Taken by Tuesday (Weekday Brides Series) (27 page)

Dean and his posse of detectives were waking up the courier company that delivered packages in an effort to learn more about Mitch.

As they did this, Neil and Rick found a link on the game.

Dainty Destroyer was the gamer tag of a woman who called herself Michelle. Only when Neil and Rick looked over the Facebook page where Michelle spoke with Judy up until the first attack, they didn’t find any evidence that Michelle was a woman. There weren’t any pictures on the profile . . . just random postings of flowers and cats. She did respond with a comment or two on Judy’s page where Judy had posted pictures of her graduation.
I didn’t know Michael Wolfe was your brother
.

Judy’s response was a simple
Shh, don’t mention that on the game
.

“How fast can we get an ID on this person?” Rick asked Neil.

“Through the right channels? Monday?”

Rick simmered. “Through the wrong channels?”

Dennis had an earpiece in. Their resident hacker clicked away. “Working on it.”

Dean stepped up to the van. “They’re letting us in.”

Rick waved a finger in Dennis’s direction. “Keep looking.”

Rick stood shoulder to shoulder with Dean as they marched past the police line, ducked under the tape, and jogged into the building. They started at the site of the first explosion. Looked like an equipment room of some kind. Burned-out monitors, lots of trashed wires.

“Guess what this was?”

Rick glanced above him, noticed a lack of cameras, stepped outside and found a few burned-out ones. “Surveillance.”

“So the guy took out the cameras first.”

“Only he wasn’t expecting ours.”

“Right,” Dean said as they started up the main stairway. At the seventh floor, Dean gripped the banister and waved Rick along. “Go. I’ll catch up.”

Rick ran the rest of the way, felt the burn in his lungs, and ignored it as he pushed into Judy’s floor. Emergency lights were the only thing working, giving very little light to a space he’d only ever seen filled with people.

He stepped into Judy’s cubicle, stood exactly where she had when the courier approached her. Rick turned, mimicking their conversation, and stepped around the flimsy office wall and a few steps down the hall to Mr. Archer’s office.

The door was open. Rick removed a flashlight from his pocket and followed a line down the frame, noticed something lying on the floor below the jamb. He bent down, noticed a metal fragment and searched for where it originated. By the lock, the door was scarred, as was the threshold. As if the metal on the floor somehow kept the door from opening. Rick glanced around the office, noticed the package Judy had taken from their suspect.

He heard Dean sucking in a breath from outside the door. “Careful,” he warned. “Looks like the door was locked from the outside.” He shone his light on the floor for Dean to see.

While Dean investigated that, Rick walked over to the desk and laid his light to shine on the package.

It was addressed to Mr. Archer but didn’t have a return address. Using a letter opener, Rick tilted the box over and dug into the tape sealing the package.

Dean moved beside him, held his breath.

Rick opened the box, noticed several papers inside.

Before the first one slid onto the desk, he recognized a photo of Judy’s red dress . . . her hat as she ducked into the limo.

“Damn it.”

Dean used a pen on the desk and spread the images out. They were all of Judy. Several were cut up.

The phone in Rick’s ear buzzed.

He clicked on. “Talk to me.”

“We have an address.”

Rick bolted from the room.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Rick and Neil rolled up to the property that held two living spaces divided by a chain-link fence. The front house had lights blazing and evidence of children’s toys scattered in the yard. The back house, the one they focused on, appeared empty. Seconds after they skidded to a halt, Raskin and Perozo moved in behind them.

The detectives left their blue lights flashing on the car while Rick ran toward the back of the house. The place was dark, no car in the drive. Holding his weapon in front of him, Rick nodded toward the back of the structure.

Neil moved around the house.

“Back off,” Raskin told Rick, his own weapon pointed toward the ground.

In his ear, Neil said, “It’s dark back here. Don’t think he’s home.”

“Roger.” Rick ignored the detective and rapped his finger on the door. “Hey, Mitch?” Rick yelled at the closed door.

There wasn’t a response.

“Still nothing,” Neil reported. “What are the chances he booby-trapped this place?”

“What are the chances Judy’s inside?” Rick asked.

