The Bliss Factor

by Penny McCall

  Conn forced himself to run the facts like it was any other case. I’m still at the office. That’s what Rae had said. She’d been about to tell him the identity of the mastermind when the call cut off, which meant she’d probably been incapacitated in some way. Dammit, she should have listened to him—

  He cut that thought off, took the anger, and the fear, and forced them under a layer of calm so he could think. If she’d been taken, her captor would have her cell. And Conn’s number was the last one dialed.

  He stopped trying to call Rae. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he put the phone on the seat beside him and waited. It rang, just as the exit sign for Big Beaver Road came into sight.

  He flipped the phone open, and a muffled voice said, “I want the plates or the girl dies.”

  “Very dramatic,” Conn said, swinging the van off the highway, heading for Rae’s office building because he didn’t know where else to go. “One problem. I hand over the plates and she’s dead anyway. Me, too.”

  “Oh, well, uh . . .”

  Okay, definitely a man, but not Harry or Joe or Kemp. He had to be talking to the mastermind, Conn thought, working hard again not to lose it at the idea of Rae being held against her will, maybe hurt—“Let me talk to Rae.”

  “No.”

  “I hear her voice in the next ten seconds,” Conn said, “or I call my handler and turn over the plates, and the printing press. And Kemp. How long do you think it will be before he talks?”

  “He doesn’t know anything.”

  “He knew enough for me to narrow my search down to your firm.”

  “What firm?”

  “Putnam, Ibold, and Greenblatt. I know Harry Mosconi went there for a check to fix the glass in his Honda, and since Rae said Ibold has one foot in the grave it must be Putnam or Greenblatt.”

  The call disconnected.

  “Shit.” Conn redialed.

  No answer.

  He wheeled the U-Haul into the parking structure drive, realized at the last minute that it wouldn’t fit inside, and slid it to a stop across the two lanes comprising the entrance and exit, barely missing a Buick that slipped out in front of the U-Haul at the last second. A Lexus pulled up at the exit, the driver giving the horn a brief little hey-you’re-blocking-the-exit toot. When Conn jumped out of the van, the Lexus’s window whirred down and a sour-looking woman peered out.

  “I’m going to call the police,” she said.

  Conn kept walking, throwing, “You do that,” over his shoulder as he passed her car by.

  He hit the elevator, hands on the door so when they parted at Rae’s floor he was through before they’d opened all the way. He shoved through the glass doors etched with P.I.G., skirted the receptionist’s desk and worked his way through the suite. Until he came to Rae’s office. He stopped there, caught by the light, fresh scent of her perfume on the air, seeing her in the little touches. Rae considered herself a number cruncher, cool, all business. But she was also a woman who hung brightly colored sun-catchers full of dried flowers in her window, and draped a swatch of what he assumed was one of her father’s woven textiles over the file cabinet in her office. She was a woman who’d taken in a complete stranger who needed help, and wanted her parents to see her as the person she’d become, not the child they’d raised. And she was a woman who’d been let down by all three of them.

  Conn couldn’t speak for Annie and Nelson, but he sure as hell wasn’t letting her down again. He put his feet in motion, finding four women of various ages gathered in the front of the suite. They drew back a little when he came toward them.

  “Any of you know where Rae Blissfield is?” he asked them. “Is there anyone around besides secretaries?”

  One of the women drew herself up, clearly insulted. “We’re not secretaries,” she said.

  “We’re administrative assistants,” another chimed in helpfully.

  “You can call yourself Topsy and spin in circles for all I care, I just want to know where Rae Blissfield went.”

  “Oh,” the helpful administrative assistant said. “She left with Mr. Greenblatt about ten minutes ago. He said they had a meeting.”

  Conn didn’t bother to ask where. He slammed through the doors, took the elevator back down, and found a Troy police officer talking to the Lexus driver.

  “There he is,” she crowed.

  The cop straightened away from the car window, putting himself in Conn’s path.

  Conn flipped his badge out of his pocket and flashed it at the cop. “FBI,” he said, giving the cranky old bat in the Lexus a dismissive glance.

