Crossing Lines: A gripping psychological thriller (Behind Closed Doors Book 3) (20 page)

“What's going on? Caleb?”

“I don't know, D. The police are everywhere.” His voice tips closer to joining Georgia’s on the edge of hysteria. “They shoved some bits of paper into my hand, then barged into the house and now no one will tell me what’s going on!”

“What papers?”
They had a search warrant? What the hell?

“They’re looking for something, but no one will tell me what.” He’s almost crying, and my tummy twists in knots. It’s not like Caleb to lose his cool. He’s always been super level-headed, and ready for everything. With all his years of experience working at crisis shelters, he’s seen all kinds of trouble, not to mention finding the wrong kind of trouble during those three years he searched for Cal after Faith’s death. He took the failure to find Cal harder than any of us, which was why I asked him to manage the L.A. center at just twenty-seven years old.

“They’re demanding to know where Lisa is, but they won't tell me why,” he continues. “Darryl, I don’t know what to do. She’s in trouble, and from the number of cops in here, I'd say it’s beyond shoplifting. This is serious!”

“Caleb, just slow down for a second and breathe.” I’m speaking with more rationality than I feel. Lisa is missing and there are police crawling around my home, and I'm thousands of miles away and totally helpless. “Okay, I want you to tell Georgia to ring Uncle Robert. Ask him to get over there. Then I need for you to keep her distracted until he gets there. Can you do that for me? Can you talk to her? Tell her we need to know exactly what happened last night, right down to the smallest of details. If Lisa's in trouble, then we need to know everything. I'm coming home, but it's a six-hour flight. Caleb, I need you to hold it together until I get there.” I hate to ask him, but I know Georgia won’t be able to keep herself together if she thinks this is all her fault. “Tell her it’s not her fault, Caleb. It’s mine.”

“It’s not your fault, D.”

“But I was the last person to talk to her.”

“You’re not even here.”

“Well, there’s that too.” I shrug. If I take the blame, Georgia will focus her energy on me. “It doesn’t matter who’s responsible, Caleb, what matters is finding Lisa. So, let Georgia think I’m to blame for now. It'll keep her focused on something other than beating herself up. You know that if she’s mad at me, she’ll go easier on everyone else.”

“Yes, yes. All right.” Caleb breathes out now, and sounds much calmer. “It’s okay, D. I’ll take care of it until you get here.”

“Okay. I'll see you soon.” The second I hang up, palpitations kick into my rib cage. Lisa is in trouble. She’s not only in trouble, she’s gone, probably run away or—oh god! She could have been kidnapped, or mugged, oh Christ! My mind fills with images of gangs grabbing her from behind, taking her kicking and screaming, beating her, violently raping her, then tossing her unconscious body in some ditch somewhere to die.

I slam my thumb into the touch keypad on my cell. Lisa's name lights up on the screen. But after a minute it rings and rings, and it rings until it finally trips to voicemail.

“Lisa, where the hell are you?” I snap into the handset and then after a second—reining in my spiraling emotions—I sigh. “Lisa, I know you're in trouble, and I may even know how much trouble you’re in. But I'm not mad. Please, just call, or text, or something. Just let me know you're okay, and safe. We can sort the rest out. I promise. Please just call me.”

After I hang up, I make an attempt at slowing my erratic breathing. I draw long, deep breaths in, but for the life of me I can’t release them just as slowly. I feel like I’m suffocating just trying. And the fear? It's crawling in my gut, because I know, just know, something is going on and I haven’t acted on it. I feel sick. My head’s spinning.
What am I going to do? And what if something has happened to Lisa? I can’t lose her too!

My heartbeat pounds in my ears, so loud I can’t hear anything else. My vision blurs, because I can’t…
I can't lose her. Not Lisa. This isn’t happening to us again! Oh god no, not—

“Darryl?”

I register the voice, and know I recognize it, but for the life of me, I have no idea who it is. I can't focus. But I have to do something. I have to move my feet. I need to be on the next flight to New York. I have to go home. Like now! So why am I wasting time?

