by Kara Lennox
“You haven’t eaten enough of that dinner to keep a bird alive,” Daniel observed. He’d been the perfect host, seeing to her every need. He’d even obtained the special food Copper’s vet had prescribed for him.
Raleigh smiled. “My dad used to say the same thing to me. I always lose my appetite when I’m nervous.”
“You’re more than just nervous.”
Damn Daniel for being so freaking observant. “Yeah, okay, maybe I’m a little upset over the situation with Griffin, too.”
“Romance is one area of my life at which I haven’t exactly excelled. So you can take any advice I foist on you with a grain of salt. But I have a feeling he’ll come around.”
Raleigh had her doubts about that. He’d been so, so angry, justifiably so. “Even if he does…I thought we had a chance at first. Griffin made me see that I was limiting myself. He made me feel…happy. For the first time in a long, long time.”
“And now you feel like you blew it.”
“It’s not just that I didn’t show any faith in him. Things were going wonky before that. He was the one pulling back, saying it couldn’t work for us because I’m still hung up on Jason.”
“Are you?”
“I’m not beyond hope! Lately I’ve been putting things into perspective. But I’m beginning to think Jason was only an excuse. Griffin pushed to get closer to me, and then when he finally did, he didn’t want me anymore.” And why she was telling this to Daniel Logan, her boss, of all people, she didn’t know.
But Daniel was perceptive. Maybe he could help her understand. He might not be in a relationship right now, but he was a man. Surely he understood how the male brain worked better than she did.
She wasn’t completely naive when it came to men. She had dated a few, even had some semi-serious boyfriends before she’d met Jason. But regarding Griffin, she felt as baffled as she had in junior high the first time she’d let a boy touch her breast and then he’d bragged about it to anyone who would listen.
Daniel shook his head. “I don’t think that’s what’s going on. I think Griffin Benedict very much wants you. I see it in the way he looked at you. You wounded him today. In the heart.”
Raleigh nodded. “As bad as things were, I’m afraid I made them much worse with my accusations. He probably won’t even talk to me after this.”
“Things often look bleakest just before a stroke of good luck. You can take it from an expert on the subject.”
Certainly Daniel had seen some very bleak times. All those years in prison, avoiding a lethal injection by mere days. She should stop feeling sorry for herself. Her prison had been one of her own making, a gilded cage with bars made from idealized memories of her husband.
At least she was free now. She could be grateful to Griffin for that.
THE LIMO PULLED UP in front of the Project Justice building just as the sun set, bathing downtown in a gold-orange glow. A pretty time of day, one Raleigh hardly noticed anymore. But now that her senses had been reawakened, she noticed everything.
“Wait,” Randall said when she reached for the door handle. “I’ll get that.” He would also check out the street and shield her with his own body as he escorted her to the building’s front door. Although he posed as a mere chauffeur, Daniel had assured her that Randall had once worked the Presidential detail for the Secret Service.
Ten steps, and she was inside the lobby. Randall said he would park nearby, and she should call him when she was ready to go home.
Raleigh was surprised to see Celeste still at the front desk. Although the lobby stayed open all night, because Project Justice personnel often worked at odd hours, in the evening hours a night watchman was usually on duty.
“You’re working late.”
“Phil called in sick,” she said sourly. “Sick, my sweet patootie. He’s watching baseball, I just know it. Daniel’s sending someone to relieve me in a while. Till then, I’m stuck here.” She punched unhappily at a Mylar Happy Birthday balloon tied to her chair.
Raleigh hadn’t even realized Celeste was having a birthday. She really needed to reach out more to people at work. “Sorry. That bites.” She set her purse down on the reception desk.
Celeste shrugged. “It’s okay. I’ll get overtime pay. Thought you were on vacation.”
“Only sort of. I’m meeting a sergeant from the police department.”
“He’s already here. But he stepped outside to have a smoke.”