  The officer hooked a thumb in the general direction of the U-Haul. “Is there somebody in the back of that thing?”

  “Yeah.” Conn took the keys out of his pocket, stripped one off the ring, and flipped it to the cop. “Hang onto him for me, would you?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, going around the truck and getting into the police cruiser. The officer followed him, his hand hovering over his sidearm.

  “You gonna shoot me?” Conn asked him.

  The cop blew out a breath. “No, but I’ll need an explanation for my squad commander.”

  Conn gunned the engine. “My mission is classified. But I’ll try not to hurt your car.” And he took off, tires squealing, half his focus on the road, the other half on the computer, looking up Morris Greenblatt’s address.

  It wasn’t far, and he didn’t expect to find Rae there. But he had to look, just like he had to check out Harry Mosconi’s place—no Rae, but it wasn’t empty, either. A woman answered the door, late thirties, pretty, a couple of kids in the ten-to-fifteen age bracket behind her, all three of them staring at the police cruiser but keeping their curiosity to themselves.

  As soon as he saw her he knew Rae wasn’t there. Mosconi’s wife screamed PTA, home-baked cookies, and bedtime stories. The kids were well-behaved, the house was neat as a pin, hell, even the dog sniffed him politely then sat and wagged its tail.

  Nice family, Conn thought as he headed back to the car. It was a shame Harry was going to jail for the rest of his life.

  Harry’s wife supplied Joe’s last name, along with Kemp’s, since they were cousins. The police computer gave him the locations. Conn was on his way when his cell rang. He picked it up, fumbling it a little, before he managed to answer.

  “Conn? It’s Annie.”

  Even if he’d checked the readout he still would have taken their call. He had no clue what to tell Rae’s parents, but he couldn’t leave them hanging.

  “I can’t get Rae,” Annie was saying, a little breathless and nerved up. “She’s not answering her cell or her office phone, and she didn’t meet us—”

  “Let me talk to Nelson,” Conn said, her worry too much to handle on top of his own. “There’s a police station not far from the mall,” he said when Nelson came on the line. “Go there and wait for me.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t go inside. Don’t even get out of the car. I’ll be there in about an hour.” Unless he found Rae. He’d have some major ass-kicking to do then. It would probably delay him a few minutes.

  He grinned. Having a target for all the emotional crap jumping around inside him was a nice little fantasy that put him almost back to normal again. Normal being really pissed off, especially when he got to Joe’s house, a little bungalow it took five minutes to search and find deserted.

  The same went for Kemp’s hole-in-the-wall apartment, although it proved harder to rule out. The place was a garbage scow, one room of trash and smell, except for the bathroom, and if it was as ill-kept as the rest of the place, and Rae was in there, she’d be screaming bloody murder unless . . .

  Conn found himself at the bathroom door with no consideration for whether or not he was up to date on his tetanus booster. The bathroom was empty. Unless he counted bacterial life.

  He stood there a moment, struggling with the urge to trash the place, not that anyone would notice. He forced himself to think instead, but
there was no reason he couldn’t move, too. He went out to the cruiser and headed back toward Troy, which let him feel like he was doing something even if he wasn’t. That was pretty much where the forward progress ended. Until he made it back to the Troy police station and had a brilliant idea.

  He pointed the cruiser toward Rae’s Jaguar, parked in the corner of the lot farthest from the door. Annie and Nelson were out of the Jag before he made it into the next parking space. Conn got out and held up a hand. They stopped in their tracks. He kept walking, across the parking lot, through the front door, only stopping for the cop on desk duty, one Sergeant Melnick, because it wouldn’t help him to piss off the locals.

  He held up his badge and said, “I’m here to collect the prisoner you’re holding for me. Kemper Salerno.”

  “The guy from the U-Haul?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The U-Haul my officer had to drive in here because you commandeered his squad car?”

  “It was an emergency,” Conn said.

  “And here I thought it was just another fed clusterfuck.”

