by Casey Hagen
“I’m okay,” she said against his chest, her arms circling his waist, her face burrowing into his shirt.
He kissed the top of her head and closed his eyes. “Good. That’s good,” he said, the words a little more than a sigh.
He pulled back and searched her pale face. She’d been shaken, but that determined glint in her cobalt blue eyes burned bright. He tilted her head and pressed a reverent kiss to her lips, thrown by the emotions coursing through him.
“Well, I see I’ve missed a few things in the past...” Jasmine looked down at the clock on her cell phone, “eight or so hours.”
Lily turned to her and grinned over her shoulder. “Yes, but I still gave him hell.”
“That’s my girl,” Jasmine said.
Mason shook his head and loosened his hold on Lily. “I need to go inside and take a look around.”
He followed the walkway, up to the steps, and pushed open the door. One thing was for sure, he’d seen worse. There were times where nothing was left undamaged. Most of Lily’s belongings had been tossed about, but not permanently destroyed.
She’d need some new dishes and after running up to the second floor, she could add a mattress to that list, but other than that, she needed extra bodies to help her right everything again.
Most of all, she needed to work through feeling violated.
His phone buzzed just as he’d gotten back to her living room.
“Hello,” Mason said.
“Hey. We found our guy with the tattoo. His name is Curtis Downs. We have a location and are ready to head there now. Did you want us to wait for you?” Garrett asked.
“Can’t do it. I’m at Lily’s now. Someone did a number on the place.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, I’m not letting her out of my sight. Plus, Mara’s parents agreed to let Lily and Jasmine go through Mara’s room to see if they could get a feel or vision of anything else that might help us. We’re on our way there now.” Mason explained.
“Okay, we’ll let you know when we’ve picked him up. Just wanted to let you know…trust that gut of Lily’s. Downs is a tier III sex offender.”
“Christ.” Downs was the worst of the worst. Tier III meant that he focused on children under the age of thirteen. He may have followed orders to not touch the merchandise, but if he was on the payroll to collect kids, it was only a matter of time before he lost control of himself and crossed the line.
He was the perfect criminal to employ for kidnappings. His desires and the thrill of the hunt would keep him going back more and more if for no other reason than the high that came with success.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get him. Jeff has been informed and we’ve got Troy Arsenault and Rick Latrobe joining us. We didn’t want to take any chances since all indications are that Downs could very well be the tip of one massive iceberg. He’s definitely not the brains of the operation.”
“Good idea.” There had been a few other missing children’s cases, but nothing that Alegra was involved in. Mason had to wonder if they were going to stumble upon a major ring and if they did, how far and wide it went.
In that case, it was best to have extra manpower. Even better to have specially trained manpower. Troy and Rick were partners of The Phoenix Agency. Mason had worked with Rick on a few missions during his Army days. They’d run into each other a few years back and Mason told him his idea for forming Alegra. Rick loved the idea and talked to Troy. Within months, Alegra was up and running as a subdivision of The Phoenix Agency.
“Let me know when you have him.”
“Will do,” Garrett assured him.
“Stay safe, brother,” Mason said and hung up.
He ended his call and rested his hands on his hips looking out the wide living room window onto the quiet street. All of it—Lily, the case, the attraction—it had all moved so damned fast he questioned if it was real or not.
He glanced over to where Lily stood talking to Jasmine. Her honey-colord hair had begun to escape her messy bun, but she could care less.
Lily was definitely flesh and blood. She was a god damned effortlessly sexy temptress.
Mason joined the ladies again. “Ready to go? I’ll drive.”
“Are you sure they’re okay with us going into their home?” Lily asked fidgeting with her bracelet.
It was the first time he’d seen her nervous and unsure of herself in regards to her capabilities.
He pulled open the door and leaned the seat forward for Jasmine to climb in. Once he righted the seat, he turned to Lily. “I’m positive. They want their girl back and at this point will do anything to make that happen. That’s why they hired us.”
“Okay. Umm, I need to tell you something else, though. Before we go. I saw the men who broke into my place.”
He clasped her shoulder and stopped her as she started to drop into the passenger seat. “You got here when they were here?”
“No.”
“Then how?” Mason asked.
“Some things remain the same.” Jasmine leaned forward and stuck her head out. “She had a vision, genius.”
“Oh,” he said. He climbed into the driver’s seat and headed east. “What did they look like?”
Lily tilted her head. “Cops.”
“Are you sure?”
“That’s how they were dressed. Even had a cop car. They cleared out the press, but…”
“What, but what?”
“They didn’t announce themselves when they knocked. That’s how I knew something wasn’t right. Wouldn’t cops identify themselves?”
“Yes, they would,” Mason said. He pulled out his cell and hit a button connecting him to Jasper.
“Hey, I need you to find out if there are any cameras on Lily’s street. City cams, personal security, shit, if there’s a nanny cam with a view out the window looking toward her house, I want to know about it. We’re looking for men dressed as cops.”
“You got it, boss.”
