L.A.P.D. Special Investigations Series, Boxed Set: The Deceived, The Taken & The Silent

by Style, Linda

  The door clicked open again, but only a few inches this time. “I can’t help you,” the woman said. “Mr. Sullivan doesn’t live here.”

  Jillian glanced at Adam, then back at the woman again. “This is the address we were given and the number is listed for Jack Sullivan.”

  The woman gave them a blank look, shook her head and said, “I’m sorry.”

  I’m sorry? That was it?

  “How long has he been gone?” Adam asked.

  “He means, did he leave a forwarding address?” Jillian added. “We’re here about his son.”

  The woman’s expression softened. “Oh, I wish I could help, but I really don’t know anything. I just started working here a few weeks ago.”

  “Is there someone else who might know?” Jillian pressed, noticing a young girl hanging about close by. “It’s very important.”

  Just then the door was pulled out of the woman’s hand. She looked behind her and then stepped away. A tall gray-haired man replaced her. “I purchased the property two months ago,” he said in perfect English. “The transaction was through a real estate company. I didn’t ask where the previous owner had gone, and I don’t know anything about him. I’m sorry, but we can’t help you.”

  He raised his chin, then closed the door with a thunk of finality.

  “I guess that’s our cue to leave,” Jillian said, her gut aching with disappointment. They were no closer than before they found the address, except that they knew he probably wasn’t in Mirador. She looked at Adam. His mouth curled into a snarl.

  “Asshole.”

  “Well, at least we know he’s been gone from here for a while,” she said, calming herself. “More than two months. Right?”

  Adam scowled. “We don’t know squat. Sullivan could’ve been having breakfast in the kitchen, for all we know.”

  Jillian started down the steps, and a moment later, Adam caught up with her.

  “I bet we could get more information from the realtor,” she said.

  It took Adam a moment, but he finally said, “I guess. If the guy is telling the truth, the agent might know more…where Sullivan went. Or the bank that conducted the transaction. The’d have to have something.”

  “That’ll take a long time, won’t it? I mean, we don’t know the company or the bank.” Her spirits took a nose-dive. More and more it was looking like she would have to go home without the information she came for. “But I guess we’re no worse off than we were before.”

  “I would’ve liked to end it right here,” he said.

  “No more than me. I feel as if I’m in some kind of suspended state, unable to get on with anything until I know.” Though oddly, she’d felt an immense sense of relief when the man they were looking for hadn’t been there. “So now what?”

  At the car, Adam opened the door and said, “Get in.”

  She climbed inside and when he positioned himself behind the wheel, she asked, “Where are we going?”

  He started the vehicle. “I’m going to find Jack Sullivan, and you’re going back to San José.”

  Then just as Adam began to pull away, Jillian saw the young girl she’d seen in the house coming toward her.

  “Wait.” Jillian grabbed Adam’s arm for him to stop. She rolled down her window.

  Reaching the car, the girl shoved a piece of paper at Jillian, then turned and ran off. Jillian stared at the markings on the paper. It was a crudely drawn map and some writing. In Spanish.

  She handed it to Adam. Watching him read, she saw his eyes light up. “What does it say? What’s the map for?”

  Adam was silent for a moment. Then he said, “When he left here, our guy was on his way to Cabacera to find his son.”

  “When?” Adrenaline surged through her veins.

  “Doesn’t say. Could’ve been two months ago, could’ve been yesterday.”

  “So, let’s go.”

  His expression was uncertain, as if wondering that very thing himself.

  “We’re wasting time,” she said.

  His mouth compressed as if weighing his options. A second later, he said,“Yeah. Let’s go.” He put the car in gear and squealed away from the house. “Get out the map and double-check the location of the village, with what the girl wrote down.”

  Gladly, she did as he asked and gave directions for the next three turns. Before long, the road narrowed, this time to little more than a single lane. As they pressed on, the foliage around them grew thick and tangled, alive and eager to swallow them up, car and all. The rain forest seemed a primal entity, a living, breathing thing, and she was awed and fascinated by it.

  She’d once seen a television program on the destruction of the rain forests around the world, and there’d been dissension between those who wanted more development and those concerned about the environment. What a pity if the forests were destroyed here. Still, with industry came opportunity. A tough choice to make.

  She’d also seen a program on tourists getting kidnapped in foreign countries and being held for ransom.

  “Let me know when you get hungry,” Adam said out of the blue about fifteen minutes into the trip.

  “Why? Are we going to stop at the nearest fast-food place for a hamburger? Have a picnic with the snakes and poison dart frogs?”

  He gave a hearty laugh. “I think we’re stuck with the leftovers I got at our swank digs in Mirador.”

  She liked the sound of his laughter. It had an honest ring about it, genuine. True.

  “It wasn’t the Ritz, that’s for sure,” Jillian said, laughing, too, but she remembered the man rummaging through their things. “I still find it odd that the intruder didn’t take anything.”

  “If he’d ripped off your passport, you wouldn’t be able to get home.”

  “What do you suppose he was looking for?”

