On the Hunt

by SUE FINEMAN

  Dave assigned Greg to take care of Bobo. Greg protested, but Dave insisted. “You wanted to come along.” Greg pouted like a little kid and danced with Bobo. Dave shared a long look with Mia, who couldn’t stop laughing.

  The girls chattered with each other and with the agents, happy to be free. With only one phone line in the house, the girls had to take turns calling their parents, but they didn’t seem to mind.

  Al and Arnie would both be charged with several counts of kidnapping, and Arnie would undoubtedly spend a few years in prison for the attack on Mrs. Snyder.

  The murder of Nadine Lynderman was another matter. The more he thought about it, the more Dave knew that Nadine’s murder had nothing to do with what went on in this house. The other girls were imprisoned, but not killed.

  Two of the missing girls from Clover Hills were alive and well, but this operation wouldn’t be over until they found who killed the third one.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dave and Mia checked into a hotel in Las Vegas while the girls returned home to their families and the higher-ups handled the diplomatic aspects of the situation. Bobo stayed at the house with his father, who had arrived the day after the FBI raid.

  Kowalski spent hours interrogating Assad, who had, on advice of his attorney, decided to cooperate so he wouldn’t be charged with Nadine Lynderman’s murder.

  Accounting made noises about the car Dave had lost, and he intended to ask them to pay for the plane, too. His boss had approved the operation, including the use of his plane, so they owed him. The bureau carried insurance for this kind of thing. He didn’t want to use his own insurance and have the insurance company jack the rates up on his next plane.

  Dave lay in bed with Mia sleeping in his arms, soft and warm and so sweet he wanted to keep her there forever. She’d finally forgiven him for shutting her out after his conversation with Greg.

  If only his life wasn’t so unsettled. He traveled so much, his apartment in Denver had never felt like a real home. He wanted to ask Mia to marry him, but he didn’t want to work around the clock and leave a wife and family home alone like so many of his co-workers. He had to make some big changes in his life before he could expect her to consider building a life with him.

  Some of the women he’d dated would’ve made good wives, but he didn’t love any of them. He fingered Mia’s hair, felt her warm body in his arms, and knew why he didn’t love any of the other women. He’d been waiting for this one. Mia understood him better than his own mother. Her last lover bruised her pride, so she didn’t have a lot of trust in men, but he could change that. He would change that.

  Mia made a little sound in her sleep and turned over. Dave curled his body around hers and kissed her shoulder. Running his hand lovingly down her arm and around to her breasts, he woke her slowly. She pushed her behind against his growing erection and rubbed her tush back and forth until he grew hard as stone. With one quick move, he slipped between her legs and plunged inside her tight little body.

  She gasped. “Dave, are you wearing—”

  “No.”

  “I don’t care,” she whispered. She faced away from him, and it was a tighter fit this way, more erotic, especially without a condom. He kissed the back of her neck and felt her heart race as she moaned and whispered his name. Rubbing her aroused nipples with one hand and another nub with the other, he drove himself deeper and deeper. She came quick and hard, holding him inside her as he let himself go. Sex had never felt this intimate or satisfying. He and Mia connected on many levels, and the more time he spent with her, the deeper his love grew.

  The intensity of their joining surprised Mia. Until Dave, she’d never given all of herself to any man. She didn’t hold back with Dave. She savored every touch and kiss, soaked in his sweet words, and her body vibrated with love. Dave caressed her breasts and belly, and she put her hands over his, holding onto him while her breathing slowed. “Montgomery, you are one hell of a lover.”

  “You like it that way?” he whispered.

  “Are you kidding? I love it.” She loved him, too, and the unspoken words hung between them. But she didn’t want Dave to say the words unless he meant them. The man she thought she’d marry had said the words often, but now she knew she had never loved Ted, not the way she loved Dave.

  The phone rang and Dave rolled away to answer it. Mia went into the bathroom and stood under the hot shower. That had to be Greg on the phone, and she didn’t want to talk to him. He continued to try to push her and Dave apart, and she didn’t understand why. Why didn’t Greg want her with his best friend? What did Greg know about Dave that she didn’t know?

