His gaze landed on his cell phone.
Still no word from Melissa.
No answer to his texts, no wisecrack about him being a jackass.
Nothing.
When Jason had told him earlier that her sister’s missing boyfriend—scratch that, fiancé—had been found? He’d sent her another string of texts.
And still—radio silence.
Was Melissa upset about his taking her down to the lake yesterday? About him kissing her and stripping off her sweater in his SUV? He hadn’t exactly planned to move that quickly with her, but she hadn’t seemed upset about what had happened. And according to Jason, all had been good with the women last night.
They’d supposedly all left in high spirits.
He grabbed the phone on his desk, dialing the number for Jason’s office on the floor below his. Jason answered on the second ring.
“I haven’t been able to get ahold of Melissa all morning,” Tyler said, clearing his throat. “Did she fly out to see her sister or something?”
“That’s a negative,” Jason said. “I know she called Amy before she headed off to teach preschool. As far as I know, she had a full day planned at the office. I think she would’ve told her if she was catching a flight.”
Tyler clenched his fist. Maybe she was just ignoring him. Just busy and she hadn’t gotten a chance to text him back yet.
Worry niggled at the back of his mind though.
Melissa usually always had her phone with her and was quick to shoot him a text reply. Even if she was calling him an ass, she’d always texted back. Something was up. “I might swing by her office.”
“You think something’s wrong?” Jason asked, sounding surprised. “I know there’s been a lot of stuff on the news lately, but she’s got a lot going on with her sister right now. She might just be busy this afternoon.”
“Understood. I’d just feel better seeing for myself. It’s not like her to not respond at all.”
“I’ll call Amy and see if she’s heard anything. She might be tough to get a hold of since she’s teaching right now, but I’ll see if I can get someone to go down to her classroom and have her call me.”
“I appreciate it,” Tyler said. “Doesn’t she have her cell?”
“She leaves it off during class.”
“Roger that. I’ll talk to you later.”
He hung up the phone and was rising from his desk before he could think about it. Locking his computer screen and palming his keys. Although Melissa was probably fine, he needed to see her. Hear her voice. Touch her.
He’d feel better when he was certain that she was okay.
***
Twenty minutes later, he was pulling into the lot of her real estate office. He spotted her SUV in the parking lot and let out a breath he hadn’t even realized that he’d been holding.
She was here.
Perfectly safe.
He felt a little paranoid rushing over for no reason, but he might as well go see her now that he’d arrived. Maybe even give her a hard time for not texting him back. He strode across the lot, frowning as he saw the photographer from the other day looking in the window of her vehicle. What was it with this guy?
Why was he always prowling around?
“Hey!” Tyler said loudly, storming over.
The man jumped, relaxing slightly when he recognized Tyler. “Oh, it’s you. Have you heard from Ms. Ford?” he asked. “I haven’t been able to get ahold of her.”
“No, I just came by to check on her. What the hell are you doing peeking in the windows of her car?”
“I was supposed to meet her,” the man said, frowning. “We had an appointment for two o’clock. We even spoke on the phone earlier, confirming it. She didn’t show and wasn’t answering her phone, so I came here. It’s not like her to miss an appointment like that.”
“Shit,” Tyler muttered, glancing around. “I haven’t been able to get ahold of her either.”
“Well, her car’s here, so that’s something. Maybe she just got tied up with something in the office.”
“I don’t like it,” Tyler said, turning and striding toward the front door. The photographer hurried along behind him, and then Tyler was yanking the glass door open and storming inside. The young receptionist looked up in surprise, and Tyler halted at her desk. “Where’s Melissa?” he asked bluntly. “She missed an appointment and isn’t returning any calls.”
The receptionist peered around him, glancing out the window. “I assumed she was here,” she said, looking bewildered. “That’s her car out front.”
“Go check her office,” Tyler commanded. “Check the ladies’ room. No one has seen or heard from her in several hours.”
“Right, of course,” the receptionist said, standing up and hurrying off.
“It’s not like her to miss an appointment,” the photographer said again. “She’s never late either. Maybe she’s sick or there was some sort of emergency.”
“Yeah, she gave me hell for being late the other day,” Tyler muttered. “What could’ve happened to her?” He glanced out the window, his gaze sweeping the lot. There had to be security cameras around with all the local businesses. Some cars might even have dash cams. If someone was driving by, they might’ve seen something.
But what?
People didn’t just disappear out of thin air. Had she been showing a home? No, probably not since her vehicle was here. But what if she went with someone?
Tyler leaned over the desk of the receptionist, flipping through the papers stacked there. What he expected to find, he didn’t know. Each realtor probably kept their own schedule and showed homes as they came on the market. As their clients showed interest.
They set up appointments and kept their own schedule.
There wasn’t some master schedule that listed everything.
“I don’t see her anywhere,” the receptionist said, walking back. “I’ve checked the conference rooms, break room, bathroom.... I assume you’ve tried calling her?”
