by Sharon Sala
“I haven’t done anything to help you yet,” she said. “But I can promise you I will.”
“You’re wrong,” he said softly. “You’re here. That’s what counts.”
It came before daybreak; a fat, red, white and blue package by overnight express and East knew when he opened it that he was opening the proverbial can of worms. But what was inside was immaterial to where he was going. He’d delegated all his duties to Foster Martin the night before without a worry. Foster had shown an amazing change of character since the child’s rescue from the sea, and the fact that he’d restrained from questioning East’s decision to leave him in charge gave East a small measure of relief.
Afterward, East had gone to his apartment and packed for an indefinite leave of absence. But it was the knot in his gut and the gun in his suitcase that kept him awake most of the night. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw his son’s face. It was all he could do to wait until dawn to head for L.A. And even though he’d tossed and turned, there was one redeeming fact that had kept him just that little bit sane; the knowledge that he wasn’t facing this alone. But morning had come, and with it the packet he’d been waiting for.
Now, he tossed the file into his bag, zipped it shut, then reached for the phone. Ally answered on the first ring.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Meet you downstairs.”
They hung up without saying goodbye and headed for the door, each focused on their own agenda. East was going to what he assumed would be the scene of the crime, and Ally was going to pick it apart. Between them, they would surely find something that would give them a place to start.
It was almost noon by the time they reached L.A. Traffic was jammed on the exit that East normally used, forcing him to drive on, and he muttered beneath his breath knowing that it would take longer to backtrack to Jeff’s apartment.
“What a mess,” Ally said.
“That’s L.A.”
“When I have a home, it’s not going to be in a city,” she muttered, and cast a wary eye out the window as they drove past a man and a woman who were standing on the shoulder of the road and screaming at each other beside a stalled car.
East gave her a curious look, then returned his attention to the traffic, but it had set a picture in his mind that he couldn’t shake. Ally in a kitchen. Ally in a garden. Ally rocking babies.
He blinked. Where the hell had that last one come from? He decided to change subjects.
“What’s your favorite food?” he asked. “Besides waffles with peanut butter and jelly, that is?”
“Anything, as long as it’s not raw meat or made out of tofu, why?”
East grinned. “A woman after my own heart. And I asked because I’m starving. If I know Jeff, there will be nothing in his refrigerator but beer and a piece of week-old pizza.” His grin faded. “I was coming up next week for a visit. He wanted steak.”
Ally didn’t take her eyes off the road. “We’ll find him,” she said. “Do you want to eat now, or go straight to Jeff’s apartment?”
“Now’s good, why?”
She pointed to a sign up ahead. “How about barbeque?”
He swerved into the right-hand lane and began to slow down. Moments later, they were out of the car and following the aroma of hickory-smoked meat. Ally tripped as she started to step up the curb and East grabbed her.
“You all right?” he asked, clutching her arm as he turned her to face him.
There was concern in his eyes as he waited for her answer, and all the while Ally was trying to form the word, she couldn’t help thinking that once he’d looked at her with a different expression on his face.
“Ally?”
“Yes, of course. Just clumsy, I guess,” and quickly pulled away before she made a fool of herself all over again.
East frowned as he followed her into the restaurant. To his surprise, they were seated almost immediately and he soon forgot the moment as they sat down.
“I hope this is a sign, because this is a first,” he said.
“What’s a first?”
“Since we’ve met, you fixed the hotel computer, saved a little boy’s life and the hotel from a possible lawsuit, and now we’ve just walked into an L.A. eatery at noontime without a reservation and were seated without a wait. I’m thinking that you’re my lucky charm.”
“There’s no such thing as luck.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s all about the law of averages—you know, being in the right place at the right time. It has nothing to do with luck.”
He leaned across the table and took her by the hand.
“It’s difficult for you, isn’t it?”
She looked down at her menu, pretending to study it as she spoke.
“What’s difficult?”
“Accepting compliments.”
“No, I don’t think—”
“Ally.”
She sighed, then laid her menu down and looked up.
“What?”
“This may offend you, but in my opinion, your parents need a swift kick in the butt.”
It was the last thing she had expected him to say. Her eyes widened and her lips parted, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a thing to say. All she could do was savor the knowledge that someone cared—and not about what she could do, but about the way that she felt. Struggling with her emotions, she began to scan the menu anew and found herself looking at the words through a blur.
“Do you know what you want?” East asked.
She looked up, the word you on the tip of her tongue, and then nodded.
“I’ll have the chopped brisket in a sandwich, an order of fries and a gallon of iced tea.”
“Gallon?”
She pursed her lips. “A mere figure of speech.” She pointed to a small pitcher of sauce sitting between a pair of salt and pepper shakers. “I can tell by the scent of the sauce that it’s hot.”
“Is that okay?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, I like it hot.”
East’s mind went blank and he was still staring at what looked to be a small freckle on the right side of her mouth when a waiter appeared to take their order.
