M.D. Most Wanted

by Marie Ferrarella

Try as he might to crowd his head with thoughts that had nothing to do with London, all his thoughts had something to do with London.

  He’d never placed himself on the line before and so had never suffered rejection before. He couldn’t say he cared for it much.

  Sitting at the desk at the fifth-floor nurses’ station, Reese closed the folder on the patient being released today. His cell phone rang and he welcomed the diversion.

  “This is Dr. Bendenetti.”

  “I still get a thrill hearing you say that.”

  He recognized his mother’s voice and wondered what she was doing calling him here. His mother never called the hospital, never called his cell. He felt an odd premonition.

  “Reese, I’m sorry to call you on your cell phone, but do you know where London is? I’m worried about her.”

  That made two of them, but for entirely different reasons, Reese thought. He had no idea where London was. He hadn’t seen her since she’d turned down his proposal. Initially he’d thought of going back, but to what end? To yell at her? To try to coax her into changing her mind? Neither seemed the right way to go. So he remained away, working. It was what he was good at. Relationships obviously weren’t.

  “No, Mother, I don’t know where London is.” He told himself to drop it there, that anything concerning London was no longer his affair. For all he knew, she was snubbing his mother. Having turned down the son, she might not want to have anything to do with the mother. It seemed like a fair guess. But something prompted him to ask, “Why?”

  “Well, I stopped by on the way to Hayley’s House to pick her up the way we’d agreed, but she’s not answering the door. It’s not like her to stand me up.”

  How could his mother possibly know what was or wasn’t like London? Granted she was pretty good at sizing people up, but she hadn’t known the other woman for that long.

  How about you? Certainly didn’t take you long to propose, did it? an inner voice taunted him. “Are you sure you got the day right?”

  “Of course I got the day right,” Rachel replied patiently. “I never forget anything, you know that.”

  Yes, he knew that. His mother had a memory like a steel trap. She always had. “Maybe she just forgot.” But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t true.

  It was as if his mother could read his thoughts. There’d been a time, when he was young, when he’d been convinced of it. “That isn’t like her, either.”

  No, he thought, his mother was right. That wasn’t like London. And it really wasn’t like London to take anything out on his mother that might have happened between them. He was just looking for excuses, but in truth, there weren’t any.

  “Did you see any of her bodyguards around?” Maybe whoever was on duty had just gone shopping with London. Or maybe, the thought suddenly occurred to him, London had been in another accident.

  “Not unless they’re disguised as potted plants or paintings.” Rachel’s voice grew serious. “Reese, I’m worried. London didn’t seem to be concerned about whoever was sending her those notes, but I am. This is a very strange world…”

  So she’d shared that with his mother had she? That meant that London was more concerned about the notes than she let on. That bothered him.

  “All right, go home, Mother.” He tried not to allow his own mounting concern to enter his voice. “I’ll see if I can find her after my shift’s over.”

  “Call me the moment you do.” He wasn’t fooling her. She knew him too well. He was as worried as she was. Rachel paused before adding, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  The trouble was, Reese thought as he flipped closed his cell phone, his mother’s bad feelings were usually right.

  This was absurd, Reese told himself as he rode up in London’s elevator some thirty minutes later. He was getting worked up over nothing. The woman could look after herself and even if she couldn’t, she had a tag team of bodyguards who could. Nothing had happened to her, she’d just forgotten an appointment. Lots of people forget appointments.

  Still, he had seen the rose on her pillow that evening, had seen how pale London had grown when she’d discovered it.

  What if…?

  Determined not to let his thoughts go there, Reese got out of the elevator and went to her apartment. He rang the doorbell, but no one answered. Not that time nor the ten times that followed in quick succession.

  There was no one home.

  But there should have been. He’d asked the doorman before coming up if the man had seen London today. The answer had been a firm no. When he’d pressed, the doorman had informed him that he had been on duty from ten this morning until now, and in that time he had not seen her in the building, much less walking out of the building.

  Still, the man had to take a break sometime. Maybe London had left then.

  Damn it, he was letting this all get to him. There could be a hundred explanations.

  He kept coming back to one.

  Since she obviously wasn’t answering her regular phone, he took out his cell phone and called hers.

  There was a moment’s delayed reaction before he realized that the ring inside his cell phone was being echoed from within the apartment. Her cell phone was in there.

  The knot in Reese’s stomach tightened a little more. London was never without her phone. She’d told him she felt naked without it. Either she was inside and not answering for some reason, or—

  Reese struggled to curb his initial instinct and not run down the fifteen flights of stairs to the ground floor. Instead he forced himself to take the elevator down. Bursting out through metal doors that were barely parted, he quickly hurried over to the doorman.

  “I want you to let me into London Merriweather’s apartment.”

  The other man drew himself up to his full five foot eight. He figured the several inches he lacked were made up for by the uniform he wore. “Hey, look, mister—”

  Reese didn’t have time for an argument. He said the first thing that came to his mind. It was either that, or grab the man by his lapels and slam him against the opposite wall.

