VANISHED, A Romantic Suspense Novel (Edgars Family Novel)

by Suzanne Ferrell

  A moment later Jeffers walked out of the men’s room and headed for the pub’s front exit. Almost immediately, hoodie guy slid off his barstool and followed the cop out of the pub. She’d been right. He was following someone, just not them.

  She lifted her phone and snapped another picture of hoodie guy as he walked past, hoping to get a better angle for Luke to use.

  “Come on,” Luke said, sliding out of the booth and grabbing her hand, nearly pulling her out with him. Cursing whatever insanity had caused her to buy the heels instead of just sneakers, she stumbled along beside him as he hurried out the bar to follow their suspect.

  “Dammit,” Luke said as the man climbed into a nondescript brown sedan and pulled out into traffic just behind Jeffers car. “I don’t suppose you caught his license plate number?”

  She closed her eyes and pictured the car. Nothing that identified its make or model. Standard Ohio plates. “Only part of it. ESC but he pulled out too fast for me to catch the others.”

  He heaved a sigh as he watched both cars turn the corner. “Okay, let’s head back to the hotel and I’ll run his photo. But I think our detective has a tail.”

  “Isn't it a good thing hoodie guy isn’t following us?”

  “For the moment, but I’ve got a bad feeling your friend stumbled into something nasty.”

  She looked at him like he was the class dunce. “I figured that out from all the blood last night.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  If the situation wasn’t so serious Luke would’ve laughed at Abby's quick response outside the bar earlier. He smiled to himself as he retrieved his laptop from his room’s safe. Abby never cut him any slack, that was for sure.

  Going through the connecting door into her room he nearly tripped over the cute shoes she’d worn earlier. He tensed, swallowing the growl that threatened. If he’d hadn’t insisted she be less of her practical self, she would’ve been in tennis shoes—a safer choice for both of them—and they might’ve moved quickly enough for her to get the entire license plate number.

  Stooping to pick the sandals up, he tossed them into the closet on top of the new sneakers she’d also bought and her more sensible accountant’s shoes. “Why did you get two pairs of shoes?”

  “Because they had two pair in my size.” She answered without looking up from her work

  “Do you always buy all the shoes in your size?”

  She gave a shrug. “My feet fit my height. It’s rare to find one pair in the store that are size ten, let alone cute sandals, too.”

  Her explanation sounded like she was talking to the town idiot and didn’t ease his frustration. “Don’t wear those again while we’re here.”

  “Why not?” She asked from the far bed where she sat cross-legged, working on her own computer, one brow raised in question—both at his comment and the edge of anger he couldn’t quite keep out of his voice.

  Because seeing you in them and your painted toes peeking out at me is way too distracting.

  “Because they’re dangerous. You could need to move fast and being agile might be a matter of survival for you. Wear the sneakers next time.” Forcing himself to relax, he kicked off his own shoes and sat on the edge of the bed bedside her. “Scoot over.”

  “You can sit on the other bed or at the desk.” Her brows drew down in that stubborn way that made him want to grab her and either shake the expression away or kiss her. Either action would probably get him a gun muzzle in the side again.

  “I could, but then I can’t see what you’re working on and you can’t see the faces of the men on my screen.”

  “Oh, that makes sense,” she said, the stubborn look gone so fast he almost laughed.

  That was the practical Abby he knew.

  She scooted over, rearranging her computer and the pillows behind her to make space for him. With his back against the headboard he stretched out his legs, one thigh pressed against hers. Not since his senior year in high school had he been so self-conscious sitting on a bed with a woman.

  “I already sent hoodie guy’s photo to your phone,” she said, clicking away on her keyboard, reminding him they were there to work.

  “Is that what we’re calling him?”

  “Until you can come up with his real identity.” Stopping her typing, she picked up her phone and glanced at the face of it, then set it aside again.

  He pulled out his phone and forwarded the image to his laptop. “Are you still working on filling in your copy of your friend’s day planner?”