“Hell yes,” Tyler said, clenching his fist in frustration. “Calling, texting. I drove over here from Quantico. What time did she get in this morning?”
“She was expected around eleven. I can check with IT and see if she logged into her computer. Or we can try calling her house, but her car’s still here....”
“No, I think she did arrive around eleven,” the photographer said. “That’s when I called her. She was just arriving at the office, and we confirmed our appointment for this afternoon.”
Tyler nodded, glancing around. “So we’ll see when she logged in. Obviously she didn’t leave in her own vehicle. But if she was showing properties, she could’ve come in and left with someone else. Maybe she pulled up a property listing or something. We can go check there.”
The receptionist glanced down at her papers. “I don’t have a record of that. If she came in, she would’ve notified me. At least gotten a copy of a driver’s license for a new client. And if she already had something scheduled first thing, I don’t know why she’d come here first.”
“Fuck,” Tyler muttered. “I’m going to look around outside.”
He pushed open the front door and walked back into the parking lot, frowning at the snow flurries. Damn wonderful. Yesterday the weather was beautiful, and today it was full on winter again. At least they weren’t expecting a major storm or some shit like that.
He looked around the lot again, his gaze tracking over the few vehicles, before turning back toward the real estate office. He glanced down the sidewalk, his chest clenching as he saw a spilled cup of coffee on the ground a few storefronts down.
Jogging down the sidewalk, his heart stopped as he spotted Melissa’s crushed cell phone beside it. Someone had thrown her coffee to the ground and stomped on the screen of her phone, cracking it. Rendering it useless.
Someone had taken her.
Grabbed her things and snatched her. Right from the parking light. Right in the middle of the day.
“God
damn it!” he shouted as the photographer and receptionist came running out the front door.
Tyler pulled out his phone, dialing 911 as his heart pounded. He clutched his phone so hard it dug into the skin of his hand as the operator answered the call.
“911, what’s your emergency?” a female voice asked.
“I need to report a kidnapping.”
Chapter 16
Tyler paced back and forth in Jason’s living room, agitated. He clenched his fists, his blood boiling as his mind raced through a million possible scenarios. A million different ways Melissa could be hurt. A million different places she could be.
He grabbed his phone from his pocket, staring at the blank screen.
Willing for it to ring. For Melissa to text him, saying this had all been a big misunderstanding.
Impossible since they’d found her crushed phone, but hell.
How could so many hours have gone by with no new information?
Why hadn’t the police found her yet?
It didn’t seem possible.
Not her missing, not the fact that they had no idea where she was. None of it.
Amy sat on the sofa, sobbing, with Jason trying to comfort her as the other men from base huddled together and made calls.
“Call me back as soon as you know anything,” Braden angrily said into his cell phone, slamming it down on the coffee table in frustration. “The damn police won’t tell me anything,” he muttered. “No updates, no possibilities about her location, nothing.”
“Me either,” Tyler muttered. “And every minute that’s she gone is another minute that someone could be harming her. Hurting her. Taking her farther away from us. Every minute matters, and they won’t tell us a God damn thing!”
“How can she be gone?” Amy wailed. “This doesn’t make any sense. She’s always so careful! She’s been in real estate forever, and she’s always careful. Always.” She sniffled again, Jason grabbing her some more tissues from the coffee table.
“She let her guard down,” Tyler said, his gut clenching. “She was happy about her sister, up early this morning from the sounds of it. And when she got to work, she must’ve thought she was meeting with an actual client.”
“But why would she go off with someone like that? That video shows a man walking up to her in front of her real estate office, and then she just leaves with him! And we have no idea what happened!”
Tyler nodded, feeling bile churn in his stomach.
The police had showed them a surveillance video, asking if any of them could identify the man she was last seen with. By all accounts, he’d never been there before. No one recognized him. No one knew him. None of his information was on file.
Which meant that Melissa thought it was someone she could trust.
Did she think he was someone else? Had he lied and made up some story?
Fucking hell.
“We don’t know,” Jason said in a low voice. “Maybe she thought she knew him. Or he could’ve lied and told her anything. It looks like she left with him willingly.”
“Or started to,” Amy said bitterly. “We don’t know what happened when they went offscreen.”
“The police are looking for additional surveillance footage,” Tyler said. “There could always be other witnesses. Hell, if everything weren’t closed, I’d be down there right now asking people what they saw.”
Liam looked up from his laptop. “It seemed like it took them a damn long time to show us the surveillance footage. What they hell were they doing all afternoon?”
“They might’ve been reviewing it themselves,” Jason said. “Seeing if they could get a hit off of facial recognition or something.”
“Did they ever release the description of the suspect in the other attempted kidnapping from the other day?”
“I’ll look it up and see,” Liam said, typing quickly on his laptop.
“I don’t think so,” Braden said. “Which makes me wonder if this is the same guy. If they know who it is, maybe they’re closing in on him. Maybe they don’t want it all over the news.”