“Hmm.” She was sure she hadn’t seen anyone nearby on the street. Raleigh returned to the large double doors and peeked outside. Sure enough, a man in a suit was now leaning against the wall of her building, puffing on the dregs of a cigarette. He must have been stretching his legs a few moments earlier.
He was tall and slender, early forties, maybe, and he sported an enormous handlebar mustache and thick-framed black glasses that seemed out of place on his otherwise pleasant face.
He came instantly alert, straightening his stance. “Raleigh?”
“Yes. You must be Sergeant Smythe.”
“Yes, ma’am.” As they met halfway on the sidewalk, he reached into an inner pocket, flashed a badge for her, quickly returned it to his jacket, then offered her his hand. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“I…I’m sorry, have we met?” He did look familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him.
“Just once, briefly.” He sounded slightly irritated. Normally she was very good with faces and names, but she did meet a lot of law enforcement personnel in the course of her work.
She made a point to shake his hand warmly. Now was her chance to mend some fences. “I’m so glad you called. We don’t have time to waste. If Anthony is innocent, he needs to be freed, sooner rather than later.” Clearing Anthony’s name after he’d died of a lethal injection would be a hollow victory.
“Then you’ll want to come with me,” the sergeant said. “The evidence I found is in my trunk. I didn’t want to just carry it into your office. I know the press is covering you pretty closely.”
“I don’t want the press to know anything else until I’m good and ready.” She started to burn all over again, thinking about that bogus story CNI ran. But she pushed her irritation aside. She had to stay focused.
“My car is parked right around the corner. This is gonna blow your mind.”
“Okay, but…” She looked around nervously. This part of downtown Houston became a ghost town after hours, and it was quickly emptying of cars and pedestrians. Also, once the sun set, she wouldn’t be able to see much, given her dreadful night vision. “I am a police detective. I’ve just been checking out the area. I didn’t see any suspicious cars or people.”
She was being paranoid. She was with one of Houston’s finest, as safe as she could be under the circumstances.
“Let’s go, then.” As they walked, she asked, “So when did we meet?” Surely if she’d met anyone with that distinctive mustache, she would remember.
“We met when you were still working as a defense attorney. I was a witness in one of your trials—for the prosecution.”
“Ah. I hope I wasn’t too unpleasant toward you.” She was only half joking. Her cross-examinations could get nasty.
Smythe laughed. “You had to do your job. I actually admired your courage.”
“If so, you’re rare among police.”
They stopped at an unmarked Ford Taurus, an anonymous white. Probably picked up at a police auction. So many officers acquired their personal vehicles through the department.
Raleigh’s heart started beating faster. She couldn’t wait to see what Smythe had to show her. A piece of evidence she didn’t know about? Something that tended to rule out Anthony as a suspect, conveniently “lost” by someone in the department to make his job easier?
Something Smythe didn’t want to be seen with, or photographed with, which meant it was more than a piece of paper or a folder.
Smythe opened the trunk. Inside was a plain cardboard box, resting toward the back of t
he large space. The box was old, dusty. On the outside was written, in black marker, Michelle Brewster P.E. Physical Evidence.
Raleigh reached for the box. “May I?”
“Help yourself.” She pulled open two of the box flaps and leaned in so she could see the contents. Given how dim the lighting was, she had to get close to see.
Suddenly the trunk lid fell and hit her hard on the back of the head. “Ow! What the—” Before she could even finish a sentence, strong hands clamped around her waist and hauled her off her feet, pushing her into the trunk. She landed painfully on one shoulder as Sergeant Smythe—or whoever he was—folded her legs and stuffed her inside. As she screamed in pain and fury and outrage, he slapped a piece of duct tape over her mouth. She caught just a glimpse of triumph on the man’s face—and a crazed look in his eyes—before he slammed the lid shut, trapping her in the darkness.
She rolled over onto her back and beat on the trunk lid with her fists, then kicked with her feet. One of her shoes had fallen off.