  All movement beside him ceased at his question.

  He turned to see what the problem was. She sat with her fingers frozen on the keyboard, her eyes wide as she stared at him and she’d pulled her lower lip between her teeth in a worried fashion.

  How could that one little act make her look vulnerable and sexy all at the same time? It roused the need to claim her and protect her simultaneously. Problem was, who was going to protect her from him?

  “What?” he asked, focusing on her worried green eyes, instead of that mouth he’d happily sampled throughout lunch.

  “How did you know?”

  “How did I know you’ve got a photographic memory?” He tapped her computer screen. “I saw that last night. You might be a novice in the field, but you wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the police finding your friend, so I knew you hadn’t secreted her datebook out of the condo. That much detail on your computer, meant you had a good memory.”

  She continued to worry her lower lip with her teeth. He needed her to stop doing that. Pronto.

  “Does it bother you that I know about your ability, Abby?”

  Like clockwork the nickname drew her up straighter, more focused. “No, of course not. I just don’t go around advertising it, so was surprised you’d figured it out.”

  “Putting two and two together is a requirement for working in the Treasury Department, sweetheart.”

  “You don’t need to keep doing that,” she said, breaking eye contact and focusing on her laptop once more.

  “Doing what?”

  “Using endearments. No one is here. No need to fake any intimate relationship between us.”

  There wasn’t anything fake in the heat and sizzle simmering between them. No matter how hard she tried to avoid it. No matter how much he needed to ignore it.

  “It will keep me in practice, sweetheart,” he said just to watch her lips purse. “And as I was saying, not only am I good at addition, but I know someone who not only has a photographic memory, he has a phonographic one, too.”

  “Who?”

  “My nephew, Nicky. Before my sister and her husband adopted him, the kid was used as a walking, talking numbers black book for Russian mobsters down in Columbus.”

  “Good God, how did that happen to him?”

  “Like you he was orphaned after his grandmother brought him here from Russia. He was a kid hanging out for scraps in a restaurant and somehow the mob bosses figured out his ability and exploited it.”

  “But your sister and brother-in-law adopted him?”

  “Yeah, after Jake kidnapped my sister and forced her to help stitch up Nicky, then they were on the run from the police and feds and mobsters, and from there things just got worse.”

  “You’re making that up.” She’d narrowed her eyes at him once more.

  He tensed, looked deep into her eyes, lowering his voice, all traces of humor gone. “I might bullshit about a lot of things, bend rules to get a case solved, but I never, ever make things up about family. Sometimes that’s all you have to cover your back. To me, family is sacred.”

  For a moment, she held his gaze, then her eyes grew watery and she closed them. “That’s how I feel about Brianna. She’s family.”

  Damn. He hadn’t meant to make her cry.

  “We’ll find her, Abby.” Settling his hand over hers, he squeezed it and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Nicky’s story made the local papers a few years ago. Look it up.”

  With a nod, he released he
r hands and watched her swipe the tears from her eyes.

  While she did exactly as he suggested and looked up the news feed on the case, because God forbid Abby should take his word at face value, he connected his phone to the laptop. Then he opened up the facial recognition program and uploaded hoodie guy’s photo to it. “This is going to take a while. What were the license plate letters again? Might as well see if we can get a lead on the car while we’re at it.”

  “ESC,” she said, not looking up from the article on the screen about his sister’s family. “Your sister and Nicky almost drowned?”

  “It was the only way to save Nicky from the man trying to kill him. But my sister is a lot tougher than she looks and smart to boot.” He pulled up the state license plate database. “Well, crap.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I was hoping we had enough to at least narrow our search to this area, but Cuyahoga county, which is where we are, and Franklin, where Columbus, the state capitol is, both have license plates that start with ESC.”

  “Crap.”

  Well, at least they agreed on something.

