Missing Person

by Matt Lincoln

  A bullet drilled into the boxes I was hiding behind. I felt them shake from the impact and flinched, but the bullet didn’t punch through the other side, stopped by the mass of paper inside. I popped up again, trying to take everything in within that split second between when I pulled the trigger and when I dropped back under cover again. The warehouse was emptying quickly, one gunperson momentarily incapacitated by her bleeding bicep while the other two advanced toward our positions. I’d lost sight of our actual target.

  I cursed, hidden behind the cardboard boxes once more. I could just barely see Lex across the way, and we made eye contact, both of us knowing that we needed to move quickly before we lost our quarry for good. We probably should have brought more backup, but there was no going back now. Lex nodded, indicating that she was ready to wing it, and I took one last deep breath before I dashed out from behind cover, gun up and firing three times at no particular target, simply hoping to make our opponents flinch and duck.

  One of the bullets hit something important-sounding on the giant printing press, and the whole thing scraped and squealed in dramatic protest, the sound filling the entire warehouse and grating painfully against my ears. The three thugs cringed and scowled as the press gave one last, groaning wheeze, and fell silent, the sudden calm a heavy weight across the scene.

  I was halfway across the floor toward the man with the terrible head tattoo, too much space still between us as he began to regain his bearings and brought his gun around to point at my head. So I shot him in the leg. He cried out as the limb buckled beneath him, and I took three large steps to close the gap, swinging my boot up and kicking the gun from his hand. It flew away and smacked against some boxes, sliding to the ground with a clatter. The moment my foot hit the ground, I pivoted and threw a left cross at his chin, the man folding to the ground like a piece of paper, as my knuckles sang with pain.

  The woman I’d already shot in the arm held up the hand not clutching the bleeding wound, eyes wide and screaming that she had not signed up for this crap, and as Lex tackled the third person facing off with us, I turned to scan the warehouse for our prey. I caught sight of his tousled red hair still in that glass office, hiding behind his thick wooden desk while he waited for his cronies to deal with us.

  I jogged toward the office, dodging between the rows of tables. The smoke from the now-dead printing press stung my eyes, and pages and pages of fake euros, pounds, and dollars spilled across the floor.

  “Ramsey,” I called to the cowering man. “Come out. It’s over. Don’t make this harder on yourself.”

  Colin Ramsey, the counterfeiter we’d been chasing for a couple of weeks now, poked his head over the top of the desk to glower at me, and, after a moment, he stood, a large revolver pointed right at the door. He was short and speckled with freckles that made him look younger and more innocent than he actually was, and he glared at me through the glass, hatred in his eyes. He should have run while we were occupied with his goons, but he was, at heart, something of a coward despite his cutthroat business practices.

  I stopped just outside the door. He couldn’t shoot me through it since the glass was bulletproof, but he also couldn’t stay in there forever. Something would have to give. A hint of satisfaction creased his features, and I frowned, wondering what was so—

  Someone tackled me from the side, and we crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs, my gun flying from my hand and skittering away. An elbow to the ribs drove all the air from my lungs, and the crack of my head against concrete sent blackened stars across my vision. Instinct made me throw my hand up, catching the wrist that was descending toward my face. Silver sliced through the dark stars. I blinked hard, forcing my eyes to clear, though they immediately went fuzzy again as they focused in on the nearly invisible knifepoint just above my head. The face behind it leered down at me, covered in black scruff. I grabbed his wrist with my other hand, grunting as I struggled against the weight of his entire body pressing against the knife hilt.

  I jerked my knee up in a rather desperate and stupid bid. I nailed him right where it hurt the most, and he went cross-eyed and jerked from the sudden agony, the pressure on the knife disappearing so I could take one hand away, plant it against his chest, and fling him off me. He tipped over with little resistance, dropping the knife to clutch at the wounded area, and I staggered to my feet, kicking him just a little too viciously in the stomach for good measure.