“You don’t have the slightest idea who I am, do you?” he yelled at her through the trunk. “We met only two days ago.”
She scanned her memory banks, coming up blank.
“Don’t you ever watch the news?”
Then it came to her. Get rid of the mustache and the glasses, and she was looking at Paul Stratton, anchor of the Channel 6 Evening News, the man who had asked her about John Shinn in the hospital parking lot.
And he wanted her dead because…? Oh, no. Now she saw it. He had been the reporter to break the Michelle Brewster murder story—the first to name Anthony Simonetti a suspect, well before the police had arrested him. He’d earned some kind of award for his series on the case, if she recalled.
If she proved he’d been wrong, his reputation was on the line. But surely the person he most wanted out of the picture was Griffin, his competition for the coveted network job.
He’d been trying to solve two problems with one criminal campaign. Paul could easily have come up with twenty-thousand dollars—news anchors made plenty of money. As a reporter, one people recognized and trusted, he could get at all kinds of information, like bank account numbers and phone bills.
Raleigh screamed again, though she doubted anyone but Paul could hear her. She kicked and beat the trunk lid as the darkness threatened to smother her. But Paul Stratton wasn’t about to free her. The fact he had wanted her to know his identity meant he didn’t intend for her to live long enough to tell anyone what he’d done. She could only hope someone else would hear her and intervene.
Surely Randall hadn’t gone far with the limo. But the Taurus’s engine rumbled to life and the car lurched forward. He was getting away with his crime. She was being kidnapped.
She’d heard somewhere that if you were ever kidnapped and thrown into a car trunk, you should kick out the taillights and try to signal someone. But she didn’t see any taillights. It was completely dark.
So what did she have to work with? She’d left her purse, along with her cell phone, on Celeste’s desk. The trunk appeared clean, free of any tools or other junk. Except for the box. She quickly found it and reached inside. She found what felt like…bricks. Plain old bricks, probably just to weight the box down so Raleigh would have to lean in farther to grasp it and open it or pull it toward her.
As weapons went, she could do worse than bricks. She pulled two from the box, got a good grip on one in each and concealed them behind her body. When the trunk opened, she would be ready.
GRIFFIN’S ATTEMPT to interview Julia Shinn had been a bust; her secretary said she was “unavailable,” and she was nowhere near the hospital. So Griffin had spent his afternoon at home, following up on every lead he had, even the weak ones.
Then he’d resorted to investigating Raleigh’s coworkers, including the college interns. Their histories and all private information appeared to have been sanitized. Daniel Logan strikes again.
He was just starting to turn up information on “Little Louie” Costanza when his phone rang. He answered eagerly, half hoping it would be Raleigh.
“Griffin.” It was Daniel, sounding all business. “Is Raleigh with you?”
“Why would she be—no.”
“I can’t locate her.”
“She’s missing?” Every cell in Griffin’s body went on high alert.
“She said she was going to the office to meet someone from the Houston P.D.—”
“And you let her go?”
“She’s not my prisoner, Griffin,” Daniel said a bit testily. “I sent her in the limo with the best bodyguard I have. But Celeste Boggs, who was at the front desk, said the man she was supposed to meet stepped outside for a smoke, and when Raleigh arrived, she went to look for him and never returned.”
“And neither did her mysterious contact, I take it.”
“No.”
“Where was this infamous bodyguard?”
“Parking the limo. Since she was inside the building, he assumed she was safe. So you don’t know anything?”
He wanted to scream and curse and reach through the phone to throttle Daniel Logan for being so careless. But that wouldn’t bring Raleigh back. “I haven’t heard anything, but I’m heading that way now.”
“Our security cameras have an image of the guy. He looks familiar, but no one here can place him.”
“Can you send it to me?”
“I’ll email it to you right now.”
Griffin had scarcely disconnected that call when his phone chimed again. Seeing that it was another blocked call, he assumed it was Daniel calling back with more questions.
