Gone

by Shirlee McCoy

  As if anyone could see through the thick curtains or the walls.

  She pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her forehead on the soft flannel pajama bottoms Honor had brought her. Bright orange with smiling yellow faces, they were exactly the kind of thing Ruby would have chosen.

  Her cousin would have fit in well with the Special Crimes Unit. She’d have called the chaos an adventure and the danger exciting. She’d have weathered it all with a smile on her face, because that was how Ruby did everything.

  She hadn’t just lived life. She’d enjoyed every minute, every relationship, every job. She was the person Ella had always wanted to be when she grew up—strong, confident and compassionate.

  And now, she was gone.

  “I miss you, Ruby,” she whispered, wishing she had the journal she’d given to Wren. It was the one thing that hadn’t been destroyed in the fire, the one piece of her cousin that hadn’t disappeared.

  “Ella?” Sam knocked and opened the door, stepping into the room with the easy grace she’d noticed the night he’d rescued her.

  She hadn’t known him then.

  He’d simply been a man who’d said he was there to help.

  Now, he was a man who’d saved her life, who’d believed the truth about Ruby’s death, who’d devoted himself to proving that Ruby had been murdered and to finding the person who’d killed her.

  And her heart soared when she saw him—every single time—lifting toward him the same way a flower lifted toward the sun. She could feel it happening, and she was helpless to stop it.

  She didn’t even think she wanted to.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked, dropping down beside her.

  “Great. But that’s easy to do since all I’m doing is waiting.”

  “Sometimes waiting is the hardest part,” he said.

  “Have you heard from Adam?”

  “He and Bo will be here in five minutes. Depending on what Bo says, we may send two people with him to locate your car. Three will stay here with you.”

  “Are you going to be one of the three?” she asked, and she wasn’t embarrassed by the neediness in her voice, by the way she longed to know he would be around if trouble did come.

  “Do you want me to be?”

  “Yes.” She said it simply, because it was simple.

  He asked. She told the truth.

  No hedging. No pretending. No hoping that what she said wouldn’t be used to manipulate and use her.

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” he responded, sliding his arm around her waist and pulling her into his side. Being there felt warm and comfortable and right, and she rested her head against his shoulder, feeling firm muscle and soft cotton against her cheek.

  “Do you think Ian is going to show?” she asked.

  “I think someone will. There’s no way this is just Bo trying to protect his family. He could have asked for protection for them at any time, and we’d have given it. And he could have easily brought Adam to your car without coming here.”

  “So he’s still working with The Organization?”

  “Or they’re using something to manipulate him. Like his family. Radley was right when he said that would be Bo’s vulnerability. He might be the kind of guy I prefer to avoid, but he does seem to care about his wife and his kids.”

  “How old are his children?”

  “His son is fourteen, and his daughter is seventeen.”

  “So prime age for human trafficking? The Organization probably would have noticed that.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it that way, but you’re right. His kids would be easy to sell on the black market.” He stood, pulling her up with him. “I need to call Sheriff Johnson.”

  “Do you think Bo’s kids have been kidnapped?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to ask the sheriff to look around the shipping crates. He’s had officers do triweekly patrols of the area, but I don’t know when they’ve been out last. If The Organization were going to try to hide a couple of kids, that seems like as good a place as any.”

  “I hope they’re in Portland with Bo’s in-laws. If they’re not, I hope the sheriff finds them quickly. I was terrified when I was in that crate. I hate to imagine two young kids being there.”

  “Or all the kids that came before them?” he asked, and she thought about the kids who’d been reported missing by business owners in Newcastle. She thought of how alone they must have felt and how scared. She knew how it felt to be tied up in the dark, knowing that no one would be looking for her. She knew the feeling of desperation and terror.

  “Do you think they’ll be recovered?” she asked.

  “I hope that we’ll find information on the medical clinic’s computers that will give us an idea of where they were shipped. I’m assuming a crime syndicate the size of The Organization must keep records of their successes and their failures. If we don’t find any, our only hope is that someone in The Organization will talk. Maybe give us an idea of where to start looking. One way or another, we’re not going to give up on finding them and bringing them home.” He glanced at this watch and frowned. “I need to get back downstairs. Stay here, okay?”

  “I planned on it,” she assured him.

  “No matter what, okay? Because things could get crazy, and I don’t want you to get caught in the cross fire of a gun battle.”

  “Do you think it’s going to come to that?”

  “I think I don’t want to take any chances with your life. Promise me you’ll stay in here unless one of us comes to get you?”

  She could have refused. She could think of a dozen scenarios where she might feel it necessary to escape on her own. But she was looking in his face and into his eyes. She could see his concern, and she couldn’t deny him what he’d asked.

  “I promise,” she said, and he smiled, leaning down to kiss her gently. Sweetly. A million promises in that one light and beautiful touch.

  And then he was walking away, closing the door, closing her back in with her fear and her thoughts.

