Hide 'N Seek (2 page)

“That’s not necessary,” Beck said as he squeezed by her in the narrow hallway on his way to the front door. He opened the door, paused and looked over his shoulder at her. “I think you stepped in something,” and he was gone.

•  •  •

Markie waited until his footsteps faded on the concrete floor in the hall then followed him. When she pushed open the double glass door in the lobby of the apartment building, he was gone along with the black Navigator. He moved quickly for a man of his size. He must have guessed she would follow him. She pulled out her cell phone and called her office.

“Brooks Investigations, Jamie Wright speaking. How may I help you?”

“Hey, Jamie.”

“Hey, Boss Lady. How was lunch?”

Jamie was a dead ringer for Mr. T, a character from a popular eighties television show, the A-Team, Mohawk and all, minus the jewelry. They’d worked together when she’d been a cop and after she quit the force and started Brooks Investigations, Jamie had asked to join her. Maybe quit wasn’t the right word. Forced out was more like it. She hadn’t returned the advances of her Shift Commander and he’d taken it as a personal attack on his male pride.

He’d made it difficult for her to continue working with the other officers by spreading rumors about her. When she’d applied for a transfer out of the department he’d vetoed it and she sued him and the police department. She won her suit with a lucrative settlement and was also offered the promotion to the detective division she’d lost a year earlier. She took the money, leaving the promotion behind, and Brooks Investigations was born.

At first, clients were few and far between but Jamie stuck it out with her. When she had asked him why he’d given up his job to join her he’d said he was looking for a new challenge.

“Markie?” Concern filled Jamie’s voice. “You still there?”

“Sorry. I zoned out for a moment. What was your question?” She pulled the door open and held it to let out a freckled-faced kid pushing a mountain bike then felt the rush of the A/C when the cool air hit her face.

“I’d asked how lunch with Sydney went.”

“Didn’t happen. Someone trashed her place.”

“What? Hold on. Carlos just walked in. I’m putting you on speaker.”

Markie didn’t want to be put on speaker and only wanted to talk to Jamie. He was playing mother hen again and she hated it. It didn’t matter how many times she warned him about it, he still did it. And she didn’t like being called Boss Lady either.

“What’s going on?” Carlos asked. Markie could picture him folding his large frame into the chair in Jamie’s office.

“Someone trashed Syd’s place,” she heard Jamie say.

“Get outta town.”

“I got Markie on the phone. Close the door.”

“Are you okay?” Carlos asked, sounding worried. He was the last addition rounding out her eight-man investigative team.

“Now that we’ve made a federal case about it, can we get on as to why I called?”

“Sure,” they both said in unison, making fun of her. They were probably making faces at the phone because that was what they did when they clowned around. But they were good at their jobs.

“I need one of you to run a plate number for me. It’s a black Navigator, could be ‘10 or ‘11 model.”

She closed her eyes and the plate number appeared in front of her. Having a photographic memory had its advantages.

“I want
everything
on this guy, from where he went to school to the brand of cereal he eats for breakfast. If he had a dog when he was a kid, I want to know the name.”

“Got it,” Jamie said. “Carlos, get started on this. I’ll touch base with you shortly.”

“Sure thing.” She heard the sliding door open and close and assumed it was Carlos leaving.

“Did the guy with the black Navigator trash Syd’s place?”

“No. He was in her apartment when I got back.”

Markie told Jamie about the man in the ski mask and the chase that led to her dodging bullets.

“Jesus. Why the hell didn’t you leave the apartment and call for backup when you saw the door was open? One of these days you’re going to get your butt shot off,” Jamie barked. “What are you trying to prove?”

They’d had this conversation many times before and like all the other times it ended with her defending her decision. Not this time.

Ignoring his rant she said, “My gut feeling tells me Mr. Navigator had nothing to do with trashing the place, but he knows more than he’s letting on. He was way too smooth. I think the man wearing the ski mask redecorated Syd’s place.”

“They could be working together.”