Raskin heard Rick’s question, motioned toward the front house, where a woman and a child peered through the kitchen window. “I need to get them out of there.”

Rick nodded. “Go.”

Less than a minute later, the family from the front house were shuffled away. Perozo huddled next to the neighbor’s car. “They haven’t seen him since this morning.”

She’s not here.

“Back up,” he told Neil in his mic. “Just in case.”

“We need a search warrant,” Raskin managed from the side of the front house.

Every minute Judy was missing was one too long.

“You need a search warrant.” He wiggled the handle, just in case it wasn’t locked. It was. “I don’t.” Rick lifted his foot to the door, busted through the lock. The door crashed against the frame.

When no explosion ruined what was already the worst day of his life, Rick led with his gun aimed into the room. He flipped a light switch on the wall and stopped cold.

Judy was everywhere.

Images tacked, stapled . . . strung around the room.

“Holy hell,” he heard Raskin say behind him.

Mitch Larson had only lived in the converted garage for a few months . . . that was according to the tenants of the front house. He didn’t have parties, came at strange times but never seemed to have anyone around so the people in the front house didn’t pay him much attention.

Seeing Judy on every wall, every surface, told Rick how sick the man who had her was. It also gave him hope she was still alive. Because as much as he was beating down any possible emotion that resembled grief, it lingered above his head like a cloud. Statistically, Judy was already dead.

When his mind went there, he pushed it away.

Hold on, baby. I’m coming.

They were closer. Though she wasn’t sitting in Larson’s rented space, they were closer to knowing the man who had her.

Police filled the space, lights flashed outside the residence like white noise from rain.

Several images kept playing in his head, pictures of Judy with the word
General
written over them in a juvenile hand, images of her home . . . the office building where she worked. There were even a few shots of her outside of Zach and Karen’s house taken the night of the fundraiser. Pictures taken by a private camera and not something printed in the local paper or gossip magazine. So Mitch had been watching her since then.

The images of her prior to coming to California were taken off the Internet, mainly with Michael in the shot and generated by the media.

The office building shots caught his attention. They didn’t hold images of Judy, just the building. The bastard had even taken pictures of the place he attacked her the first time. Question was, did he take the shots before or after he’d attacked her?

Outside Mitch’s place, Dennis and Russell were inside the van with Neil . . . all working hard to find out any information they could about Mitch Larson.

Rick’s gaze met that of a picture taken of Judy and Mike outside the café close to her office. She wasn’t wearing what she’d left the house in today, so the picture had to have been taken long before. In his ear, he heard Neil’s voice.

“He’s wannabe military.”

The information didn’t come as a surprise. “How wannabe?” he said into the mic, ignoring the detectives around him who were swiping for prints and photographing the scene.

“Enlisted only to feel the sting of rejection six months in. Army. Had a psychotic break while on a training mission.” Neil delivered the facts without emotion.

Rick diverted his attention away from the photographs. “What kind of break?”

“Challenged a superior officer. Female. Went through a series of tests and was discharged.”

“Dishonorable.”

“Is there another way six months in without an injury?”

“What else do we know?” Rick turned back to the images, knew something was there . . . he just needed to find it. Only the pictures were floor to ceiling and many were carved into while others had dried blood smeared all over them.

“He’s crazy, not stupid. Excelled in intelligence and details. First clue he wasn’t balanced was his desire to get close to his enemy. Guns aren’t his thing.”

Rick thought of the scars on Judy’s arm. “He likes knives.”

Neil paused. “Yeah.”

Rick knew a trip to the dentist was inevitable with how much he was grinding his back teeth. “Get close to your enemy. Feel their pain, their fear.”

Neil waited a second . . . maybe it was two. “We’re going to find her, Smiley.”

More images of the office building filled the wall of Larson’s bedroom.

The sick fuck slept in here . . . imagined whatever it was he was doing to Judy right now.

He had no intention of bringing her back here.

The room was littered with Judy’s image. Some were taken at the Beverly Hills home where even now her brothers and friends waited for any word on her well-being.

It was well past three in the morning, so no one was at the office except the lingering fire department and police that would guard the place until first light. Until arson could poke around with fresh eyes and a new outlook. None of them were actually looking for a missing wife.

