by Dale Mayer
He never said a word; he just held her close.
When her emotional storm spent itself, she lifted her head, which had been tucked up against his shoulder, and stared out at the darkness. “I can’t stand to think she’s lying lost and broken somewhere, that somebody could have done something to her. She was so very special.”
He reached up gently and wiped the tears off her cheeks. “Don’t speak of her in the past tense. We have to keep up the hope that she’s alive.”
She nodded, settled back on her side of the car and wiped her tears. “I should go home and get some rest.”
“Yes, you should. It’s probably been days since you’ve had a good night’s sleep.”
“I haven’t slept.” She laughed. “How could I?”
“And again you’re no good to her if you can’t look after yourself.” He studied her face. “Let me drive you home. You’re in no shape to drive yourself.”
She stared down at her hands, still trembling in shock. She took a deep breath and told herself to smarten up. But her pep talk failed miserably.
A knock on the window on Saul’s side startled her. He rolled down the window, and Stone leaned in and said, “We’re ready to go to Richard’s.”
Saul nodded. “I’ll take her home. You want to follow and pick me up?” He motioned toward Rebel. “She’s in no shape to drive right now.”
Stone studied her face and then nodded. “We’ll follow you there.” He tapped the top of the car and walked over to Saul’s jeep with the keys in his hand.
Saul looked at her. “Okay?”
She nodded. She handed him the keys, and the two of them changed places. She watched as he started up her old car and reversed out of the alleyway. He handled the car with a competence she expected. With that, she settled back and let somebody else take care of her for once.
*
He couldn’t imagine she accepted help very often. Whether she knew it or not, she kept walls up and that worked most of the time. But she’d hit a personal limit. He’d seen it happen time and time again. Not only had she been fighting to find her friend but dead bodies were unsettling. Finding that locket was a huge step forward, but it was also a serious step backward in terms of understanding where her friend was. It did not mean she was dead, but, after ten days, with something like that showing up, it, … well, … was not a good sign.
Saul hadn’t wanted to leave the crime scene. He could only hope the police shared the information they found. He planned to go back in the daylight and see if he could find any evidence that Tammy had been in that building.
Plus he also would check out where the homeless man was known to hang out. Just because he was in the building at the end of his life did not mean Tammy had been there too. She could’ve been anywhere along his route. He could’ve taken the locket off her dead body for that matter. Or he could’ve seen it on the ground someplace where she might’ve been involved in a struggle. There were endless possibilities.
He drove to Rebel’s apartment. He knew the area well. He had friends living not too far from here. When he drove up in front of a large brick apartment building, he nudged her. “Is this your place?”
Startled, she looked at him, a dazed look in her eyes. “How did you know where I lived?”
“I heard you tell the policeman.”
She had a right to be suspicious. He just didn’t want her suspicious of him. She contemplated his answer; then she reached up and rubbed her face. “I’m sorry. I’m just not myself right now.”
He parked the vehicle, got out and walked around to her side of the car. She still sat in the passenger seat, staring at the building. She needed time to work through this. He opened her door and helped her to her feet. “Come on. Let’s get you inside.”
The jeep pulled up behind him. Saul and Rebel walked up to the entranceway, and she punched in a security code into the keypad on the wall. The door unlocked in front of them. He pulled it open and held it for her to walk through. The other three men waited in the jeep, watching. He gave them a half wave, walked her inside and to the elevator. He studied her carefully. He wasn’t sure she should be alone right now. “You have anybody you can call? Any other friends or family who could stay with you?”
She shook her head. “Only Tammy. I would call Tammy.”
Damn. That just triggered another memory of Tammy. Not that Rebel was likely to stop thinking about her best friend under these circumstances.
On the third floor the elevator door opened. He gently grasped her arm above the elbow, nudging her into the hallway. With the keys from her vehicle in his hand, he checked for an apartment key. Sure enough, he tried the door, and the selected key worked. He opened the door and led her inside.
And she froze. “What happened?”
His gaze sharpened. He kicked the door shut and put Rebel between him and the door. He pulled out his weapon with one hand and his phone with other, saying, “Get up here.”
He put away his phone and left her backed against the front door to search her destroyed apartment. He could see most of it from this vantage point but not enough to ease his concerns. Still he had to leave her to do a full sweep. Her kitchen table and the kitchen drawers were tossed to the ground. The living room couch cushions had been slashed open. He noted all this while running a timeline through his head. Had Tammy been kidnapped? Had she told them about Rebel? Or had whoever killed or kidnapped Tammy known that she and Rebel were best friends? Did Daniel tell the kidnappers that? Or did the kidnappers/murderers find Rebel lurking around Daniel’s apartment building too, just like Saul and his team did? That alone revealed Rebel had some deep connection to Daniel and/or Tammy. Were the women best friends enough that Rebel would hold something for Tammy?
He hadn’t even thought to question Rebel on that last aspect. But, with Tammy and Daniel both being in IT, espionage was not an unlikely leap. The fact that Daniel was suspected of hacking into his employer’s system and creating coding errors somehow played together. Saul didn’t understand how yet, but he would.
