David went up to the eighteenth floor and strode toward the main conference room where Ben told him everyone was assembling. Catherine Crossman made a beeline toward him. The petite brunette was dressed impeccably as always, but her brows were creased in worry. Catherine owned NET with her husband, Rob. They’d been instrumental in launching Maximum Exposure two years ago.
“What can I do?” she asked, putting her manicured hand on David’s arm. “Break through programming?”
David hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe—but right now we need more information before I make that decision.”
It wasn’t lost on him that he was now de facto in charge. It was a role he didn’t enjoy, though he was capable of it. He much preferred staying in the background.
“Anything,” she said. “I mean it. Was this related to one of her investigations?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. He stepped into the conference room. Everyone stopped talking at once. A dozen people were there, all Maximum Exposure staff, including Riley and Ben. Sally hadn’t arrived yet.
David walked to the head of the table but didn’t sit down. “Maxine hasn’t been seen or heard from since eleven thirty-five last night when a car picked her up outside this building. I’ve viewed the security footage and she left with her car service in no apparent distress. The car and driver are both missing, but I’ve confirmed that the driver who picked her up was not the driver dispatched by Vance’s service.
“I want reports from everyone on what Max has you working on. Even if you don’t think it’s important, write everything down and send it to both Ben and me. But if there’s something you think stands out, tell me now.”
He looked at the faces of the staff, then his eyes rested on Riley Butler. She looked shell-shocked.
“Nothing? Anyone?”
Then everyone spoke at once, and Ben whistled and the voices stopped. Ben went around the room, and each person relayed what they’d been working on for the past week. Most projects related to future Maximum Exposure spots, primarily research. David was familiar with all the cases they were considering for upcoming shows, and dismissed anything not related to Bachman or the Palazzolos.
“C. J., you were working on something in Connecticut?” Ben asked the head of the research department. C. J. was Max’s favorite staffer. He was older than nearly everyone else who worked for the show, and nothing seemed to faze him from the workload to Max’s odd requests, though he could be tempermental.
This morning, however, C. J. looked troubled. He ran a hand over his shaved head and said, “I’m trying to locate a woman, Anna Hudson, who was a counselor at the same time that Adam Bachman was a patient at Greenhaven.”
“And?”
“I haven’t found her. I know she exists, and I’ve been able to confirm the information Max learned. I then tracked her to a graduate program in Chicago, but lost her trail after that.”
David said, “Send me everything you have. Why was Max looking for Hudson?”
Riley cleared her throat. “Anna quit Greenhaven while Bachman was there. Her friend believes Anna’s leaving was directly related to an incident with Adam Bachman, and Max thinks Anna can lead her to Bachman’s partner.”
Debbie Starr timidly raised her hand. C. J. was the oldest, most senior member on staff; Debbie was one of the youngest, but she had a knack for being extremely thorough with fact-checking. “Um, Mr. Lawson? Max asked me to run deeper background checks on staff at Greenhaven, particularly the administrator, counselors, and doctors.”
“Shit,” Ben mumbled. “I told her to use C. J. only.”
“I’m sorry,” Debbie whispered and glanced down.
“Did you find anything?” David snapped. Debbie, though competent, was also shy and nervous, and David didn’t have the patience to coddle her. “Debbie, anything important?”
“She was vague. She said she’d know it when she saw it, and to verify all public facts. There are no criminal records for any of the individuals she gave me, and so far I’ve verified each curriculum vitae, though I’m still going back to previous employers.”
“Send me everything you’ve already completed,” Ben said. “You might have raised a flag with someone. Then finish the research and send reports to both David and me.”
David said to the group, “If you leave this building, let security know where you’re going and when you will return. Stick in pairs or groups, and we’ll arrange for a car service to take each of you home tonight. Until we know what’s going on, I’m keeping close tabs on everyone.”
The staff filed from the room, but David squeezed Riley’s shoulder. “Stay,” he said.
She sat back down, worried and scared. Good. She should be. David didn’t know what Riley had been up to with Max, or on her own, but she’d better not be holding anything back.
Before David could question Riley, Sally O’Hara came in. She wore jeans and a polo shirt and no makeup. She looked as hungover as she’d sounded on the phone. Ben called his secretary to bring in coffee for four.
Sally collapsed into a chair. “This is so fucked. What do you have?”
“Not much, except a security video that I need enhanced,” David said. “Can you do that?”
“We have people.”
Ben said, “It’ll be faster if our tech guys do it.”
“Good.” David much prefered to maintain control over the evidence until they had something solid to give to the police. “Security is bringing up the original feed.”
Ben’s administrative assistant, Lara, came in with a tray of coffee. Ben said, “Lara, when security arrives, let me know.”
“Of course.” Lara put her hand on David’s arm. The woman had a motherly demeanor while also being one of the best gatekeepers David knew. “David, anything,” she said softly. She and Ben exchanged a look as she walked out. David didn’t ponder what it might mean.
David turned to Riley.
“Tell me what you’ve been doing for Max. Everything.”
“I—you know everything.”
