by Elise Noble
“Too much champagne?” Joey suggested.
“I don’t think so. She had an argument with Erin right before she vanished. You know, the red-haired bridesmaid?”
“The one I said was trouble?”
“Yes.”
Joey gave his head a faint shake. “Worked with thousands of girls, and I can spot the problems from a mile away. You think Erin scared her off?”
“Maybe.”
“Do the cameras at your gates record?” Mal asked. “I want to work out whether she left the property.”
“Sure, we can review the tapes.”
“Do you want me to help?” Misty asked. “Or should we organise a search party?”
Fuck, this was her wedding. She should have been saving everyone from Archie’s dad-dancing, not hunting for a missing woman. Mal forced a smile.
“No, you go take care of Archie. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for all of this.”
Inside, Mal followed Joey through the ornate hallways, the older man moving with surprising haste. A few shards of shattered glass on the floor made him tsk-tsk-tsk. There had been more earlier when Mal walked the same way, and whoever cleared the mess up hadn’t done a very good job.
“Thanks for helping with this,” Mal said.
“Number one rule in my business: always look after the girls.”
“Have you known Misty a long time?”
“She made her first movie with me. I knew right from the start she was special—kind, smart, ambitious… She deserves everything she’s got. To tell you the truth, I was worried when she told me she was marrying Archie, but I think he’ll be good for her. Too many men who go after the women in this industry are kooks.”
Joey’s office was on the first floor, overlooking the front driveway and a hideous sculpture of women with their legs open spraying water into a small pool from… Yeah, tasteless didn’t even begin to cover it.
A pair of monitors on the other side of the room showed the security camera feeds, and Mal studied them closely. Good quality pictures, no fuzziness.
“Can you start two hours ago? That’s when Imogen went inside.” Dammit, he should have done this sooner, but he honestly didn’t think she’d have left without saying a word.
“Do you want to see the indoor cameras too?”
“You record in here?”
“Only at the doors and the hallway outside this room. Someone stole a copy of an unreleased movie from here during a party once, and it got uploaded onto a bunch of free sites.”
“Did you find out who?”
“Yes, but it was too late by then. He won’t work in this industry again, but that release was screwed. Your girlfriend’s a blonde?”
“About an inch shorter than Misty, but she looks quite similar.”
“I think I saw her earlier. Pretty little thing.”
Pretty didn’t do Imogen justice. Fuck, where was she? If Erin had messed her up…
“This her?” Joey asked as a head of blonde hair came into view wearing a silky cream robe. “Or is that Misty?”
Mal squinted at the screen. Scripted writing on the back of the robe read Bride.
“I’m not sure.”
Would Misty really have given Imogen her wedding outfit? From what he’d seen of her, she had a generous soul, and he suspected the answer might be yes. On screen, a waiter walked past, head down, pushing a cloth-covered cart filled with empty glasses. A tall guy with a bald spot. Skinny. Mal hadn’t spoken to him. Perhaps he should?
Joey spoke softly into his phone, asking Misty about the robe. After a moment, he nodded.
“That was Imogen. Misty felt bad Erin snapped her bikini string.”
“Where does this hallway go?” Mal racked his brain from the hunt earlier. “Is there a dining room around the corner?”
“The dining room’s on the other side. This hallway leads to the prop room. Spare beds, couches, that sort of thing.”
Then what reason did a member of the catering staff have for walking along there? Unless he was as lost as everyone else seemed to be.
Mal kept watching. He expected Imogen to come back once she realised she’d gone in the wrong direction, except she didn’t. But the waiter did, still with his head down as if he knew the camera was watching. And he was in a hurry. When he paused to glance behind him, the cart bumped into the wall and a glass fell off, but that wasn’t what made Mal’s chest seize. No, what made his heart stop was the arm that flopped out from under the white cloth and trailed along the tile.
Tell him that wasn’t Imogen.
Except it was. He recognised the bright pink nail polish, and when Joey zoomed in with a trembling hand, Mal could even see one nail was missing as Misty had mentioned earlier.
“Fuck.”
“Did… Did that…” Joey swallowed and tried again. “Did that waiter just kidnap a woman from out of my damn house?”
“Sure looks that way.”
Mal’s heart hammered against his ribcage. He dealt with these kinds of problems all the time for work, but it had never gotten personal like this. Some fucker had stolen his date out from under his nose, and what was more, it’d happened over an hour ago.
This wasn’t good.
And worse? Now he needed to explain the situation to his colleagues.
CHAPTER 12 - MALACHI
MALACHI BREATHED INTO the silence on the other end of the phone, biting back curses.
Finally, Cruz spoke. “Are you fucking around?”
“I only wish I was.”
“Who the hell took her?”
“We don’t know yet. The perp was dressed as a waiter, but the catering staff are all accounted for.”
“An impostor?”
“Possibly. He kept his head down, so we don’t have a clear shot of his face. The guy who owns the house is calling the catering company.”
“I’m on my way. What do you need?”
“A dozen roadblocks an hour ago.”
“Tricky. Do you have a vehicle description?”
“He took off in a van, but we don’t have the licence number.”
