Then Lance smiled as though the two men were simply playing some sort of sport and the match was over. “Leah,” he said, again looking over the man’s shoulder as he gently released his grip on the man’s wrist. “Can you do our pal here a favor and double-check. Just pop inside and make sure his sister’s not in there?”
Leah let her eyes slide from Lance’s to the man’s. Then she smiled big and said, “Sure! Happy to do it. Just a sec.”
“We’ll wait,” Lance said. “Right?”
The man’s eyes were murderous, but he somehow restrained himself. He did not speak, but he nodded.
Leah stepped back into the women’s room and took a breath, refocused. She walked straight to the end of the row of stalls, prepared to let whoever was in there (Allison or otherwise) know what was happening, and maybe get some understanding as to who the guy outside really was.
She stopped. The stall door was ajar and inside was empty. Leah looked to her left, saw the door at the far wall still opened just a bit. She walked over quickly and peered inside, whispering, “Hey, are you in there?”
She nudged the door open a bit more with her foot and looked inside. Saw nothing but a small janitor’s closet full of supplies.
There was nobody in the restroom.
Leah walked back outside and said, “She’s not in there. It’s completely empty.”
And she didn’t understand how that was possible.
9
“She’s not in there. It’s completely empty.”
Lance watched as Leah came out of the women’s room and relayed her message, and it was obvious she was telling the truth, because he thought she looked somewhat confused. She’d indicated to him earlier that there was in fact a girl in the restroom—perhaps the very girl that this man was looking for—and now it seemed that there wasn’t.
Interesting. But not what Lance was immediately concerned about. If the girl really was gone, then that was good. Because the man standing between Lance and Leah was a very bad dude.
Lance forced on his smile and slipped on his pleasant voice and said, “Well, there you have it. Nobody inside.”
The man took a deep breath, as if trying to control his emotions. Which Lance now knew he usually had a very difficult time doing. “I don’t suppose you’d be so kind as to let me check the men’s room, see if she’s in there?”
Lance cleared his throat. Spoke loudly, just in case somebody else that wasn’t standing here, somebody hiding, perhaps, needed to hear. “Let me get this right, just for my own understanding. You—”
“You don’t have to understand,” the man growled softly. His frustration was clearly growing.
“Sure I do. I’m involved now.”
“You’re not. This has nothing to do with you.”
Lance shrugged. “Maybe not at first, but now that you’ve physically assaulted my girlfriend, I’d say I’m very much involved, and perhaps being much nicer than I should be. But I guess that’s just my nature. I like to help, like to try and see the good in people. So, if you would please, humor me.”
The man crossed his arms. Eyes like slits.
“Thanks for your understanding. So, as I was saying, you believe that your younger sister is missing. Has been for roughly twenty-four hours. And, being that she’s—I’m only speculating here—young and full of youthful energy and ambition and has the whole entire world out in front of her to explore, you firmly believe that with infinite options presented to her, she has chosen to spend her time hiding in the men’s restroom of a highway rest stop between two forgettable cities?”
The man waited a beat. “Are you finished?”
“For now,” Lance said. He was being patient, and it was killing him on the inside.
“Yes. That’s exactly what I think. She’s here. I know it. And I think the two of you are trying to help her.”
“Help her what?” Lance said. “You said she’s missing, not on the run.” He knew the truth, at least he thought he understood part of it, but he needed the man to understand that he knew.
“There’s more to it,” the man said. “She stole something from me.” Then, with a hiss in his voice, “And I’m not somebody you want to steal from.” After this quasi-threat had been delivered, the man’s eyes softened a bit, his voice calm again. “How much is she paying you?” the guy asked, rubbing the stubble on his cheek and looking like he was suddenly unraveling a great mystery.
Lance shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re—”
The man sprang into action, all coiled muscle and anger flying toward Lance. Lance turned in time to have his shoulder absorb the brunt of the impact, but he was still knocked off balance, stumbling a few steps as the man’s weight drove him back into the men’s room. They hit the wall hard, and one of the automatic paper towel dispensers triggered, spitting out a sheet. The man hunched low on his legs and the drove his weight upward, slamming Lance against the wall, pressing his forearm under Lance’s chin, applying pressure on Lance’s windpipe.
“You don’t know who I am,” the man said. “Or what I’m capable of. That bitch crossed a line, and she needs to pay. I’m giving you the chance to walk away, right now, with all your teeth. All you have to do is tell me where she—”
There was a dull thud sound and man’s eyes went wide and all the air whooshed out of his lungs and he cried out in pain as his muscles all relaxed and he started to go down. Lance had been full of fear that the man would notice Leah creeping up behind him, had struggled greatly to keep his eyes forward and not glance her direction, giving her away. But she’d made it, and one ferocious kick to the balls was all it took to take the man down.
Lance coughed to clear his throat to catch his breath. He looked at Leah and said, “Did you play soccer as a kid?”
Leah smiled and shrugged, but then her eyes fell onto the man writhing in pain on the bathroom floor.
“Oh, right,” Lance said. He reached down and grabbed fistfuls of the man’s expensive button-down shirt, hauled him so he was sitting upright and then slammed him once against the wall. Keeping his grip tight, Lance squatted down and looked the man in the eyes, which were rolling around, seized in his agony.
