by J. D. Mason
She almost laughed at the image of him standing in the middle of the living room of his penthouse scowling at detectives and Phyl, barking orders, demanding that they do their damn jobs, get off their asses, and find her. They’d have to talk him out of leaving and looking for her himself and it would take everything in him to back off, but only if he wasn’t satisfied that they weren’t doing everything they could to find her.
If they hurt her, I’ll kill them! he’d yell to somebody, everybody.
And he’d mean it. She couldn’t lose faith in him. Just like he’d touched her soul, she’d touched his. What they had was more than love. There wasn’t even a word for it. It was force unlike anything imaginable. Abby desperately needed to remember that, to hold on to it and know that nothing in the world would keep him from finding her before— Abby was going to be all right. She was going to walk out of this room alive and back to Jordan. That’s all that mattered. She was going to survive this.
“No matter what,” she reassured herself.
These people weren’t going to break her. She wouldn’t let them. Abby was strong. She stared down at the three items on the mat in front of her. That fool had left without taking them with him. A brown paper bag. A clear plastic sandwich bag. And an empty plastic water bottle. She was an engineer, and engineers were problem solvers, born to create, design, and manipulate. There was seemingly no way out of this room. But Abby never did believe in the impossible. She’d find a way. She’d make one.
Abby was so lost in her thoughts that she almost missed the sound of the outer door opening and closing. She quickly hid the items underneath the blanket balled up and shoved in the corner behind her. Her heart jumped into her throat at the sound of the key turning in the door. Jesus! What if it was him? She almost started crying again when she saw that the woman had returned.
The woman squatted and placed the bag and a bottle of water on the floor like she’d done all the previous times and waited while Abby slowly crawled over to get it and take it back to the mat. She didn’t have an appetite, but Abby knew better than to not eat. She had so many questions.
“How long are you going to keep me here?” She dared to ask the first one.
“Eat.”
She had on that black ski mask, but Abby couldn’t help but notice a cut down the center of her bottom lip. The woman caught Abby staring.
“I’ve got to pee.”
“I said eat,” she demanded more forcefully.
“Did he do that to you?” Abby asked, forcing herself to bite into that sandwich. She chewed and made herself swallow it. “The one who came here last night?” Her voice cracked as she stared up at the woman.
She didn’t answer, but Abby noticed the strange way in which she bent one arm across her midsection.
“Did … did he hit you? The man who—?”
“I said eat, gotdammit!”
Abby twisted off the cap to the bottle of water and gulped down half of it before placing it on the floor and taking a bite of that sandwich.
“Hurry the fuck up,” the woman yelled.
The woman cringed. She was in pain. If he had beat her, Abby couldn’t help but wonder why. But she knew that asking would get her nowhere.
“Will you be back later?” she did ask. “Will it be you? Not him?”
The woman pulled a gun from behind her and pointed it at Abby. “You’re done,” she said.
Abby shook her head and took another bite of the sandwich. “No,” she said with a mouth full of food. She immediately followed it with a drink of water.
The woman used both hands to steady the gun aimed at Abby. “Push it back over to me,” she demanded.
When Abby didn’t immediately comply, the woman took a step toward her.
“Now!”
She did as she was told, then quickly scooted back to the corner.
“I really do have to use the bathroom,” Abby insisted.
To Abby’s horror, the woman gathered up Abby’s trash and abruptly left the room, locking the door behind her.
“Please!” Abby called out. “I need to use it!”
Moments later, the key turned in the lock again and the woman shoved the dirty bowl into the room, then closed and locked the door again.
“One minute,” she said through the door to Abby.
“Tissue?” Abby reluctantly asked.
Again, the door opened, and a single tissue from one of those packs you carried in your purse floated to the floor.
A few moments later, the woman returned to remove the bucket.
“Will you be the one coming back later?” Abby asked before the woman slammed the door shut behind her.
“Just don’t let him come back,” she called after her. If he’d hurt that woman like that, then what would he do to Abby? “Just you. Okay?” she begged. “Just you. Please don’t let him come back!” she yelled, slapping the palm of her hand against the metal door. “I just want to get out of here.” She sobbed, slowly sinking to her knees. “Please, let me go!”
She didn’t know how long she stayed there before going back over to the mat and pulling the bottle and bags from underneath it. Abby stared at each of them long and hard, until she finally calmed down enough to focus.
“Now. What the hell can I do with a plastic bag, a bottle, and a brown sack?” She shrugged. “Maybe nothing,” she said, sounding defeated enough to get on her own nerves. She took a deep breath and focused. “Maybe something,” she said, determined.
Back to the Lab Again
PLATO HAD WARNED GATEWOOD. If the motha fucka insisted on meddling in this problem he’d hired Plato to solve, he could end up getting his lady love killed. After their phone call last night, Plato could’ve left the man to his own devices, but the fact remained that he knew Abby. He liked Abby for what he knew of her. Marlowe loved Abby.
