Confer, Lorelei - Deadly Deception (Siren Publishing Classic) (10 page)

“I didn’t see any tattoos on either Amanda or Joe or any jewelry either. Oh, and Amanda always wore stiletto shoes, always.”

“Where did Amanda live? Do you know her address?” Wyatt asked.

She shrugged and shook her head. After a few more exasperating questions from both Wyatt and Dave with the same response from Isabella, she turned to Wyatt with pleading eyes shaking her head. “Is all this really necessary?”

“In order for us to help you, we have to know anything and everything.” Wyatt responded softly, giving her an I-warned-you glare. “Some of it may seem unimportant right now, but it might lead to some little tidbit we can use later.”

She nodded and addressed Dave. “Okay, but I went through all this with Wyatt last night. It seems like a waste of time, and frankly, I can think of numerous other things we could be doing to get me out of this fix.”

“Like what?” Wyatt asked.

“Like tracking down Joe and Amanda, getting to the park and backtracking to where they held me. The longer we wait, the colder their trail gets.”

“And what do you plan to do when or if you find them?” Wyatt asked.

“Well, I hadn’t gotten that far yet, but at least I would be doing something.”

“They sound like they’re experienced traffickers to me, Isabella.” Dave explained. “They’ve been doing it for a while, too. It happens every single day to young women and children. They start abducting kids as young as ten years old, infiltrating middle schools, befriending a kid, making all kinds of promises of money and easy work. Then they’re abducted and delivered.

“The abductors get paid and start all over again. The abductees are left to serve a lifetime of slavery without their families ever being aware of where they are or if they are dead or alive. And it happens all over the world, more in the
United States
than most people can imagine.”

“We know you’re anxious to find them and, believe me, we are too.” Wyatt interjected again. “We’ll be doing all you want us to do and much more, only we’ll have more information and a plan ready to implement and apprehend them when we find them. And we
will
find them. Okay? Just try to be a little more patient a bit longer.”

Dave changed the line of questioning. “Tell us about your fiancé, his name, date of birth, where he works, his home and work addresses?”

“Ex-fiancé, please,” she said as she gave him all the pertinent details she could while hanging her head, embarrassed to have been so gullible.

“When did you first meet him?” Wyatt asked.

“We went to the same high school, and even though he was a number of years ahead of me, we hung out with the same kids. He asked me out on dates but my dad wouldn’t allow it. He said Michael was too old for me. Michael would get really mad but then come back the next day asking again.”

“Did he have any prior arrests?” Wyatt asked.

“I’m not aware of any arrests,” she answered, “but even though I knew him from high school, I didn’t keep track of him all the time.”

“What does he do for a living?” Wyatt asked.

“Well, I don't really know. When we first started dating, he had just gotten back from
Central America
. He had been there a number of years, not sure how many.”

“What did he do while he was there?” Dave asked.

“I don’t know. He never wanted to talk about it, and I didn’t press him for answers,” Isabella explained.

“What happened then?” Dave asked her.

“What do you mean?”

“What happened between you and Michael?” Dave asked.

“I really don’t understand how this could possibly be of any relevance,” she retorted snootily.

“Maybe you and Michael had a falling out and he wants revenge. How would you know?” Wyatt asked.

She acquiesced and said, “When I first started dating Michael, he wowed me with kindness, and devotion. He quit his job after I moved in with him, leaving me to figure out how to pay all the bills. He also became very demanding and controlling of who I saw, when I saw them and even what I said to them. And then one day I came home…I left and never looked back.”

“Did he threaten you?” Wyatt asked.

“Oh yes. Telling me I owed him, I’d pay, that sort of thing.”

“Did he say how you’d pay?” Wyatt asked.

“Of course not. He doesn’t have a clue. He was too angry with himself for getting caught and losing his meal ticket,” Isabella replied, once again crossing her arms over her chest in a huff.

“After you left, did Michael try to contact you?” Wyatt tapped his pencil on the table.

“Yes, a couple of times. He called and threatened to get me fired from work and thrown out of my apartment. I had to get a restraining order. Then I moved into an apartment building with a security guard. Oh, I also change my phone number to an unlisted number.”

“When did you hear from him last?” Dave asked.

“I haven’t heard from him in months.”

“What about your parents and siblings? Are they still living? If so we’ll need their personal info as well.”

“I only have my mother. My father’s gone, and I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“What your mother’s full name and address? We’ll need to check with her and make sure she’s safe,” Wyatt said.

After relaying all the pertinent information to them regarding her mother Isabella asked Dave, “Will you let her know I’m okay? I’m sure she’s frantic with worry about me.”

He looked at her with raised eyebrows, tilting his head to the side. After a minute or so of unspoken words, his implication dawned on her.

“You can’t possibly think my mother had anything to do with this, can you? She loves me. She tries to look out for me. She never liked Michael. We argued about him many times, especially when I moved out of her house and in with him. She told me many times he was trouble. But she’d never do anything to hurt me, ever.”

“Did your mother need any money, or did she recently take out a loan? Maybe receive a large sum of money?”

“No, no, to everything. You’re wrong, way wrong to even think it! It’s absurd! When my father died about ten years ago, he left us both with enough money to live on comfortably for quite some time. I
told
you my mother has nothing to do with this. I think we’re wasting valuable time here.” She stood and walked over to the sink.

“You’re probably right, Isabella, but we need to check out every angle, and of course, we need to make sure your mother isn’t a victim or in any kind of trouble, remember?” Dave asked.

She nodded. “Okay.”

“So, how did you get to Amanda’s house, if you didn’t know her address?” Dave asked.

She explained how she followed her handwritten directions.

