“Eric, thank you. But I’m going to stay with friends tonight and then head home to see my parents tomorrow. What are you doing here?”
“I’m worried about Bella. I think something bad might’ve happened to her.”
“What?” Her neighbor from across the hall? The one who’d moved out and broken Eric’s heart? “Why do you say that?”
“It never made sense that she’d just leave my life like that,” he said. “She didn’t tell me she wanted to break up. She just ghosted me and disappeared. You know I blamed myself and figured I’d done something to drive her away. But then you told me about the intruder in the building. What if he was stalking her? Or hurt her in some way? And then there’s the letter she sent me after she left.”
He pulled a piece of cream-colored printer paper out of his pocket and laid it down on the table. She looked down and read:
Dear Eric,
I don’t want you in my life anymore.
This is goodbye forever. Please don’t try to find me. You’re a wonderful man, and I’m not good enough for you.
You’re better off without me.
Bella
Samantha blinked. “What am I looking at?”
“Don’t you see?” Eric’s voice rose. “It’s typed and printed on a sheet of computer paper. Anyone could’ve written this! I should’ve seen it earlier. Bella never would’ve sent me something like this!”
Wouldn’t she? True, she hadn’t known her neighbor well enough to know what she would or wouldn’t write.
“When I was a teenager there was this girl I fell in love with in high school.” Eric’s words were spilling out so quickly she could barely keep up. “Then she moved away over the summer and sent me a letter saying she never wanted to see me again. She said the same thing, that I was really great and I was better off without her.”
She was getting confused. Wasn’t that the kind of thing people naturally said when they were trying to politely end a relationship? Eric had the tendency to babble. Sometimes she suspected he was popping caffeine pills and washing them down with energy drinks to manage the weird hours he kept due to working the early-morning show. He’d get all hyper and then he’d crash.
“What if there’s a connection?” His voice rose. “Your newspaper ran a big story about a crime ring that was kidnapping teenaged girls. What if their disappearance is connected to that?”
Was it so unbelievable that a woman had broken up with him that he’d had to grasp at ridiculous straws? It was sad, and even worse than the time Torchlight had done a huge story on a disease breakout overseas and Eric had rushed over, convinced he was dying. Yes, she was familiar with the story of the gang who kidnapped teenage girls. She’d researched it. She also knew it had happened in a completely different part of the country and everyone involved had been arrested months ago.
“Eric, Bella told me she was moving and I saw the moving van myself. That crime ring was targeting girls much, much younger than Bella. You need to go home and get some sleep.”
“I gave her a kitten as a present and it keeps coming back to you, like nobody’s feeding it. So I called the police, but they had no record of anyone matching her description. So, next I thought I’d try the hospitals, but they didn’t have any record of her either. You’d know stuff like that, right? You’re a researcher.”
Only what Eric was doing was the exact opposite of what she did. She looked at facts and figured out what they meant, even if that meant coming to conclusions she didn’t much like. Eric had seized on the fact he couldn’t have been rejected by a woman he cared about, invented and was twisting around every random fact he could find to make it true. The simplest answer was almost always the right one. It was far more likely Bella didn’t want to date Eric anymore and that the cat had always roamed between multiple apartments getting fed.
Joshua had asked her if she thought Eric could have anything to do with what had happened to her. Honestly, she hadn’t. Not only had her criminal research in the ATHENA database shown that Eric didn’t have the pathology to plan something so nasty and devious, Eric seemed too needy for approval to hurt anyone. He was like an overgrown puppy. The idea he’d ever connive and scheme with common thugs to terrorize her seemed laughable. He wanted to protect Samantha, not hire creeps to blow her up.
Eric just didn’t possess the cruel, calm, calculated evil needed to be Magpie.
Yet, at the same time she knew that if she’d been standing here in the hospital talking to any other friend, she’d have already offered to use her own contacts and research skills to help them confirm Bella was okay. In fact, she might just do that for her own peace of mind. It couldn’t be that hard to do an internet search for her new address or to call around to moving companies just to confirm they had indeed moved a very live woman into a new home. Instead, Samantha couldn’t shake the suspicion that if she did that she’d have been helping Eric stalk a woman who wanted nothing more than to be gone from his life.
