Missing Brandy (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 2) (35 page)

Denny didn’t bother answering. “She wouldn’t leave the house at this hour without calling me.” He went through his voicemail, his messages. “She did try to call me. But that was much earlier. My phone didn’t ring, or I didn’t hear it.”

“You’ve been eating all this time?” his father asked.

He heard scratching, muffled voices.

His mother again. “You and your father, what’s wrong with you? Sometimes I think I understand men. Then you do something stupid like this. Why are you mucking with the likes of Zizi? Can’t you see what she is? The both of you need your heads knocked against a brick wall, and I know someone angry enough to do it. You’d better find Fina before that crazy guy with the needle kills her!”

Denny felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He listened to his parents breathing at the other end of the line. Then he heard footsteps, voices outside. The doorbell rang.

“Gotta go.”

From the other end of the line came the choked voice of his father. “Let us know, son. Don’t let us sit here worrying. That girl’s like a daughter to us.”

Chapter 67

Fina. Evening Three, The Ride

I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke up, my vision was a mess, black with red and white stars. My head had grown six inches, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. A ragged tune pounded in my ears. I lay on my side in a dark and bumpy place. After feeling around, I realized I was in the trunk of a car, and the car was moving. Shit. I breathed in exhaust fumes. The Holland Tunnel, maybe. When I tried to sit up, I bumped my head and went to sleep again. When I woke up, my head was hammering. I smelled urine, and I couldn’t open my eyes. I shivered underneath a blanket. But the fumes had cleared a little, and the car was speeding. I could hear the air whizzing around the tires. Whoever was driving had never heard of a straight line. I was getting sick from the smells and the weaving pitch of it all.

It was the toothpick guy, Ben Small, who’d gotten me. Toothpick guy, hell: it was Mr. Needles, and he was a maniac, maybe juiced himself when he entered my study, scaring the bejesus out of me. Before he could lunge, I crouched down and bounced a few times, ready to slug the daylights out of his balls when my world disappeared.

My shoulders felt like a giant was sitting on top of me. How long I’d been cramped in the blackness, I couldn’t tell you, but we were rolling someplace fast, and I hurt like hell. I told myself to think. If I was in his trunk, there had to be tools. Only problem, I couldn’t see beyond the swimming spots in my eyes, and I couldn’t move my hands or legs, and my gut felt like I’d swallowed a giant rock. I tried to undo my hands, but they were tied in back of me with something, probably a tough piece of leather. I couldn’t move them. When I wriggled my eyebrows, I felt hundred-mile-an-hour tape over my eyes. It was yanking the daylights out of my curls.

The car slowed and sped up again, and in a while, the road got bumpy. Swell. I remembered Denny telling me if I ever found myself cornered, to lie still and think. I followed what he said because I had no other choice. My back and arms were killing me. I breathed in, breathed out. My heart slowed, and I was having trouble figuring out what the hell had happened. My teeth started chattering. The road got bumpier; the ride, more painful. My back felt like an elephant was sitting on it, and I had to pee. The car slowed. More bumps. Speeding, weaving, slowing, stopping. A door slammed. I went still. I heard the trunk open and felt a prick like a bee sting.

Chapter 68

Denny. Evening Three, The Trace

Jane charged in with Willoughby not far behind.

“Fina’s not here. No one knows where she is,” Denny said.

“When was the last time anyone saw her?”

“She drove my mother home. That must have been right after your meeting?”

The doorbell rang again. It was Cookie. “Where is she?”

Denny shook his head.

Cookie looked from Denny to Willoughby to Jane. “I left a message hours ago. She was supposed to meet me and Clancy for dinner. Then she was going to go with us to my lecture.”

“She must have forgotten with everything that’s been happening.” Jane brought Cookie up to date on what they’d learned about Ben Small and Henry Gruber on their trip to New Jersey.

“When she didn’t answer my voicemail, I knew something was up. Fina doesn’t go back on her word.”

No one said anything.

“I was worried, so after the lecture I swung by. That was close to eleven. I rang the bell, but no one was home. That’s when I really started to worry.”

“Did you see anything strange?”

Cookie canted her eyes to the right and shrugged. “Nothing, really. In front of the house, I saw a different sort of car, at least, different for this block. I noticed your Jeep wasn’t here, but Fina’s BMW was, and her Beretta, too. I never look at cars, but this car, it looked familiar, and I thought of Charlie.”

