room at least,” I whispered to him. “I wonder what’s up with all the blood. It’s gotta be blood.” I pointed my gun to all the red stains on the floor, unease spreading within me at the sheer volume of the stains. “Can you see the phone anywhere?”
“No, but according to the GPS, it should be in here somewhere.”
“Is it possible that the GPS is wrong?”
“Possible, but not likely. It’s in here somewhere. Maybe in an adjacent room.”
I gave the low-ceilinged space another quick scan, still seeing nothing that looked like a phone anywhere. Which meant that Burt had to be somewhere else in the apartment. Oh, God, let’s hope he isn’t hurt. There was a door standing ajar opposite the couch and another, closed one kitty corner to the hallway. I nudged Ian and nodded toward the open one and whispered, “Let’s see if he’s in there.”
Fearing the worst, I tiptoed over to the door, keeping my gun at my chin. I could sense Ian following behind me. With my back to the side of the doorway, I rounded it and kicked open the door all the way, pointing my gun into the room.
Part of me had expected someone keeping Burt in there, maybe at gun point, and the other part had feared that he would be lying dead and tortured on the floor the way my husband had been. But no one was inside the room, which was a bedroom with a single window, no curtains or blinds covering it. A thick mattress was placed directly on the floor and a couple of blankets and pillows were scattered on it. There was no other furniture in the small room. No blood either.
I turned to Ian. “Let’s check the other door.”
Without a word, Ian left the bedroom and walked over to that closed door in the living room. Kicking the flimsy door hard, it burst open, smacking against the wall on the other side. His legs wide apart, Ian stood before the doorway and pointed his gun toward the dark insides. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see what hid in the darkness behind the threshold, but Ian might. He stuck a hand inside that room and must have found a light switch because suddenly the space was bathing in light. Eyeing it for a brief moment, he turned back to me.
“It’s a bathroom and empty.”
I walked up to where he stood next to the doorway to the aforementioned bathroom. “He must be in the room at the end of the hallway then.”
“Yeah, let’s go check it,” Ian replied.
Together, we crossed the living room and walked over to the hallway, continuing to the other end where that single door was. We passed a small bathroom on the way and several blood stains on the hardwood floor that made me shudder.
“What the hell’s up with all that blood?” I said to Ian’s back.
“Hopefully we’ll soon know.”
His reply triggered several sickening images of a tortured Burt to appear in my mind.
Ian grabbed the doorknob and tried to turn it. It was locked and this door looked a lot sturdier than any of the other doors inside the apartment, including the front door. He leaned his ear against the wood and listened.
“Can you hear anything?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he replied.
“We need to get inside and see what’s on the other side of that door.”
“Yes, we—”
The sound of what had to be a cell phone rang out then, cutting him off. It
was coming from somewhere in the living room we had just left. We started walking in that direction and the sound grew stronger.
“I think it’s coming from the couch,” I said, pointing toward it. I began removing the sofa cushions in search of the phone that had now stopped ringing. Ian joined me in turning the cushions over and then throwing them on the floor. We found nothing.
I went down on my knees and leaned forward to see if maybe the phone was under the couch. I saw it almost instantly as it wasn’t far in. Sticking my hand under the edge, I grabbed it and pulled it out. It was flecked with blood.
“I have it,” I said to Ian as I got back to my feet.
“Who called it?” Ian asked, glancing at the small iPhone in my hand.
I pressed the round button at the bottom of the smartphone to light up the screen. It displayed several missed calls, all of the numbers having New York area codes and unfortunately no names attached to any of them. I recognized some of them as belonging to the disposable I had tossed an hour earlier. Yes, this was definitely Burt’s phone.
“Do you recognize it?” Ian asked me.
“Uh-uh,” I replied, shaking my head.
“So his cell phone is here, but he is not. I wonder why that is.”
“Maybe it was left on purpose,” I offered. “It seems kinda odd that it would have fallen and then rolled under the couch like that.”
Ian nodded slowly, rubbing his stubbly chin. “Yes, someone might have left it to throw us off. If they thought we would try to find Burt, that is. I’m not sure what would make someone at Adler assume that we are—at least not so soon—but they surely have their reasons. Stranger things have certainly happened.” He gave a half snort. “Are happening, I should say.”
“I’d have to agree with that.” I sighed heavily. “Too bad it was our best bet to find him. I suppose we can ask Nadja if she has any idea where he might be. Unfortunately, I don’t think that it’ll lead to much. But it’s worth a shot.”
“Who’s Nadja?”
“One of the membership advisors at Nikkei. Striking woman. I think she’s part Chinese and part Hispanic or something. Black, pin-straight hair all the way down to her waist. Anyway, she and Burt are quite friendly. I saw them together a couple of times, looking kinda cozy. Yesterday he was at the club waiting for her so she could give him a new client. Or so he claimed when Janine showed up all of a sudden. Janine said that Nadja had already left.”
Ian narrowed his eyes at me. “Did you speak to Nadja today?”
“No, I was told it’s her day off when I went down to see her in membership.”
He laughed and shook his head at me. “It may be her day off, but I’ll bet you she’s spending it in a place where she doesn’t want to be. Together with Burt.”
“Really? I’m sure they have taken Burt, but what makes you think they’ve also taken Nadja? No, she’s probably just at home.”
Ian looked at me intently. “Think about it, Gabi. Why would Janine know that Nadja had already left? Are you telling me the senator is friends with Nadja?”
I shrugged. “Maybe, but probably not. My guess is that Janine just saw Nadja leave the club at some point. That would be nothing unusual. Like I already mentioned, Nadja’s a striking woman and she also has a big personality. She’s someone people notice. When you see her, you’ll know what I mean.”