  Abby closed out the article she’d been reading, then lifted her phone and looked at the screen a moment before setting it aside again.

  “Expecting a call?”

  “I know it’s silly, but I was hoping Brianna would just call.”

  “Wasn’t her cell phone at the condo last night?”

  She closed her eyes and he imagined she was seeing the crime scene again.

  “No. Unless it was buried under something, I don’t see it anywhere in the mess.” She paused, her eyes still closed. “Her purse isn’t anywhere either.”

  Abby opened her eyes, now filled with a glimmer of hope.

  Damn he wanted to bolster that look, but he had no words. Then another thought hit him and a cold chill swept over him.

  “You haven’t tried to call her have you?”

  She gave him that “duh” look again. “Not since I arrived at the airport last night. I didn’t think of it once you came into the condo and everything seemed to happen in a blur.” She held the phone in her hand, staring down at the screen. “I didn’t want to tip her assailants off if she had it with her. You know…in case she tried to call me.”

  Thank God. Practical, analytical Abby hadn’t zeroed the target hanging over her any closer.

  Exhaling in relief, he pulled out his phone and dialed Jeffers number.

  “Got a question for you,” he said in lieu of a greeting when the detective picked up his phone.

  “Okay, maybe I’ll have an answer.”

  “Did the crime scene techs find Brianna’s cell phone or her purse?”

  “No. Neither, and my people are thorough. They even went through her car.” Papers shuffled in the background. “We have a warrant pending to pull her phone records, then we can try to find her on the GPS.”

  “How long will it take you to get a warrant for the phone records?” Locking gazes with Abby again, Luke laid his free hand over hers, stilling it on the phone. With a shake of his head he mouthed the word wait to keep her from pushing the call button.

  “If we’re lucky and find a sympathetic judge who hasn’t taken off for the weekend yet, a few more hours.” Jeffers paused. “But then, as her friends, you don’t need a warrant to call her. If you want to come in, we could use our system to track the phone call from here.”

  Yeah, Jeffers hadn’t become a detective because he lived in the shallow end of the smarts gene pool.

  Luke waited for the man to put more pieces to the puzzle together.

  “And you don’t need my program, because you have your own.”

  Bingo.

  “If I come up with anything, we’ll let you know.”

  “You do that. Even super feds need backup.”

  Luke grinned at the sarcasm in that comment. “Speaking of backs. Watch yours.”

  “Oh?” A sharpness filled Jeffers voice.

  “Yeah. Apparently you’ve got a tail. Drives a dark sedan, plate number starts with ESC.”

  “Numbers?”

  “Couldn’t quite get those. But guy wears a grey hoodie, probably like half the OSU fans in town.”

  “Caucasian,” Abby added, leaning close to the phone.

  “’Preciate the info,” Jeffers said.

  They disconnected and Luke released his hold on Abby’s hand, waiting for the barrage of questions while he opened another program on his laptop, typing in his password to open the encrypted site.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  “I thought you weren’t going to tell Jeffers about his tail? And why didn’t you offer to send the picture of hoodie guy?”

  Turning, he stared straight into those deep green eyes. “I told him because he’s a good cop and needs to know to watch his back. I didn’t offer to share the picture because we don’t want him bringing in the guy before we discover who he is or we might not get a crack at figuring out what his connection to your friend’s disappearance might be. Your friend’s life might depend on that.”

  This made her pause and focus on their priority, finding her friend.

  “You’re not going to wait on a warrant to run Brianna’s phone records are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you don’t want me to try calling her because someone could trace the call back to us?”

  God, he loved how her brain worked.

  “Right. But we can still try to use the phone to trace her whereabouts.”

  “How?”

  “What kind of phone did Bethany have?”

  “Brianna. She would spend thousands of dollars maintaining her looks, but high-tech upgrades? She didn’t see the need in it. She had a very old cell phone.”

  “Damn. It would be better if she had the newest smartphone. They all have GPS installed in them.” He brought up the screen. “What’s her phone number?”