“Look at me,” Lance said. “Look at me or this time she’ll punt them clear back to the last exit.”
The man struggled for only a moment, but one additional slam against the wall knocked all the fight out of him. His eyes met Lance.
“I know exactly who you,” Lance said. “Your name is Paul Anderle. You live at 373 North Cyprus Avenue. A big place on the hill. Swimming pool in the back and a three-car garage. You host an annual barbecue in the summer that’s always the talk of the neighborhood. Everybody thinks you’re a day trader, that you make your money because of your uncanny ability to time the market. Self-made. The American dream and all that.”
Lance slammed the guy against the wall again, just because he felt like it, because the words he was saying, while they would have the impact needed, didn’t seem like enough, didn’t exonerate all the pain this guy had caused.
“But that’s a lie, isn’t it, Paul? You’re a drug dealer. One of the biggest in the region. You import and distribute and have some very powerful people as clients. People that have entrusted you with their biggest secrets and therefore pay the biggest prices.”
Lance rattled off a list of names that had been transferred to him, along with all the other information he was revealing to Paul, when he’d caught the man’s weak punch after Lance had spun him around as he’d attempted to enter the women’s room. One of Lance’s instant downloads that always seemed to take him by surprise.
At the mention of his clients’ names, Paul’s eyes grew wider than they’d been when Leah had pulverized his testicles.
“That’s right,” Lance said. “I know everything. I also know that you have a thing for younger girls. Like to bring them to your big house with your fancy things and watch their mouth’s drop open in wonder … and then you make them do things. To you
, to your friends. And if they don’t like it, if they don’t bow to the demands of the almighty Paul Anderle … what do you do, Paul? Hmm? Do you hit them? Knock them around and show them who’s boss? Degrade them even more?”
Lance wished he could push the images out of his head, the one’s he’d pulled from Paul’s own memory. But they were there, front and present, and Lance felt his own anger begin to boil. He slammed Paul against the wall hard enough this time that the man’s head cracked against the tile, his eyes going temporarily blank.
“Lance.” Leah said.
Lance breathed in deeply, worked to regain his composure.
“We know all of this, Paul. All of this and more. It’s all documented, we have a big colorful PowerPoint and everything, and it’s going out to the police, FBI, news outlets, everyone. It’s probably already in their inboxes. This girl … and sure, we’ll call her Allison, she worked with us to set you up. Get you right here to us. Honestly, I’m just surprised you were actually dumb enough to show up.”
Paul’s face was returning back to normal, either because of the pain subsiding or Lance’s words sobering him up. Back was the malice as he said, “I’ll kill you, you know that? Both of you.”
“Go ahead,” Leah said, coming up beside Lance and squatting down to look the man in the eyes. “We’re both wearing wireless cameras and mikes. Everything’s been recorded from well before you even got here. The signal is transmitting back to HQ via satellite. Do you really want to add murder to your list of charges, Paul?”
Paul went quiet, his body going very still as he looked back and forth between them, as if he were struggling to process what was happening. Lance loosened his grip, just enough for the man to notice.
Which had the desired effect.
Paul pushed off the ground like a bottle rocket, knocking both Lance and Leah out of the way. He didn’t say a word as he sprinted from the men’s room, his footsteps growing quieter in the night as he fled. The sound of the truck’s engine roared to life and tires squealed on asphalt, and Paul Anderle was gone as fast as he’d arrived.
“Are you okay?” Lance asked, helping Leah up from the ground.
Leah nodded. “Fine.” She looked at him hard. “You let him go?”
Lance shrugged. “What was I going to do, arrest him?”
“We could have called the police.”
Lance shook his head. Tapped his temple with his index finger. “My only evidence is up here.”
Leah thought for a moment, then nodded her head. She understood. Such was the burden of being Lance Brody.
“Wireless cameras?” Lance asked. “Satellite back to HQ? That was a good touch.”
Leah did a small bow. “I thought you’d like that, Mister Flip-Phone.”
Lance nodded.
“Now what do we do,” she asked.
Lance turned and looked at the semi-opened door at the back of the men’s room. “Now we find the girl,” he said. “Tell me what you saw in the women’s room.”
10
When Leah had finished explaining to Lance about how there had definitely been a person—she could not verify it was girl based on the sound of the person’s gasp alone, though she’d be willing to bet that it had been a girl, and had in all likelihood been exactly who Paul Anderle had been looking for—in the last stall in the women’s room, and then suddenly there hadn’t been when she’d gone back in to check, Lance asked, “Is there a door at the back of the women’s room, like that one?” He pointed to the one that was a quarter open at the rear of the men’s room.
Leah nodded. “Yes, but it’s just a janitor’s closet. I checked inside. There was nobody there”
Lance thought for a moment. “It was open, when you went in the first time?”
Leah tried to recall what she’d seen when she’d first entered the restroom. “Yes, I’m positive it was.”
Lance started walking toward the opened door. Leah followed. He said, “This one was, too. Why are both the janitor’s closets open when there’s no janitor here and it’s the middle of the night. I’m sure protocol is to lock them up, keep folks from stealing things.”