  She sat down. On the floor in the middle of the room.

  Waiting.

  Only this time she prayed. For Bo and his family. For the teenagers who had been kidnapped and sold. For the Special Crimes Unit.

  For Sam.

  Because he mattered, and because she cared, and because when this was over, she really did want to see where the future would bring them.

  Downstairs, a door opened and closed.

  Voices drifted into the silence.

  Muted, but audible. Quiet and indistinct.

  Bo must have arrived.

  She could hear chairs scraping on the kitchen floor, smell fresh coffee rising through the vents.

  She wanted to go downstairs and hear the conversation, find out for herself what Bo had to say. But she’d made her promise, and she wasn’t going to break it. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, and the door opened and closed again.

  For a few minutes afterward, she could hear faint voices. She imagined Sam, Wren and Radley standing in the kitchen, discussing the case. They’d given up the comfort of their homes and the presence of their families to be in Newcastle, and she knew they were as anxious for this to be over as she was. Had their meeting with Bo gone well? Were they happy with the information they’d received from him?

  Minutes ticked by and the house grew quiet, silence settling like a thick and comfortable blanket. No chaos. No danger. No bullets whizzing by. Just those quiet voices slowly fading, the world fading with them.

  Her eyes drifted closed, and she opened them again, certain this wasn’t the end of it, that the night wouldn’t end in quiet voices and gentle sleep.

  Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty.

  She stared at the clock until her body grew heavy and her mind was numb, and then she grabbed a blanket and pillow from t
he bed, lay on the floor and stared at it more.

  Because she didn’t believe the peace any more than she should have believed Jarrod’s lies.

  This time, though, time passed, the silence continued and she slowly relaxed, drifting away on disjointed thoughts and velvety darkness and the soft, sweet sound of peace.

  * * *

  Sam expected trouble the same way he expected the sun to rise and the tide to flow. It was coming, but he didn’t have a chart to look at to figure out the time or a handy website that could help him calculate it.

  He had gut instinct, and it was saying soon.

  He paced from the kitchen into the living room and back, his gun holstered but available, his nerves alive with adrenaline. It had been nearly two hours since Bo’s visit, and there’d been no call from Adam or Wren, no indication that Bo had been telling the truth when he’d said he would lead them to Ella’s vehicle.

  Sam was certain he knew where the vehicle was.

  Bo’d offered a convincing story, explaining in detail the way he’d hot-wired the old station wagon. His description had been thorough, and Sam had been nearly convinced that he’d done the job. When he’d pulled a laptop from a duffel he’d been carrying, any doubt had disappeared.

  It was a beat-up and well-loved machine, a few flower decals stuck haphazardly to the exterior. Bo had found it in a box in the back seat of the station wagon, and he’d removed it before he’d abandoned the car.

  When he’d been asked why, he’d had no explanation, except that he hadn’t wanted Ian to have it. It had seemed too personal of an item to be lost to him or The Organization.

  Sam hadn’t believed that story, and he hadn’t been convinced that Bo was going to lead Adam and Wren to the vehicle. He’d been too vague about the location, describing trees and barns and an abandoned house that could have been in any town in the country.

  Wren hadn’t believed him, either. Sam was sure of that. She’d gone along with the charade anyway, because they wanted Bo to tip his hat and show his hand.

  The sooner the better.

  Sam hadn’t been lying when he’d told Ella that waiting was sometimes the most difficult thing to do. He liked it about as much as he liked cabbage and kale: not at all.

  “You can stop pacing anytime you want,” Honor muttered, her head bent over the laptop, her shoulders taut. He’d been working with her for a couple of years, and he’d never known her to be tense or anxious. She seemed to face every job with a mixture of confidence and enthusiasm.

  Right now, she seemed worried, a frown line marring her smooth brow, dark circles beneath her eyes.

  “Sorry.” He dropped into a seat across the table from her, watching as she typed something, waited, typed again.

  “You can stop staring anytime you want,” she muttered without looking up from her work. This was definitely not Honor-like. She didn’t gripe, didn’t snap and didn’t expect people to do things her way. She certainly had never expected anyone in the unit to make her job easier or to accommodate her idiosyncrasies. He’d seen her work her computer magic in the middle of a boardroom teeming with loud people. No way was his staring impacting her ability to work.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, and she sighed, rubbing the back of her neck and pushing away from the table.

  “They cleaned it. The files are gone. Or, at least, on the surface they seem to be. They’re still there. It’s just going to take me a lot longer to access them.”

  “We have time.”

  “We do, but what about the next kid that The Organization plans to kidnap? Does she or he?”

  “You can’t protect the next victim by accessing those computer files sooner. You know that, right?”

  “Of course I do, but I have a superhero complex, Sam. I think I can save everyone. If I work hard enough and try hard enough and put enough into it. Haven’t I mentioned that yet?” He thought she was only partially kidding, and he watched as she walked to the carafe and poured more coffee into her nearly empty cup.