  The door to the glass office was open, and Ramsey was out and scampering for the open, yawning exit. My gun was gone for the moment, lost amid the tangle of table legs, so I chased after him, my longer legs eating up the distance between us. He heard me coming and flung his gun arm behind him without looking, the motion throwing him off balance as the bullet went wide, pinging off the roof. I cringed but kept my balance while Ramsey staggered, slowing, and when I was close enough, I dropped into a baseball slide, my boots knocking Ramsey’s legs right out from under him. He landed on top of me when he fell, bruising my ribs in the exact same place as his crony had, but I knocked his gun away with one hand and got my other arm around his neck.

  He scrabbled against my forearm, fingernails ineffective against the fabric of my suit jacket, and I increased the pressure, reinforcing it with my other hand as his feet kicked and panicked squeaks got caught in his throat. Eventually, he stilled, unconscious, and I rolled him off him, dumping him unceremoniously to the floor.

  Muscles protesting, I clambered to my feet, still stooped as I dug handcuffs from my pocket and bound Ramsey’s wrists behind him. I straightened fully and turned to check on Lex, finding her tightening a zip tie around the hands of the man with the knife, our three other attackers similarly restrained behind us. Two of them were bleeding, but it didn’t look like it was serious. They would hold until the paramedics and the rest of our team arrived.

  “Good work,” I said, retrieving Ramsey’s gun and then my own, reaching awkwardly under a table for it.

  “That was awesome,” Lex said. There was a bruise blossoming along the bottom of her jaw, but otherwise, she looked unharmed. “We took these guys out.”

  One of the men scowled and muttered something, though the words quickly dried up in his throat as the two of us turned to glare at him.

  “Let’s call the team. Time to get this place cleaned up.”

  “A lot of them got away,” Lex pointed out as I dug my phone from my pocket.

  “Small fry,” I said, dialing the MBLIS office number and putting the phone to my ear. “They shouldn’t be hard to round up now that we’ve got the head honcho. It’s not like they’ll be able to do much damage on their own.”

  Ramirez picked up. “What?” he asked, his voice a little staticky since cell service wasn’t the best in this part of town.

  “We’ve got Ramsey and all the counterfeit bills. We’ll probably need the NOPD’s help to clean all this up. Can you call Barrett on your way over?”

  “Fine. Be there in ten,” Ramirez said and hung up on me.

  While we waited, Lex and I got our ducks in a row, settling our prisoners against one of the warehouse walls where we could keep an eye on them as we started poking through the evidence. All the cardboard boxes were filled with stacks and stacks of fake dollars, euros, and pounds, and I found a ledger in Ramsey’s office, detailing where and to whom every single bill was being sent to.

  “Jackpot,” I said, pointing it out to Lex, though I left it where it was until it could be photographed. Cal didn’t like us disturbing things before they got there.

  A wash of red and blue spilled through the still open roller door as three police cars pulled up, Ramirez’s Jeep behind them, though the sirens were mercifully silent. Five uniformed officers spilled from the vehicles and immediately rushed onto the scene. Detective George Barrett followed more slowly. He was a perpetually tired-looking man, his hair turning gray prematurely, but the bags under his eyes and the wrinkles etched into his skin hid a sharp intellect and desire to do good. He’d helped the New O
rleans MBLIS branch find its first case, and for that, we were still in his debt.

  He ordered his officers around, reading what needed to be done without having to ask us, and two of them immediately left with the injured prisoners in tow, carting them off to the nearest hospital.

  Cal Vidal and Henry Ramirez brought up the rear. Cal was the office’s only forensic scientist, even after a few months of searching on our boss’s part to expand the team, and they clutched a bulky camera bag to their chest. They’d recently added a second piece to the floral tattoo on the inside of their left arm, so now, the delicate vines and leaves made a half-sleeve ending at the wrist, slick with fresh lotion to protect the new ink from the sun. They grinned and flashed me a thumbs-up, dropping their bag to one of the tables so they could dig their camera out and get to work.