  Abby read it off to him. “What if it’s turned off? We won’t be able to track it then, will we?”

  “Not a problem. We can still track it as long as no one removed the battery.”

  * * * * *

  Detective Aaron Jeffers sat staring at his cell phone and contemplating the conversation he’d just had with Agent Edgars. He didn’t buy the guy’s story about just visiting his girlfriend’s friend for one second. Years of listening to criminals and people with something to hide lie to him left him with a nose to smell out a line of horseshit when he heard it, even if it was with a firm handshake and politician-slick smile.

  Oh, there was something between Edgars and Ms. Whitson, he’d give the guy that. Hell, Edgars had practically marked his territory like a wolf protecting his mate. Who could blame him? When she’d walked into the pub today he’d had to do a double-take to be sure it was the same woman from last night. Who knew such a beautiful and sexy woman was hidden under all that baggy blue polyester?

  A dating couple though? His instinct told him they hadn’t crossed that boundary yet, but he wasn’t convinced they were long-term working partners, either. Sparks seemed to fly off them when they were within ten feet of each other. Edgars was going to be a lucky man if the pair ever crossed that line.

  Heaving a sigh, Aaron ran his hand over the slight stubble of his jaw.

  Edgars had the capability to work on this case outside the usual channels and without the restraints that tied his hands. And didn’t that just bite his ass?

  With any luck, the cocky agent would get some information about the missing woman’s associates or her whereabouts, or at least her phone’s location, then keep him informed. No use in both of them working that angle, at least not yet.

  Aaron glanced at his wall clock. Two hours until his appointment to meet with Ryan Baxter, Brianna Mathews’ boss at Hollister-Klein Exporters. Maybe the company’s CFO could fill him in on what the missing woman was working on for the company.

  With another heavy sigh, he wiped his hand over his face.

 
Two hours to kill.

  Since his hands were tied on this case until the warrant came through, forensics came up with something useful or Edgars called him back, he could focus on his other case. Not that he was any closer to making a crack in it, either.

  Turning to his computer, he pulled up the last file he’d had open before catching the Brianna Matthews’ abduction.

  Five women missing over a period of three years. The case his captain had told him to drop because there was no real evidence. Only, his gut told him there was something.

  At first he thought Brianna Matthews might be the sixth. Now he wasn’t so sure. Pulling out a piece of paper, he made two columns, match and not a match then he began comparing the facts from both cases.

  All between the ages of eighteen and thirty. Check in the match column. He read over the interviews they’d done with associates, co-workers and acquaintances of the other women.

  None with family ties to the area. Flipping through the pages, he confirmed what Ms. Whitson had told him. Brianna had no blood relations in the area and her adoptive parents had both passed away in the past five years. Check.

  Low-level jobs. Brianna apparently was a high-level employee in Hollister-Klein. He marked an X in the not-a-match column.

  The other five were all shy, retiring, stay-at-home types. He pulled out an 8x10 glossy he’d taken from the myriad of photos at the crime scene last night for the case file. Brianna Matthews was a blue-eyed, blonde bombshell. Nothing shy or retiring about this girl. A stay-at-home night wasn’t her thing. Another X.

  The other women had all used some sort of on-line dating service. Another glance at Brianna. Nope. Pretty damn sure she didn’t need one. Which begged the question, why did she have a dating site open on her computer? And why were there only pictures of women on that site? Could she have been shopping for something different? Looking to play for the other team? This hottie and another woman?

  Damn, that wasn’t an image he needed to linger on. Not if he wanted to get any real work done today.

  He lifted another of the crime scene photos to study again.

  Then there was the violence of the Mathews disappearance. The in-your-face, blitzkrieg-type attack. These guys were looking for something. The chaos of the condo confirmed it. Five would get you ten that whoever had Brianna wouldn’t be finished with her until she gave up the location of what they wanted.