Innocent Prey (A Brown and de Luca Novel)

by Maggie Shayne

  “Oh. Well, not exactly. She’s gotta look young, but hooker young.”

  “Hooker young,” I repeated, trying to visualize what that meant so I could costume myself appropriately when I took Cantone’s place. “So you’re just gonna... What? Drop her off on the corner and let her stand there all alone?”

  “She won’t be all alone. We’ll be parked nearby. And we’ll follow when they pick her up.”

  “So she’ll be...wearing a wire?” I had no idea if that was actually the correct term for it, or whether all the cop shows had it wrong.

  “No, they might find a wire, and that could get her dead. But she is gonna plant a GPS on the vehicle as backup.”

  I nodded. “How does she do that? Plant a GPS?”

  “It’s magnetized. All she’s gotta do is slap it onto the vehicle someplace it won’t be seen right away.”

  “Right. As they grab her.”

  “Or right before. They don’t know that she knows she’s about to be abducted. She’s gonna lean over any cars that stop and proposition ’em like any hard-working street girl would do.”

  “What if the guy’s a real john and not the kidnapper?”

  “She pretends to change her mind or gets a phone call or something, and backs out of the deal. If he lets her walk away, he’s a regular perv looking to get his rocks off. If he grabs her, he’s our boy.”

  “Or girl,” I said. “That nurse... She was a woman.”

  He looked at me sharply. “That couldn’t really be verified from the footage. It was grainy, out of focus. Could’ve been a guy in drag.”

  “If it had been a guy in drag, I think I’d have picked up on that. It’s unusual enough that it would’ve tripped my triggers.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “No. So when he grabs her? Then what? You just let him?”

  “Well, yeah. We’re close. We follow. But yeah, we have to let him take her to wherever they’re going so we can—” He stopped there, tipped his head a little bit. “You’re awfully interested in all this.”

  “Well, of course I am.” I lowered my eyes, using my milk shake as an excuse. After a long pull, I said, “I’m an official police consultant. It’s my case.”

  That made him smile, just as I’d intended. He wanted me to get excited about sleuthing. Or consulting. Or whatever it was I was doing. It was his passion, after all, solving crimes, protecting the innocent, tracking down the guilty. Rescuing damsels.

  But it wasn’t mine.

  And I wasn’t warming to it as I had led him to believe just now. In fact, the more I worked around crime and death and darkness, the better I liked making my living writing happy-happy, joy-joy books from the peaceful, safe haven of my own home.

  * * *

  Several hours later I was knocking at Vanessa Cantone’s hotel room door with two cups of Dunkin’ in a tray with a bag in between them. The DD approach was kind of becoming my all-purpose solution to any problem. I was supposed to be with the kids. But I’d pawned Josh, Jeremy and Myrtle off on my sister, Sandra. Misty had been delighted by the excuse to hang with Jeremy again so soon, and Sandra didn’t mind too much. She liked Jere. Had even told me she wished he had a twin, because the boys Christy had been bringing home lately were trouble with a capital T.

  When Cantone opened her door and peeked out at me, she lifted her brows, looked past me—for Mason, I knew—and then at me again. “What are you up to, de Luca?”

  “Peace offering?”

  “I didn’t know we were at war.”

  “Even better. And since you liked the coffee so much, I brought you a pound.” I held up the bag. “And a couple of doughnuts for good measure.”

  She pursed her lips, and I knew that she knew better, but she opened the door anyway. I walked in, looked around. No sign of anyone but her. That was gonna make this a whole lot easier. I set the coffee on the table in the corner of her hotel room. She’d made up her bed. There was an empty Walmart bag on it, with price tags and stickers on top of it and the clothes that went with them laid out nearby. A pair of skinny jeans, capri length. A super low-cut green cami, a push-up bra and a torn-up T-shirt that was either designed that way or bought secondhand from an extra in a zombie flick. I was betting on the latter. There was also a framed photo on the nightstand. A woman who wasn’t Vanessa, pretty and blonde and very pregnant, and standing beside her, the little girl I’d heard on the phone. I knew it without asking. Lilly.

  “She looks just like I thought,” I said. “Is that your sister?”