  Henry Ramirez served as an almost-foil to the younger lab tech. He was older and certainly grumpier, his hair gray and his face weathered by his years in the Coast Guard. He was broad across the shoulders though on the shorter side, and his stride was long but clipped as he approached Lex and me.

  “What do you need?” he asked Lex, giving me only the briefest of stares before he gave me the cold shoulder and turned his attention wholly on her. Lex glanced at me awkwardly, but I rolled my eyes, indicating that she should just go for it.

  “Obviously, there’s a lot of stuff we need rounded up in here,” Lex began, gesturing around the warehouse at the stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes, the heavy metal printing press, and Ramsey’s cluttered office. At first, she spoke a little uncertainly, thrown by the odd vibe between Ramirez and me, but quickly began to pick up speed. “Some of his underlings escaped. I’m sure we’ll be able to get him to flip on them, but maybe they’re still in the area. We should see if we can round any of them up. And, obviously, we need to transfer these two to the office for questioning.”

  “I’ll work with Barrett and get it done,” Ramirez said, and then he walked off without sparing me another glance.

  “Okay, what the hell was that about?” Lex demanded, grabbing my elbow before I could walk off and get started on the next task. “You guys have been acting weird around each other ever since the gala. What’s going on?”

  “I think that’s just Ramirez,” I said vaguely, not wanting to get into it. Lex and I had agreed on no secrets, but this one was just too big, and I was sure that if I spoke it aloud to even one person, then the whole world would know, and I would be in trouble.

  “It’s not. He’ll hang out with Cal and me, but he bails as soon as he learns that you’ll be there,” Lex insisted, tugging at my sleeve, so I had to turn toward her and look into her face. “Spill.”

  I couldn’t spill. I’d seen Ramirez speaking with Christian Haverford at the gala we’d used to stage a trap for Blair Haddow. Christian and I had worked together on one of my last big cases with the FBI, and I was sure he knew what I’d done, what I’d vowed to always keep a secret. And I was sure he’d told Ramirez the same thing, and that was why Ramirez was acting so coldly toward me. I just couldn’t figure out why they were keeping the information to themselves.

  I kept saying that it was a problem for another day. Really, it was a problem for the here and now, before it came around to bite me in the ass, but the truth was, I didn’t want to deal with it. I wanted to leave that door at the end of its dim hallway closed and locked to not reveal what lay inside.

  I shrugged, flicking a look of vague disinterest Lex’s way. “I don’t know then. Maybe it’s an alpha male thing. I did sort of push him around a lot on that case.”

  Lex looked unconvinced, picking apart my explanation with quick efficiency, but she didn’t push it.

  “Alright,” she conceded. “Just don’t let it get in the way of work, yeah?”

  I sketched an X over my heart and nodded. It was probably an empty promise.

  3

  The case wrapped up smoothly, suspect interrogated, confession signed, a few more of his lackeys arrested, and all that counterfeit money properly disposed of. After that, Lex and I fell into that sleepy lull that existed between cases. Ramirez had his own open investigation, tracking a new heroin dealer trying to make New Orleans their home base, but he had made it clear that he didn’t want my help, and so, for the first time, I had the space to pursue my own, personal project.

  The Greyson Gem.

  It was a family heirloom, thought to be lost or destroyed after World War I, the search for it a passion project within my family that had never gone anywhere until I captured the thief Blair Haddow, and she’d recognized my last name. She remembered hearing a loan shark mention it over the phone, some man named Martin Black out in Los Angeles. She’d had no reason to lie, as I’d offered her nothing for the information. She’d given it willingly. And, surprisingly, convinced me to take up the mantle, despite my previous scorn of the family tradition.