“Damn it,” Tyler said, punching his fist into his open hand. “I hate just sitting here doing nothing. Melissa could be hurt. Scared out of her mind. Just sitting back and doing nothing is killing me.”
“The police are trained for this,” Jason said. “Maybe we’re Marines trained in war, but we’re not used to sweeping scenes of kidnappings.”
“Shit,” Tyler muttered.
“I called her sister,” Amy said, wiping away her tears. “I felt awful doing so—she just found out her fiancé was alive. And now her sister’s been kidnapped? I couldn’t just not tell her though.”
“It’s a fucked-up world,” Tyler muttered.
“Cool it,” Jason chastised him.
“It’s fine,” Amy said. “He has every right to be upset. Melissa is missing! My God, we have no idea where she is or if she’ll be okay. I just saw her last night, but what if I never see her again?” Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks, and Jason pulled her close.
“So what the hell are we supposed to do all night?” Tyler asked, frustration surging through him. He was a man of action. Not someone used to sitting around, waiting for updates.
“We wait,” Jason said, shooting him a look. “We stay here until we get word. That’s the best thing we can do for her right now.”
Chapter 17
Melissa groaned as she opened her eyes, blinking in the darkness. Her wrists and ankles were tightly bound, and she was curled up in a cramped space. The trunk of a car, she realized as she felt the car she was riding in lurch.
Oh God, they were driving somewhere.
Waves of nausea rolled over her, threatening to make her sick all over the trunk.
Snippets of memory came rushing back.
The man.
The parking lot.
Offering to show him the house.
She’d turned to get her keys from her bag, and he’d grabbed her. The polite-looking middle aged guy, dressed in business clothes, not some scruffy loner. Not a big guy covered in tattoos who stood out anywhere he went.
This guy had looked...harmless. Normal. He’d said he was there to see Mary, another one of the realtors.
And then the second she’d let her guard down, he’d grabbed her.
She wracked her brain trying to think if anyone else had been around. If other cars had been in the lot. If other customers had been in the shops nearby.
Someone had to have seen something, right? And if not, there were surveillance cameras there. Traffic cams. Something, anything, that would show this guy driving into the parking lot.
That would show her SUV arrive and never leave.
But what if he’d taken her car? He could’ve been working with someone. Could’ve thrown her in his own trunk and then moved her vehicle. This man could’ve driven her SUV off to God knows where, and no one would have been the wiser.
What if no one even realized that she was missing?
Tears pooled in her eyes as her muscles cramped. Her wrists hurt from how tightly they’d been bound, but at least they were in front of her. If her arms had been behind her back, she’d really have felt helpless.
Her stomach churned as the car turned a corner, and she squeezed her eyes shut, taking a few deep breaths.
Her sister had probably tried to call her back to give her updates about Brody. She might realize something was wrong. And she’d never returned Tyler’s text last night. Sure he’d been fantasizing about their afternoon together, but he had asked when he could see her again.
And she’d been so confused about the whole situation she hadn’t even responded. Just left that text there on her phone, waiting, while she’d continued her night out with her friends. He’d been with the guys, too, from what Amy had said.
Oh God.
What if she never saw him again either?
What if this man attacked her when they arrived wherever they were going—raped her? Killed her?
She gasped as tears began to roll down her cheeks. Blinking away the dampness, she took a shuddering breath. Willed herself to calm down.
Had they been driving all this time?
Should she scream? Or was it better not to let him know that she was awake?
She listened, trying to hear the sounds of traffic around them. To hear voices. People. Anything.
They could be anywhere by now.
Shoot, maybe she wasn’t even with the man who’d grabbed her. He could’ve been working with anyone.
The car slowed slightly, and she realized she could see the brake lights from inside the trunk if she twisted her head. One little light was all that stood between her and the rest of the world.
Weren’t there emergency releases on the insides of trunks?
If she could twist and turn around, maybe she could move enough to release it. Lift up her arms and grab it or nudge it somehow. Why hadn’t she ever looked in her own trunk before? Sure, it was probably different in an SUV, but wasn’t that something she should pay attention to?
Throwing her body to one side, she smacked her head against the back of the vehicle. With a lot of wiggling and frustration, she finally managed to turn herself so that she was facing the back of the vehicle. She lifted her bound wrists, fumbling in the darkness.
A car honked behind them, and as the car she was in pulled forward again, she realized this was her chance. Someone was around. Someone would see her.
Kicking as hard as she could at the brake lights, she screamed.
She grabbed onto something with numb hands and tried to open the trunk. Tried to free herself.
Kicking harder and harder, she finally kicked out the entire brake light. The car behind them honked again and again. A siren sounded from nearby, and she kept kicking and fumbling in the darkness, sobbing.
The car she was in sped up and swerved, and she screamed as she was thrown around the back of the trunk. They suddenly swerved off the road, and as her head hit the top of the trunk, everything faded to blackness.
Her Sinful Marine Page 11
