Closing Books (29 page)

Her efforts to concentrate on her drawings weren’t much of a success.

Since Dan should be arriving anytime, she packed up her stuff, which mainly involved sweeping everything she wanted to bring home into her bag, and pushed the rest of the paper and stationery aside.
 

She really should pack up her desk soon.
 

To convince herself that she wasn’t a slob, she arranged the few pencils neatly, placing them in line with one another, from the shortest to the longest.

Her phone vibrated and saved her from the mundane task. She picked it up, seeing a text from Dan, telling her that he was there and would wait for her in the parking lot.

She frowned slightly at the text. Since Lydia’s assault, Dan always came up to her office and walked her down.
 

Call him.

She laughed at how dependent she’d become. It wasn’t a long walk to the parking lot, and she wasn’t a baby.

Call him.

She shook the thoughts from her head, took her bag, and headed out of the office. She’d just stepped out of the elevator and was scanning the parking lot for Dan’s car when she felt a jab in her neck.
 

She flinched from the pain and turned, but everything swirled and she found herself swaying dangerously to the side, unable to right herself. Almost immediately, a dark rim invaded her sight, quickly overtaking her vision.

Dan had just gotten out of his car when he felt a pair of boney hands grasping his arm. His head snapped toward the hands, and he glared up at their owner.

His glare must have been menacing, for she immediately let go and stumbled a few steps back.

“Melissa Rose?” He softened his looks and smiled politely at her, but the frantic look on her face didn’t go away.

“Quick, you don’t have time. He took her.”

“What? Who?”

“Miss Jordan! He took her!” She waved the crumpled name card in her hand. “I saw him, I saw him taking her. You have to find her; he’ll kill her.”

“Where did he take her?”

She blinked, then shook her head. “I don’t know…”

“Think!”

She shrunk back from Dan, her chin tucked in. “I really don’t know.”

He wanted to step forward, to press for more details, but she appeared so frightened that he didn’t dare risk it. With his eyes on her, Dan called Evelyn on her phone, but it was switched off.
 

“He drove off in his own car?”

“No, he didn’t. He has another car for these things,” she said.

“Do you know the number plate of that car?”

She chewed on her lips and took another step away from him. “No.”

Dan needed information, but was afraid that Melissa might take off running if he pushed. He’d take her to Kate and search for Evelyn while Kate grilled her. “Please come with me, Miss Rose.”

She looked over her shoulders, seemingly searching for a way away from him.

“Evelyn would help you. If things were the other way around, she would do everything she could to help you.”

She hesitated for a moment before nodding. She hurried over to the passenger side and got into the car, clutching her handbag against her chest.

“We’ll head over to where our friends are,” he said while pulling out of the lot and calling Kate.

“Hey Dan,” Kate’s chirpy voice filled the car once the line went through.

“Trace Evelyn’s phone. Do what you did the other time.”

“Why?”

The words were already ringing in his head, but he couldn’t get them out of this mouth.
 

“Dan? Are you still there?”

He forced himself to swallow hard before saying, “He got her.”

No further explanation was needed. The sudden silence on the other end of the phone was deafening.

“I’ll do it now,” Kate said.

“I have Melissa Rose with me, we’re coming over now.”

“All right. Drive safe. I’ll update you if I get a location.”

Hanging up the call, he slammed on the gas pedals.

Kate must have been keeping watch from the mansion’s window. The moment his car went around the bend, Kate stepped out of the house and waited for him.

When Melissa Rose saw Kate, her shoulders relaxed. The resemblance between Lydia and Kate was obvious to all.
 

Kate rushed up to Dan as he stepped out of his car.

He held his breath, hoping that Kate wouldn’t turn hysterical. He needed all the help he could get, and the last thing he wanted was to waste time calming Kate down.

He sighed, relieved, when Kate simply ran her hand down his arm with a tense smile and a nod before turning to Melissa.
 

“Miss Rose, you have to help us find her.”

“I don’t know what I can do.”