“No,” she said shaking her head. “The guy that trashed the place was a thug and Mr. Navigator was too polished. They were both looking for something and by the looks of the place, they didn’t find it.”

“You sure?”

“I’m almost positive. I’m waiting for the police to arrive. Once they’ve completed their work then I’ll find the building superintendent to replace the window and front door lock. When that’s done, I’ll have a look around and see what I can find.”

“I’ll come by and help,” Jamie offered.

“No. I want you working with Carlos to get everything you can on Mr. Navigator. He may be our only lead to Syd.”

“So once again you’re cleaning up Syd’s mess.” Jamie let out a disgusted sigh. “The woman is twenty-five years old and doesn’t know what the word responsibility means. You should—”

“I’m not in the mood, Jamie.”

She cut him off and hit the end button, shoving the phone into her pocket. The phone started to ring and she thought it was Jamie calling back, but when she looked at the caller ID it was her grandmother.

“Hi, Nan.”

Their parents had died in a car accident when she was thirteen. Sydney was three years younger. Nan had raised her and Sydney. Not wanting to worry Nan, Markie thought she would wait until Syd surfaced before getting her involved.

“Marklynn,” Nan said, voice deep with worry. Her voice was strong for an eighty-year-old woman. Markie could picture Nan in her pink house frock with her gray hair in a neat bun pacing the floor as she often did when she was troubled. And Sydney was usually the cause of her worries.

Nan was the only one who was allowed to call her by her given name. To Markie, it sounded too formal and since Nan was born in England, it just made sense somehow.

“Are you okay?”

“Sydney is in trouble,” she said without missing a beat.

“Did she call you?” Markie asked, as she was about to enter Syd’s apartment building then stopped at the glass door and turned to look out onto the road where the Navigator had been parked.

“No. It’s just a feeling,” Nan said. “Have you heard from her?”

Nan was better at predicting the weather than any meteorologist around. Since Nan’s premonitions were always correct, Markie paused before answering. She didn’t want to upset Nan.

“I’m at her place. We were to have lunch today but she’s not here.”

“What has she gotten herself into? Why can’t she be more like you?”

Yeah, right, Markie thought. How many times had she heard that? Sydney was Sydney. She loved adventure and didn’t want the responsibility of taking care of anyone but herself. Sometimes she wished she were more like her sister instead of taking care of the whole world. But wasn’t that what she did best?

“There’s no need to worry. She’ll show up in a day or two wondering what all the fuss is about.”

“No. Something happened to her. I can feel it,” Nan insisted. “She could be hurt.”

“Let me look into it and get back to you.”

“You need to find out what happened to her. Can I count on you to do that? She’s not like you.”

There it was again, the responsibility that she didn’t want being shoved upon her, as it often was when they were growing up. That had created some friction between her and Syd.

“Marklynn? Are you still there?”

“Yes, Nan. I’ll take care of it,” she said, weary, when she saw the uniformed officer step out of the squad car. “I gotta go.”

“Hi I’m Marklynn Brooks,” she said as the officer approached the building and she opened the door to let him in. She dropped the phone in her jacket pocket. “I made the call.”

He followed her into the building and she waited by Sydney’s apartment door until he motioned for her to enter.

“Did you touch anything?”

He was a senior from the Cambridge police department. She could tell from the pins on his collars. He was tall, of athletic build, his head shaved.

Cambridge was across the river from Boston. Even though her issues were with one man, not the entire Boston PD, word still got around. The way he looked at her she knew that he recognized her after she’d shown him her ID. Maybe she was being paranoid. After all, it had been almost five years ago.

“I used to be a cop,” Markie said. “I know the drill.”

“I didn’t ask if you knew the drill. I asked if you touched anything.”

Oh yeah. He was still carrying a grudge and so were some of her former colleagues.

“No. I didn’t touch anything.”

Police officers were a tight-knit group. There was a bond between them and if you went against one you suffered the wrath of all. In her case, it was a select group that worshiped the Shift Commander, Jeffery Booker.

