by Leanne Tyler
Brand woke the next morning expecting to find Carly sitting in the chair in the hospital room where he’d been moved, instead he found Hawkeye drinking coffee and reading a report.
“Anything interesting?”
“Very. We got the funding. We not only got the funding, but we got enough funding for six men instead of the four I requested. I’ve never seen that committee work so fast before, but I think after what happened yesterday seeing how Henry Manning and Peter Hastings were so dead set against it only spurred Mona Farrell, Hector Gonzalez and Terrance Blevins on, especially after they found out that Manning was opposing the Task Force even though it was helping his own daughter. That in itself may have been the deciding factor for the other three.”
“We’ll take the win, won’t we?”
“We sure will.”
“Did Carly tell you I can have surgery to get the shrapnel out now?”
“She mentioned it when I took her and Margot home. That is some news. It opens up a completely new world of opportunities for you. I was here when Dr. Octavia made his rounds this morning. I asked him the one thing that has to be going through the back of your mind. If the shrapnel is removed, does that mean you’d be cleared for active duty again.”
Brand slowly raised the motorized bed so he could see Hawkeye clearer. “What did the doctor have to say about that?”
“Your doctor at Walter Reed was hopeful that with healing and physical therapy, conditioning, and training that you’d be back up to speed and ability to pass the physical to be cleared if you so choose to return to duty. If you wanted it. Personally, I’m hoping you don’t. I really want you to head up my task force and stay in Chicago. But then I’m being selfish to want you to stick around.”
“No, you’re not. I want to stick around too. My SEAL days are over. Getting the shrapnel out is good. I’ll have the surgery as soon as we know there is no more threat to Carly’s life. And to answer your question from yesterday, I’ll head up your task force.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it.” Hawkeye laid the report down. “There’s something we need to discuss. Somehow your encrypted cellphone was hacked. That is the reason you couldn’t get ahold of your team after the visit to the hospital when the girls came to see Colleen. I’ve confiscated it and given it to my best tech guy. He’s trying to figure out what or who has touched your phone. I have my suspicions, but I need proof, solid evidence to take him down.”
“I don’t like the sound of this. Are you saying, Petree?”
Hawkeye nodded.
“Damn.”
“Stay calm. It won’t help matters for you to get upset. The doc said you need to keep your blood pressure at an even keel right now.”
“Then why tell me this at all?”
“I thought you needed to know in case you go looking for your phone.”
Brand shook his head. “I don’t know how or when the man would have gotten access to it.”
“What about when you went shopping for the suit? That is when Carly thought it might have been possible? I’ve had my guys looking into his background all night trying to come up with something, even the explosion on his SUV, the four tires blowing out beforehand. That seemed a little overkill to me, even for a street gang like the Twin Cobras, especially after the gunshots fired on civilians leaving Christ's church. But who knows what gangs will do when their guy in jail has just been killed.”
“There is no way that a gang could retaliate that quickly for their man being taken out. I don’t think the shooting or the SUV was a result of that. When have you ever known a gang to use sniper fire?”
“Never.”
“And Petree told me and Carly that the guy was long gone by the time SWAT found his location. Thinking back on the chaotic scene and the timeframe it’s highly unlikely that he would have been able to receive word that quickly. Yet because of the chaos, he was able to get us to go with him in his SUV since he’d been our driver.”
“The factor that alludes me is the why? What would make him risk his career?”
“Or who.” Brand said fiddling with the oxygen device stuck in his nose. “Did the doc happen to say how long I had to wear this?”
“He didn’t, but I wouldn’t remove it since the reason he had you stay overnight was to bring up your oxygen level.”
Brand sighed. “This stinks. I feel like I did when I was in Walter Reed all those weeks and I’ve only been here overnight.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“But it is. I should be at the apartment with Carly.”
“Doing your job? Or spending time with your girl?”
Brand looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“You know damn well what I mean. I’ve never seen you lose your cool in a meeting with superiors like you did with Carly’s father for taking her ex-husband’s side. You’ve stepped over the line with this girl. You’ve developed feelings for her.”
“So what if I have?”
“Whoa! You aren’t even going to deny it. This is big. You really have feelings for her. Have the two of you gotten physical?”
“No. And if we had it wouldn’t be any of your business, but we haven’t. I don’t want to mess things up by rushing it. She’s the real deal, Hawk.”
“I can see that.” He nodded. “Good for you. Just be careful that you don’t end up getting either one of you killed in the process. Keep your head on straight.”
Chapter 13
Carly woke in total darkness and couldn’t move her arms or legs, yet she had a sense that wherever she was at was familiar to her. The smell of the place gave her the feeling of home, but something inside didn’t allow her to feel comfortable. Her hands felt numb and her wrists felt cramped. She tried flexing them, but she scraped her skin against something rough and scratchy. Swallowing, her mouth was as dry as cotton, and she began to gag because there was a rag stuffed in her mouth. Heaving for air only made matters worse and she about passed out because she couldn’t get enough oxygen.