Kate placed her hand gently on Melissa’s arm, leading her toward the house. “Tell us everything you know.” Returning her eyes to Dan, she continued. “Her phone is off, but I’ve set the email notification.”

Kate ushered Melissa into the house and sat her down in the living room.

“Miss Rose—”

“Melissa.”

“Melissa.” Kate took her hand and squeezed it gently. “Point us in the right direction. We’re digging up everything, but that’ll take too much time.”

“I’m sorry, all I know is that I lied to provide him with an alibi whenever he needed one.”

“But you know something. A wife always knows something, anything that you suspect.”

Melissa reached into her handbag and took out a DVD that had a line of numbers written across it. 15042009. “This is my trump card. This was how I got him to let me move out.”

Dan grabbed the DVD.

His haste startled Melissa, and her eyes widened, staring at the DVD.

“We’ll give that back to you.” Kate patted Melissa’s hand softly. “I promise.”

Though Melissa was clearly much older than Kate, Kate spoke to her like a mother coaxing a child. “This is Marianne. I need to go up to help them out. You all right here?”

He didn’t wait for Kate. He headed up the stairs and toward the study, grabbed one of the laptops and played the video that the DVD contained.

All the guys were inside. They dropped what they were doing and crowded around the laptop. Kate joined them just as the video began running.

The screen was black for the first few seconds before a new scene suddenly cut in.

Dan’s heart dropped.

He had seen the pictures, the cuts and bruises, but he wasn’t prepared for the scene in the video.
 

A woman in her twenties was strapped to a chair. No matter how she shoved, turned, and twisted, the chair didn’t budge.
 

Tears were streaming down her cheeks, smudging the mascara and messing up her face. Though the same gray tape that strapped her to the chair was across her mouth, it was clear she was screaming, or maybe begging.

Dan was glad he was seated as he felt blood drain from his face.

He knew things weren’t good when he found out Evelyn had been taken, but somewhere inside, he’d hoped it was simply another threat. He’d hoped she would turn up by the side of the road. Even turning up at the hospital like Lydia was a better alternative than this.
 

But if Melissa held such evidence, if Kate’s house was a warning, if Lydia’s attack was a taste of the worst to come, he couldn’t help thinking that this was a showdown.
 

Evelyn wouldn’t be turning up by the road or the hospital. She might not be turning up at all.

“It looks like a container,” Tyler said.

His words took Dan’s eyes off the woman and onto the background.
 

The walls appeared to have white wallpaper over them. Unlike those found in homes, they weren’t matted. There was a light sheen as though it was waterproof. The most telling of it all was the floor, the undeniable metal wavelike structure.
 

“He owns a logistics firm. It’s probably one of the trucks,” Joseph added. “We’ll watch this. Ben managed to find some information about the firm. There are logs and tons of things to look through. Why don’t you go help with that?”

He knew Joseph was trying to get him away from the video. He wasn’t interested in watching the video, but it didn’t seem right dumping such a task on Ryan and Joseph.
 

“We’ve seen all sorts of injuries at work. Leave this to us,” Ryan assured, taking the laptop from Dan. “We won’t miss anything.”

Tyler and Ben went back to their computer while Kate looked at a stack of logs, taking a quick glance at each page before flipping to the next.

“What’s that?”

“Ben managed to get us the logs of the trucks records.”

“Are you looking for something?”

“Something about the schedules. Look at the dates. Logistics firms operate 24/7, right?”

Dan nodded.
 

“I can’t find a single day where the trucks return to the office on a Wednesday. The schedule seems to be arranged such that the trucks are out every Wednesday,” she said while she continued flipping through the pages.

“They have two cleaning companies, both outsourced. Perhaps it’s for cleaning of the trucks,” Mr. Sawyer spoke up, and for the first time, Dan noticed he was in the room.
 

Dan thought about it for a moment. It wasn’t right. He provided tools and trucks for his workers, too, but he wouldn’t bother finding someone to clean them for his guys.
 