  “Who knows?” Adam said loosely, but she knew he thought there was a helluva lot more going on here than appeared on the surface. Every time she mentioned it, he got quiet, and she had the feeling he knew something she didn’t. So far, she hadn’t pushed, but she was tired of waiting for him to bless her with information. She needed answers.

  He jerked the steering wheel to the side to avoid another humongous hole.

  “Well, how about hazarding a guess?” She waited a second, then added, “I think he wanted to know who we are and why we’re here.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?” He swerved again. “And why do you think anyone would care who we are?”

  She pondered for another moment. “Because we’re looking for a guy who’s taken someone else’s identity. If he’d do that, it’s probably not the only disreputable thing he’s done, and someone else is looking for him, too. Or…maybe he’s caught wind of it. Maybe he has people who keep an eye out for strangers who might come looking for him because of his activities. If he could afford that home back there, he surely can afford a few security guards.”

  “Good powers of deduction. You’re thinking like a cop.”

  Her cheeks grew warm. “I could never be a cop. And I doubt that I think like one. I’m not that calculating, or that cold.”

  “Ouch.” He gave her a pained expression. “Is that how you think of me? Cold and calculating?”

  She pulled her gaze away and back to the road, her body rigid.

  “Of course not. I don’t think of you at all.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “OUCH. THAT HURTS,” Adam said. “And from my perspective, that’s a very cold comment to make about someone who’s only looking out for your best interests.”

  She rolled her eyes. “If I believed that, I’d be sitting back in San José waiting for you to come back.”

  “And if you had waited, I’d have been there and back by now. And you would have had a few days of R and R.”

  “I don’t need R and R.”

  “Everyone needs R and R.”

  “Not me. I like being with people I care about—that and my work.”

  “You like being stubborn, impulsi
ve and unpredictable.”

  “And you have tunnel vision and get an adrenaline rush from chasing down the bad guys.”

  “Hmm. You’re fifty percent right. I want to see every crook and scumbag drug dealer behind bars.”

  “The jails couldn’t hold them all.”

  “There are other alternatives. As long as they’re off the streets, that’s all I care about.”

  He didn’t feel the need to explain his reasons for doing what he did. He’d seen too many lives shattered by people who thought the law didn’t apply to them, too many kids destroyed by drugs, some he’d personally tried to help but had lost the battle.

  His best friend and former partner was dead because of drug runners. Getting the dealers off the streets meant more to him than just doing his job. Getting the big guys who sat back and made it happen gave him a cause, a purpose. It gave Bryce’s death some meaning.

  “Off the streets, dead or alive?”

  “If that’s how it has to be.”

  She drew back, her expression incredulous. A response he wouldn’t have predicted.

  “What? You’re a mother, I’d think you’d champion that cause.”

  “The cause, yes. Not your solution.”

  He thought about Bryce and what kind of solution there should be for the person who took his friend’s life. But that was a discussion for another time. Like never. Because she would never see the evil he saw every day. She would never see things as he did.

  He glanced over. “Tomato, tomahto. It’s all cool.”

  Yeah, he got a rush when he caught the bad guys. But massaging her neck, feeling her relax under his hands had given him a bigger rush than a half-dozen two-bit collars. That was like comparing Viagra to a one-a-day vitamin. And it sure as hell had him thinking twice about touching her again.

  So she thought of him as a cold calculating SOB. Good. It was better that way. He had only one objective on this trip—nailing Sullivan.

  “Look.” She pointed ahead. “A clearing. Maybe it’s the village.”

  “It can’t be. According to this map, we’re still an hour away.”

  “Well, at least it’s civilization of some kind. A pit stop, if we’re lucky.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. We haven’t been particularly lucky so far.”

  She turned to look at him, her expression perplexed. “Well, I think we’ve been lucky. We may not have found what we wanted, but we’ve found out more than we knew in the beginning. And while we didn’t stay in plush hotels, we didn’t have to sleep with the animals and insects and creepy-crawly things. I call that lucky. Maybe you should try a little positive thinking once in a while.”

  “I’m a realist, not a Pollyanna.”

  She sat back. “Call me whatever you want, at least I’m happy, which is more than I can say for you.”

  Now it was his turn to give her an incredulous look. “Excuse me? How do you presume to know whether I’m happy or unhappy?” The implication annoyed him. How the hell would she know anything about his state of mind? If she did, she’d know he’d rather pull over and do her right here in the car than listen to her yak at him.

  Her eyes narrowed. “The outside of a person is a pretty good reflection of what goes on inside, except we usually tone it down for other people or try to mask it in some way. We don’t want the world to see what we really feel.”

  “We?” His annoyance kicked up a notch. He didn’t need her self-appointed psychoanalysis. He didn’t need her to tell him whether he was happy or unhappy. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “I’ve found that when one is busy mucking around in another person’s guts and doling out platitudes about what one thinks the other is all about, one is usually avoiding looking into oneself. And that’s probably because it’s so much easier to point out other people’s flaws than it is to look at one’s own.”

  When she didn’t respond, he glanced at her from the corner of his eye. He could almost see the steam rising from her skin.

  He knew all about avoidance. He was an expert on the subject. It had been easier to screw up his life than to face what was going on inside. And he didn’t need her or anyone else to bring it to his attention as if he didn’t have a clue.