  “That’s my partner.”

  I sent her a surprised look before I could cover it, and she muttered, “Some psychic.”

  “You got that right.” I looked at the photo again and refrained from asking, “You’re having another baby?” because I didn’t want to hear “No, she swallowed a hot air balloon.”

  Then I started to laugh and shook my head. “Damn,” I told her. “I was afraid you were gonna try to get into Mason’s pants. ‘Some psychic’ is right.”

  “I read somewhere that negative, petty emotions block a person’s natural gifts,” she said, grinning now, relaxing a little.

  “That sounds like something I would say,” I told her, wiping my eyes.

  “You did. I’ve been reading you on my phone. Trying to figure you out.”

  “Welcome to the club.” I picked up my cup, held it up to her. She picked up hers, tapped it against the rim of mine.

  “Did you come to try to warn me not to go tonight?”

  “Would it do any good?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m not gonna try. But I figured I could still tell you anything I’ve seen that might help.”

  “Seen? You mean...?” She tapped her forehead with a short, clean nail. “Seen?”

  I nodded. “There are three girls. Stephanie and Lexus Carmichael and one I’m pretty sure is Sissy Dunham. I looked at the photos of all the missing girls, and she looks most like the one I...saw.” I had snapped pics of the file photos of Lexus and Sissy with my phone, and I showed them to her even though I knew she’d seen them before. Hell, I needed some kind of legitimate excuse to be here. “And there are two men. One just lurks out of sight, but I know he’s there. I feel him. That’s probably Jake Kravitz. And then there’s the one the girls call the Asshole, who seems to be doing most of the hands-on work from behind a ski mask. He’s white. Average build. You know, not lean and toned, but not fat, either. Five-ten or so. Always has a gun on him, and he’s real careful not to give the girls access to it. He doesn’t get too close to them.”

  She was with me, intense and interested. She sipped her coffee and sat down on the bed opposite me. “This is good intel, if it’s accurate.”

  “And harmless if it’s not.”

  She reached for a little notepad by the phone, but I didn’t want her hands occupied, so I was ready for that. I tugged a folded piece of paper from my pocket, showed her, but didn’t give it to her. “I wrote it all down for you.”

  She set her pen back down. “You get anything about where they are?”

  “It’s underground. But not a cellar or basement. There’s no house over it. It’s kind of...round. I know that sounds unlikely, but...” I shrugged. “It’s in my note there.” Then I drank my coffee. Subliminally triggering her to drink hers. Half-gone. It would be enough.

  “That’s all I’ve got.”

  “If any of this pans out, I’ll pass out from shock, de Luca.”

  She was going to pass out, all right. But not from shock. “Well, you know, some of it probably will and some won’t. It’s hit-and-miss with this stuff.”

  She sighed, looked at her watch. “I gotta finish getting ready for this thing. I need to leave in...”

  “About an hour. You want to ride over there together?”

  She looked surprised that I had asked. “Sure. I’ve gotta hit the shower, though.” She slugged down most of the remaining coffee in a single gulp.

  “Go ahead. I’ll wait in
the lobby.” I got up to go.

  “You can wait here if you want.” She opened the bathroom door and looked back at me, like she was more curious than before about what the hell I was doing here. Then she seemed to change her mind, went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  “Some FBI agent,” I muttered.

  As soon as I heard the water turn on, I went through the clothes she’d been wearing earlier in the day. I found her rental car key in her pocket and threw it into my purse. I didn’t think she’d make it even as far as her hotel room door with the amount of Ativan I’d put in her coffee, but better safe than sorry. Besides, if Mason saw my car pulling up when I was supposed to be home with the boys, he’d be on to me.

  The pills had been Amy’s, prescribed right after her abduction last Thanksgiving to help with the post-traumatic stress. She’d brought them with her to house-sit for me in February, and then she’d left them in my medicine cabinet. I guess she hadn’t needed them again. I’d forgotten all about them until rummaging for something I could use to knock out Cantone, sure I’d find nothing and have to settle for Benadryl or just sabotaging her car. That little brown bottle had appeared like an answer to a prayer.