  “Want some sugar with that?”

  “No. I’m taking this hit for straight caffeine. Not for flavor.” She took a sip and shuddered. “About as nasty as I thought.”

  “Sugar is a good energy boost,” he reminded her, and she shrugged, dropping back into her seat and staring at the screen again.

  “At least I know one thing for sure,” she commented.

  “What’s that?”

  “Bo’s story isn’t completely on the up-and-up. If he moved the car, found the laptop and took it with him, he also had to be the one to clean this. I don’t think he has the knowledge for that. Even if he does, why do it?”

  “Unless there was something on it that would incriminate him, he wouldn’t have had a reason.”

  “That’s my point. What could possibly be on Ruby’s computer that would incriminate him?”

  “Information about his money laundering?”

  “We already know about that.”

  “A list of the kidnapping victims? Maybe he’s more involved than he wants us to think. Or, maybe, the computer was wiped clean by someone else in The Organization.” That seemed the most likely explanation.

  “Right. That’s what I’m thinking.” She typed again, her fingers flying rapidly over the keys. She looked exhausted, her skin pale.

  “You look tired, Honor,” he said, hoping to get a reaction from her. Maybe a comment about how that was just what every woman wanted to hear.

  Instead, she shrugged.

  “It’s been a long week, and I’m starting to feel tired.”

  “Starting? You’ve been burning the candle at both ends since we arrived in town. Teaching classes and trying to access files from the clinic’s database.”

  “That’s not hard work. Not like what you and the rest of the team are doing.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She stopped typing and met his eyes, and for a moment, he saw something he’d never seen before—doubt, vulnerability, fear.

  “Because it’s true,” she finally responded. “Physically, this type of work is as about as draining as sitting on a lawn chair at the pool.”

  “It’s mentally exhausting, though,” he reminded her, and she shrugged again.

  “What is this conversation about, Sam?”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be. I can take care of myself.”

  “You’ll take care of yourself better after a good night’s sleep.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not going to get one until I figure this...” Her voice trailed off, her eyes focused on the screen. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?”

  “See this?” She tapped the screen, pointing to a long strand of numbers and symbols.

  “Yes.”

  “It looks like a tracking code of some sort. Someone from a remote location could use it to get the coordinates of the device and find it if it went missing. It’s not organic to the machine. As in—it’s not built into the system. I found it mixed in with some other files that were pretty well hidden.” She turned off the computer, frowning as she eyed the black screen.

  “What other files?”

  “One is a list of names, birth dates and dates missing.”

  “Dates missing? That’s what it says?”

  “Yes. I’d show you, but I don’t want to turn on the machine again. Not until I figure out how to remove the tracking bug.”

  “It can’t be used when the machine is off?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You don’t sound very confident.”

  “I’m not. I’ve never seen the code before, and I’ve seen a lot of code. I’ve created a lot of code.” She smoothed her hair, took another sip of coffee. “Unfortunately, I’ve had the computer running for two hours. That’s two hours someone could have used to figure o
ut our location.”

  “We’d better get Radley,” he suggested.

  “Get me for what?” he said, stepping into the room.

  Honor explained quickly, skirting over the technical aspects of what she’d found and getting right to the point. When she finished, Radley nodded and strode to the back door. “I’d better run an exterior patrol. I want to make sure the perimeter is clear. Once I’ve assessed that, we can come up with a plan for getting Ella out of here.”

  That was exactly what Sam had been thinking—get her out, get her to Boston, hide her away until this was over.

  “Am I more useful here or following you?” Honor asked, pulling her firearm and checking the chamber. Sam could feel her tension, just like he could feel his own.

  They’d known trouble could come. They just hadn’t imagined that they’d be drawing it to them, sending out a beacon and a signal to guide it on its way.

  “Stay here,” Radley said. “I’ll text if I see anything unusual.”

  He opened the back door and slipped outside, fading into the shadows so quickly Sam wouldn’t have known he was there if he hadn’t seen him go.

  “How does he do that?” Honor asked, closing the door and turning the lock.

  “What?”

  “The disappearing thing. One minute he’s there, the next he’s not. I find it disconcerting.”

  “I find it useful. He can get into or out of almost any situation without being noticed. On nights like tonight, that’s an important attribute,” he responded, crossing the room and checking the window above the sink. He knew there was no easy way for an intruder to get in, but he needed to be sure that every access point was secure. Just the way Ella had earlier.

  Ella...

  Yeah. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, about the way her eyes had widened when he’d appeared in the kitchen, the quick flash of surprise followed by a warm sweep of pleasure.

  Because she was there, and he was, and there was nothing nicer than being in a room with her.

  Those were dangerous thoughts, and he’d acknowledged that days ago. He’d also acknowledged that a little danger in his life wasn’t always a bad thing.

  If it affected his judgment, though, if it kept him from doing his job, it would be a problem.