A horn honked outside. Headlights flashed on and off.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “My ride is here. But I’ll text you when I get back from Montreal and we’ll have that coffee together. We need to sit down and talk.”
“Just promise me you’ll never disappear from my life without saying goodbye.” His arms flew around her. He hugged her tightly and everything inside her body bristled. “Just don’t, okay? I care about you and I want to protect you. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, that women I care about keep leaving me. I’ve got a lot of fans, but it’s not the same. First my dad left, then my mom got really sad, and then the first girl I ever liked dumped me.”
And sadly, if you keep smothering me like this, I’m going to need a break from you too.
* * *
The sky was dark, and heavy snow was pelting down by the time Joshua finally left the police station. He stopped outside the door under the protection of the overhang, squared his shoulders and looked out at the night. Well, that had been an exercise in utter futility. Roy, the so-called detective, had turned tail and run the moment police had shown up, which further solidified Samantha’s suspicion that despite his firearm and penchant for spouting overused cop-show lingo, Roy definitely wasn’t law enforcement.
So now we have an unstable snoop, posing as a detective, with an almost illegal firearm to add to our list of things to protect Samantha against.
If he was ever looking for an example of everything Gramps had been against when he railed about people just running around wildly with guns thinking they were authorities unto themselves, then Roy Davis, self-declared detective, was it.
But the police hadn’t been interested in giving Joshua any answers either. Instead they just kept asking Joshua the same futile questions, over and over again, until he couldn’t tell if they were trying to catch him up in a lie or couldn’t think of anything to ask. Until, finally, he’d reminded them that he was there voluntarily and that if they were going to charge him with something that he really should call a lawyer. After that, it was amazing how quickly they told him he was welcome to leave.
A horn honked in the darkness. He started toward it. Alex’s truck was sitting at the end of the parking lot with the engine idling. Joshua’s rental car had been towed back to the rental agency after the rain of ice, snow and debris caused by the grenade explosion had left it with a cracked windshield and dented hood. He didn’t even know if insurance covered explosives.
The snow was growing thicker by the moment.
“Hey, jailbird!” Alex rolled down the window. “I hope you’re okay if we don’t hang around the city much longer. I want to get on the highway before the weather gets too bad. It’s supposed to dump a ton on us.”
Joshua looked up at the sky. “Just promise me you’re not going to crash this time.”
“Ha ha.” Alex grinned. “One day you’re going to have to forgive me for that.”
Joshua chuckled. Of course he’d forgiven Alex for crashing his very first truck. Didn�
�t mean he had to stop teasing him about it, though. He’d already started around the side of the car before he realized that Samantha was in the passenger seat. Her sturdy suitcase sat by her feet beside her blue vintage handbag. She rolled the window down.
“You okay?” she asked.
He nodded, suddenly feeling emotion swell up in his chest, making it slightly hard to breathe. “Yeah, you?”
She nodded. “Yup. Thanks for reminding me to throw the grenade in water. The slush and snow in the Dumpster absorbed a lot of the blow.”
The back door behind her seat swung open.
“Come on,” Zoe said, leaning across the backseat. “Get in. Unless your feet are frozen to the pavement.”
Something like that.
He climbed into the backseat. The front-seat windows rolled up. He shut the door and reached for his seat belt.
Then he looked up again. Three pairs of eyes were on his face.
“What now, boss?” Alex said.
Since when was he the boss? He’d just gotten out of a police station and he wasn’t even an official part of this new private-security venture. It was hard enough trying to be a bodyguard without being voted de facto leader of what happened next.
He looked at Samantha. She’d turned around backward in the seat to face him.
“What’s next for you?” he asked, softly.