Only Rick. He was looking for his wife.

The woman he married and swore to protect.

The thought of telling her father he didn’t find her in time ate at him. The thought of her lying lifeless . . . finding her dead and abused.

Rick closed his eyes and blew out a slow breath.

No.

He opened his eyes again, tuned out the noise around him, and focused. The wall in Larson’s bedroom showed images of Judy everywhere. Rick looked beyond the woman he loved . . . looked at the world surrounding her.

The office building loomed in many images.

The parking garage. Empty. Dirty.

The office.

Empty halls of concrete and grime. Every tenth image was of an abandoned space. In many were pictures of Judy cut out and standing, sitting in the space.

Cut up.

Bloody.

Rick touched the device in his ear. “Is there a basement in the building Judy works in?”

Neil said one word. “Checking.”

A few second later he heard him reply. “New building. No basement.”

Raskin tapped Rick’s shoulder. He jumped.

“I owe you an apology.”

Rick glared at the man. “You owe me more than that.”

Raskin offered a nod, turned back to the images in the room. Both of them worked to find her. Rick felt that now.

Dean stood in the corner of the room, fatigue sat behind his eyes like a drug.

None of them did anything other than drink bad coffee and keep looking for something . . . anything.

“Rick?”

Neil’s voice sounded hopeful.

“What?” Those around him, including Raskin, turned to look at him.

Rick held his ear, making it clear he was talking into a mic. “What?” he asked in a calmer voice.

“The building adjacent has a basement. Two floors under the main structure.”

Rick waited for the boom.

“Abandoned . . . secluded . . . easily reached by way of the garage.”

The hope in Rick’s chest expanded. He looked around the room again, couldn’t help the half smile on his face.

Rick turned from the room, made it a few feet before Raskin stopped him. The man leveled his eyes to his. “You know something.”

The smile on Rick’s lips dropped. “And you owe me.”

The tension in the detective’s jaw was palpable.

“Damn it.”

For a minute, Rick didn’t think the man was going to let him go without an argument. “Look around. The answer is here.”

“Tell me,” Raskin demanded.

“I need fifteen minutes.”

Raskin glared.

“You married?” Rick asked.

Raskin let him go, nodded toward the door. “Get out of here, Evans. We’ll call you when we have something new.”

The short nod Rick offered would have to be enough. He lowered his head and walked out the door. Once clear, he jogged to the van that was idling and waiting.

Neil handed Rick a tactical weapon when he closed the door to the van. “They never left the building . . . not really.”

The ten-mile high-speed drive back to Westwood was the longest in Rick’s life.

“I need to pee.” The physical need outweighed the need for silence. The rats had lost interest after the flash of the camera scared them away.

It appeared she woke Mitch with her words. “Think prisoners of war tell their captors of their bodily functions?”

Judy did her best to keep a straight face. “There isn’t a war, Mitch. This is your idea of a good time. And I need to pee. Good news for you, a lack of food and water means I won’t have to again for a while.”

Mitch grinned, lifted a bottle of water to his lips.

Judy had long since lost the ability to salivate. Between the smoke from the building and the drugs still swimming in her system, she was as dry as they came.

It didn’t seem like her words were doing anything for him. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the need.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She kept her eyes closed. “Trying to go with an audience. Haven’t done that since I was three.”

He pushed against the wall, made his way to her side.

She refused to look at him when he reached for her left hand, undid the knot tying her down.

Biting her bottom lip, she refused to respond.

First order of business, get out of the ropes, second was to go. She couldn’t remember ever having the need quite as keen, but it was there now.

Mitch gripped her wrist before removing the rope on her right arm. Circulation made her arms tingle as he lowered them to her sides.

“Fight me,” he said, “and I’ll cut you.”

She felt a blade at her throat. He was going to cut her anyway . . . eventually.

“I just need to go to the bathroom, Mitch.”

Pulling both her arms, he shoved her to her feet, where she stumbled into him, felt his knife jab into her arm. The bite of the blade made her cry out and back away.

Mitch wrapped one of her hands to a bare pipe several feet away from where she’d been for the past several hours.