“Where did you park your car at Amanda’s? Was it in a residential area? Did you notice any neighbors or anyone outside maybe walking the dog? Do you remember seeing a fire hydrant, a church, or a traffic light, any street signs?” Wyatt asked.

Bombarded with questions by both Wyatt and Dave, she expected them to turn on the bright lights or hook her up to a lie detector machine at any moment.

“What happened next?” Dave asked.

She retold her story in its entirety as she stood with her back leaning against the sink. “I only remember bits and pieces of people, persons, and things after I left Amanda’s.”

Dave and Wyatt looked at each other.

“Do you remember what the date was when you went to Amanda’s house?” Wyatt asked.

“I know it was a Thursday, because I didn’t want to go to Amanda’s house on a weeknight, but it was the only night I didn’t have a department meeting after class. I wanted to get home and get my run in and not have to get up early the next morning. I think it was May fourteenth, because it had been six months to the day since I split from Michael.”

Wyatt took her hand in one of his and turned her face with his other hand, putting his finger on the side of her cheek. When she looked at him, he asked, “Do you know what the date is today?”

She shook her head.

“Today is May twenty-fourth. You’ve been gone over a week.”

She looked at him, aghast, and leaned away from him, her lips trembling and her eyes wide in disbelief. Covering her mouth with her hand and gnawing on her index finger, she tried to blink back the tears forming in her eyes. It didn’t work. Rivulets of tears made their way down her cheeks.

Wyatt rubbed his thumb across the top of her hand, while rubbing her back with his other hand. Her trembling lessened in the silence as minutes ticked away.

* * * *

Morning came too soon as it always does after a sleepless night. Amanda got up and headed to the kitchen in search of coffee. She heard Joe’s voice and found him talking on his cell phone. When she walked up behind him, he turned away from her, talking more softly into the phone, then clicking the phone closed.

“Joe, I made a decision,” Amanda started to say.

Joe shook his head back and forth, waving his coffee cup at her, cutting her off.

“No one but Boss’s gonna make any decision ’bout where, what, who, when, or anything. Thought I made that clear last night when I explained all that to you. Now, either we deliver the girl Boss picked out or we can both kiss our sorry asses good-bye right now. We already delivered the blonde girl he wanted, what’s her name?”

Amanda answered with anger and fear. “Megan, her name’s Megan.”

“Yeah that’s right, but we also need this brown-haired girl with big tits. I don’t know why, but Boss has to have this particular girl, not just any girl, an’ that’s what he’s gonna get. So we need to get back out there in those woods where we last saw her and track her ‘til we find her. If she wasn’t in the woods or at the big house last night, she might still be at the big three story house. I doubt she woulda stayed in the woods all night. Girls are scared of the woods and the dark.” He shot Amanda a scornful sneer.

“It wasn’t ‘we’ who lost her, Joe. It was you.” Looking Joe straight in the eye, she continued. “And I told you, I saw her in the big house last night peeking through the curtains.”

“How do you know it was her? It could have been someone who lives there, or a girlfriend or wife just closin’ the curtains.”

“Yeah, well where is she then? We searched those woods pretty good all day yesterday and didn’t find even a clue she
ever
went through there.”

“We hafta start over!” Joe bellowed. “From where she first went into those woods. We look at every broken twig, every path or footprint, and we follow it. We hafta think like her. Sniff her out an’ track her like a dog, and those tracks will lead us to her. That’s what we hafta do. I’m not gonna call Boss again an’ tell him we can’t find her an’ we can’t deliver. He gave us till Tuesday at midnight to get her to
Norfolk
, so we gotta find her today or it’ll be too late for us.”

Amanda shrieked at Joe, “It’s already too late for me. I want out now. It’s your fault we’re even in this mess, so it’s up to you to find her.”

From the waistband of his droopy pants, Joe pulled his gun, pointed it at her, and said with finality, “We’re both in this together. We started together and we finish together, one way or ’nother. Let’s get goin’. Just keep your yap shut.”

* * * *

Dave and Wyatt resumed their thorough questioning, each making notes and occasionally conferring with the other.

“Did you smell, hear anything nearby like trains, buses, blinking red lights, or see anything out of the windows of the place you were held?” Wyatt asked.

“I never got the chance to look out the window until I got away, but no, I don’t recall any sounds or smells,” Isabella answered.

“Do you know what they drugged you with or how they drugged you?” Dave asked.

“Drugged? What do you mean drugged? I didn’t realize... I was drugged? Now that I think about it, I must have been. It must have been something in the soda Joe kept making us drink. I guess I kinda thought about it when Wyatt told me earlier this morning I wasn’t in
Colorado
anymore.”

“That’s the only explanation I can come up with for your lack of memory for over a week. What else could it be?” Dave asked.

Wyatt interrupted him. “Wai-wait. What do you mean ‘us’? Were there other women there too?”

“No, not any more. I think I was the only one left. I just don’t remember. Joe forced me to drink this awful soda. My mouth was dry. I slept most of the time. I was groggy and everything fuzzy when I woke up. A couple times, I felt a pain in my arm like a pin prick but didn’t think much about…Wait! I remember a girl named Megan in the bathroom one day when I walked in, but Joe dragged her out before I got to talk much to her.”

Dave and Wyatt glanced at each other when she mentioned the name Megan.

“Can you remember how many days ago you saw Megan?” Dave interrupted her litany of information.

“I think two days, maybe three.”

“Why didn’t you see her before?”

“She said she stayed on the other side of the house. Wait, wait, they were letting her go, but she didn’t know where. That’s why she was in the bathroom. Her shower was broken. She screamed for help when Joe dragged her out. I tried to stop him from taking her, but Joe hit me, knocking me to the floor.” She touched the side of her face. “I couldn’t help her so I ran down the alley between the houses to get help, but Joe caught me.”