Finally, she got her breathing under control. But, she teetered to the side, falling from a sitting position to the hard floor. She hit her head on concrete. She knew without a doubt she wasn’t at the senator’s apartment nor was she at her small apartment across town. The familiar smell of home made her think of the basement at her parents’ house. Another whiff reminded her of the unfinished storage space off from the garage at the house she’d shared with Justin Porter. That made her sick to her stomach.
It was impossible for her to be at either house, wasn’t it? She’d left the hospital with Margot and Commander Burns in the early morning hours after Brand had been moved into a room. The commander had driven them to the Lakeshore apartment building and seen them to their respective floors before leaving. At least Carly assumed Margot had allowed the man to leave. She had been so clingy last night. Surely, Margot didn’t act like that when her father was around.
The commander had handed Carly the keys to the apartment and she’d sent the elevator back down to Margot’s floor before she went into the apartment, locking the door. She took a quick shower, put on her pajamas and crawled into bed where she fell asleep. She remembered all that clearly.
What she didn’t remember is how she ended up here.
The sound of heavy footsteps drew her attention away from her thoughts. She listened intently wondering if the person was coming toward her. The ringing of a phone sent the footsteps in the opposite direction.
The whoosh of water flowing through pipes was the next sound she heard and then a squeak and scurry of little feet along the cement floor. Carly’s mind began to race with vivid images of tiny creatures eating away at her flesh and she cringed, trying to push those thoughts away as fast as they came to her. She had almost succeeded when she thought she heard the sound of hissing and she lost it and screamed the best she could against the gag in her mouth. However, only muffled sounds came out and she soon was out of breath and heaving for air before she lost consciousness.
It was around noon when Dr. Octavia sent around orders that Brand could go home once his O2 stats reached above normal status. The head nurse on his floor brought him the news herself.
“Will you have someone to pick you up?” she asked.
“I’ll get someone here. Don’t worry.”
“Your t-shirt was destroyed last night in the ER. I’ve brought you a Chicago Med shirt to replace it. I hope an XL will do?”
“Thanks.”
“Buzz if you need anything.”
Once she left, Brand didn’t waste time changing out of the hospital gown back into his street clothes. He put the oxygen back on and sat on the bed while he dialed Hawkeye’s number.
“Burns.”
“Brand. I’m being released. I’ll need a ride to the Lakeshore apartment if you can swing it.”
“Great, but how about you come by the department and let’s go over some task force stats first? Since you aren’t that far away. I’ll give Margot a call and have her drop in on Carly if she hasn’t already today.”
“Okay. Sure. Work does come first.”
“I won’t keep you long. An hour at most.”
“What about the situation we were talking about earlier? Any news on that?”
“Negative, but I will make a few follow up calls. I’ve been snowed under since I got in this morning. I’ll see you soon.”
Brand hung up the phone and leaned back in bed waiting for the nurse to return and check his O2 stats again and tell him he could leave. He counted the ceiling tiles twice and then reached for the phone trying to recall Carly’s cell phone number. He’d called her on it once and he was pretty sure he remembered the number. He took a stab at it and listened as the call went through ringing three then four times before getting her voice mail.
“Hey Carly, it’s Brand. Just wanted to let you know I’m coming home. I mean…getting out of the hospital. I’ll be back this afternoon after stopping by Chicago PD for a briefing on the new task force. We got the funding and Hawkeye has asked me to head up the team. Isn’t that great? We can talk more about what this means when I see you. I don’t have my cell right now, but you can call the hospital and see if I’m still here if you want. You know the room number.”
He hung up, then placed the phone back on the stand beside the bed. He took the oxygen out of his nose and walked over to the window, staring out into the city.
“Mr. Chambers, did I tell you that you could get out of bed?” the head nurse asked coming into the room.
“No, but I was bored lying there.”
“Come here and let me check your stats if you want to get out of here.” The woman peered at him over the edge of her bifocals. She placed the Pulse Oximeter on the end of his finger and waited for it to beep with a reading. “Very good. Looks like I can let you sign these discharge papers after all.”
He took the clipboard and pen, scratching his name across the signature line with the fine point tip. “I can’t say this hasn’t come a moment too soon. I was contemplating making a break for it.”
The woman grinned. “Then you won’t like the wheelchair that has been ordered to take you downstairs.”
“I can walk.”
“That’s what they all say, but regulations call that patients be wheeled out of the hospital.”
He crossed his arms and looked her in the eye. “How ‘bout we say you did and I don’t tell.”
She grunted and shook her head. “Cheeky devil. Get out of here.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
He was half-way to the door when the phone rang. He stopped, pivoted to get it thinking it was Carly calling him back. “Hello.”
“Brand, my cars downstairs.”
“I was on my way down, Hawkeye.”
“Good. We have a situation.”
Chapter 14
Brand rode to the Lakeshore apartments in silence. He replayed what Hawkeye told him about how Carly had vanished without a trace during the night. How Carly didn't answer her phone and she wasn't there when Margot went to check on her. So the woman let herself into the apartment with the second set of keys to the apartment she possessed. That she hadn’t told him she had.