They rolled down Mara’s street and Lily stiffened in the seat beside him. Her gaze landed on the tree near their home, and for the first time he got a true glimpse as to what her visions cost her. She flinched and her eyes turned red. No doubt she was remembering Mara’s abduction, and for a second, he had a moment’s pause at what he was about to have her do.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked Lily.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Okay, let’s go,” Mason said.
They walked up the sidewalk to the front door of the Wilkins residence. Leaves covered the yard, rotting from the recent rain. The house seemed to sag in the grief of the family, tucked within a line of neatly tended houses. Pine needles filled the gutters and dead mums lined the steps leading to the front door. Preparations for Halloween had begun, but had not been finished, as decorations lay abandoned in a sad pile on the front porch.
Mason hated this part. He’d lived it. Alegra had been taken at a different time of year, but it didn’t matter. The property, once a home, wore the devastation as surely as the family inside. Every time he had to do this part, he was reminded of what he’d gone through and the way he’d watched the light dim in his mother’s eyes, little by little, until there was nothing left.
They knocked.
Lily jumped at the sound.
Moments later Adam Wilkins, his skin gray and mouth lined with exhaustion, opened the door to them and wordlessly let them in. Along the walls family photos hung, Adam looked to be a decade younger as he stood straight and proud with his family. The picture had to have been taken in the last year, as Mara looked almost unchanged from the photo they had turned over to the authorities and Alegra.
“Leanne is in the den.” He led them into a dimly-lit room where Leanne sat on a loveseat staring out the window in view of where Mara had been abducted. Her skin seemed to have lost elasticity and her jowls had taken on the droop normally seen in women two decades her senior.
Mara was the living, breathing heart of who they were as a coupl
e. She was the ultimate culmination of their love and dedication and losing her had begun to chip away at their very foundation just six days in.
“Leanne” Mason said with a nod.
“Mr. Devlin,” she whispered keeping her eyes on him, only him.
He cupped Lily’s shoulder and nodded, prompting her forward. “This is Lily.” He nodded in Jasmine’s direction. “And her friend, Jasmine.”
Leanne blinked and turned back to the window.
“Leanne,” Adam whispered in a harsh tone laced with tension.
She continued to stare out the window, shutting them out. Shutting everything out.
“I’m sorry,” Adam said.
“It’s okay,” Lily murmured.
Adam tucked his hands in his pockets. “I’ll show you to Mara’s room.”
He led them up the stairs where pictures of Mara from her newborn photo through her latest school photo ran in a diagonal along the angle of the stairs.
Mason rubbed at the dull throb in his temple. The sense of helplessness hovering over this couple was so thick you could practically peel it off the walls like old wallpaper. Just sharing the air with them in their misery wore on him. The ache in his head, the tightness in his shoulders that he would pay for later, and the heaviness in his limbs wore on him. He often wondered how they managed to walk under their own steam with the weight of the world on their shoulders.
At the end of the hall he opened the door to Mara’s room and led them in.
“I, uh, I’m just going to leave you to it,” Adam said, the lines of his mouth tightening when he gazed in.
“Thank you.” Mason nodded.
Lily walked the perimeter of the room, her gaze traveling over the mementos of Mara’s childhood. “She blames me,” Lily said quietly.
“She blames herself for not listening to you,” Jasmine said, picking up a stuffed dolphin.
“Are you sure?” Lily asked.
“Yup. And if she speaks, she has to acknowledge it. If she acknowledges it, she’ll break. That’s exactly what she’s thinking.”
“How do you know that?” Mason asked.
Jasmine shrugged and replaced the dolphin to its spot. “I just know. It’s what I do.”
Yeah, that was the thing. He didn’t get how that all worked.
Lily sat on Mara’s bed staring at her dresser. Mason scanned the items: bracelets, an iPod, headphones, and a cell phone with a cracked screen.
Lily narrowed her eyes then moved to the cell phone. She curled her fingers around it, holding it in front of her, as if an evil queen in a fairytale gazing into a magic mirror. Within seconds her eyes went blank and Mason would swear she was no longer in the room.
She swayed on her feet, but laid a palm on the dresser to steady herself. It was nothing like what he had seen from Cybill. Of course, Cybill had been theatrics along with well-placed smoke and mirrors.
“She’s alive,” Lily whispered with a hint of a smile. “I can see her. She’s in a cinderblock room with a cot, pillows, and blankets. Somewhere abandoned. She’s warm.”
For the first time in twenty years, he was seeing a psychic in action. He reminded himself that Lily was the real deal. He’d seen it with his own eyes. That part of him that had been made a fool and taken for a ride still hadn’t found the sought-after redemption for the way he’d been manipulated.
By letting Cybill in, he’d had a hand in breaking his family as surely as if he had been the one to abduct Alegra himself.
“Can you see anything else? Is there a window maybe?”
“No window. At least not within my view.”
“What about other people. Is she alone?” Mason asked.
“She’s alone, for now. There are other cots with fresh bedding, just waiting to be used,” Lily said. She turned to Jasmine. “Do you feel that?”
“Like she’s being watched and she doesn’t know it. A peephole maybe?” Jasmine asked.
“Someone watches her or that room. They look because they can’t touch,” Lily whispered.
Downs maybe? Or were there others like him just lurking around Mara and others? Either way, they needed to hurry before it was too damn late.