Ian didn’t look convinced. “That may be, but it’s still too much of a coincidence that Janine happened to see Nadja leave before the time Burt was expecting her, and that today is her day off. I don’t believe in coincidences. Furthermore, if Nadja couldn’t make her date with Burt, she would have notified him, wouldn’t she? I’m telling you, they’ve taken her and she’s with Burt somewhere. Let’s find her number and call her so you can see this for yourself. She won’t be picking up.”
I thought about how uneasy Burt had looked yesterday when Janine had appeared and ordered him to come with her. How determined Janine had sounded when she’d stated that Nadja had already left, like that was something she knew for a fact. Sadly, what Ian was saying made a lot of sense. I didn’t really believe in coincidences either. The more I considered all of this now, the surer I felt that he was right.
“Well, in that case,” I said, “maybe we can find them by tracking Nadja’s cell. Surely she has one. Hopefully she has it on her,” I added grimly.
“That’s a good idea. Do you have her number?”
“No. I barely know her.”
“Can you call the club and get it?”
I bit my lips as I considered this. “I can try, but I don’t think they’ll give me her cell number over the phone. They only give out email addresses.”
Ian looked surprised. “But you work there. Don’t they trust you?”
“It’s not about that. They’re very particular about handing out personal information over the phone to anyone.”
“Then let’s go back there and ask for her number in person.”
“Fine. Though it’ll be hard for me to explain to Jonah why I’m back at the club when I’m supposed to be home studying so hard for my test.” Just the thought of running in to him gave me chills.
“Do you think he’ll be there this late?” Ian checked the time on his phone. “It’s eight thirty.”
I grimaced. “Yeah, probably. He’s one of the club’s busiest trainers, so he’s there a lot.”
“We’ll figure out how to get around him in the cab back downtown. Let’s go.”
Ian grabbed hold of me and started toward the front door.
“Wait,” I said, resisting him. “What about that locked door?” I tilted my head toward the end of the hallway. “Shouldn’t we check what’s behind it? Maybe we’ll find something interesting.”
Ian let go of me. “Yes, you’re right. We should definitely take a peek.” Giving me a crooked smile, he winked. “See, this is why I need you so badly. In those rare instances when I miss something—and that was a big miss—I knew you’d pick up the slack. We make a good team.”
I rolled my eyes at his back that somehow managed to look smug as he started toward the door at the end of the hallway, then followed him. Raising a knee to his chest, Ian landed a sharp heel in the middle of the door. It took him a couple of more tries before it came open.
Staring into the big, dark room, Ian hissed under his breath, “What the fuck…”
His hand went to the side of the doorway and he found a light switch, making the light fixture in the middle of the ceiling go on. Then he dashed into the room.
I stopped in the doorway, shocked at the sight of a well dressed, raven-haired woman sitting tied up in a sturdy wheelchair in the corner farthest away from where I was, her mouth taped shut with a big piece of silver duct tape. She stared at us with slanted hazel eyes, her long hair a mess and her face ashen and clammy.
It took a few seconds before I realized who sat there in the corner, unable to either move or speak; all the fresh blood staining the hardwood floor competed for my attention.
Nadja, the membership advisor, was sitting in that wheelchair.
Ian ripped off the tape from the woman’s mouth. She gasped for air.
“Please… please help me…get me out of here,” she wheezed, staring first at Ian, then at me. “I need juice… Sugar.”
“Don’t worry, doll,” Ian said and produced a small knife from a pocket in his jeans. “You’ll be out of here in no-time.” He began cutting off the zip ties around her wrists that attached to the wheelchair’s armrests. There were red sores crisscrossing her skin where the zip ties had been, showing that she hadn’t been taking her confinement in stride.
I ran up to her, grabbing her shoulders as Ian sank to his haunches and continued working on getting her ankles free from the chair.
“Nadja, do you know who I am?” I asked her.
“Yes, you’re… you’re a trainer from the club…” Her voice was weak. “Jamie?”
“Yes, I’m Jamie, a trainer from the club. But I’m rea
lly a cop and so is my friend here. I’m undercover at the club. We’ll get you out of here. Rest assured of that.”
“Thank you,” Nadja said and tried to lick her lips. “Please… I need juice. Sugar. I’m diabetic…”
“You’re what?” I asked her. “Diabetic?”
“Yes… my blood sugar’s low. I need sugar.”
When Ian had finished cutting all the ties, he grabbed the voluptuous woman under her knees and back and carried her out of the room like she weighed nothing.
“Let’s take her to the living room and get her some water,” Ian said as he moved toward the doorway.
“She’s diabetic,” I said. “Her blood sugar’s low.”
He looked at me, then at Nadja. “Well, that explains the clamminess. It must be really low.”
“We… we need to get… out of here,” Nadja managed to say. “They’ll… be back.”
“We will, but first we need to get some sugar in you,” Ian said as we strode down the hallway and back into the living room. “Does water mixed with something sugary work?” He asked Nadja.
“Yes…”
As Ian placed Nadja on the part of the couch that looked the least filthy, he told me to look for anything with sugar in it in the corner kitchen and to put it in water. I dashed over there and turned on the faucet while opening the cabinets above at the same time, searching for anything sugary. Far inside one of the cabinets, I spotted what looked like an old bag of Domino Sugar. Pulling it out, I saw that it was and that it was half full with dried-up sugar.
“Found sugar,” I said to Ian. “It’s all dry and clumped up, though.”
“Break it up and mix it with water,” Ian replied.
“Okay, how much sugar in a glass of water?” I asked.
I heard him ask Nadja, who said a few tablespoons in one glass of water would work.
I found a glass that I rinsed out a few times and filled up with cold water. Then I broke up a few chunks of sugar and stuck it into the water. It immediately began to dissolve.