“What?”
“Benedict.” The voice was electronically disguised. “I have something you want.”
Griffin stopped dead, his heart slamming into his chest wall. “Do you have Raleigh?”
“There’s something you want more than her,” the voice said, maddeningly calm.
“No. Nothing is more important than her safety.”
“What about…the story? The big story. The one that will get you the job with the seven-figure paycheck. You want that more than anything, don’t you, Benedict?”
“What do you want?” Griffin demanded.
“No, my friend, the correct question is, what do you want? If you want to see your girlfriend alive ever again, you’ll do exactly as I tell you. No police. No Project Justice. Not if you want an exclusive. But if you follow my directions to a T, I’ll give you the interview of your life. You’ll never have a chance at a story like this again.”
As if he cared about that! “Let me talk to Raleigh.”
“You’ll have to trust me—she is alive and well. A bit uncomfortable, perhaps—”
“You bastard! If you hurt her I’ll hunt you down and shoot you in the street like a rabid dog.”
“Do you want to see her again or no?”
Griffin reined in his temper. The man behind the tinny voice was trying to upset him. Best not to play his game.
“Just tell me where to find her.”
“There’s an alley just west of the Project Justice office. It’s overgrown with weeds and rusty Dumpsters. A nice, dark place to finish our business.”
“I’ll find it. But listen, you have to promise me—”
The line went dead.
So, Raleigh’s kidnapper thought Griffin’s ego was so big, that he wanted this story so badly, he would risk Raleigh’s life? Dream on. Griffin would call in the police, the FBI, the frigging National Guard—whatever it took. Honest to God, who cared about the damn story?
But then he had a better idea. As he headed for his car, which he’d parked in the street in front of his town house, he dialed Daniel’s number.
“Daniel. He called me. He told me where to find Raleigh.”
To his credit, Daniel didn’t doubt Griffin’s word or demand details. “Should I contact the police?”
Griffin quickly filled Daniel in on the specifics of the anonymous phone call, and the directions the man had gi
ven.
“You’d be crazy to meet him alone,” Daniel said. “He’ll kill you both. He might be trying to set up some sort of murder-suicide scenario.”
“I don’t plan to be alone. But I want Project Justice behind me. I’d rather have a handful of your people backing me up than the cops. You can mobilize faster, you’ll know exactly when to intervene—and I won’t have to spend an hour explaining things to you. Can you do it?”
“Absolutely,” Daniel said without hesitation. “But I’ll alert law enforcement, as well. I have contacts there who will take me at my word. I’ll have a plan and some backup for you in fifteen minutes. Can you wait until then?”
“Yes.” It would be insane to go blundering into the kidnapper’s trap. But this would be the longest fifteen minutes Griffin had ever lived through.
RALEIGH HEARD the trunk lock turn, and she braced herself for the next assault. But night had fallen during the few minutes she’d been trapped in the trunk, so what she got was a flashlight in the face, momentarily blinding her.
“How are you doing in there?”
In reply, Raleigh screamed. But with her mouth taped shut, she couldn’t create any volume.
“Enough of that. I don’t want you announcing your whereabouts until I’m ready. You should be comforted to know your boyfriend is on his way. Be a good girl, don’t give me any trouble, and soon the two of you will be together again.”
Griffin? Is that who he meant? Oh, Griffin, it’s a trap. Don’t come.
She still had the use of her hands. And she had her bricks. But she didn’t have much time; Paul was about to close the trunk on her again. In a panic, she lobbed one of the bricks at him. It bounced off his shoulder, getting his attention but doing no harm.
“You little bitch!” He grabbed her right arm. She tried to kick at him but she was wildly ineffective. He was stronger than he looked.
With the remaining brick in her left hand she tried to hit his hands, to break his grip on her. His response was to backhand her across the face and grab the brick, tossing it aside.
While she reeled from the blow, eyes stinging and nose running, he wrapped her wrists in duct tape.