“Well, my apartment’s still standing, but I’m definitely going to take up Olivia’s offer to stay at the country house tonight. Zoe and Alex helped me install a new door on my apartment and fix the window. Yvonne wasn’t thrilled, but she was glad she didn’t have to pay for it. So, I’m covered. You really do have the most extraordinary friends.”
He grinned. “Yeah, I really do.”
Alex put the truck in Drive and eased it through the parking lot.
“And how are you feeling?” Joshua asked her.
“The hospital gave me a clean bill of health,” Samantha said. She turned back toward the window, so he was now looking at the back of her head. “I called Theresa and she’s agreed to see me at ten tomorrow morning. Then I’ll head to the train station right after that and hopefully catch an early-afternoon train to Montreal.”
“Okay, sounds good.” It was odd trying to have a conversation with the back of her head.
The truck merged with downtown traffic. Joshua closed his eyes and leaned back against the seat. Exhaustion seemed to seep into his bones. He wouldn’t be surprised if he nodded off on the drive.
Samantha’s sudden scream jerked him back to consciousness. A man’s shape loomed large in the headlights. Alex hit the brakes, shouted to God for help and leaned into a skid as the truck spun into ongoing traffic. The blare of horns filled the air. Joshua felt Zoe grab his arm as her quiet prayers mingled with her brother’s loud ones. The truck stopped, facing the wrong way on the crowded city street.
“Thank You, God, I didn’t hit anyone!” Alex looked up at the roof and said a final prayer. Then he glanced back. “Sorry about that, guys. Apparently I was getting more of an opportunity than I expected to demonstrate my stellar driving skills.”
Joshua leaned forward. “What happened?”
“Some lunatic leaped right out in front of the car and waved his hands like an air-traffic controller. Some of the people in this city are crazy. I’m just really, really thankful I didn’t crash and nobody was hurt.”
Joshua looked out the window. Pedestrians were crowding around. Horns were honking. Other vehicles seemed more intent on squeezing around them than actually stopping long enough to let Alex move.
“Do you want me to get out and direct traffic while you try to turn around?” Samantha asked, beating Joshua to the question that was on the tip of his tongue.
“Thanks, but not yet,” Alex said. He checked his blind spot. “Hopefully the light will change in a moment and the traffic will clear.”
“Hey!” Suddenly two fists were banging on the hood, again and again, hard and relentless. It was Roy. “I see you in there! I know what you did! And you’re not going to get away with it!”
TEN
“Jessica Wynne from Huntsville!” The so-called detective pounded on the truck again, like he was on a televised cop drama and the hood was his interrogation-room table. “Holly Williams from Ottawa! Isobel Joyner from Mississauga! Monique Nash from Windsor!”
“Does that mean anything to you?” Samantha glanced back at Joshua. “Heard any of those names before?”
“No. I haven’t.”
Clearly Samantha hadn’t either. But here the man was, shouting them over and over again, like he thought they should mean something. Joshua opened the car door, even as he could hear Alex yelling at him not to do anything foolish. But if that man pulled a weapon on a crowded city street, a lot of innocent people could get hurt if Joshua wasn’t there to disarm him.
“I don’t know who those women are.” Joshua stepped out into the snow. “And I’m pretty sure you’re no detective.”
Roy stopped. He walked around the truck slowly, his eyes locked on Joshua. In the corner of his mind, Joshua was keenly aware of the crowd of pedestrians on the sidewalks, the vehicles trying to creep around them, the police station only two blocks away and the lives of three people he cared about sitting between them in the vehicle. But he locked all of his attention on the angry red face of the man slowly pacing him around the vehicle.
“You know what you’ve done,” Roy said.
“Are you sure about that?” Joshua asked. “Because, like I said, I’ve never heard of those women and I’ve never heard of you. So whatever vendetta you think you’re chasing down, and whoever you’re chasing it for, it has nothing to do with me.”
But could it have anything to do with the threats against Samantha?
