Kidnapped! (6 page)

When I was finally able to disengage her arms from around my neck, I noticed a strange scene. Angelica was standing next to Raszini but not showing much happiness at being reunited with papa. The two goons that came with him were staring at me and Linda, trying to hide the jealousy behind stern faces. Raszini, on the other hand, was looking at Susie, and I didn’t like the way he was looking at her. Sort of like a tiger eyeing a tender, delicious goat he was planning to have for the evening meal. If he didn’t have his muscle with him, I would have taken him to task for looking at my little sister like that. When he woke up, he would think twice about undressing little sis with his eyes.

“Let’s get away from these creeps,” Linda whispered in my ear, but loud enough for them to hear. Raszini tore his eyes from Susie and tried to look offended.

I tapped Susie on the arm and turned to leave. She picked up the briefcase that was hopefully filled with my promised cash payment. Linda hung on to my arm like the cheerleaders used to back in high school. It felt good.

Chapter XII

Snitch

I didn’t get out of bed until nearly noon. And, believe me, it was not because I slept late. Linda kept me up most of the night showing how wonderfully grateful she was for my getting her free. Then again in the morning. Repeatedly. Her gratitude almost took more than even I, Sled Speed, the world’s greatest private dick, could handle. Gawd, what a woman!

When I finally managed to elude her clutches and crawl out of bed, it was mostly because of hunger. A dozen fried eggs and half a dozen pieces of toast, plus a gallon or so of coffee, and I would be back to normal. Besides, there was something I had to do.

Looking back at Linda as she lay on the rumpled sheets, I could not help but see those marks that bastard had put there with his belt. I had a pretty good idea which goon had done that, and we were going to have a little chat one day about his treatment of my girl. But right then, I had something that I had promised to do and really, really wanted to. So I ate, dressed and left a note to Linda, telling her to rest up and we would have another go-around that evening.

Chapter XIII

Surprises

Things were calm for a few days. Susie brought the detective business up to date after our little trip to sunny Italy. I settled down to continue my relentless search for the best tasting scotch (not an easy task with so many brands on the market), and reminisced about the days when gorgeous dames with long legs and swishy nylons slinked into my office to beg me to take their case. Ah, those were the days! None of this advertising on the Internet, computers in every office (even mine! Susie insisted). The only time I got to fire Wilma was on a shooting range.

At least this trip to Italy was something of an adventure. The only problem was that I didn’t exactly shine. I let us get caught and it was Susie who got us out of trouble. Well, at least I got Linda back. She says she’s not going back to that movie star actress she was chumming up with – shacking up with was a more correct term. Right now, she is staying in my apartment, which, thanks to Susie’s efficiency at running my business, is much nicer than my old one and in a much better section of town, too.

Well, at least I had Linda to go home to. I could afford good scotch and had a drop-dead gorgeous dame to warm my bed. Life is good!

Of course, it couldn’t last. The first hint of trouble was one morning when I told Linda to meet me at the office and we would go out for lunch. That’s when I found my Linda, my personal sex-doll, kissing another. Not a quick peck, no, it was a long, passion-filled kiss with, I’m sure, a lot of tongue action and feeling.

The worst part was that the person kissing Linda was my little sister!

The kiss broke up finally and they both turned to me, standing in the doorway with my mouth hanging open. Neither of them bothered to be embarrassed. It was like that kiss was nothing, just a friendly greeting between friends. But I knew better. I’ve seen enough lesbian kisses to know exactly what it meant.

Now, I know that Linda is more than a little bit lesbian. Hell, she dumped me to take up with a very well known female movie star. And I just know there was a lot of fun and games going on in that kinky sorority she was the housemother of. But with my little sister?! And they didn’t even have the decency to blush. I was the only one in the room turning red in the face.

“See you later,” Linda told Susie. “Stud-muffin here wants to take me out to lunch.”

Susie’s only comment, directed at me, was, “After lunch, I want to go over that Morrison account with you.”

I think I muttered something like, “Sure, sure,” and took Linda by the arm.

Riding down in the elevator, I said, “You’re not… I mean, you don’t…”

“Yes, my big lover hunk?”

“I… You…”

When she looks at me with those big blue eyes, I melt. She leaned over and kissed me, sending tingles all the way down to my toes. “You’re the only stud for me, Sled.”

Well, since she put it that way… I was content to be the only man in her life.

But was my little sister about to become the woman in her life?

Chapter XIV

The Snatch

The next day, things continued to fall apart. No news on the Raszini front – he was still nowhere to be found and the agencies looking for him still had no explanation as to how he was tipped off about the raids. Which gave me an uneasy feeling inside, a gut-level feeling that I hadn’t heard the last of Raszini. Unfortunately, I should have listened to my gut and taken precautions.