  I’d had a Post-it note with Black’s number on it stuck to my computer monitor for several months but had always been too busy to give it a call. Until now. Nerves wiggled in my stomach as I pulled out my phone and punched the digits in. This was the first step along the path to opening the Schrodinger’s Box that was the Greyson Gem’s fate, and I got nervous when I thought about what I might find at the end. If the necklace really was gone for good, it might destroy my family, my youngest sister especially. And even if I did find it, it might still break the family. We’d—they’d—been searching for the necklace for so long. What would be left once that quest was done?

  Journey over destination, I reminded myself. That was why I’d finally decided to join the hunt—for the excitement of the how and not the what at the end. I hadn’t told my family about my sudden change of heart yet. I wanted to bring them something substantial first. That way, they couldn’t laugh at me for drinking the Kool-Aid, so to speak, after having scorned it for so long.

  Lex noticed what I was doing and perked up, sliding her chair to the left of the monitor to have a better view.

  “Are you finally calling him?” she asked, and I nodded. “Can I listen in?”

  “Sure.” I put the phone on speaker as I hit the green call button, and then we waited, my breath caught within my chest. For all my months of thinking about it, I had yet to come up with a script to use when I finally spoke to Black. Was I Jace Greyson, MBLIS agent? Was I Jace Greyson with no federal connections, or was I someone else entirely? I’d never been able to figure out if my last name would help me or hurt me. Did Black have criminal connections? Would the mention of MBLIS make him wary, suspicious, closed off? Haddow hadn’t been able to tell me much about him. Damn, I needed to make a decision.

  The phone clicked. “Forest Street Loans. What is it?” The voice was male, gravelly and low like the man smoked cigarettes. It was not overly friendly.

  I swallowed, briefly forgetting why I was calling as my brain tried to make too many decisions at once. Lex gave me a look and motioned for me to speak as the man on the phone said, “Hello?”

  “Hi, sorry,” I said, the words practically bursting from me as I forced them out. “Is this Martin Black? I’m looking to get a loan. Do you ever take collateral for them?”

  I spilled too many questions out all at once, but the man didn’t seem perturbed. No doubt, this was how most people acted when asking for a loan from someone like him.

  “I’m Martin Black,” he drawled, and my heart seized. I glanced up at Lex. She was hanging off the edge of her chair, supported by her elbows where they were branched against the table. “And we do take collateral on our larger loans.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Eh, depends on the circumstances.” I heard a crackling, crunch sound from the other end of the line, like Black was eating nuts or something. “Usually, we start taking collateral when the loan reaches a hundred k, or if you’ve been missing payments.”

  “What kind of collateral?”

  “Different things. Cars. Jewelry. I’ve been convinced to take sentimental item
s on occasion. Actually, those are the ones that get paid off most consistently. What kind of loan are you looking for?”

  I answered his question with another one of mine since I definitely didn’t want to get roped into taking out a real loan with this guy. “How long do you hold on to the collateral? And what if someone wants to pay off the original debt? Would they get the collateral back?”

  That crunching sound came again, and it was a few seconds before Black spoke. I wanted to get up and pace to release the energy building up inside of me, but Lex was listening in, and I figured she wouldn’t be happy if I took the phone away. “If the debtor can’t pay, the collateral is mine to do whatever I wish with. I usually sell it. Got to make back my money somehow. If someone else wants to pay, and I still have the item, then sure, maybe I sell it to them. It’s all at my discretion.”

  “Could you tell me if you still have a certain item in your possession?” I asked, each word an extra stitch in the tapestry that was my combined excitement and anxiety.

  Black was silent for so long that I began to worry he’d hung up on me, though I would have heard the click of the line closing. “You’re not looking for a loan. Are you?” he said at last, displeasure curdling his voice, reaching right through the phone’s speaker to send a shiver down my spine.

  I licked my lips. “No,” I replied. “But I believe someone I know might have an open account with you. I’m interested in getting his collateral back. I think he gave you the,” I hesitated, swallowed, steeled myself, “the Greyson Gem.”