  Just then a little girl appeared in the middle of the road directly in front of the car. He stomped on the brake. Jillian lurched ahead, but stuck out her hands and caught the dash in time to stop her forward momentum. The engine died.

  “Fuck. Where the hell did that kid come from?”

  Jillian, still leaning forward, said, “Where did who come from?”

  Reaching out, he lifted the hair away from her face and neck and touched her cheek with his fingertips. “You okay?”

  He felt her tense up at his touch, then slowly she raised her head to look at him. Moistening her lips, she said, “I’m fine.”

  His heart had stopped when he thought she’d been hurt. But she was okay. He looked out the window, scanned the area. “There was a girl in the middle of the road.”

  “I didn’t see anyone.”

  Twisting the key in the ignition, he said, “And if you did, it probably would’ve been a fairy godmother ready to lead the way.” The engine made only a grinding sound. He tried again.

  “Maybe you need to wait a minute,” she said. “It could be flooded and all it needs is a rest.”

  “And we could be sitting in a café on the Left Bank in Paris, but we’re not. And it’s not flooded.”

  She smiled, as if she knew he was needling her because he was irritated with himself.

  “The child in the road had to come from somewhere nearby,” she said. “And where there are people, help might be available. That’s a good thing.”

  He turned. “Don’t you ever get discouraged?”

  Her smile widened. “Rarely. I took control of my own destiny a long time ago.”

  ***

  Act instead of react was Jillian’s motto, and fortunately, she and Adam had been of the same mind when it came to assessing the situation.

  After waiting fifteen minutes and the engine still wouldn’t turn over, they agreed to set out on foot carrying their gear. They couldn’t just sit in the car on some godforsaken road waiting for help to come, because who knew when that might happen?

  The girl had to live somewhere close by, Jillian reasoned, and if they kept to the road, they shouldn’t have any problems. Except that it was drizzling and her gear was getting heavy and now the mud sucked at their boots, like the tentacles of a giant octopus. With every step, the road got worse and their progress slower.

  They hadn’t covered a whole lot of ground when Jillian noticed the usually raucous forest was eerily silent. She saw something large dart through the trees just off the road and a little in front of them. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

  “Adam. Wait a minute, will you?” she called out as she switched her suitcase to the other hand, then hurried to catch up. Although Adam was loaded down with the rest of their supplies, he looked as if he was on an afternoon hike.

  He stopped until she caught up to him. “We have to keep moving. It’s already eleven and if we’re going to reach Cabacera, get the car fixed and make it back to Mirador before dark, we’ve got to hustle. Otherwise, we might be spending the night out here—and I don’t think you’d like that very much.”

  “And you would?”

  He chuckled. “No. But I guarantee you’d be more uncomfortable than I would.”

  “Oh, really?” She stopped abruptly.

  “Yeah, really. So what’s up?” He gave her a nudge to keep moving while they talked.

  She hitched up her gear and slogged on, walking faster to stay in step with him. She usually had no trouble keeping up with anyone, but with Adam, she felt like a little kid struggling to keep up with a big brother. She kept dropping back a step and then had to kick it up a notch to stay close. “Nothing really, except…well, listen.”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “That’s my
point. It’s dead quiet.”

  He kept on walking.

  “What do you think it means? Isn’t that a sign of something?” she said to his back.

  “I think it means you’ve seen too many old Rama of the Jungle reruns.”

  “No…not true. I just…well, I have this eerie feeling.”

  He stopped abruptly, causing her to nearly bump into him. He turned fully around, crossed his arms over his chest and gave her an impatient, skeptical look, the kind where one eyebrow shot up and she knew he was thinking she was overreacting. The rain stopped as quickly as it had started. A ray of sunshine poked through the trees above.

  “You have an eerie feeling.”

  She moved closer keeping her voice low. “I have keen senses. I know things sometimes, call it intuition or whatever, but most of the time it’s correct. And right now I have this feeling…like we’re being watched.”

  A slow grin erupted.

  Suddenly the forest was a cacophony of sound again; blue butterflies fluttered up in front of her, leaves rustled, branches snapped, monkeys chattered and squawked, while endless varieties of birds warbled and cawed and swooshed upward in unison, their wings thwapping noisily against the thick leaves.

  She pivoted, pulses pounding as she searched the landscape for the cause of the disruption.

  She glared at Adam, whose expression was suddenly serious. He put an arm around her shoulders and moved her along at his side. Leaning in, he said in a hushed voice, “We are being watched.”

  “We are?” She kept her voice as low as his, her steps quickening with each furtive glance into the bushes. “You know that? Who’s watching? Hungry animals? Bandits? Kidnappers?”

  A noise like clothes rustling sounded behind them….and then a crunching sound. She jumped and swung around…and stared into the faces of two men. Men carrying guns. Air gurgled in her throat. “A-Adam!”

  She turned to run the other way, but saw more men emerge from the forest, all heavily armed with assault rifles and guns in holsters slung around their waists. Some wore bandanas or flat topped hats over long scraggly hair, and their clothes, mostly camouflage and army type fatigues, were dirty and torn and they looked like they wanted to eat her for dinner.