  “I’m her doctor and I think there might be a medical emergency.” Reese already had his wallet out and flipped it open to show the doorman his hospital identification. “There’s no answer from inside the apartment, but I heard her cell phone ringing. She is never without her cell phone,” he emphasized as the doorman began to mount a protest.

  Faced with the look in Reese’s eyes, the doorman had no recourse but to back down.

  “Okay, sure.” He swallowed nervously as he went to the front desk and unlocked the drawer where all the keys were kept. “But you’re taking full responsibility for this.”

  Reese was already shifting impatiently on his feet, ready to take off. “I’ll sign in blood if you want, just get up there.”

  The apartment was empty.

  There was no response when he called her name, nothing but the faint echo of his own voice.

  “Looks like she’s not here,” the doorman volunteered timidly. He made no move to leave his post right outside her doorway.

  But Reese wasn’t so sure. He raised his hand in silent dismissal as he went to look through the rest of the apartment.

  London wasn’t in any of the other rooms.

  Puzzled, worried and annoyed with himself at the same time, Reese made his way back to the front door. As he reentered the living room, something crunched beneath his shoe.

  Looking down, he saw that it was a piece of a vase. He recognized it as the one he’d almost knocked over that first night he’d made love to her in her apartment. Where was the rest of it? Had it fallen? Or was there some kind of a struggle here?

  Was Wallace out looking for her? Was that why the bodyguard wasn’t here?

  “Ready?” the doorman asked nervously. He kept looking over his shoulder, worried that the manager might be coming up, or that someone else on the floor might see him and make a report to the manager. He couldn’t afford to be let go. “You know, t
his could mean my job if—”

  But Reese wasn’t ready to leave just yet. He really didn’t even know why, but he suddenly felt an urgent need to find the rest of the vase.

  “Wait.”

  Leaving the doorman, Reese hurried into the kitchen and looked inside the lower cabinet where London stored her wastebasket. The pieces of the vase were inside, neatly thrown away. He took the wastebasket out. Something red caught his eye, and he lifted out a piece.

  There was blood on the long jagged edge.

  Hers? Had she cut herself picking up the pieces? Or was something else going on?

  Had the vase been thrown at someone coming at her?

  His heart froze.

  “Hey, Doc, you coming?” the doorman called out to him.

  He put the basket away beneath the cabinet and crossed to the front door again. The doorman quickly locked up and was at the elevator bank in record time, pressing for the down button.

  “Are you sure you didn’t see London leave?” Reese asked just as the car arrived.

  The doorman was the first in. He pressed for the first floor, relieved the ordeal was over. “I already told you, I was at the front entrance all day.”

  Front entrance. “Is there a back entrance?” Reese asked quickly.

  The question clearly threw the other man. “Well, yeah, but that’s for the delivery people. Ms. London wouldn’t take that.” He made it sound tantamount to her slumming.

  “Not of her own free will,” Reese said, more to himself than to the man with him. He dug into his pocket and gave the doorman a twenty. They’d reached the ground floor and the lobby. “Do you know where her bodyguard lives?”

  The doorman thought for a moment. “Don’t know about the other two, but if you mean Wallace, yeah, I know where he lives. He’s got an apartment over on Grand Avenue in Santa Ana. One of the older buildings. Told me he was saving up to move down to El Toro.”

  With the kind of money Reese figured the ambassador was paying Grant, the bodyguard could easily have moved to a more upscale area. “What’s the address?”

  The doorman waited until another twenty appeared to keep the first bill company before he rattled off Wallace’s address.

  Wallace wasn’t at his apartment.

  Feeling desperate, Reese knocked again, then tried the doorknob. Something sticky met his touch. When he examined his hand, there was blood on it. Fresh blood.

  He thought of the vase.

  The sick feeling in his stomach grew. What was going on here?

  Like a man possessed, he ran down the narrow staircase to the first floor, the metal stairs echoing each step he took.

  Reese used the same story on the superintendent that he had on the doorman in London’s building. And the same bribe.

  The superintendent, a small, shapeless man with two days’ gray-and-white growth unevenly sprouting on his face used his spare key to let Reese into Wallace’s apartment. Unlike the doorman he had no compunction about coming inside with him. He liked to look, to snoop, whenever possible. A man needed to know about the people he rented out to. That was what the building owner paid him for.

  This time the superintendent got more than his money’s worth.

  The old man’s jaw dropped as he walked over to a mural, drawn like a moth to a flame.

  “Wow, he must really have the hots for that woman,” the older man marveled, moving closer to take in as much as he could without putting on his glasses. The wall was crammed with photographs and news clippings about London. Curious, he turned to Reese. “She anybody?” he wanted to know, then pressed, “You know her?”

  Reese felt as if he’d just been gut shot.

  The photographs all collided into one another, a haphazard collage. There were some pictures that had obviously been taken several years ago, but most were recent.

  His eyes honed in on a photograph that had to have been taken within the past few weeks. It was the evening he had taken her to Malone’s. He could tell by the dress she was wearing.

  His head had been cut out.

  “Yes,” he said quietly to the superintendent, “I know her.”