  A minute later, Dave stepped in the shower behind her. “Was that Greg on the phone?” she asked.

  “No, it was your captain. I hate like hell to tell you this, honey. Your apartment has been vandalized.”

  She groaned, knowing it must be the dead boy’s family or the gang, or both. “What about my furniture and—”

  “They trashed the living room, but the cops got there before they got to the bedroom. The kids painted gang slogans on the living room walls, so they know who did it.”

  She hated leaving Tacoma this way, chased out by a gang of kids who’d been fed a steady diet of violence. The kids wanted to make an example of her, to scare the police away from their crackdown on gang activity, but they’d gone about it the wrong way. After this, the police would step up their efforts to control the gangs.

  “I have to go home and pack, put my things in storage.”

  “We’ll stop there on the way back to Clover Hills.”

  Mia felt numb. Since the shooting, her life had changed in ways nobody could have anticipated. She’d lost her job, her apartment, and Aunt Leona’s house. “People used to ask me if I was a gypsy, and I guess I am now. I have no home, no job, and no visible means of support, but I can dance.”

  Dave leaned in for a kiss. “That’s not all you can do, honey. Move to Denver with me. Please, Mia.”

  She gazed into his bright blue eyes and shook her head slightly. “I can’t, Dave. I need to spend some time with my grandmother, and then figure out what to do with my life.”

  “You don’t want to live with me?”

  “Dave, you’re never there, and we both know this...” She waved her hand.

  “Affair?”

  “It’s temporary. You’ll find another sophisticated blonde, take her home to your family, and live happily ever after. And I’ll go teach dancing somewhere.” Why couldn’t she fall in love with a man from a family like hers, people who were essentially color-blind?

  <>

  The next afternoon, several of Mia’s former co-workers met her and Dave at the apartment in Tacoma. They’d brought two pickups and a stack of boxes. With their strong, willing hands, in no time the boxes were packed and loaded on the pickups.

  The living room furniture would go to the dump and the boxes to storage. She told her co-workers they could have the other furniture. There was nothing there worth moving. One claimed the bed, another the antique chest in the bedroom, and another one took Mia’s little desk for his daughter.

  Mia thanked each of them with a hug and walked away from her home of the past five years. She’d never planned to make the apartment her permanent home. Her deposit money would go to replace the damaged carpet and drapes. She walked away with nothing. The kids had won this battle, but the war on gangs in Tacoma would continue.

  Her life was changing one thing at a time, but the changes weren’t all bad. Losing Ted had stung, but she’d found Dave, and she had a grandmother. Dave and Mrs. Snyder were more important than a job she’d grown to hate and an apartment she’d never liked.

  Dave drove her to Clover Hills, and as they neared the town, it began to snow. Fat, wet flakes splattered on the windshield. “Dave, does this rental car have snow tires?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Mine does, and I have chains in the back. I don’t care if it gets whacked again, because it’s shot any
way. It’ll cost me more than it’s worth to file an insurance claim.”

  Dave pulled into the parking lot at the hotel and peered out the window at the side of Mia’s car. “I didn’t realize he’d done that much damage.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Dave. It’ll do until I’m ready to leave here.” She waved her hand. “What the hell? I’ve lost everything else. Why not the car, too?”

  He sat quietly for several seconds, staring at the snow piling up on the windshield. He turned to look at Mia and spoke softly. “You haven’t lost me.”

  “Oh, Dave,” she said on a sigh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.” She’d hurt his feelings.

  He opened his arms and she leaned into him. Once they walked inside, he’d dive into the case again. She needed this time alone with him first. One of these days, after he solved Nadine Lynderman’s murder, they’d go their separate ways. Until then, she wouldn’t let anything or anyone keep them apart.

  Holding hands, they walked through the snow to the back door of the Four Leaf Clover. Dave brushed the snow off her hair and kissed her cold lips before they walked inside.