Because in Joey Sambuco’s life, appearances took priority over security, and he’d told his gardeners not to trim the bushes at the front of the house until they finished flowering. Those blooms had partially obscured the security cameras. Joey had men out there right now, hacking branches back in a spectacular demonstration of shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted.
“We’ll find her, amigo. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
No sooner had Cruz hung up, Mal’s phone rang again. Oliver was calling. Fuck.
“I just thought I’d check Imogen’s okay. She’s still not answering.”
Not Oliver. Stefanie. Double fuck.
Should he tell a little fib? Try to soften the blow?
“We’re still looking for her at the moment. She had a small argument with my ex, so she might have wanted to keep out of the way for a while.”
“You mean she let the opposition win? No way! Imogen never gives in like that. Have you checked all the bathrooms? If she drank too much, she might be feeling ill.”
“We’re just going to start a more thorough search.”
A pause. “What if…? No, that’s silly. It couldn’t be him.”
“Couldn’t be who?”
“It doesn’t matter. Forget I said anything.”
“If Imogen’s been having problems with a guy, I need to know.”
“He couldn’t have followed her there. I mean, she didn’t even know she was going herself until yesterday.”
“Who?”
“I’m not supposed to tell anybody. We have a girl code.”
For fuck’s sake. “Stefanie, we have reason to believe Imogen might have been abducted. If you know anything that could shed light on who took her, you need to tell me right now.”
Stefanie’s gasp reminded Mal why he’d avoided mentioning his suspicions in the first place. The last thing he needed was a h
ysterical female to deal with.
“Abducted? What? How? When? You have to find her! Her brother’s deranged.”
“You think she’s been abducted by her brother?”
“He’s hated her for years.”
“A lot of siblings don’t get along, but they don’t tend to resort to kidnapping.”
“This is different.”
“In what way?”
“I’m not meant to talk about it,” Stefanie whispered. “I promised.”
Could a family member really have tailed Imogen all the way to Florida? They’d flown on a private fucking jet, and they hadn’t exactly broadcast where they were going either. The only place they’d spoken about the trip in public was in the bar with Deon, and Mal might have been off-duty that night, but he’d sure as hell have noticed if someone was eavesdropping.
No way.
He’d get to the bottom of the brother story, but it didn’t take priority right now.
“Okay. Don’t break your promise. Just call me if she contacts you.”
“But—”
“I’ll keep you updated.”
Mal hung up. Time was of the essence, and he didn’t want to waste any cajoling Stefanie to give him information that wasn’t vital to their cause. Across the room, Joey Sambuco raised an eyebrow expectantly. Mal shook his head. He had his own theory about what had happened to Imogen, and it didn’t involve her brother shadowing them halfway across the country. He fired off a quick message to the tech team at Blackwood, asking them to have a nose around just in case, then focused back on the task at hand.
Time to ask questions.
Misty was in Archie’s arms, eyes glistening as she chewed on her bottom lip. And she looked nervous. Fifty bucks said she’d already had the same thought as Mal had. From behind, on that video, even he’d struggled to tell the pair of them apart.
“We need to talk.”
She nodded, and Archie’s arm tightened around her waist. “It was meant to be me, wasn’t it?”
“Do you know who that man was?”
Archie answered for her. “No, but there’s no shortage of wackos out there.”
“Have there been any direct threats?”
Misty got her voice back. “Since I was on Horsing Around—you know, that reality show where celebrities learn to ride horses? After that, everything just stepped up a gear.”
“Love letters, death threats, religious nuts determined to save her,” Joey said, moving to her elbow in a show of support. “Letters, emails, Facebook messages… One freak broke into her place last year and cooked her dinner.”
“And he wasn’t a keeper?” Mal asked, trying to lighten the mood.
“He made beef stroganoff, and I’m a vegetarian.”
A thought struck him, and he turned to Archie. “Was that what you wanted to ask me about earlier? These problems?”
“I didn’t know whether they were something or nothing.”
Well, they had their answer now. “Is that why you hired security for today?”
“I just wanted everything to go without a hitch. Well, obviously I was getting hitched, but you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“And it’s also partly why I decided to take a step back from acting,” Misty said. “Nobody remembers who’s behind the camera. I’ve been thinking about focusing on directing for a while now, and meeting Archie gave me the push I needed.”
“We’ll need to look into the threats. Anything recent, anything that mentions violence or kidnapping. Can you help us with access?”
“Whatever you need. Should I send all the guests home? Call the police?”
“Yes, we should call the police.” In a situation like this, extra manpower helped, and the Fort Lauderdale PD had proven to be reasonably competent on similar investigations in the past, just slightly lax with the paperwork. Blackwood could run their own team alongside. “And keep everyone out of the house.”
An hour later, Casa di Amore was filled with cops, who nibbled on canapés while they talked to tipsy guests. The best part? Somebody had located Erin and brought her back for questioning.
“Some people stop at nothing to be the centre of attention,” she muttered.
“Hello, pot. Have you met kettle?” Mal asked.
“I’ve never ruined anybody’s wedding.”