  “Wish and it is granted,” I said softly. I’d done a little internet research to figure out how much to use. Risking my life to save hers wouldn’t be worth a lot if I killed her in the process. Besides, I only needed her out for an hour or so.

  I rummaged through her purse, found the little electronic box she was supposed to attach to the bad guys’ vehicle and took her cell phone, too. Just for good measure, I unplugged the landlines and took the cords. She would never know what had happened until it was too late.

  Then I changed into the clothes that were laid out on the bed. The jeans were skintight but otherwise comfy. The bra gave me cleavage I never knew I had, and the torn-up T-shirt hung strategically off one shoulder and had what looked like claw marks across the breast area to reveal said cleavage. Subtle. Not.

  I used the Walmart bag to carry my own clothes and grabbed one of the doughnuts for the road. I heard the shower turn off, a little movement in the bathroom, and then it got really quiet in there, so I opened the door to take a quick peek.

  Cantone was wrapped in a towel, sitting on the floor, sound asleep. I took pity and shoved a pillow between her head and the wall, and draped a blanket over her.

  On my way out of the room, I hung the Do Not Disturb sign on her door.

  * * *

  About thirty minutes later I arrived. I’d driven Agent Cantone’s rental car. My brown hair was pulled around to one side, and my face was hidden beneath the low brim of a funky painter’s cap with a sequined peace sign on the front. I stayed out of the light, and pretended to study my fingernails as I waited for kidnappers to come and abduct me.

  And I was shaking like a stray dog in a thunderstorm. How the hell had I reached the conclusion that this was the only solution? I didn’t fucking know. I knew that Vanessa Cantone’s little girl needed her mommy. Both of her mommies. Not to mention they had a baby on the way. And I’d seen Vanessa die. I’d seen it. I was never wrong.

  Well, almost never. And not about things like that.

  I’d made the right call. I’d seen what I’d seen for a reason, and here it was, handed to me on a silver platter. A reason. So that I could save the life of Vanessa Cantone. Mother and, who the hell knew, maybe soon-to-be Binghamton chief of police. And I wasn’t risking my life, because I hadn’t seen me getting killed in this thing.

  Then again, I hadn’t seen me not getting killed, either. The way I figured it, you couldn’t ask for things, demand things, have them handed to you and then refuse to take them. Could you? I’d asked for there to be a reason for this. I’d asked to understand why me? And here were my answers, being handed to me.

  * * *

  Mason was inside the van with Rosie and Chief Sub, watching the GPS monitor, when Vanessa’s car pulled over a block away.

  “Here she is,” Rosie said. “And here she comes.”

  Vanessa’s car door opened and she got out, locked it and then started walking up the sidewalk. She didn’t wobble in the heels at all the way he’d expected her to.

  After five steps he got a real good notion why.

  “That’s not Cantone,” he said.

  The other two men looked at him. He watched her move, the sway of her hips, the length of her stride, the swing of her arms, the bounce of her hair. He knew them all. Intimately. “That’s Rachel.”

  “What?” The chief was looking at him like he was crazy. “Rosie, call Cantone.”

  Mason started to get up, but Chief Sub clapped him on the shoulder. “Just wait. Rosie?”

  “It’s ringing.” He held out the phone he’d used to dial Cantone’s number and hit the speaker button.

  Mason watched the woman he knew better than any other stop walking and fumble inside the little purse on the long chain. She brought the phone to her ear. “Yeah?”

  Mason snatched the phone from Rosie and yelled into it, “Rachel, what the hell are you doing?”

  “I’ll explain later. Someone’s coming.” She clicked off and headed up the road toward the corner where Carlotta was supposed to have set up shop. A pair of headlights caught her, and a van slowed down and veered toward her.

  Mason saw Rachel tapping on Vanessa’s smartphone. Then she apparently finished and shoved it down the front of her shirt just as the van came to a stop.

  She walked right up to the rolled-down window, smiling, but wisely staying in the shadows. She was a hottie, but she wasn’t gonna pass for barely eighteen on close inspection. Her hand was inside the purse, and when she pulled it out, he was sure she had the GPS.