  <>

  After Dave and Mia settled in upstairs, they had dinner with Kowalski in the game room. Kowalski talked about his interview with Assad. “He said he took the girls to fill a request by Bobo’s father. The man wanted to get his son interested in ‘nice girls’ and get his mind off cross-dressing and other behavior he considered... uh... inappropriate, I guess you could say. Bobo’s behavior embarrassed him and made him look weak, so he brought the kid to America, as far away from home as he could get.”

  “Not necessarily a good idea,” said Mia. “Being in America gave Bobo the encouragement to be himself. Why did Assad have to kidnap girls? Couldn’t he just hire them?”

  “He said he tried that, but none of them would follow the rules of behavior Bobo’s father insisted upon. So, he took one girl and then another, and forced them to obey. A few became troublesome, but he couldn’t just let them go because they could identify him. He didn’t want to kill them, so he decided to sell them to a brothel overseas. That way they wouldn’t be around to turn him in for kidnapping.”

  “The perfect solution,” said Dave, “but it backfired.”

  “Did he sell any girls?” asked Mia.

  “No, we caught the first group before they left port.”

  “What about Nadine Lynderman?”

  “Assad swears he and his people didn’t kill her. He also swears he wasn’t responsible for the men in the pickup who pushed you off the road.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know. He had Nadine at the strip club for a few days and then took her to the house in the desert, so he knows something, but I don’t think he killed her. Not one of the other girls has been harmed. He obviously didn’t want to get caught, but I don’t think he intended to hurt anyone. As for the men in the pickup, we know they intended to kill. One managed Assad’s strip club in Tacoma, so we know there’s a connection. The other man was a petty criminal who worked for Assad from time to time.”

  Mia pushed her dinner plate aside. “I think I saw Nadine at the strip club when I made an arrest there. I can’t remember the date, but I’m sure it was before she disappeared from Clover Hills.”

  Dave stared at her. “Are you sure?”

  “She was on stage when I arrived. She wore a lot of makeup, and she didn’t have much on, so I wasn’t looking at her face, if you know what I mean, but I’m pretty sure it was her.”

  “But that means—”

  “She was there more than once,” said Mia. “Maybe that’s what her stepfather meant when he called her a slut, and maybe that’s why someone didn’t want me in Clover Hills, snooping around the investigation. They were afraid I’d see her picture and connect her to Assad.”

  Dave leaned back in his chair. Assad had not only procured girls for Bobo, he was connected to Arnie and Knight and the bartender in Clover Hills, and also to the men in the red pickup. After Assad took the girls, why did he come back to Clover Hills? What was a man like Assad doing in a tiny little mountain town like Clover Hills?

  “What are you thinking, Dave?” asked Kowalski.

  “That Assad didn’t tell us everything. There’s something else going on here, something worth the risk of killing two FBI agents, a cop, and an old lady who may have seen something she wasn’t supposed to see.”

  “And one nineteen-year-old girl,” said Mia. “Assad may not have killed Nadine, but I’ll bet he knows who did.”

  “It isn’t over with Assad,” said Kowalski.

  “Not by a long shot,” said Dave.

  Stipes and the crew searching the Edwards home came dragging in at seven-thirty. Stipes’ toes were swollen again, and Mia pointed to the bed in the corner. “Lie down and prop your foot up while I get you some dinner.”

  “Mia, I still have work to do.”

  “Go,” she said firmly, and he obeyed. Kowalski smiled and nudged Dave. When Mia’s nurturing instincts kicked in, there was no arguing with her.

  Dave sat beside Stipes’ bed. “What did you find in the Edwards house?”

  Stipes pushed a button and the lower portion of the bed rose, lifting his legs. “There’s a locked room in the basement, hidden behind a wall of wine racks. Murphy said the shelves didn’t line up right and, when he investigated, he pushed something and the rack slid open. There’s a bedroom and bathroom behind the wine rack. The bed looks like it’s been slept in, so I called in the lab crew from Seattle. They’re there now.”