  Conn took a deep breath. Even if he could have gotten the words out, an apology would have thrown off the entire federal/local dynamic it had taken decades to establish. “You’ve got no reason to hold him,” he said.

  “Guantanamo Bay mean anything to you?”

  “Okay, so we have a track record. You gonna hand him over or what?”

  Melnick gave it some thought, then gestured Conn to follow him. “Like you said, we got no reason to hold him.”

  They went into the bowels of the station, arriving at the holding cells. Melnick instructed the guard on duty to retrieve Kemp. He came back empty-handed.

  “Prisoner refuses to come out of the cell,” he said. “Guy says he’ll confess to anything we want as long as we don’t make him go with the fed.”

  Conn exchanged a look with Melnick, who said, “You want him, go get him.” The other cop was helpful enough to hold out the key to Kemp’s cell.

  Conn took it, consigning Kemp to the lowest level of hell for making him into a laughingstock.

  Kemp was huddled on the cot in his cell, completely covered by a gray, industrial-grade blanket that couldn’t begin to camouflage his doughy form.

  “Get your ass out of there,” Conn said, unlocking the door.

  “No.”

  Conn went into the cell, hauled Kemp off the cot, and shoved him toward the door. Kemp fisted his hands around the bars at either side of the door, so Conn pinched the nerves in his shoulders until his hands spasmed and let go, flopping uselessly at the ends of his arms.

  Kemp braced his feet in the opening and dropped onto his ass. And he began to shout. “Help!” he yelled. “He tied me to a tree. He’s going to torture me.”

  Conn hauled Kemp upright by the collar of his shirt, planted his foot on Kemp’s ass, and shoved with every ounce of muscle he possessed. Kemp shot out of the cell like a champagne cork, bounced off the opposite wall, and fell on his face.

  “Looks like torture to me,” Melnick said, having come into the holding cell area to watch the show.

  The guard nodded solemnly.

  Kemp got on all fours and tried to dive between Conn’s legs, back into the cell. Conn scissored his legs together, trapping Kemp at the neck. He gurgled a little, so Conn caught him by the waistband of his jeans and hauled him back out into the narrow hallway.

  “Jesus,” he said, “I just want you to make a phone call.” Kemp rolled on to his back and peered up. “Promise you won’t hurt me?”

  “Yeah.” But he didn’t tell Kemp who was waiting for him in the parking lot. He did handcuff him.

  They got to the car, Annie stepped out, and Kemp tried to run. Conn took him by the collar and cuffs and stuffed him into the backseat of the Jaguar, following him in.

  “Where to?” Nelson asked.

  “Holly Grove. There’s a tree there with Kemp’s name on it. Unless he makes this phone call.”

  Annie turned around and looked at Kemp; that was all it took. Conn had been in some nasty situations in his life, but confronted with that face, he had to admit he’d do whatever was asked of him.

  He handed Kemp his own cell, retrieved along with the rest of his personal effects. Kemp dialed and handed the phone to Conn.

  “You didn’t have to use Kemp’s phone for the caller ID,” Harry said once Conn had identified himself. “I would have picked up for you.”

  “Just covering all my bases,” Conn said. He’d needed to retrieve Kemp anyway, and frankly he was tired of coming up empty-handed. Harry knew Kemp was in custody, and Kemp would rat him out without a second thought.

  “My wife says you were at the house.”

  “You have a nice family,” Conn said.

  “You’re not married to her. I’m already in hot water, and she doesn’t even know what I did yet.”

  “What if I offered you a way to cool that water off?”

  “You want me to find out where your girlfriend is.”

  “Yeah,” Conn said, not even wincing at the label. He had bigger problems than how the bad guys characterized his relationship with Rae.

  “I’ll try,” Harry was saying, “but Greenblatt has gone berserk. He wants the plates and he’s not exactly trusting us to get them for him.”

  “So is that a yes?”

  “Can you keep me out of jail?”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  Harry was silent.

  “You could disappear,” Conn said.

  “Either way I’m gone from my family, but at least I’d be free.”