The closer they came to Jeff’s apartment, the tighter the knot drew in East’s gut. He had no idea what he’d find inside, nor was he even certain that this was where Jeff had been abducted, but it was a place to start. By the time they parked in the parking lot, he’d gone completely silent.
Ally could only imagine the fear that must be going through East’s mind and when they got to the door of Jeff’s apartment she knew she had to say something to break the tension between them.
“I have a forensics kit in my backpack. If need be, I can do a thorough sweep of the place.”
East gave her a new look of appreciation, then nodded. “Yes, bring it in. We can’t involve the police. Which reminds me, I’ve got to talk to someone at UCLA Medical Center, or they might put out a missing person’s report on him and blow everything out of the water.”
As they entered, East caught himself holding his breath as he flipped on the light switch with the end of a ballpoint pen so as not to disturb any fingerprints. He exhaled on a slow, angry breath. Even though the furniture was in place, he could see signs of destruction.
“There’s broken glass beneath this chair,” Ally said, squatting down and pointing to a couple of small, glistening shards. Without touching them, she gazed about the room, looking at everything from this level and then suddenly focused on a dark smudge below a desk near the wall.
“East.” She pointed.
He moved in that direction, then squatted, briefly touching the edge of the smudge. It was dry and flaky, but he didn’t have to test the stain for identification. He’d seen enough dried blood in his days to recognize it.
“Son of a bitch.”
“It doesn’t have to mean it was Jeff’s,” she said. “Remember, you’ve talked to him, so whatever happened to him was not life threatening.”
/> He exhaled slowly, reminding himself that she was right, then stood abruptly. As he started to turn away, something about the smear caught his attention and he stepped to the side then looked at it again. Suddenly, his heart skipped a beat. There were letters traced in the blood.
“Ally, get over here. Tell me if you see what I see.”
She stood, then hurried over to where East was standing.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Just look. Tell me what you see.” Then he stepped aside to give her room.
Ally glanced at the smear then past it, thinking that East had seen something else, something that she’d missed. But it was quickly apparent that there was nothing beneath the desk but the smear. She stepped to one side for a different view, and almost immediately, a name appeared in the smudge.
“A name! He wrote a name in the blood!”
East nodded with satisfaction. At least he hadn’t been imagining it.
“That first one is a B for sure,” Ally said.
“And the second is definitely an O,” East added. “But the last one isn’t as clear. It looks a little bit like a P…no, maybe it’s a—”
“It’s a B,” Ally said. “I think it’s a B, too.” Then she looked at East. “Bob? Does that make sense to you?”
“No,” East said, frowning in frustration. “Who the hell is Bob? Damn, this couldn’t be much more generic.”
“It’s still something,” she said. “Don’t touch anything else until I get back, okay? I’m going to get my camera and the forensics kit out of my bag.”
She headed for the bag she’d dropped by the door, leaving East alone with his thoughts, and they weren’t very good. As he moved about the room, he found a large amount of broken glass in a wastebasket, and the lamp sitting on the end table beside the sofa was missing a bulb. When he looked closer, he noticed that the base of a broken bulb was still screwed into the socket. Only the globe was missing. He stopped and pivoted about the room, searching walls, windows and doors. There was a blank space on the wall where a picture had once hung and what appeared to be another smear of blood on the doorjamb leading to the hall. This made no sense. Why go to all the trouble to kidnap someone and then try to clean up the place, as if it had not happened—especially when he’d already received a ransom demand?
As he stood, contemplating the oddity of the clues, it occurred to him again that the man who’d made the demands had not been the one who’d done the snatch. It was as if the people who’d physically taken Jeff had been acting under orders rather than playing it by ear. No one in the heat of the moment of a crime is going to stop and clean up the scene unless they’ve been told to do so, or unless they’re trying to wipe away fingerprints. And, too many things had been handled in the act of cleaning up to let East believe that these criminals had not been wearing gloves. The kidnapping had been too intricately planned. No one connected with this was going to be that stupid.
Besides that, there were the phone calls he’d received—first those from the man who’d made the demands, then the one from Jeff, himself. And the time between the calls was even more proof. If Jeff was with the mastermind, then why the long lapses between calls? The longer he stood there, the more certain he became that Jeff was being held in one place, while the real man behind the crime was in another.
“Got it!” Ally announced.
She began unpacking the kit, her expression a study in concentration. Only once did she look up, and that was to ask East a question.
“Are Jeff’s fingerprints on file anywhere?”
East nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. Before I found him, he’d had several run-ins with the police. Nothing serious, but very typical, homeless-kid-on-the-street stuff.”
Ally nodded. “Good,” she muttered, and set to work.
As East watched, the irony of it hit him. The mere fact that Jeff had ever been arrested would play an integral part in a process of elimination that might help them find his kidnappers, instead. Jeff’s prints were on file. If they got lucky, maybe the other prints would belong to a known felon and they would have a place to start looking.