He made a quick sweep of the tiny one-bedroom apartment. By the time he made it back to Rebel—still leaning against the door, her face stricken—a knock at the door made Rebel jump. Saul checked the peephole and then let his friends in.
They stepped inside, took one look and Stone let out a low whistle. “Well, this is an interesting development.”
Something about his tone of voice and wording caught Rebel’s attention. She turned on him. “Interesting? This is interesting for you? This is destructive. This is horrific. This is my entire life here.”
Stone looked at her pointedly. “And yet you’re alive. So they knew you weren’t here. They went through your property, went through all your possessions. What were they looking for?”
Saul watched her face go blank.
Then her jaw dropped. “You think they were looking for something?” She shook her head in bewilderment. “Looking for what?” she cried out. “I don’t have anything. Hell, Tammy made way more money than I did. Why would they not destroy her place instead?” She stared at the men, her gaze going from one to the other and then back again. “Why me?”
Dakota stepped in. “That’s what we’ll find out. One of the first questions we need to know is did Tammy, at any time in the last few months, give you anything to safeguard for her?”
That was the very question Saul wanted answered; he stepped closer and peered at Rebel’s face, looking for any sign of subterfuge.
She stared at the men and shrugged her shoulders. “No, of course not. Why would she?”
“She could have found something damning at work, and she needed you to hold on to it, on the off chance something happened to her.”
She frowned, her focus remaining on the men. “She didn’t give me anything to hold or keep. I didn’t know of anything potentially dangerous in her world. She would’ve told me.”
“Did she feel the same way about you as you feel about her?” Saul asked quietly.
She turned her gaze to his. “Yes. We’ve been best friends since forever.”
“Maybe she wouldn’t tell you about this, seeing it would bring danger to your doorstep.”
He watched the wheels in her mind turn, and then a stricken look took over her face as she realized something. “That’s exactly what Tammy would do,” she whispered. “As I would for her.”
“And that’s why this is interesting,” Stone said. “Because this changes our avenues of thinking completely. Whoever came here was looking for something, for whatever reason, whether she told them or they assumed so because of your close association.”
“Or because Daniel told them,” she said bitterly. “He was always a troublemaker.”
Chapter 8
She stared at her destroyed belongings, rubbing her temple out of habit. Nothing made sense in her world anymore. Only a single kitchen chair still sat upright on four legs. She picked it up from the pile of garbage underneath it and repositioned it to a more stable spot and collapsed on it. “I slept here last night.”
Saul didn’t even want to acknowledge his thoughts that immediately followed that statement.
“Why? Why do this?” It was a stupid question because she knew the answer, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking the obvious. “None of this makes any sense.”
“It made sense to the person who did it,” Saul said. “We may not know the logic behind this yet, but there will be some. It may not even make sense to us when we do know. But the person who did this had a reason, and they took a lot of time trashing your apartment. So who would know you weren’t here today?”
She stared at him. “I have no idea. Anybody could have seen me leave, but how would they know how long I would be gone?”
“Unless they saw you at Daniel’s apartment building. And maybe had seen you at Daniel’s building a lot this last week.”
“But then they would’ve seen me with you guys.”
Saul’s voice, low and hard, said, “And maybe they didn’t care if you did come back. Maybe they were hoping you were here so they could ask you themselves about what they were looking for.” He didn’t want to scare her needlessly, but she could no longer ignore the fact that she was a target now. By the expression of horror on her face, she understood fully.
The other men contemplated that concept in silence. One by one they nodded.
“Given the fact we have two people missing and one dead body, chances are very good that’s exactly what would’ve happened here,” Stone said. “In which case, it’s a damn good thing you weren’t present.”
Her heart beat wildly, and her accelerated pulse rate throbbed in her head. She took one long slow inhale, then another, all while staring at the floor. Focus on that, she told herself. I have some control over this mess before me, if only to clean it up. All her kitchen cupboards had been busted and their contents dumped on the ground. The drawers had been opened and dropped. Even the contents of her fridge were shattered on the floor. Broken glass and ruined food was everywhere.
“You have insurance?” Merk asked.
“I have renter’s insurance but have no idea if it covers this type of an issue.”
Saul’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket. “Hello, Detective Wilson. What did you find?” He listened for a long moment and then said, “Okay, we’ve had a development here. Rebel’s apartment has been vandalized. A thorough job, not just some punk kids. The contents of the fridge dumped, couch cushions sliced open, things like that.”
She watched as he nodded at something the detective said, then turned to look to the front door.
“No, it doesn’t appear to be a forced entry.”
Her mind blanked at that. How could they not have forced their way in? If they hadn’t, that would mean they had a way in of their own, and her heart sank.
Because Tammy had a spare key to her apartment.