Plato made the call while he waited in the car for Marlowe to finish getting ready so that they could go to her crazy aunt’s house.The phone rang once before Gatewood answered. “This is the one and only conversation you and me are going to have about this,” Plato abruptly began the conversation. “I am not a member of a team, man. You commissioned me to find her, and that’s what I’m doing.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Gatewood responded with an attitude. “Because it doesn’t appear to me that you’re doing any damn thing, Wells. This is day three and you’ve got a fuckin’ emblem. That’s all you’ve managed to get, and it is not enough.”
“I get it, Gatewood. You snap your finger and the sun rises and sets. That’s the kind of shit you’re used to.”
“Yes. That’s the kind of shit I’m used to.”
“Gratification ain’t always so instant,” Plato told him. “Believe it or not, I do know what I’m doing.”
“Then show me.”
“You back up off my ass and let me find her. But if you insist on taking your happy-go-lucky rich ass out there and stirring the pot of all the wrong people, you might as well consider her dead now.”
The man was silent.
Plato understood. If Marlowe was the one missing, he’d be all over that shit, turning over every stone, knocking down every damn wall in his path to find her. He knew where Gatewood was coming from, but dammit, this dude needed to back up and let Plato do what he needed to do, which was to find Abby Rhodes.
“Let me find her before you go off running rampant with a temper tantrum, Richie Rich,” he reluctantly reasoned. “Once she’s back with you, you can go knocking heads against walls, man, but until then, stand the fuck down.”
Plato hung up.
* * *
Truth be told, a man like Plato had no business trying to live a so-called normal life in a pimple on a gnat’s ass town like Blink, Texas. He taught trigonometry at the local community college. He mowed grass. Changed the oil in his woman’s car. Sat down to eat dinner with her every night at six. Made delicious love to her every chance he got. And damn near forgot that in the course of his life, he’d
killed more people than she could count on all her pretty little fingers and toes. Being in love with a woman was one of those luxurious liabilities that a man in Plato’s position could ill afford to have, and yet his dumb ass was head over fuckin’ heels.
“Shou hasn’t been feeling well for a couple of days now,” Marlowe said to him on the way to her aunt’s house.
Plato absolutely did not like being around that old woman, a tiny thing, frail and blind, who had a way of making all six feet four inches, 240 pounds of him feel like a bug she’d squash under her shoe if she could do it without Marlowe noticing. She scared the shit out of him with that hoodoo vibe she had going on. He never believed in that nonsense until he met Shou. The old woman didn’t trust him with her Marlowe. She didn’t like him. She’d made that point clear enough every chance she got, so he made sure to keep his distance.
“I’ll wait in the car,” he told the lovely Marlowe after they pulled up in front of Shou’s house.
She looked at him. “Don’t be like that, baby.”
Good Lord, those eyes of hers were hypnotic, amber gold, big and bright. She was his weakness.
“I’ve got a call to make, sweetheart,” he explained.
Marlowe waited for him to elaborate, but not long. She knew better.
“At least come in and say hi when you finish?” she asked, batting those long lashes at him.
He salivated at the sight of her plump ass as she climbed out of the car to go inside and made a mental note to make love in slow motion to her when they made it back to the house.
“Wonder Boy,” he said over his cell phone. “You called?”
Plato never did know this kid’s name. He came recommended by a former associate and had impressed Plato with his ability to find out any- and everything about any- and everybody whenever Plato asked, no questions except the pertinent ones.
“So that file you sent me.” He sighed lazily. “The one with the lady in dire straits and all tied up?”
“Yes?”
“That same emblem that’s on that jacket or whatever she’s sitting on is also on the tip of the blindfold. I almost missed it, but of course I didn’t,” he explained, sounding smug as always.
“Of course.”
“It’s a crown inside a triangle. Belongs to a machine parts distributor called Crown Distributors, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. They ship parts all around the world, machined parts mostly related to farming equipment, big rigs, even trains.”
Memphis? Was this search really going to take his ass all the way to Memphis? As if reading his mind, Wonder Boy chimed.
“They have a warehouse in a town called Nelson.” He paused. “Ever heard of it? It’s in northeast Texas.”
“Anything else?”
“Who do you think I am? Some sort of genius, all-seeing, detail-oriented motha fucka who can tell the make of the vehicle she’s in by the seat she’s sitting on or something?”
Plato smiled. “That’s exactly what I think.”
“Toyota Highlander. I know this because I used to have one back when I was in high school.”
“I thought you still were in high school,” Plato quipped.
“I’d laugh if that was funny. That was last year.”
“Is that it?”
“Damn, man. You could at least sound impressed.”
“I’m gushing, bruh,” Plato said before hanging up.
Plato had no idea how long Marlowe had planned on staying, but he looked up Nelson on his cell phone and saw that it was a forty-minute drive and he was anxious to find that distribution center and check it out. He walked in to find Marlowe sitting across from Shou, holding the old woman’s hands in hers. That house felt like an oven. It was chilly outside, but not cold enough for her to have the heat turned up to kiln levels.
“You’re not running a fever, Auntie,” Marlowe explained with concern.
“Because I’m not cold. My hands are, though. And my feet won’t get warm.”
“What’d the doctor say?”
“He didn’t say nothin’ ’cause I ain’t gone see him.”
“Shou,” Marlowe said, frustrated.