  The man cackled, shaking his head. “Wish I did.” He looked around, disappointed that the other walls were not similarly decorated. “Wonder if he’s got any more pictures or stuff in that storage room he’s always so secretive about.”

  The half-muttered question sent up a red flag. Reese all but grabbed the other man by the shirt. Adrenaline began to pump madly through his veins. “What storage room?”

  The man jerked a thumb down, indicating a spot below his feet. “The one in the basement.”

  “There’s a basement?” As far as he knew, the homes and apartment complexes in Southern California didn’t have basements.

  “This is an old building,” the superintendent reminded him. “Different code then. Lucky thing for some of the tenants. They pay extra to have it. I told Grant I needed a key to the place, but he said no, that there was this sensitive equipment there and he didn’t want anyone fooling with it.” The man snorted indignantly. “Like I’d fool with—”

  Reese didn’t have time to listen to the other man rave. “Take me to it.”

  But he remained where he was, shaking his head. “Won’t do any good. I told you, I ain’t got a key, and he keeps it padlocked. Doesn’t trust nobody.”

  There’s a good reason for that, Reese thought. The man was a monster of a magnitude that far transcended any physical flaws. “Do you have bull cutters?”

  The superintendent knew where he was heading with this. He led the way back into his apartment and went into his tool chest, a massive red affair with multiple drawers and crannies mounted on wheels.

  The bull cutters were inside the cabinet. He took the set out gingerly. “But that’s against the law,” he protested.

  As if the man cared. “We want the law,” Reese told him. “Once we’re down there, I want you to point out which storage room is Grant’s and then go call the police—911,” he emphasized.

  “Why?” The man’s deep-set, mud-colored eyes opened up wide. “What’ll I tell them?”

  That was a no-brainer. Opening the door to the stairwell, Reese led the way down to the basement. “Tell them to get down here as fast as they can. Tell them a woman’s life is in danger.”

  The superintendent was right behind him. They stopped as they came to the landing. “What woman?”

  He didn’t have time to write out a cue card for the man. Every second he was here talking to him might be a second that was crucial in saving London’s life. He grabbed the bull cutters the superintendent was still holding.

  “Which one is it?” Unnerved, the unshaven man pointed to the third door from the wall. The largest one. Reese took off. “Just get them here,” he tossed over his shoulder as he ran. “Fast.”

  Reese approached the storage room door. His heart was in his throat.

  Logically, he should wait for the police. But logic didn’t have anything to do with the situation right now.

  Why hadn’t he seen it?

  London was being stalked by her own bodyguard, by the very man who’d been paid to look after her. That was why he’d managed to get into the apartment without setting off any of the alarms. He’d been the one to install the security system in the first place.

  All the while he’d been entrusted with keeping her safe, he’d been a breath away from abducting her. How sick was that?

  As he brought down the bull cutters on the padlock, Reese prayed that he’d find London here. Alive. If she wasn’t here, he hadn’t a clue where to start looking for her.

  The padlock fell to the floor.

  Reese threw open the door. The enclosure looked like a tiny model home, all stuffed into an eight-by-ten area. There was a bed, table and chairs and a sofa arranged before a small television set.

  All the comforts of home, Reese thought sarcastically.

  A musty smell assaulted his nose. There was a single bulb hanging overhead,
illuminating the tiny, pseudo-living space. It was just dim enough for him to need a moment to get his bearings.

  Just long enough to hear the desperate, almost inhuman sound.

  And then he saw her.

  London.

  She was bound hand and foot and tied to a chair over in one corner. Her mouth had been sealed shut with duct tape.

  She was wearing a wedding dress. A veil drooped over her left eye.

  “Oh, my God.” His heart pounding, Reese dropped the bull cutters, raced over to London and pulled off the tape.

  Pain shot through her, going from her face to the top of her head. It was worth it just to be free of the damned tape. London gulped in air as Reese worked to free her of the ropes.

  “It’s him. It’s Wallace,” she cried, fighting back hysteria and the dizzying realization that she’d been rescued. “He’s the one who’s been sending the poems, the flowers, everything. He said he had to do something before someone like you took me away from him.”

  Reese untied the rope from around her ankles. Freeing her, he pulled London to her feet. He wanted to hold her, to comfort her, but they had to get away before Grant returned. “Where is he now?”

  She almost cried at that. The whole thing had been too horrible to describe coherently.

  The words almost refused to emerge. “He went out to get us our wedding supper.”

  She’d always considered herself strong, but London struggled to keep from shuddering. She’d trusted this man, allowed him into her home, into her life, for the past eighteen months. And all the while he’d been fantasizing about her, planning this. Bit by bit.

  How could she ever trust anyone again?

  “He said we could marry each other, that all we needed to do was say the words and then he’d be my husband and would always take care of me.”

  Reese saw the tears in her eyes. For now, he made no mention of them. “When did he leave?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Time had become a blur. “Ten, fifteen minutes, maybe longer. I didn’t have any way of telling.”

  “That’s all right,” he assured her, needing her to remain as calm as she could. He didn’t want her to fall apart now. “The police are on their way.” Reese saw her wobble. “Can you walk?”