“If I knew everything, I would know why somebody grabbed her last night,” he said, enunciating his words clearly. His temper was coming frayed because he didn’t have answers. Each passing minute increased the tension. “Start with Greenhaven. Why did Max ask Debbie to run deep backgrounds?”
“We toured the facility on Wednesday and Max thought that the chief administrator didn’t dress as well as she should have.”
“Excuse me?” Sally said. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Riley said. “Max determined what her salary should be based on like positions and because she had no family or elderly parents, Max said she probably spent her money on something she shouldn’t.”
“I’ve warned her about those gut impressions,” Ben said.
David ignored him. “Why was she looking at Jackson? Does she think she’s involved with Bachman?”
“God, no, she’s in her fifties.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“Oh. No, I don’t know, she just said that someone who lied in their appearance would lie about other things. It was cryptic.”
“Were you with her the entire time?”
“Yes—I mean no. She arranged to talk to Jackson without me, and I think she might have looked at confidential files.”
“Might?”
Riley bit her lip and glanced at Sally.
“Forget I’m a cop for five minutes,” Sally said.
David slammed his palm on the table. “Riley! Everything!”
“I don’t know quite what she did, but she came out with the names and addresses of employees who’d been fired, and determined which one was most likely to have worked there when Adam Bachman was there.”
Sally slowly lowered her head to the table and put her hands over her ears.
Ben said, “And?”
“We tracked down a woman named Janice Brody. She’s the one who clued Max to Anna Hudson, and Max asked C. J. to find her
.”
“Then why was Max pushing Milligan?” Ben interjected. “She had no hard facts.”
David said, “Our witness from Fringe described Bachman’s friend from New Haven. Did she ask this Janice about the guy?”
“I don’t know—she asked me to leave.”
Ben snapped his fingers. “That’s why Max was pushing Milligan last night. She was stuck, couldn’t get the information on her own.”
“Or couldn’t get it fast enough,” David said. “If Bachman is sentenced on Monday, wouldn’t it be more difficult for her to gain access to him?” He answered his own question. “Of course, Milligan can get Max in now. For her to get inside a prison will take weeks, sometimes months.”
“Then why was she planning to run off to San Francisco?” Ben said.
“Because it wouldn’t have happened today,” David said. “She was stuck and frustrated.” And, he suspected, she was still enamored with Detective Santini. It hadn’t taken David long to figure out how Max handled her relationships, and with Santini it was still new and fun for her. As soon as it became too serious on either side, she’d pull back. He’d seen it more than once.
He turned to Riley. “Anything else? You spent nine hours with Max on Wednesday. Did she have any plans to go to Brooklyn?”
“Not that she told me.”
“I want the contact information of everyone she spoke to, including the former Greenhaven employee,” David said. “Five minutes ago.”
Riley ran from the room, passing Lara on her way in. “The tapes are here from security.”
“Take them straight to tech, priority enhancement,” Ben said.
“Of course.” Lara left.
“I need to talk to Milligan,” David said. “As soon as we have an image from the tapes.”
“I’ll go with you,” Ben said. Before David could object—and he wanted to—Ben said, “I know Richard. Trust me.”
“I’ll work the image on my end,” Sally said.
“Can you get footage from the bridge? Maybe we can figure out which way they went, follow the cameras,” Ben said.
“Not as easy as it sounds,” she said. “But I’ll try.” She stepped from the room to make a call.
David turned to Ben. “I’m going to call Lopez.”
Ben nodded, but he wasn’t smiling.
David had FBI Agent Marco Lopez on speed dial.
“Lopez. Is this Kane?”
“Yes.”
“Maxine needs something but isn’t willing to apologize, so she has you call me? The answer is hell no.”
“She’s missing.”
Lopez didn’t say anything for a beat. Then gruffly, “Explain.”
“She left the studio last night at approximately eleven thirty-five and didn’t make it home.”
Lopez snorted. “Hell, Kane, thirteen hours? That’s nothing, especially for Max.”
“I viewed the security footage. The driver who picked her up isn’t the individual dispatched by the car company. That person is also missing, and so is the vehicle. She missed a scheduled trip this morning. Didn’t call me. Didn’t check in.”
“She doesn’t check in.”
His fist tightened around his cell phone. Why did Lopez sound like such a prick? If that fed was in the room right now, David would deck him.
“With me she does. Do you think I would call you if I didn’t know that Max was in trouble? A detective is helping, but the police aren’t going to do anything at least until tomorrow.”
“And that surprises you?”
“Dammit, Lopez, this is fucking serious and I don’t need your wounded ego in my way. She’s completely off the grid and yes, she still does that, but not without telling me first. Believe me, you’re the last person I wanted to call for help.”
“Send me everything you know. I’ll be there first thing in the morning.” He hung up.
Prick.
David took a deep breath. Marco was a prick, but he was coming to New York, and having a fed working the case would help.
He just hoped that tomorrow wasn’t too late for Max.
“Ben, we’re going to make a stop before we go to the D.A. I want to show the photo of the driver to a potential witness, someone who worked with Bachman at Fringe. If she recognizes him, we’ll be one step closer to finding him.”