“Actually, you did,” Misty pointed out.
“Oh, please. I defended myself. She went and got kidnapped.”
How the hell had Mal dated this bitch for so long?
“Are you fucking kidding me? Imogen didn’t ask to be stuffed into a catering trolley.”
“Just leave it,” Cruz said, steering him away from Erin before he got tempted to dump her in the ocean. With a concrete block attached to her feet. “She’s not worth it, and we have work to do. Several of the houses on this street have cameras on their gates, and I bet at least one caught the van on tape.”
“Do you want the east side or the west side?”
“I’ll take the east. Let’s go.”
“Kidnapped?” The lady’s hands flew to cheeks that paled under her tan. She had to be at least seventy, with thinning grey hair brushed into waves reminiscent of a forties movie star. “A girl got kidnapped from Joey’s house?”
“It looks that way, ma’am.”
“But this area’s normally so safe. What should I do? My Herbie’s away this week, and it’s just me and my sister here on our own. What if the perpetrator comes back?”
“That’s unlikely. Usually, these people want to get as far away as possible. We know he left in a van, but we don’t have a great description, and I see you have a camera on top of your gatepost.”
“Are you with the police?”
“No, my name’s Malachi Banks, and I’m with Blackwood Security. We’re looking into the case. I have ID right here, and you’re welcome to call the office for verification.”
“Did Joey hire you?”
“Not formally. I was a guest at the wedding that’s going on over there.”
“Misty’s wedding?”
“That’s right.”
“Such a sweet girl. She invited me, but my sister’s recovering from a broken hip, and I didn’t want to leave her on her own.”
“You know Misty?”
“Oh, yes. Every Christmas, Joey has a big party, and Misty’s always there. She bought one of my Herb’s paintings. He’s an artist, you know.”
“Do you think I could check your camera footage?”
“Let me just call Joey. A gal can never be too careful. I’m Lindy, by the way.”
Two minutes later, Mal got ushered into the living room with an offer of coffee, whisky, or anything else he wanted. Apart from a smoothie—those were an overpriced con, according to Lindy. Not a health freak, then, and Mal detected the faint aroma of marijuana lingering in the air.
Giant canvases dominated the room—nudes painted in garish colours, broad brush strokes and splashes that looked careless but which were probably placed with excruciating precision. The signature in the corner read F Herbert. The work of Lindy’s artist husband? No wonder she’d been so laid back about Joey living across the road.
“I’m actually in a hurry, ma’am. The cameras?”
“My Herbie installed those. I don’t really know how they work.”
“Could I take a look?”
“All the electronic doohickeys are in his study.”
It wasn’t a bad system, but whoever installed it had angled the cameras badly. Rather than covering the house and driveway, the one on the gatepost looked straight down the road. Not so good for home security, but great for Mal. The licence plate showed for a clear second as the van drove away from the property, and the vehicle also had a large dent in the rear door, rusty around the edges as if the driver had reversed into a post at some point and never gotten the damage repaired.
“Is that it?” Lindy asked.
“Sure looks like it.” The driver wasn’t much more than a dark
silhouette, but Mack, one of the technical gurus at head office, could enhance that. “Do you mind if I take a copy?”
“Take whatever you want. That poor girl.”
Mal’s heart stuttered again. Usually, it was easy to stay detached, some might say cold, but all he could think about today was Imogen’s smile when she’d climbed on board the jet earlier. Even though the trip to Florida promised to be anything but fun, she’d still been happy. A breath of fresh air. In the same situation, Erin would have found something to complain about for sure.
If they got Imogen back, Mal had a lot of making up to do. When. When they got her back. He had to stay positive. Statistically speaking, most victims of abduction came back home. But eighty-five percent of those who didn’t were murdered within the first three hours. Fuck. Imogen had been gone for two hours already. Thinking about statistics was a bad idea.
Just focus on the clues, Malachi. Not the woman.
CHAPTER 13 - MALACHI
MACK WORKED QUICKLY. Within ten minutes, Mal and Cruz had an address for Morton Seacroft, a thirty-four-year-old Fort Lauderdale resident with no criminal history. His last known residence was just nine miles from Casa di Amore.
As the pair of them drove towards his house in Cruz’s Jeep, the updates came thick and fast.
“According to his LinkedIn profile, Seacroft worked at Make a Splash Food & Events until May of this year,” Cruz said. “Weren’t they the caterers at the wedding?”
“Yes. Joey Sambuco said he always used them.”
“So perhaps Seacroft saw Misty at a previous party and took a shine to her?”
“That’s possible. Can we send somebody over to speak to the boss? Joey called him, but one of our people needs to ask questions too.”
Cruz was already on the phone to Blackwood’s Florida office. “I’ll sort that out.”
“I’ve got a satellite image of Seacroft’s house,” Mack said. “Sending it over now. The place is small, but there’s a garage at the back.”
A garage Mal found himself watching from the other side of a rickety fence an hour later with Cruz crouched beside him. The whole property was unkempt, overgrown, and the garage roof sagged in the middle. Worse, there were no signs of life, and the driveway was empty.