“Oh, dear God!” A hand grabs at my shoulder. “Look at me!” Sharp nails dig into my skin and snap me out of the spiral. “For God’s sake, look at me, Darryl!”

“Krystal?” I mutter, but I know I’ve got that wrong.

“Talk to me,” she insists. “What do you need? What can I do?” Words tumble from my lips, and don't make any sense as I try to explain, but somehow she understands. “Okay.” She pulls me toward the chair. “Just sit down and catch your breath. You’re no good to anyone if you keel over.”

I laugh. It’s inappropriate, I know. But she’s right.

She picks up the phone on the desk and barks orders. I don’t really hear what’s being said. It feels like forever before she touches my shoulder again. “C'mon!" She urges me to my feet gently. “We need to get your things, and then get you to the airport. They'll be ready for you in an hour.”

“What?”

“The plane will be ready in an hour, and it takes twenty-five minutes to get to the airport.” She begins pushing me towards the door. “So I need you to move your—” Her cell phone cuts her off mid-sentence. She looks at the caller ID on the screen and then answers. “Thank you for getting back to me so quickly.”

She doesn't speak again, but over the course of the short call her 'ums’ and 'ahs’ acknowledge everything the caller is saying. Then she hangs up and looks right into my eyes. It's as though she’s testing me, expecting me to lie. But she knows I don’t do that. Or at least I didn't until I came here. “What do you know about the people Lisa hangs around with?”

“They're not a nice crowd, and they're not to be messed with.”

“That's an understatement,” she sighs. “They're into drugs, and for the wrong kind of people.” Drugs?
Drugs!
My heart thumps louder.
Are there any good kind of people who supply drugs?
“If you ended up in that business, these are the kind of people you'd stay far away from if you were smart.” She answers as though she’s heard my thoughts. “But these guys, Lisa's friends, aren’t smart, and they don’t know what’s good for them. They’re in deep.” She goes eerily quiet for a moment or two, and when she continues I get the impression she hasn't told me everything. "How friendly is Lisa with them?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Darryl, I’m so sorry. They were busted turning over a jewelry store at two o'clock this morning. Lisa was with them, but she got away.”

“No!” I shake my head in denial. “She couldn’t have been!” For the first time since I picked the phone up to Caleb, I see things clearly. “Lisa is innocent,” I tell Ashleigh.

“Rylan’s contacts in New York say she was there. This wasn’t a small job, D. They abducted the store manager from his home at gunpoint. Every cop in New York is now looking for Lisa.”

“But she was in a subway station at two o’clock this morning.” My gaze meets with Ashleigh’s as I tell her, “Lisa was on the phone to me when this happened.”

Light brightens her eyes. “Really?”

I nod.

Lines of concentration furrow above her brows, and she stays silent for a moment. “All right,” she eventually says, “I have a call to make. Go pack your things. Be ready to leave in five minutes.”

Chapter Fourteen

THE CAR SLOWS
to a stop on the tarmac outside a private flying club. For the entire drive, Ashleigh has taken, or made, call after call. She’s turned part super-sleuth/part lawyer: issuing instructions, scouring documents, and watching CCTV footage. I’ve asked how she’s gotten that, and she’s just told me I'm better off not knowing. Somehow in the space of an hour, she has both my and Lisa’s phone records, as well as footage of Lisa in Grand Central Station on the phone, time stamped one fifty-seven a.m. I suspect there’s more to Rylan's military past than anyone has told me. After all, it was him she had called first when she learned Lisa was in trouble and missing.

When the driver turns in his seat to inform us that there’s been a slight delay, she closes her laptop. Although she doesn’t comment, she drums her fingers impatiently on the arm rest.

“I’m just going to call Drew while we wait,” I explain. I had meant to call John's brother the moment we got in the car, but I’d been mesmerized by Ashleigh Jordan, in full-on defense-attorney mode.

“Don’t tell him what you do know, Darryl. We’re not supposed to know this yet.”