“Do you think they would let me take this? Just for now?”
“I don’t know about that, Lily,” Mason said with a shake of his head.
“She was holding it during the abduction. I just think if I focus on it some more, maybe something will come to me.”
“I’ll see if I can’t talk Mara’s parents into it. Why don’t you guys wait in the car?”
Mason led them downstairs and waited for them to get outside before he went into the study. How the hell would he do this? He’d been on the receiving end of false hope. What if Lily and Jasmine were wrong and he got the Wilkins’ hopes up for nothing?
He blew out a breath. “We’re finished. Lily did ask one thing. Can she take the cell phone—” he raised his hand just as Leanne was about to protest. She shot up straight, her face screwed up in anger, just about to let him have it. “She saw something. She thinks it’s because of this phone since Mara was holding it when she was taken.”
Leanne vaulted off the couch and grabbed Mason’s hand. “Is she alive? Tell me she’s alive,” she said, her hysteria-laced voice on the verge of tears.
“She’s had a couple flashes of her, and in those flashes she’s alive. We have no way of knowing if what she saw is from today or days ago. So I just don’t know. But it’s something…and I want more. I need more.”
Leanne whimpered, tears streaming down her face as her legs gave out beneath her. Mason caught her and guided her to the loveseat. Adam dropped down next to her, wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and kissed her temple.
Mason sat on the coffee table before her and took her ice-cold hands in his. “I’m hoping the more time she spends with that phone, the more information we’ll get.”
“Please just make sure you bring Mara home. Please,” she hiccupped a sob. “I can’t stand to think of her alone, cold, someone hurting her. I can’t stand for her to think that we’re not looking for her. That we didn’t do enough.”
“Hey, you’re doing everything you can. So am I. Let me take the phone. I promise I’ll return it. And I’ll return your little girl.” He’d never made such a declaration. He knew the odds were stacked against them and he didn’t want to encourage false hope, but for the first time, he had a good feeling that they would find her, and he’d accepted that he would do anything, use anything in his arsenal to bring her home.
“Take it. Please, just bring our little girl home,” Adam pleaded his voice thick.
Mason nodded and slipped the phone in his pocket. He had two women to get settled for the night and more work to do.
Chapter 9
Lily woke to the sound of a garage door and Mason pulling his Charger in. The day had been so chock full of stuff, her body had finally succumbed to a much needed power nap. Power for what? She didn’t really know.
Mason had taken them back to her row house for a brief moment to collect the essentials. Lily grabbed a small, rolling carry on and threw in comfort clothes…and the box in her closet. She wasn’t leaving it unattended again. In the time since she had left her place, the police had been there and dusted for prints, leaving even more of a mess for her to work through as soon as the house was secured again.
“Sorry I fell asleep,” she muttered pushing herself up in the passenger seat and smoothing her hair.
“It’s been a long day and it’s not over yet, so I’m glad you got it in. I’ll show you ladies to your rooms and you can get cleaned up.”
“Thanks, Mason. You’re good people,” Jasmine said patting his shoulder.
Lily followed along, eager to see his inner sanctum. She expected leather furniture, lots of electronics, and a bare kitchen.
The first thing she spotted when they got through the door was a small TV hung on the wall, but looked to only be there for necessity. It lacked size and accessorie
s such as surround sound, Blu-Ray, and other bells and whistles most men look for in an entertainment set up. Floor to ceiling book cases lined the rest of the wall space in his living room. Lily gazed at the groupings of books on her way past and noticed he was not only an avid reader, but a collector of titles from her favorite authors like, Lee Child, Ian Rankin, and James Patterson.
“I have a couple of guest rooms. They haven’t been used in a while, so they might have some dust. The beds are clean and made though.”
He led them into a stainless steel appliance and granite kitchen with a complicated looking coffee maker and a coffee grinder taking center stage. The dishes had been washed and neatly left in the sink to dry.
Mason, despite his tough exterior and bachelor status was an academic and homebody. She smiled to herself. Turns out her boy had built a sanctuary for himself just as she had.
“Help yourself to anything you want in the kitchen, no need to ask,” Mason said. He flicked on the light over the stove and turned off the overhead lighting.
They followed him up the stairs. Lily had been focused on his place, but now, as they drew closer to his bedroom, her skin prickled with awareness. His scent lingered strongest upstairs, which made sense since that’s where he would shower and dress. The spicy scent made her want to touch his warm skin, to feel the ridges and planes of his body, and explore him at her leisure.
She didn’t want his guest room. She’d been seeing him in her visions for twenty years now. Dreaming of him. Longing for him.
Now she could touch him. And she had every intention of doing just that.
She pressed a hand to her cheek, the skin hot to the touch. The thought of making the first move had her stomach dipping and swaying in nervous fascination.
“Hey, are you all right?” he asked when he stopped at the first door.
Her gaze snapped to his. “Of course, yeah, sure…I’m good,” she said with an overzealous shake of her head.
She’d bet all the sweet tea in the south that she looked guilty as hell for stripping him with her eyes.
“Okay. Well, here’s the first room for whoever wants it.”