I’ll admit, I was too wrapped up with my newly rediscovered romance with Linda Goodbody to have noticed much of anything else. Susie was running the PI business well enough so that I didn’t really have much to do beyond testing new whiskeys and exploring the limitless sexual possibilities with Linda.

Then Susie disappeared.

I staggered in… Make that, I showed up at the office on Thursday morning hoping that the usually efficient Ramona of the shapely legs and top-heavy figure had a fresh pot of coffee brewing. The coffee pot was empty. And Ramona was sitting behind her desk wringing her hands and looking like she was about to burst into tears at any second.

“What’s wrong, honey?” I asked. “We’re not out of coffee, are we?”

“Susie is missing!” she wailed, and did burst into tears.

“Calm down, honey. Tell me what happened.”

I assumed it was simply a miscommunication or something. Susie was pretty reliable. I was sure she was simply out on a case and had failed to tell Ramona.

“I got in,” she began, “and Susie was not here. She’s usually here when I arrive. But not today.” She reached for a tissue from the box in a desk drawer. “I looked, but there was nothing on her schedule. Then I checked her office and her computer was on. She always turns it off when she leaves. The chair was knocked over and some papers were scattered around. Susie would never leave her office looking like that.”

I’ll admit, I was getting a bad feeling about this. Susie is usually compulsively neat and organized.

Ramona went on, “Then I remembered that the front door was not locked when I came in. Last night, Susie was working when I left. She would have locked the door when she left. Oh, Mr. Sled, I’m worried about her!

“I called your apartment but Miss Goodbody said that you had already left to come here. So I waited for you.”

“You sure Susie has no appointments? Might she have worked all night and just went out for breakfast?”

“She said she was going to only be an hour or so and then go home. Oh, Mr. Speed, something terrible has happened to her! I just know it!”

I would have been hard put to disagree at that point. There was a cold, tight knot in my stomach. But I knew what to do.

“You make some coffee,” I ordered. Then I headed for the closet in the corner of the reception area. Inside, there was the recording device for our surveillance system. Susie had insisted on putting a surveillance camera in that area. A small display monitor was attached and it didn’t take me too long to figure out how to bring up the recorded images for the last evening.

At 5:16 the recording showed Ramona going to Susie’s office. A few seconds later she came out and headed out the door.

At 6:23 a man entered the lobby. He was dressed in a delivery man’s uniform. After looking around, he waved behind him and a second man entered. He was pushing a furniture moving dolly with a large wooden box on it. I could barely make out the marking on the side: “Busby Air Conditioning”.

The first man pulled a .45 out of his pocket and headed for Susie’s office. A few moments later the second man followed, pushing that box before him. Then there was nothing for fifteen minutes. At 6:40 the two men left, taking the box with them.

That was all.

One of the men looked like the guy who originally came to take me to see Raszini.

What had happened was obvious. Susie had been kidnapped and taken out in that box. And Raszini had to be behind it. Damn! With him on the loose, I should have taken precautions. Somehow Raszini found out that it was I who informed on him and was taking revenge by kidnapping Susie.

I stormed into my office and dropped into my chair. What did he want? I didn’t think that this was a ransom kidnapping. Raszini had more money than I’ll ever make, and he knew it. No, he had something else planned. Grabbing Susie was just a way of getting to me. He had already shown a tendency to kidnap and torture women when he did that to Linda. I remembered those photos of her being abused sexually that he sent me. Would I soon be getting a photo showing Susie being tortured? Would not surprise me.

But what to do?

I could wait for him to make the first move. Correction, the second move. He had already taken Susie for the first move in this deadly game. The phone number I had for contacting him was no longer any good. And already several high-powered law enforcement agencies were looking for him. What could I do to add to that? I had no idea where he was.

I would have to wait for him to contact me. And I was sure that he would. He is the kind that would want me to know what he was doing. Oh, he would get in touch, I was sure of that.

Then I remembered the evening we exchanged Angela for Linda. In particular, I remembered how he had looked at Susie during the switch. He was almost drooling, that bastard!

I would have to wait until he called. Then I would have to convince him that his real beef was with me, not Susie. Maybe I could get him to trade me for her… Then, after Susie was safe, I’d show that low-life, asshole licking turd that no one kidnaps my little sister and gets away with it.

Chapter XV

A Welcoming

The wooden crate thumped onto the concrete floor, accompanied by a muffled cry from within. Theodor Raszini, grinning in a most evil manner, waved his hand, indicating to his henchmen that they should open the crate, and stood back to watch his prize catch be unveiled.

The side was quickly pried off, revealing a bundled up Susie Speed, tightly bound with ropes and gagged with duct tape wrapped around the bottom half of her head. Her blouse was torn, revealing part of one breast, but otherwise it appeared that she had not been harmed. The ropes were tightly applied and had to be painful to the prisoner, but that was all that had been done to her – so far.