Several hours passed before Ally was satisfied that she’d gathered all the possible forensic evidence. She and East had worked head-to-head, speaking only in short questions and answers while taking blood samples and dusting for fingerprints on every imaginable surface, including the glass shards East had found in the wastebaskets. But now they were through. Ally had a knot in the muscles between her shoulder blades, and the beginnings of a miserable headache. The tension lines between East’s eyebrows had deepened perceptibly.
East glanced at his watch, surprised to see how long they’d been working. He stepped back as Ally strode past him, heading toward the mini-lab she’d set up on the kitchen table. He saw the strain on her face before he felt his own and knew that they would have to stop, at least for a while. Burning out before they’d barely started would do no one any good, especially Jeff. He followed her into the kitchen.
“Ally…”
She laid down the evidence bags she was carrying and readjusted her microscope before reaching for a chair, unaware that East had called her name.
He smiled crookedly, wondering what it would take to get her attention.
“Ally, I’m talking to you.”
She bent down to get a fresh set of slides from her carryall when East grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around.
She’d been so deep in thought that she’d almost forgotten she wasn’t alone. His touch, then that slow, husky drawl startled her enough that she gasped.
“What?”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, but you’ve been tuning me out for quite some time now.”
She flushed and then smiled an apology. “Sorry. I get so focused when I work that I’ve been accused of forgetting to breathe.”
“Focus is good, but there’s a time for everything, and I think we both need a break.”
“But the—”
He put a finger on the center of her mouth, stopping her from finishing her sentence. He’d only meant to tease, but the slight tremble of those soft, shapely lips set his own head spinning. He looked down at her face, at the startled, almost fearful expression on her face, and he groaned.
“Don’t look at me like I’m going to eat you alive,” he said.
“Sometimes I think I’ll die if you don’t.” The moment she said it, she paled. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” she muttered as she tore herself free from his grasp and reached for the slides once again. “You need to leave. I can’t concentrate when you’re standing over my shoulder.”
But East didn’t move. He was still digesting the slip of her tongue. Finally, he shook his head in wonder and touched the back of her head, fingering the feathery curls at the soft nape of her neck.
“You can fuss and prickle at me all you want, Ally, but you can’t ignore what you said.”
She looked up, glaring. “No, but if you were a gentleman, you would.”
He tilted her chin until they were looking into each other’s eyes.
“What if I don’t want to ignore it?”
Suddenly, the room was filled with a different sort of tension. Her eyelids fluttered as she tried to swallow past a sudden knot in her throat.
“Then I don’t know,” she muttered.
“Want to learn?” he asked, his breath soft against her cheek.
“Education is a wonderful thing,” Ally whispered, and lifted her lips to the kiss she saw coming.
It was a gentle coupling; founded on a new and tenuous partnership and companionable exhaustion. East wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close against his body.
Ally moaned deep in her throat as she felt her bones turn to mush.
East was the first to pull away, however reluctantly.
“You’re a quick study, aren’t you, Ally girl?”
Ally blinked, trying to focus on something besides the shape of his mouth. W
hen she saw he was teasing gently, it gave her the nerve to tease back.
“I tend to absorb what I like a lot faster than the dull stuff.”
He laughed. “Damn. An honest woman. I may be in more trouble than I thought.”
Ally arched an eyebrow, her expression suddenly serious.
“So, you think I’m trouble?”
East’s smile disappeared. “Oh, honey…I know it.”
Chapter 9
Night had come to L.A., but judging from the traffic on the streets below Jeff’s apartment, it seemed few, if any, people slept. Light from the streets shone in through the kitchen window, highlighting the clutter, as well as the microscope and slides that Ally had left on the table, and leaving the rest of the room in shadows. A small black bug skittered across the linoleum and slipped under a crack in the floor, from where it was unlikely to emerge, thanks to monthly visits from an exterminator service.
Down the hall, at the first door on the right, Ally lay wide-eyed and sleepless, thinking about the man on the living room sofa. What had happened between them earlier today? Was it nothing more than a symptom of shared troubles, or was something special developing between them? Afraid to hope—afraid to count on anything more than herself—she rolled over onto her side and closed her eyes.
A night wind was playing havoc with the palms outside, leaving dancing shadows on the walls opposite the sofa where East lay trying to sleep, but it wouldn’t come. Tired and frustrated, he got up and headed toward the patio doors leading to the small terrace beyond. A single click sounded in the silence as he flipped open the lock. The doors slid silently aside as he moved onto the terrace overlooking the parking lot below. Compared to the view at Condor Mountain, this one left a lot to be desired, but East knew Jeff was happy here. All he could do was hope that he got to come back and enjoy it.
A siren sounded in the distance, and then another in the opposite direction, while down below an argument was in progress. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, whispering a brief but heartfelt prayer for his son’s safety. When he turned around, Ally was standing in the door wearing an over-size MIT T-shirt and a pair of socks. In the dark, without makeup, she could have passed for thirteen. It made him feel like a dirty old man, because at that moment, he wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms.