The complaint she’d filed against him had never been forgotten. To make sure she never did, she was reminded with every speeding ticket as well as with having her vehicle towed without cause. Of course, the police officers were only doing their job.

The tickets became fewer as the years went on and they’d stopped towing her car.

She’d had her fight. It was over. Maybe not for them but it was for her. It was about Sydney and what had happened to her.

“What time did you arrive at the apartment?”

“Just before noon. I heard a noise coming from the bedroom and approached it. There was a man wearing a black ski mask. I’d say he was about five eight, one hundred and forty pounds. He could be of Asian descent.”

“If you didn’t see his face, how do you know he’s Asian?”

She suppressed the urge to talk down to him as he was doing to her.

“I could see his eyes. He also had a tattoo on his left ankle. It was some kind of dragon symbol. I saw it when he jumped out the window. I chased after him but he escaped in a pickup.”

Markie gave him a description of the pickup and what she saw of the driver. She watched as he reluctantly wrote the information down all the while giving her the
I’d rather be some place else look
.

“Anything else?”

“No.”

Markie didn’t tell him about Mr. Navigator. Although she didn’t think he and Sydney were involved she couldn’t say for sure. Until she figured out what her sister was up to, Mr. Navigator was her problem.

He was lying about something and she intended to find out what it was.

S
ydney groaned as she opened her eyes. Her head throbbed and each time she tried to move a blinding pain shot through her skull. She tried to lift her hand and that was when she realized her hands were tied behind her back. Her feet were bound with rope and her mouth was covered with silver duct tape.

With no window and no watch she was disoriented, unable to tell where she was or even the time of day. Someone had taken her watch and now she knew why.

She worked the rope until her wrists felt raw. They were probably bleeding. Couldn’t they have at least put her in a chair? Then she would have had a better chance of freeing herself.

She wiggled to the edge of the mattress that covered the cot and wrinkled her nose. What was that stench? Oh God. A cross between vomit and urine assaulted her senses and she scrambled to sit up.

Using her shoulder, Sydney pushed herself into a sitting position then lost her balance and fell over at the other end of the cot. She needed to get her hands in front of her body. All those years Nan had forced her to do gymnastics training had to be worth something.

Rolling on to her back and taking a deep breath, she widened her elbows then wiggled her buttocks between her bound hands, gritting her teeth when the pressure of the rope bit into her wrists. With her buttocks on the bed, and with careful precision so as not to dislocate any joints, she was able to put her legs through her bound hands to get them in front of her.

Smiling at her small accomplishment, she ripped the duct tape from her mouth and almost screamed with the pain. She had to check the tape to see if her skin had parted company with her face.

Now that she’d removed the duct tape from her mouth, she worked at the rope on her wrists. It loosened enough so her fingers could untie her feet then she made her way over to the steel door. It was bolted from the outside. There was no keyhole to see what was on the other side of the door. All she heard was something that sounded like a generator kicking in.

What she wouldn’t give to have another round with Blondie. Although Sydney had her doubts she was a real blonde. She could have taken the woman down had she not introduced Sydney’s right side to a taser gun. An introduction she would have been happy to live her life without.

There was no furniture in the room except for the cot. Given the size, Sydney concluded that it was some sort of storage room. Only a single bare light bulb hung from a white electrical cord that cast a snake-like shadow against the cement wall. The concrete floor was a dingy brown and she didn’t want to think about what the brown spots were that covered it all the way to the door.

“What now?” she asked aloud. The question of the moment raced through her mind. She breathed in deep and exhaled slowly several times, trying not to give in to the fear that threatened to suffocate her.

How was she going to get out of this mess? Would anyone notice she’d gone missing? She didn’t think so. Through the haze, bits and pieces of information floated into her thoughts. Lunch with Markie…pictures…men with guns.

She was supposed to meet her sister for lunch. This wasn’t the first time she’d stood Markie up. Markie would think she’d brushed her off and go on about her business. The way she lived her life had finally caught up to her. Fear settled over her like a blanket.