  “I can’t let this happen,” he said. “I gotta stop this. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.” He was reaching for the door as he spoke, but then the chief said, “Too late,” and he looked.

  The van’s side door slid open. A guy jumped out and grabbed her, hurled her inside. The GPS went sailing out of her hand and hit the sidewalk, pieces flying everywhere as the van lurched into motion. The door was slammed shut, and then they sped around a corner.

  “No. Dammit, no!” Mason shouted.

  Rosie dove into the front seat. He was too big to be graceful, but he was damn fast. “Get out your keys, bro, I’ll drop you at your car. It’ll move way faster than this thing.”

  Mason got out his keys while the chief shouted into the radio. “I want triangulation on cell phones belonging to Rachel de Luca and Special Agent Vanessa Cantone. If either of them has location tracking turned on I want remote access, and I want Cantone’s supervisor on my phone twenty minutes ago. Got it?”

  Rosie hit the brakes, and Mason had the side door open and was jumping out before the police van even came to a stop. The chief closed the door from inside, and Rosie stomped on the gas.

  Mason slid behind the wheel of the Beast, twisted the key and put the car into gear, very glad that he had installed a supercharger.

  * * *

  I’d blown it. Oh, hell and damnation, I’d blown it. The GPS thingie had gone flying, and I’d heard it smash into a zillion pieces on the sidewalk when the jerk had yanked me into the van. I buried my face in my hands, pretending to be terrified and crying, cringing down into a corner on the floor. Keeping my face hidden was the top part of my plan. Okay, it was, as of right now, the only part of my plan. If one of these guys was Jake Kravitz, then he would recognize me. End of story. I needed them to lead the good guys to those captive girls before that happened.

  I knew I’d been in sight of the cops when I’d been taken, and I knew Mason and the guys were following us. Or trying to. I didn’t know how successful they’d be now that the GPS was busted to bits.

  “Shoot, this one’s barely any trouble at all,” said the guy who’d grabbed me.

  The driver didn’t speak, but I figured I’d better do something before they caught on that this was going down way too easily. So I l
unged for the side door.

  “Whoa, whoa, spoke too soon!” the guy with me said, grabbing me by the hair and hurling me back. My head cracked against the side of the van and I yelped. That part wasn’t fake.

  Then he was kneeling across the backs of my thighs, jerking my arms behind my back and tying my wrists real tight. So tight it hurt. Then he flipped me over. My hair fell across my face, and I left it that way.

  He grabbed my purse off the floor where I’d dropped it and unzipped it while I watched him from behind my hair. He took out everything I’d put in there. All the props. Dummy wallet with nothing but cash, the shit-ton of makeup, my phone.

  Shit, my phone. I’d meant to leave it in the car, but I’d been so damn nervous that I’d forgotten it. And if they started going through it, they’d know I wasn’t Carlotta Bennett, barely eighteen and a part-time hooker.

  But I still had Vanessa’s phone stuffed down the front of my blouse. I’d tucked it up underneath my right boob, and now I thanked my stars I was well-endowed enough to pull that off.

  My kidnapper didn’t even bother looking at my phone. He opened a window and tossed it out. I yelped again, and it wasn’t fake that time, either. My fucking phone!

  Then he felt me up and down, both sides, both legs, even grabbed my crotch through the jeans. Up my front, giving me a breast exam for free on the way. He didn’t feel the phone crammed between my boob and the bra’s brutal underwire. And he didn’t check underneath, just down the front, then down my back. Big smack to my ass.

  “Now you just lay there and be quiet, you understand me?”

  I nodded, thinking, The Asshole, I presume?

  Then he sat down. I stayed where I was on the floor, but I scooched up a little, resting my back against the far side of the van, my head hanging down but my eyes angled up, trying to see where we were going. I caught a couple of street signs and committed them to memory, wondering as I did why they didn’t care that I was looking out the window. Then suddenly we turned so sharply I almost fell over. The van pulled into a garage with an empty car and a door on each end, and skidded to a sharp stop that slammed my head against the seat in front of me. The driver shut off the engine and the lights. The garage door closed behind us in slow motion while I watched, praying to see the headlights of the cops who were supposed to be following us.