Jesus, when would this nightmare end? It would take days to clean up this mess. She couldn’t imagine the cost of everything she’d just lost in terms of monetary value. Sure, she had insurance, but would it cover this? She had no idea as she’d never made a claim. What she did know was she had no wish to even begin to sort through what was usable and what wasn’t. Broken dishes were mixed with food among the other debris. Was anything here worth keeping? Did she care?
Hysterical laughter rose at the back of her throat. With her gut clenched, she clamped down on it hard. She wanted to be any place but here right now. And yet she had no place else to go.
Saul stepped forward, sliding his phone back into his pocket. “They found no sign of Tammy in the building where we found the homeless man.”
She blinked up at him. Relief washed through her. “So she still could be alive?”
“It’s possible. It’s not very likely, but we can’t give up hope.”
She nodded and looked around. “There has to be a reason why they came here, and the only connection is Tammy.”
“And,” Dakota said quietly, “if Tammy was caught up in something unintentionally, you’re getting dragged into it yourself. Their trail has now led to you. If they were looking for something and didn’t find it this time, I can guarantee you that, if they think you have anything to do with that, you could be snatched next.”
She pulled her legs up, her heels on the edge of the chair and her knees tight to her chest as she rewrapped her arms around them. “How do I find Tammy if these guys are after me?”
“You keep yourself safe while you let a lot of other people look for Tammy.”
She shook her head. “That’s not good enough. A lot of people were supposedly looking for her last week, and nobody gave a damn.”
“And maybe this is all happening because somebody realized you wouldn’t let this go,” Merk said. “Maybe they are scaring you off. Maybe they are chasing you away, leaving them free and clear. What I do know is, if you cross the line any further and really piss them off, you won’t survive either.”
She stared at him dully. “How am I supposed to walk away from a friend who’s in need?”
Her words seemed to have struck a chord. All the men fell silent.
Merk shook his head. “We can’t tell you to do that because we’re the same. Friendships and loyalty, they matter in our world.”
“And Tammy matters in my world.” She stared at the remnants of her apartment. She waved her hand around at the destruction and said, “That means I’m not safe here anymore either.”
“Time to pack a bag,” Saul said.
“First,” Stone said, “can you tell us how somebody might’ve gotten into your apartment?”
“That’s easy. Tammy had a key.”
She walked into her bedroom, and, even though she was prepared for what she’d find, the destruction still brought tears to her eyes. She slapped a hand over her mouth to hold back her instinctual cry. Her beautiful duvets and pillows were slashed and pulled apart. Feathers were everywhere. The place had been annihilated—her night table, her dresser drawers, everything tossed.
She turned back to the men, tears in her eyes. “Are you sure they were looking for something? Because this looks like wanton destruction. Not a methodical search.”
“They’d have searched first and then left it like this, destroyed, for the police to find.”
She nodded. “Bastards.”
Stepping into a clear spot in the bedroom, she faced her tossed closet. She pulled out her large travel bag, set it on the bed and sorted through the piles of clothing on the floor but was hard-pressed to find anything usable. Everything she picked up had been sliced. Multiple times. She didn’t need to be a shrink to note this was done in extreme anger.
In the back of her bag, she found her waterproof see-through ziplock folder where she kept her passport and important personal papers. It was intact. She grabbed it and stuffed it in her purse and walked into the bathroom to get a few toiletries. She wasn’t much of a shopper, so she didn’t buy a whole lot in terms of material things
. She didn’t like knickknacks. She preferred good paintings and lots of white space on her walls …
The trouble was, she needed enough possessions to survive. And she barely had that right now. Back in the closet she dug through the piles and pulled out a heavy sweater, her coat and several pairs of shoes. She didn’t need them now but if they’d survived she could use them in a few months. Oddly enough they hadn’t destroyed all the things in her closet, although all of it had been thrown to the floor. She guessed that the slashing of the topmost layer of her clothes was for added emphasis.
Saul stood in the doorway. “Can you see if they’ve added anything to this room?”
She spun, startled. “What you mean by added?”
“Planted evidence that would indicate you had something to do with Tammy’s disappearance.”
“How could you even contemplate that?” she cried out in horror.
He shrugged. “We’ve encountered a lot of assholes in this world. The things they do don’t always make sense to us, but it can cause a lot of pain for others. We also need to know when you were here last. What was their window of opportunity?”
“I slept here last night,” she said, pointing and staring forlornly at her destroyed bed. “I got up around 8:00 a.m., and I think I was out the door by ten.”
“You don’t have any security cameras here, do you?”
She shook her head. “But lots of security cameras are up and down the hallway.”
“We will check those.”
“They will be busted. This wasn’t vandalism. This was rage acted out, and they had fun doing this.” She held up a bra that had been cut in two. “This is not normal behavior.”
“There’s nothing normal about any of this,” he assured her. “I’m glad you’re able to pack something in your bag. When you’re done, bring it to the front hall.” And he disappeared from the doorway.
She stared at the spot and cried out, “Why? I don’t have any place to go.”
“Well,” Saul said, appearing once more, “you aren’t staying here tonight.” Once again he disappeared around the corner.