“Charlie?” Denny asked. Then he remembered someone driving an Audi in Fina’s previous case. “No one owns an Audi in this neighborhood, unless someone was having guests.”

“This one had New Jersey plates.”

“You didn’t catch the tags, did you?” Willoughby asked.

Jane snorted.

Cookie shook her head. “This was eleven o’clock. I was looking for Fina.”

“Crime scene’s on its way,” Jane said, handing out booties and gloves. “In the meantime, let’s take a look in her study.”

They ran upstairs and opened the door.

“Something’s really wrong. She never leaves that door closed,” Denny said.

“It’s like a tomb in here,” Willoughby said.

“Fina uses a 40-watt bulb, no more. I’ll get more light from the bedroom downstairs.”

After placing two lamps on the floor, they were able to see the usual Fina trash—old pizza cartons, a few Coke and Pepsi cans, dust, crumpled paper.

“Evidence techs’ll find something in that debris,” Jane said and looked behind the door. She picked up a wad of trash and began throwing it piece by piece into the can. “She should get her cleaners to come over and do this room.”

“Got a wild hair up her ass or something when it comes to cleaning her study,” Cookie said. “Afraid it will kill her mojo.”

“Take a look at this,” Jane said, holding up a thin cardboard container. They gathered around her. “Lanoxin.”

They froze.

“Ben Small’s got her,” Jane whispered.

Denny ran a hand through his hair and excused himself.

“I found something,” Cookie said, reaching underneath the desk. “Her cell phone. Face down on the floor? That’s not like her. Looks like it was kicked around.” Although the screen was shattered, it still worked. Cookie found unopened messages, ran down the list of recent calls, and shook her head. “Nothing unusual.”

While she was swiping through Fina’s cell, Willoughby was staring at the computer screen. “She’d been looking for Henry Gruber’s company website.”

Jane made a call to the office, asking her team if they’d found anything on Gruber & Associates, but they replied in the negative.

Denny returned. “I can’t find her phone, the one I gave her for her birthday.”

“We found it. Weren’t you in the room?” Willoughby asked.

He shook his head. “No, this is another phone. I wanted her to wear it on her arm just in case. She’s so vulnerable because she doesn’t carry.” He felt light-headed, felt the color drain from his face. This wasn’t like him. He had to remain calm. “After that last crazy guy got ahold of her, I worried, so I added a line to our plan and got the smallest smartphone on the market. I showed her how to wear it on her arm, programmed all the hot buttons. At least it would be something, but she hasn’t bothered with it. This afternoon I reminded her to wear it, and now I can’t find it anywhere. It looks like she might have it with her. God, I hope so.”

“Call it,” Cookie said.

There was silence while Denny searched his contacts.

“I forgot to enter the number.”

“Call your carrier. They’ll give it to you. Tell him who you are, why you need it. They’ll put a trace on it.”

“If it’s on,” Willoughby said.

Denny sat. “God, I hope she’s wearing it. I hope to hell she’s got it with her.”

“You said that.”

Denny ran a hand through his hair.

“She knows someone at Verizon,” Cookie said. “They worked together when she interned at that snoop agency in New Jersey. He’ll help us.” She riffled through Fina’s contacts, found it, and dialed the number. While she talked to him, the CSU arrived and shooed them out of the study.

“Let’s find her!” Willoughby said, pounding down the steps.

“Wait until we see what the trace gives us.”

One of the techs came into the living room. “Lifted prints off the back doorknob.”

“Scan them in and send them to the lab. Let me know right away when you have an ID, and do it now, this minute, and don’t you dare tell me it’s going to take time. We’ve got to know who we’re dealing with.”

“As if we didn’t know.”

Jane shook her head. “Have we heard from Verizon yet?”

“Calm down, for God’s sake,” Willoughby said.

Cookie came into the room. “Verizon just called. She’s activated the phone. No one answers, but they’ve got coordinates. They’ll text them to Denny’s phone.”

“Texting’s no good. I want a dedicated body on the other end of my line.”

In a few seconds, Jane’s phone rang, and Willoughby grabbed it. “Verizon says she’s moving fast. New Jersey Turnpike near Exit 8.”

“Let’s go,” Jane said.