“How did this happen if you still had plainclothes detectives stationed downstairs?” he asked.
“The night security guard got suspicious of them hanging around in the lobby. They moved to their vehicle, but they were still on the case.”
“So anyone could have entered and left the building without them being the wiser. Do you know how many entrances there are to that building? Petree and I scouted that place out the day we moved in. It is not a secure place; no wonder the senator had the 20th-floor key protected.”
“You and Petree?”
Brand nodded. “Damn. You don’t think he’s behind this, do you? What did you find out about his background? My phone?”
“We’re keeping your phone as evidence.” Hawkeye reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a phone. “Here’s one like it. My tech guy programmed in essential numbers like McLeod, Donovan and Kincaid’s as well as mine.”
“Hanks?”
Hawkeye nodded. “A CSI team is at the apartment going over it with a fine brush to see if they can lift any prints. If Carly left against her will we will find her.”
“You know she did. She wouldn’t leave the safety of the apartment for any other reason. Where would she go? She has no one other than Jules, Simone, and Colleen, that she can trust. Her parents turned their backs on her when she decided to divorce Justin Porter.”
“I know you think you have gotten to know Carly very well, but what if there are things about her that you don’t know?”
Brand shook his head. “No. Don’t try to play that card. You never did answer my question about Petree. What did you find out about his background?”
“There’s a tie between him and Justin Porter. They belonged to the same fraternity at the same time. Carly didn’t recognize him. So it doesn’t mean that the two men knew one another.”
“Not necessarily. Carly may not have known him, but that doesn’t mean that Porter and Petree weren’t acquainted. From what I gather, fraternities are breeding grounds for brotherhoods much like the military. The two wouldn’t have to be besties to be tight.”
“So you think there could still be a connection.”
“Hell yeah.”
Carly woke to the smell of something frying with garlic and tomato, a little basil and oregano thrown in the mix. It made her stomach rumble. She tried to ignore the savory scent because she knew she wasn’t going to be getting any of it. She didn’t even know if the fragrance was coming from where she’d heard the footsteps before or from somewhere nearby.
Still lying on the cold concrete, her cheek felt numb now as did her arm, wrist, and leg on her right side. She tried to roll to her stomach and then to her other side and her back. She was in a large enough space that she was able to move freely. Now if she could only manage to get to the wall she might be able to push against it and get to a sitting position again.
A loud hissing sound and something springing against a cage stopped her from moving. She’d forgotten about the strange sounds she’d heard earlier before she’d passed out. This time the hissing sounding more like that of a mad cat in a cage than twin cobra snakes. Who knew what she was hearing or if she was right about the space where she was rolling around. She rolled back to her stomach and decided to try to inch herself up from there like an inchworm and see if she could get to her knees and maybe her feet.
She’d succeeded in getting herself scrunched enough to push her butt up in the air when the door to the room opened. Through the blindfold, she sensed the change in lighting. She froze unsure if she was being seen or not.
“Here kitty, kitty,” a woman called, shuffling into the room. “Nice kitty.”
The cage rattled as Carly imagined the woman opened it up to put the food inside. The cat hissed and lunged against the side because of the racket the cage made. Th
e woman stumbled backward, bumping into shelving, letting out a shriek.
“Damn cat. I don’t get paid enough to deal with you.”
The door slammed closed and the light disappeared. Carly relaxed and slumped against the floor, prostrate again. The woman hadn’t seen her at all yet she could sense the light filter into the room? How could that have been? Where was she with a cat that smelled familiar? Justin Porter never had a cat. He hated them as far as she knew.
Margot greeted Brand and Hawkeye when they arrived at the apartment. The CSI unit was packing up. Hawkeye spoke with the one in charge about what their findings looked like before he walked them to the elevator.
“What do you make of this?” Brand asked Margot. “Has anyone ever broken in here before while your father has lived here?”
The woman shook her head, sipping on a glass of red wine even though it was early afternoon. “Strangest thing I’ve seen. The only way to get up that elevator is with a key to this floor and unless you have that passkey, you aren’t getting up here. Either that or landing on the roof. Helicopters aren’t cheap. Do you think her abductor has money?”
“Justin Porter does.”
“Brand, you can’t go jumping to conclusions or making accusations without evidence,” Hawkeye said, returning to the apartment.
“He wouldn’t do it himself. He’d hire someone to do it for him. He wouldn’t get his hands dirty. Just like he’s had a P.I. watching her apartment probably ever since she moved in. And until I came on the scene she didn’t have a clue the P.I. was out there.”
“Shit,” Margot said, sitting down her glass of wine. “I knew Justin Porter was a douche bag in college, but I had no idea he’d fallen that low.”
“You knew him?” Hawkeye asked.
“Sure I did. Our sorority and his fraternity did events together. That’s how he caught Carly’s eye. And he’s the reason Carly and I lost touch. Once she started dating him he made certain she didn’t have contact with many of her friends. But I guess he couldn’t break the tie between Carly, Jules, Simone, and Colleen.”