I nod. I expect Drew to be at work, but his home line is picked up on the first ring. It’s him on the other end, and he tears into me the moment he knows it’s me calling. “You're a bloody cheapskate! With all your millions in the bank, you couldn’t spring for a plane ticket? You put her on an eighteen-hour train-ride by herself?”

“Who? What?” My fear is totally sideswiped. “I don’t know what you're talking about.”

“Lisa! Do you call that parenting?”

“Lisa? Why the hell would I let her travel eighteen hours on a train alone? She’s—

Wait, you know where she is?”

“Um, yeah,” he says sarcastically. “She’ll be here at dinnertime. Wait!” He pauses. “Why don’t you know where she is?”

I’m filled with a mixture of relief and dread. Relief, because I know where she is and she’s safe. But if we know where she is, then we have to inform the police and they’ll arrest her. “She told me she was at home. She never got there.”

“If you’re not home, then where the hell are you?” Drew’s silent accusation comes through loud and clear. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d been home. Well, maybe it wouldn’t have. But I'm more inclined to believe Lisa wouldn’t have told me what was going on, even if I was in New York. So now, I’m struggling to accept our heart-to-heart last night for what it was.
Why did Lisa call me?

“I’m in LA., working on a particularly tough case. But I’m about to board a plane back to New York.”

“I’m sorry, D, she said you knew. Just wait until I get my hands on the little devil. She won’t sit down for a week!”

“Hang on, Drew,” I sigh, wondering just how much she’s told him already. “Lisa’s in trouble.” I break into a fast explanation that’s far too long, barely coming up for air until I’m done. If I tell myself over and over, then maybe, just maybe, this will all sink in.

“I know all about it, D. She said you put her on the train to get her out of the way. But that doesn’t mean I can’t kick her sorry behind, and yours too. What are you—did you just say her friends knocked over a jewelry store?
Her friends?
Did you know about these so-called friends? How did you even let it get this far? Lisa robbed a jewelry store? Fucking hell, Darryl. Since when is being in L.A. while she’s robbing a jewelry store looking after her?”

Great. This is all I need right now. A lecture on child rearing from the man who’s raised three perfect honor-roll children, all with full scholarships to Ivy League colleges. From the man who caused an uproar, back when Robert announced Faith and John’s decision to make me their youngest children’s primary guardian.

“A jewelry store?” He repeats it, before uttering a few choice words I care not to repeat. “That’s not a seven-eleven, for a few hundred bucks. We’re talking serious money, diamonds and shit! This is bad, D. Really bad.”

“Is that what she told you? A seven-eleven?”

“Yeah, she said she was supposed to be their lookout, but she hightailed it out of there the second she knew what was going on. She said you called 9-1-1 and put her on the first train out of Grand Central. Didn’t you know anything about this?

So, Lisa had told Drew more about them than she’s ever told me, and after all this time it’s him she turns to when she’s in trouble. It's never been clearer to me than it is right now: Faith and John made the wrong decision when they put their faith in me.

“No.” I rub at a headache beginning to throb at my temple. “She never tells me anything.”

I guess he’s heard my disappointment, because his voice now turns sympathetic. “Me neither. But I've had more practice at questioning kids who don’t want to talk than you have. I've already called Robert. He’s on his way here with Detective Dillon from major crimes. I've explained that Lisa’s going to tell them everything she knows. They’ll give me the benefit of the doubt, since I’m a fellow officer of the law.”

Even though Drew has everything under control, it’s not reassuring to my ears.

I look up at Ashleigh, and for a moment her eyes hold my gaze. My question passes silently between us and she nods as though she understands it. “I’m on my way,” I tell him and she climbs out of the car. “I’ll be there before Lisa is.”

“Look, Darryl, maybe you should let me handle this.” The words hang between us for a few seconds and succeed only in making me feel as though John is still with us. Guilt pools in my stomach. “She came to me for help.”

“Are you saying I can’t handle this?”

“It’s not that. It’s just that I spoke to Caleb the other day. He's worried and now, so am I. Maybe she should stay with me for a little while.”

“Caleb said that?”

“Well… not in so many words, but yeah.”