“We’ll take Denny’s Jeep,” Willoughby said. “Got the best off-road. Remember that hairpin two months ago?”

Jane rolled her eyes.

“Enough room for me?” Cookie asked. “I can’t just stay here, and you never know, you might need me.”

They piled in and took off. The scenery flew by. On the way, Jane called for escort and Cookie called Lorraine to tell her what was happening.

Jane turned to Willoughby. “Do me a favor and light a fire under the lab, and don’t hang up until you’ve got something. I want to know about those prints. They should have called by now.” She called the Feds and gave them Fina’s number and her current location and told them what she knew about the break-in and abduction.

“We’re headed in her direction. I want a huge backup when we get there.” She listened for a while, nodding her head. “I’m aware of that. The situation’s fluid, and we don’t want you to go in with all horns blaring.” She listened some more. “I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, just communicating—which is a lot more than you’ve done on this case. We think a crazy guy with a ready supply of a deadly substance is the one who captured her … Ben Small, right. He’s killed before, and he won’t hesitate to kill again.” She listened again. “Of course I don’t know that for sure … Trust me, it’s Ben Small, and he’s linked to the Brandy Liam abduction.” More rolling of eyes. “Listen to me. You better have a swat team in their stealth shoes swarming all over the place when we get to wherever it is we’re going. And after this is over, I’m going to give you a lesson in how to make logical assumptions and play nice and talk to others.”

Cookie stuck a wad of gum in her mouth and offered the pack around.

There was silence for most of the way, punctuated by Jane’s periodic updates. When they turned off the turnpike onto 195, Cookie said, “This looks familiar. It’s close to that horse farm we visited a couple months ago, remember?”

Jane nodded. Denny gripped the wheel, driving on, Verizon continuing to pump Jane with coordinates. Soon they came to a tree-lined road in the middle of fields. Denny could see an old farmhouse with some kind of fancy roof in the distance.

Chapter 69

Fina. In Chains

When I woke, I was cold. I lay as still as I could, wrapped in a thick blanket that smelled of oil and mildew. Every time I took a breath, I felt like I was in a rotting hole. There was tape over my mouth. My tongue was a rusty porcupine, and my shoulders felt like they were going to pop off. When I wiggled my eyebrows, something pulled on my curls. My scalp screamed in pain. I wasn’t operating on all four burners, probably not even one. I moved my toes and heard springs. At least whoever did this had the decency to dump me on top of a bed.

I tried to sit up, but couldn’t, so I set to work pulling off the leather ties on my wrists. After a few minutes of getting nowhere except gouging out a piece of skin with my thumbnail, I bent at the waist and squeezed my arms together as hard as I could. With the fingers of one hand, I was able to feel the edges of my back pocket. It held my Swiss Army knife, a small one, better than nothing.

I stopped moving when I heard footsteps. Voices. I cocked what little brain I had left to try to make out what they were whispering. They sounded male, and they were arguing. That was a good sign, I figured. I tried even harder to listen, willing my heart to stop its crazy pounding. At one point I held my breath, but that didn’t work. What if I could get closer to the door? But the only trouble was, I couldn’t roll off the bed, and if I could, I wouldn’t be able to stand since my ankles were tied.

The voices grew louder. “You went behind my back. You took my car. You have no driver’s license. Do you realize—”

Another voice hissed, “You gave me the keys.”

“I didn’t mean for you to drive all the way to Brooklyn!”

“Don’t you see? She was close to finding us? I could have killed her, but I didn’t. I waited for you. We’re a team.”

I knew it was Ben Small talking. I could feel the slimy bastard’s voice at the base of my spine.

“You understand nothing. I don’t want your help—I want you gone. I’ll give you cash right now, enough to tide you over for a year. I’ll send you the rest when she pays. Just leave now. And get away from that door or I’ll kill you.”

Henry Gruber. I almost felt sorry for him. So careful, so lost, so dangerous.

“I won’t touch her, I promise, just let me stay.”

No reply.

“I’ll leave in the morning, I promise. Give me until then.”

Footsteps clomped down the stairs.

I heard a door open. I didn’t think it was the door to my room, but it was nearby, and I heard voices through the wall. A deep voice, Henry Gruber’s, and he was talking to someone else, someone with a high-pitched voice. “Do you need anything?”