* * *
The blindfold distracted Max. How much time had passed? One hour? Ten? A day? In the darkness, she couldn’t tell the passage of time. The initial panic she’d felt had given away to a dull throb in her head, partly from the drugs they’d injected her with, and partly from her fears.
Her mouth was parched. So dry she knew she hadn’t had water in hours. Possibly a day. If it were longer than a day, she would show more signs of dehydration. Her stomach churned, empty. But she wasn’t hungry. The thought of food made her ill, possibly a side effect of the drugs. She tried to clear her mind, get her thoughts together, because she needed to focus on figuring out where she was, who had grabbed her, what they wanted.
Her thoughts were fuzzy.
Focus, Max.
She had to escape.
What if she couldn’t escape? She was restrained. What if no one found her?
What if I end up like Karen?
Her heart skipped a beat. She didn’t want to disappear without a trace. She didn’t want her friends and family to never know what happened to her. Was that his plan? But that wouldn’t hurt her … it would hurt the people in her life. What would be the purpose in that?
Unless they kept her alive and forced her to watch the news, read the articles as her case turned from hot to warm to cold. Watch her friends go on with their lives, haunted—or not—by her disappearance.
You’re being ridiculous.
This wasn’t like her, to be waylaid by fear. She wasn’t naturally a fearful person. She’d risked a lot for the stories she wrote. Going after Karen’s suspected killer. The time she’d spent in a Mexican prison. Being tortured. She didn’t talk about that, and only touched upon it briefly in the book she wrote after her captivity.
She’d survived. She would survive this—whatever it was.
It took all her mental courage to take her eyesight out of the equation. She relied too much on what she saw and less on what she heard. The captivity troubled her, but she’d been in worse. She’d been naked in the Mexican prison. Humiliated. Whipped. And they still hadn’t broken her.
She breathed deeply.
Focus on your other senses. Hearing. Smell.
The sound of water was the first. She’d heard it when she’d first woken up, but she’d been half-conscious, not really paying attention. Not running water, but steady drips. It hadn’t rained in the city in weeks, this was like the sound of water moving through pipes. She breathed deeply, ignoring the pain in her chest. A musty, damp smell invaded her nose, her mouth. Moldy. Underground? They hadn’t gagged her, which meant no matter how loud she cried for help, no one could hear her. If she wasn’t underground, she was definitely somewhere secluded.
Was this where Adam Bachman had taken his victims? Is this where he suffocated them?
Why did she think her imprisonment had to do with Bachman?
Because he mentioned Adam before.
She shook her head to clear it and as she shifted pain hit her. What did they restrain her on? Some sort of table? A chair? She couldn’t move without getting jabbed by a million pinpricks. She had to be calm. Focus. Get her head together so she could take advantage of any opportunity to escape.
She wasn’t in her own clothes, but she wasn’t naked, either. Though her body was partly numb from the drugs, she didn’t think she’d been raped. The material on her skin felt rough and bulky, like cheap cotton. A hospital gown? Scrubs? Why would they remove her clothes?
He wants to break you.
Her clothes personalized her. But she didn’t care if anyone saw her in something impersonal. She was vain, but not like that. Why would changing her clothes break her?
&
nbsp; Solitude didn’t bother her. She could think better now that her captors were gone. She liked being alone. Living alone. Writing alone.
She breathed in again, tasted the air on her dry tongue. Definitely mold, almost a mushroom taste. Moist. Humid, but not hot. A basement, perhaps. Or in one of the underground mazes that held up New York City. She’d done an article about the hidden underground. Those two urban explorers she’d befriended had taken her to places most people who lived here didn’t even know existed.
Underground. This place didn’t have the same smell as the tunnel where they’d found the Palazzolos’ bodies. That was wetter, louder. There was no free-running water here, it was underground pipes. A subbasement in an apartment building? A warehouse? Abandoned most likely, because that was Bachman’s MO.
But what was his partner’s MO?
Where had Max heard that voice before?
Why had they taken her?
Because they’re going to kill you.
For the first time since she’d woken up, the fear took over.
She didn’t want to die.
“Hello again, Maxine,” the voice said.
Her body involuntarily jerked at the sudden sound. Pain shot up through her feet. She hadn’t heard him approach. Had she been panicking? Had she passed out? How could she not have heard him walk in?
Had he been there the entire time, watching her?
“I brought a friend.” A familiar voice. She knew who this bastard was, she just had to think!
But her mind was cloudy, unfocused. She suspected that she’d been in and out of consciousness for quite some time, that all her thoughts had been fragmented.
“You were close. I was surprised that you got so close. But not close enough.”
She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking questions, though a dozen burned on her tongue.
A pinprick in her arm made her involuntarily cry out.
“Just a little something to make sure you stay awake. Because we have a lot to talk about.”
Her arm burned, as if a million fire ants crawled up her skin.
A chair rolled up next to her. Her body jerked again as he touched her hand, and he laughed softly.
“Oh, Maxine, if you keep fighting you’ll only prolong the inevitable.”
Compulsion (Max Revere Novels Book 2) Page 19