“I’m allergic to peaches.” The old woman turned her face to where he was standing. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear that that old woman could see him. “I’m allergic to peaches, damn you!”
“I know you’re allergic to peaches, Auntie,” Marlowe said, concerned. “You haven’t had any. Have you?”
Shou shook her head.
“Marlowe,” Plato said, “how long do you plan on staying?”
“Where you going?” Shou blurted out to Marlowe, grabbing hold of her hand.
“I’ve got to make a run, baby,” he said to Marlowe, being careful not to address Shou Shou directly.
“You know I don’t much care for you,” Shou stated simply.
“But I care for him, Auntie,” Marlowe interjected.
Shou turned, frowning, to Marlowe. “Then I guess that settles it.”
Marlowe stood up and came over to him. “How long are you going to be?”
“I can be back in a few hours.”
Marlowe walked him to the door and stood outside on the porch with him. “You know it doesn’t matter what she thinks.”
He smiled. “As long as she doesn’t stick pins in a doll that looks like me, I really don’t care. She ain’t the one I’m here for.”
Marlowe stood up on her toes and planted those succulent lips of hers against his. “I’ll see you when you get back.”
* * *
Wednesday afternoon and Crown Distributors was teeming with people. The facility, a large gray one-story building, was surrounded by an eight-foot-tall security fence, with a parking lot big enough to hold a few hundred cars. This was Plato’s best and only lead, and he wasn’t feeling too optimistic about it. He sat parked outside it, watching cars and trucks pulling in and out of the place. He went ahead and made the assumption that Abby Rhodes’s kidnappers were employed here, now or in the past.
Plato had been given five days to find her. Today was number three and he didn’t have shit. He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. His specialty was hunting down people for reasons other than to save them. Plato was not a search-and-rescue kind of dude. In theory, it shouldn’t have mattered, but because he was frustrated, this time, it did.
Blink, Texas, was surrounded by two other cities. This one, called Nelson, and another one called Clark City, small towns overlapping each other until one blurred into the other. She could’ve been in any of them.
He quietly concluded that skill would have very little to do with finding this woman. What Plato needed was some good, old-fashioned luck or a miracle.
He truly did not want to make this call, but Plato felt that he had no choice. He called Gatewood again.
“I’m in a town called Nelson.”
A long pause.
“What’s in Nelson?” Gatewood finally asked.
“A lead. Crown Distributors. Ever heard of it?”
“No.”
He had nothing else to give the man, but pride wouldn’t let him concede that fact. “I need to know if it’s affiliated with Gatewood Industries in any way.”
Again, the brotha was quiet.
Plato had to offer him something else. So he gave him the last morsel. “They took her in a Toyota SUV. She’s somewhere between Nelson, Blink, and Clark City.”
Gatewood sighed. “I’ll see what I can dig up on that distributor and get back to you,” he said before abruptly hanging up.
Two days to find a pretty, little needle in a big-ass haystack. He’d done more with less. Time wasn’t on his side, but he wasn’t about to let a silly little thing like that get in the way of progress.
Cut Other People Open
THE EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION WAS BEGINNING to take its toll on Jordan. His patience was tissue paper thin and other people were starting to notice.
“Hey, Jordan,” one of the heads of his engineering g
roup said, coming into Jordan’s office. “Sorry this is late. I got held up in a meeting.”
“I needed it half an hour ago,” Jordan snapped back unapologetically.
“A … again, my apologies. I hope it’s still useful,” he said, holding out the portfolio.
“It’s not,” Jordan responded without bothering to take the document.
“I’ll hold on to it. You might need it later.”
The man stood there like he was expecting some kind of atta-boy pat on the back, but Jordan had nothing for him.
“I’ll e-mail you a soft copy as well,” he said, clearing his throat before finally leaving.
Jordan’s executive assistant, Jennifer, appeared in the doorway. “I had the valet bring your car around like you asked,” she told him. “The senator’s assistant called to say he’s on his way to the restaurant.”
“Thank you, Jennifer.”
On the ride down in the elevator, Wells’s warning echoed in Jordan’s head: “If you insist on taking your happy-go-lucky rich ass out there and stirring the pot of all the wrong people, you might as well consider her dead now.”
Of course the man was right. Every second of every day since she was taken threatened to derail Jordan and turn him into a raving maniac. He couldn’t afford to lose control—for her sake. He couldn’t afford to fall apart. But that thought that he might not ever find her, might never see her again, skirted across his mind constantly. And what would he do if he lost her? Who would he become without her in his life? Could he go back to living the way he had before he’d met and fallen in love with Abby? Living. More like existing.
Jordan understood the risks involved in meeting with the senator if he was, in fact, involved in any of this. Then again there was the chance that Jordan was wrong about him and that he knew nothing of Abby’s abduction. Too many coincidences had struck him as odd, though, and he needed to see for himself if even the slightest bit of suspicion that he had about the man could be true. If there was even a remote chance that the sonofabitch could lead Jordan to Abby, he couldn’t let it slip past him. Time was running out, and Wells was no closer to finding Abby now than he was the night Jordan reached out to him to find her.