“Maybe they just forgot,” Leah said, but she didn’t believe it. Lance had been teaching her some interesting things about coincidences.
“Maybe they could forget to lock one,” Lance said, pulling the door wide open and stepping inside, “but I doubt they forget to lock both.”
Leah squeezed into the closet with him, and she was hit with a sudden memory of playing Seven Minutes in Heaven at a middle school party in Westhaven when she’d been fourteen. She’d been goaded into the closet with Chris Gray, the best friend of the guy she’d actually had a crush on. As a result, she’d settled and dated Chris through the summer—as much as fourteen-year-olds could date—but it was nothing more than both of them trying to chase the excitement they’d felt for those few minutes in that closet and hope it led them to something bigger.
Spoiler-alert: It hadn’t.
Lance had turned and was staring at something behind her, back toward the door. Leah turned and followed his gaze and landed on what had interested him. A ladder was mounted just to the left of the door, just narrow enough to fit into the space, just wide enough for a person. They both craned their necks up, following to where it led. There was a hatch in the ceiling, a single sliding bolt meant to keep it locked.
The bolt was disengaged.
“She’s on the roof,” Leah said.
11
Lance told Leah what he wanted to do and then counted to thirty as they’d planned. When he’d finished counting, he climbed the ladder in the men’s room janitor’s closet and then reached up and gently opened the hatch, suddenly finding himself looking up at the night sky. “I come in peace,” he called out, trying to sound non-threatening. But even as he climbed the last few rungs of the ladder and hoisted himself up onto the roof, he heard the scrambling of sneakers behind him, and the sound of another hatch being thrown open. He stood and turned in time to see a young girl freeze, looking down into the opened mouth of the hatch that led down into the women’s room closet.
“Hi.” Leah’s voice floated up from below. “I’m Leah. Mind if I come up so we can talk? Oh, and that guy up there with you, that’s Lance. He’s my boyfriend. He’s one of the good ones, trust me.”
Lance stood where he was and watched as the girl took a few cautious steps backward, glancing over her shoulder as she did so, as if double-checking to make sure he wasn’t going to make a move on her. She reached the middle-ground between the two hatches and stopped. Leah’s head popped up from the women’s room hatch and she pulled herself up.
The girl, who looked to be eighteen at the absolute most, turned her head back and forth between them, and that was when Lance saw it. Her brown hair fell down around her face, but when she’d shifted her head, she’d tossed a bit of it out of the way in an effort to see him better, and the moonlight had lit up her features and Lance had seen the bruising around her cheek and eye.
Her entire body was poised, ready for action, ready to fight. Her eyes were wide. She looked like a scared animal in a trap, ready to make one last desperation attempt to ward off poachers.
Lance stayed where he was, held up his hands. “It’s okay,” he said. “He’s gone. He’s not coming back.”
He let Leah be the one to move in on the girl, let her slowly take steps closer. The girl jerked when she realized Leah was almost upon her, but then Leah spoke something too soft for Lance to hear, and the girl’s entire body seemed to relax, and suddenly she was in Leah’s arms, sobbing into the quiet of the night.
12
They sat on the roof together, the three of them. The air was colder up here, the breeze occasionally biting. None of them cared. Lance and Leah listened as the girl told her story. Lance already knew most of it, but how could he explain that? He wouldn’t.
The girl’s name really was Allison, but she wasn’t Paul Anderle’s sister. She was just one of the girls
that had made the unfortunate mistake of thinking he was a nice guy. He’d courted her with expensive dinners and his flashy cars and had then invited her to a party at his house, a chance to meet his friends. Drinks were consumed, drugs were distributed, and Allison quickly saw Paul and his crew for what they really were. Paul had stripped her of her shirt in the middle of a game of billiards, right there in front of everybody, and when she’d protested, all he’d done was laugh and dragged her to a back bedroom while his friends had laughed and hollered and cheered him on. In the bedroom, he’d pinned her to the bed and started working on her pants. When she started to fight back, the last thing she remembered seeing was his fist flying toward her face. When she woke up, naked and alone in the back bedroom, she found her clothes scattered around the room and got dressed. Out in the rest of the house, everyone was passed out, splayed across the furniture and the floor like animals sleeping at the zoo.
“I thought about killing him,” Allison said through tears. “He was passed out on the couch, another girl asleep with her head in his lap. I could have done anything I wanted to him.”
Leah shook her head. “But that’s not your style.”
“Because you’re a good person,” Lance said. “So, you just ran away.”
Allison snorted a laugh and wiped her eyes. “I’m not quite that innocent. I stole his car,” she said. “I knew where he kept the keys to them all, on these hooks by the door to the garage. So I grabbed the only one I really recognized, the key fob to that one,” she nodded toward the front of the building, toward the parking lot where the Tesla sat. “And I just drove off.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t until I got here that I found the bag in the back seat. That’s when I knew I was in trouble.”
“Bag?” Lance asked. He remembered the way Paul Anderle had opened the Tesla’s door and looked inside. He was looking for more than just a person.
Dark Rest: A Lance Brody Story (Book 5.5) Page 3