  “You’re not finished?”

  “Hell, no, we’re not finished. I left two men there, and after I rest for an hour or so, I need to go back and relieve them.”

  “What about the girl’s room?”

  “Looks like a sterile hotel room. It’s weird. They’ve only known about Nadine’s death for a few days, and they’ve already wiped out all traces of her. It’s as if she’d never lived there. There’s no clothes, no toothbrush, not even a lipstick. It’s a good thing we got to her hairbrush before they knew we’d found the body, or that would have been gone, too.”

  “Did you get prints on Edwards?”

  “Yes, and the man appears squeaky clean, but there’s something about him that doesn’t ring true.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Dave tapped his finger on the arm of the chair. “He looks familiar. I know him from somewhere, but I can’t put my finger on it. You stay in bed. Kowalski and I will take care of things at the Edwards home.”

  <>

  Without asking, Mia spent the night in Dave’s bed. Since the day at Bobo’s house, she’d stopped trying to convince herself she didn’t love him. She did love him, and she wouldn’t deprive herself of what little time they had left together. Their relationship wouldn’t last beyond this case; she’d known that all along. When the murder investigation ended, Dave would go back to Denver, and she’d go to Texas. If she could find a little storefront to rent, she’d open a dance studio in Caledonia. It wouldn’t pay much, but Mom said it didn’t cost as much to live there.

  Dave would find himself another beautiful blonde, he’d be assigned another case, and memories of their time together would have to sustain her. She’d be miserable without Dave, but Greg would be happy.

  She rolled away from Dave’s sleeping body and let her silent tears soak her pillow. Why did this have to be so hard? Why couldn’t she be satisfied with a little piece of his life?

  Because I want more. She wanted the fairy tale, the happy marriage and kids, and maybe a cat or two. But she didn’t want to marry a man in law enforcement, and the FBI was Dave’s life. Visions of her father’s funeral and the trial of the man who shot him should have faded by now, but every time she went out on a domestic violence call she relived those nightmares. The mixture of wild excitement and horror on the face of the kid with the knife haunted her. In one night, he’d murdered another boy and then lost his own life.

  She didn’t want s
ome hyped-up kid or a distraught husband killing the father of her children. Being in the action with Dave was one thing. She couldn’t sit at home and wait and wonder if he’d come home alive or in a box. Losing her father had shaped her life, and it would not happen to her own children. If she ever had any.

  <>

  Late the afternoon of the next day, the lab crew finally left the Edwards home. Mrs. Edwards, impeccably dressed in black, was so drunk she could barely hold the glass. Did drinking deaden the grief and pain of losing her daughter?

  Edwin Edwards stood in his living room, arms crossed defiantly, glaring at Dave. “Are you finished, Mr. Montgomery?”

  “For now. We’ll let you know if we need anything else.” Without another word, Dave walked out to the car, where Kowalski sat waiting.

  Edwards had not only refused to answer any questions or cooperate in any way with the FBI investigation, he’d ordered his wife not to speak with anyone. What were they hiding? Where had he seen Edwards before?

  His inability to remember frustrated him. He didn’t think it was job related, but it might have been in a social setting. His social life had been spotty at best the past few years. He dated when he was home, worked out at the gym, and attended an occasional dinner party, but he hadn’t met Edwards in Denver.

  Dave sat in the car beside Kowalski. “What kind of work did Edwards do? He said he was retired, and their house and everything in it is expensive, so where did he get his money? And what’s his connection to Assad?”

  “Charles Edwin Edwards is from Philadelphia,” said Kowalski. “He worked as an accountant for a big firm for several years. The company went under and he took another job for awhile. He retired just before he married Dinah Lynderman. That was three years ago. They immediately uprooted Nadine from high school and moved here to Clover Hills.”

  “Did Mrs. Edwards say what happened to Nadine’s natural father?”

  “According to her, he disappeared the year Nadine was born. I got the distinct impression she didn’t like living in Clover Hills, and according to her friends, Nadine hated it here.”