Keeping the trucks clean would be the driver’s responsibilities. “It can’t be. Ben, can you find information on the two companies?”

Mr. Sawyer scribbled down the names on a piece of paper without even looking through the documents and handed it over to Ben.

Ben took it while Dan crouched over him to stare at the computer. He didn’t understand a single thing that Ben was doing. His fingers were typing away on the keyboard, but everything on the screen meant nothing to him; he figured it was a program of some sort.
 

Despite that, he continued staring at the screen, waiting for something to happen.
 

He couldn’t just stand around doing nothing. The image of the woman was quickly morphing into images replaced by Evelyn in that chair. He had to keep himself busy.

From the corner of his eyes, Tyler scribbled down something on a piece of paper.
 

“What’s that?”

“All the container trucks have built in GPS tracking, except for these two. Kate, check if you find either of these trucks entering the warehouse.”

Thank God for technology, data, logs, and all the paperwork that he hated, that Kate and Tyler seemed to be especially good at.

Dan grabbed the note and gave it to Kate, staring at her while her fingers skimmed down the page, then turning it. “Are you sure? I think I saw—”

“Dan, I read a lot. I’m good at speed reading. I know you’re anxious, but trust me.”

He knew that, but he needed something to do.

Kate studied at him for a moment, then took out a small stack from the one she was holding and handed it to him. “Search through these.”

His fingers went through the logs, going down line by line.
 

He was too slow.

He could hear Kate flipping through the pages and he tried doing what she did, only to find himself moving back up the column to look through it again.

“Can’t we just use the find function on the computers?”

“It’s not in excel form. Everything is taken from their company’s program or something. I don’t even know how Ben printed it out.”

Dan sighed as Kate reached over to take over the stack he was holding.

He itched to leave the room, to do something, to be out there finding her instead of looking through papers in the room.

It was pointless to drive around when he had no idea where she could be, but he was getting more restless with each passing second.

“Nothing,” Kate said. “Nothing on those trucks.”

Just as Dan’s hopes rose, Ryan sent his hope crashing. “If he knew his wife has this, wouldn’t he move? This video is from a couple of years back. If I knew my wife had this DVD over me, I’d change the way I operated.”

“I’ll talk to her.” Kate got up and shook her head at Dan before he got up along with her. “She looks frightened around you. I don’t think she’ll talk with you around.”

Kate hurried down the stairs and found Melissa staring at the cup of tea in front of her.

“Melissa.”

Her eyes shot up. “Was that helpful?”

“Yes, but I need to ask you something. That video; it was from a couple years back. Do you think things have changed? Like could he have found another place or—”

“He knows all I have is this DVD. I don’t know much. I don’t think he’d change anything.”

Evelyn’s words ran through Kate’s mind.
He’s the arrogant sort, the kind who thinks he’ll never caught.
“He’s arrogant.”

Melissa nodded. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

“Forgive me for asking this, but why didn’t he kill you? After what he’d done to all those women.”

“I’m a public face. I still show up with him at social events. If I die, or go missing, there’ll be news. It’ll be inconvenient.”

Kate didn’t know how to react. She wanted to give Melissa a hug and tell her that everything would be all right, but that wouldn’t help her in any way.
 

Inconvenient.

Then Kate thought about Evelyn, and she wanted to cry for her best friend. The demeaning life Evelyn was forced to go through.

No wonder Evelyn wanted so badly to help Melissa.

Please God, don’t let him hurt her.
Kate stood and was heading up the stairs when she turned back to Melissa. “How long does she have?”

“Sorry?”

Kate didn’t want to ask that question.

She didn’t want to be prepared for the worst. She wanted her best friend back. But she had to know; they needed to know how long they had to figure things out. “How long does she have?”

“I don’t know.”

That couldn’t be true, Kate thought. “I suppose you began suspecting when he asks you to provide alibis? You must have went digging for this DVD, you must have seen the news about the murdered women.”