  “But you’d still have to live with your conscience.”

  chapter 30

  IT WAS DARK, ALMOST PITCH-BLACK, AND QUIET except for the rattle of the chain around her ankle when Rae shifted position. She was hunched on a lumpy mattress covered with a dirty blanket that had stopped making her skin crawl days ago. At least she thought it was days. It could have been hours or weeks, hard to measure time in the complete absence of light and sound.

  One thing she knew, she was never going to hear the words solitary confinement again and envy the recipient a chance to get away from it all. Sensory deprivation was bad enough; being alone with her own thoughts for hours on end was torture. If she’d been a wolf, she’d have chewed off her foot by now. Not that she minded being in her own head, but she was a make-lemonade-out-of-lemons kind of person, a woman who needed to act in the face of adversity. It was damned hard to find anything positive about her predicament, and impossible to take action shackled to a bed.

  Her parents must be frantic, and Conn . . . Best not to think about him. If anything would push her over the edge, it was the stew of emotions that made up her relationship with Connor Larkin, and her inability to sort them out, let alone articulate them—and not because she had a problem speaking her mind. Because she had a problem speaking her heart.

  Not something she would need to worry about unless she got free, which wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon. Short of chewing off her foot.

  She was imprisoned in Hans Lockner’s small trailer, one room, except for the bathroom. All the windows were covered, and her chain wasn’t long enough to reach any of them. The tiny bathroom had no windows at all, and she only got in there when Morris Greenblatt let her. Not that she had to use it much. He’d drugged her the first time she ate, so she hadn’t been eating, only drinking water when she could get into the bathroom and get it straight from the tap. And yelling hadn’t gotten her anything but a sore throat, and eventually another look at Greenblatt’s gun.

  It galled her. All of it. From the moment Morris had come into her office and held her at gunpoint, she’d felt like a failure. The man was six inches shorter than her, sixty pounds overweight, and he’d probably burst a blood vessel if he had to run more than ten feet. But Smith & Wesson were the great equalizers, and she’d found herself out of the office and in the backseat of his car, hands and feet secured, gagged, and shoved over sideways
.

  She’d struggled upright just as Morris drove them out of the parking structure, barely missing getting creamed by a U-Haul pulling in. Shame, she thought now, as she had then. If the U-Haul had hit them she’d probably be in the hospital, but at least she wouldn’t be a hostage on the verge of death. And as if that wasn’t enough, she was spending her last hours in the place she detested the most: the Renaissance festival. Close enough to feel Conn’s presence, but no way to get to him.

  Frustration was the least of what she was feeling; there was a cold, murderous rage building inside her, and it wasn’t all aimed at her captor.

  Greenblatt had left his car in the overflow lot, a mile away through thick woods, and walked her into the night, keeping a death grip on her arm and the gun shoved into her ribs. She might have fought back under other circumstances, but in the pitch dark, on uneven ground, there’d been a pretty good chance he’d shoot her accidentally one of the times he stumbled. And he’d stumbled a lot. She had the bruises to prove it. Considering his frame of mind, she was lucky she wasn’t dead. He’d been on the edge when he kidnapped her, as the days passed and he didn’t get what he wanted; she could all but smell the desperation. She’d never understood that phrase before, but now she knew it was a combination of sweat, stale cologne, and clothing that hadn’t been changed in a long, long time.

  A light flipped on, Greenblatt’s distinct shape just a silhouette against it. “Take these.”

  Rae blinked and held up a hand, but he didn’t wait for her eyes to adjust before he tossed a bundle of clothing into her lap.

  She unwound the bundle and held it up, rolling her eyes. “No. Way,” she said, her voice rusty. It wasn’t enough to be held prisoner for a week in a ratty trailer where the only alone time she got was in a windowless bathroom. It wasn’t enough to be chained to a filthy bed in a pitch-black room while he sat there in the dark . . . breathing and creeping her out almost the entire time. It wasn’t enough that she, a person who counted things for a living, didn’t even know what day it was, that she was practically dying of thirst and starvation, all the while she was mere feet from Conn and her parents, with no hope of rescue. Now she had to dress like a wench?