Roy hesitated. His hand reached inside his jacket pocket. Joshua braced himself and prepared to rush him. Sirens sounded in the distance. Roy turned on his heels and ran, dodging through traffic. Joshua started after him. The lights changed, vehicles started moving again, a car cut across his path and Joshua was barely able to stop as it came within a breath of hitting him.
“Joshua! Come on!” Alex shouted.
He looked back. Alex had inched the truck around until it was creeping up the road behind him. He paused, torn. Roy had disappeared in the crowd ahead of him, in a busy downtown street with dozens of doors and hundreds of escape points. There was no way to know for sure where he’d gone. Meanwhile, his friends sat in the truck behind him. Police were running toward them from the side. He gritted his teeth. He’d promised to protect Samantha. To be her bodyguard. He could hardly do that and go on a wild-goose chase through the darkened city streets. His eyes rose to the thickly falling snow.
Help me, God. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing here.
He walked back to the truck. He looked at Samantha, but her head was bowed. Her fingers moved quickly over the tablet screen.
“Zoe’s on the phone with police,” Alex said as Joshua hopped in. “I’m not sure if they’re going to want to interview us for long, considering he didn’t pull a weapon, nobody got hurt and I’m not sure what they’d even charge him with. But I’m going to pull back around and park at the police station again.”
Alex inched forward. Traffic barely moved around them.
“Do you know what that was about?” Alex asked.
“No clue. I don’t even know what he was saying.”
“He was listing off women’s names,” Samantha said. She didn’t look up. “Jessica Wynne from Huntsville. Isobel Joyner from Mississauga or Markham, something like that. Holly someone...”
“Williams.” Zoe hung up the phone. “Holly Williams. Ottawa.”
Samantha nodded. “The other was a Nash and all I can remember is she was from somewhere else in Ontario.”
“Windsor,” Joshua said quietly.
“Thanks. Monique Nash from Windsor.” Samantha went back to typing. He’d never seen anyone’s fingers move so fast. “I’m gu
essing there’s a good Wi-Fi signal back at the country house?”
He nodded. “There is. Why, what are you doing?”
This time she looked up. Her eyes met his in the rearview mirror. “My job. Because whether he meant to or not, that unstable man just gave me the one thing I’ve been needing—names. Maybe one of those women is Magpie. Maybe they’re all working for Magpie. Or maybe Roy is.” She looked back down at the tablet. “If any of those names, or Roy, are connected to Torchlight News in any way, or a bigger pattern of unsolved crimes, or anything else I can put a finger on, I’m going to find out.”
* * *
Beating snow buffeted hard against the country house window. A fire crackled softly in the fireplace. Joshua turned and looked out at the darkness through the fresh pane of glass Alex and Zoe had installed, but saw nothing but the reflection of his own face ringed in the light of the fire behind him and dozens of dots of sparkling light from the Christmas tree. Samantha sat behind him, curled up sideways in an armchair by the fire. Two blankets were wrapped around her, one around her feet and one around her shoulders.
Zoe’s dog, Oz, whimpered at the bottom of the chair for a moment, until Samantha absentmindedly reached down, scooped him up and dropped him into the crook of her knees. He curled into a tiny ball and promptly fell asleep.
“If you think that dog’s sweet now,” Joshua said, “you should see him when Alex gets out his keyboard and tries to play Christmas carols. Oz howls.”
“Cute.” A smile crossed her lips. She laughed under her breath and rubbed the dog’s head. Then she went back to typing. It had been over an hour since they’d gotten back to the country house and she hadn’t let go of the tablet once. Not even while she called Olivia to talk about Magpie’s outrageous demand that Torchlight delete their entire ATHENA database. Even though Alex and Zoe had wandered off to other parts of the sprawling house, something had kept him rooted here, in this room, next to Samantha, watching her work. Gone was the uncertainty and helplessness he’d seen in her just hours ago. Now it had been replaced with a new drive, a fire in her eyes, a focus. It had taken twice as long to get back to the country house as it had to get downtown in the morning. And of course, they’d had a trip to the police station that had been longer than predicted.
Kidnapped at Christmas Page 10
