Thread of Betrayal (10 page)

TWENTY-TWO

We followed Anchor outside and around the side of the hotel. I’d put on the same pants and long-sleeve t-shirt I’d been wearing earlier and I pushed the sleeves up, the night air still warm. Lauren pressed close to me as we walked and at some point, I realized that her hand had grabbed onto mine.

A shiny black Escalade idled at the curb. Next to it, a man with coffee-colored skin and a suit similar to Anchor's stood with his hands in his pockets. Broad shoulders and an athletic frame. Mirrored aviator glasses rested on top of his bald head. He smiled and nodded at us as we approached.

“Mr. and Ms. Tyler,” Anchor said. “This is Ellis Kitting. He is also employed by Mr. Codaselli.”

“Pleasure,” Kitting said, shaking both of our hands and continuing to smile.

Anchor looked at him. “So.”

“I have one male and one female,” Kitting explained. “Located at a home twenty minutes from here. They were in possession of the bag and I did recover the phone and ID.”

“Excellent,” Anchor said.

“They weren’t immediately forthcoming about what occurred and were hesitant to provide details,” Kitting said, looking at me, then glancing at Anchor. “I encouraged them to cooperate.”

Anchor nodded and Kitting opened the rear passenger door to the Escalade.

Inside, I saw a young man and a young woman, both in their early twenties. The girl was in skinny jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt covered in glitter and sparkles. Long black hair pulled back with a glitter-encrusted headband. The guy had on jeans and a gray hoodie and was sporting a left eye that was swollen shut. A small cut decorated the corner of his mouth.

Both looked terrified.

Anchor stared at them for a long moment and they both seemed to shrink under his gaze. “Good evening.”

Neither said anything.

“I’ll make this very clear as it appears you did not understand my associate’s explanation the first time around,” Anchor said. “If you cooperate and are truthful with us, this will be quick and my associate will return you to your home shortly, without any further action. If you don’t wish to cooperate or choose to lie…then this will take as long as necessary to convince you to cooperate. I can make no promises as to where my associate will take you afterward or the condition you’ll be in.” He looked at each of them carefully. “Everyone understand the rules?”

The way he explained it in such simple terms was more chilling than if he’d put a gun to their heads.

The girl was quick to nod and the guy, after a moment’s hesitation and a long stare from Anchor, followed suit.

“Great,” Anchor said, then pointed at the girl. “Please exit the vehicle toward us.”

The girl crawled out over the guy, giving him a quick glance. She hopped out of the car and stood nervously on the sidewalk, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Kitting shut the door behind her.

Anchor nodded at me.

“You took the purse?” I asked.

She wore heavy black eyeliner and it was smudged at the corners, possibly from tears. “Yeah.”

“Tell me how.”

“I already told that scary motherfucker over there.”

I assumed she meant Kitting. “I wasn’t there, so tell me now.”

She started to object again, but Anchor tilted his head thoughtfully and it was enough to stop her cold.

She cleared her throat. “We run it all the time. Me and Mikey. We buy cheap tickets, usually to like Oakland or San Diego, just to get to the gate side. Then we wait and watch. Find someone who we for sure can tell isn’t from here, maybe isn’t paying attention or whatever. Wait for them to go into the bathroom. Then…you know. When we rip a girl, Mikey follows to make sure the girl doesn’t chase or whatever. When it’s a dude, I follow.”

“You stole our daughter’s purse,” I said.

She frowned. “So?”

Before I could say anything else, Anchor put a hand on her shoulder and leaned down to whisper in her ear. The girl’s face went white and she looked to be on the verge of tears when he was done whispering. She was shaking.

“I mean,” she stammered, her eyes darting between Anchor and myself. “I mean, I’m sorry.”

“Tell me exactly what happened,” I said. “With her.”

She was trying to catch her breath. Whatever Anchor said to her had terrified her. He stood there, smiling at her.

“Mikey picked her right away,” she said. “I followed her in. She went to the back stall, the one for wheelchairs. No one else was in there. I just reached over, grabbed it and left.”

“She say anything?”

“No.”

I glanced at Lauren. She was staring at the girl, who was still watching Anchor.

“Then what?” I asked. “You take off with the stuff? See what you scored?”

“We do two or three,” she said. “Cover the cost of our tickets. She was our last. So yeah. We bailed.”

“Where’s the purse?”

Kitting opened the front passenger door and retrieved the purse. He handed it to Anchor who handed it to me.

It was strange holding something that belonged to Elizabeth. It was a large cloth bag with a single strap, faded purple, like she’d had it for a long time. I couldn’t bring myself to look into it, as if her face might be in there, peering back at me.

I handed it to Lauren.

She held it gingerly, as if it were fragile, and opened it up, rummaging around. She pulled out a hot pink leather wallet. She unsnapped the clasp and I saw her swallow hard. “It’s hers. Elizabeth’s.”

I didn’t say anything.

Lauren searched through the wallet. “There should be cash in here.”

Anchor looked at the girl.

“Mikey has it,” she said quickly. “He’s in charge of the money. The whole thing, really.”

“Anything else for her?” Anchor asked me.

I shook my head.

Anchor opened the passenger door. “Get in, please.” He waited for her to climb over Mikey. “Your turn, friend. Step out of the vehicle, please.”

Mikey slid out of his seat, his hands stuffed in the front pocket of the hoodie. He had close cropped black hair and a small diamond stud in his left earlobe. He was slightly taller than Anchor, with a heavy build, but he somehow seemed small standing next to him.

Kitting edged a little closer behind him.

“Your friend has explained your game,” Anchor said. “But we’d like to hear your version.”

Mikey’s right eye looked like it had a golf ball underneath it, the lid red and completely closed over the ball. But his left eye looked angry.

“If she told you, why I gotta tell you?” he said, glancing at Anchor.

“Because I asked. And take your hands out of your sweatshirt.”

Mikey sighed, but took his hands out. “Game is, we look for tourists and rip a bag when they’re in the can. If it’s a chick, Jessica follows them in. If it’s a dude, I follow them in. Then the other person waits for the chick or dude to come out of the can, runs interference if they got to, makes sure they don’t follow the one that did the rip, just to make sure it’s cool.” He shrugged. “That’s it.”

Anchor looked at me.

“So after Jessica took my daughter’s purse, you waited for her to come out?” I asked.

He nodded.

“What did she do?” I asked. “Where did she go?”

“I don’t know, dude.”

Kitting cleared his throat and edged closer to Mikey.

Mikey’s lips twisted for a moment, then he shrugged again, full of arrogance and disinterest. “Yo, she was like all of them. A little freaked out, but not sure what to do. She was crying. Looking around. Some go looking for a cop or a rent-a-cop. She didn’t.”

Anger percolated in my gut. His ambivalence toward her was maddening. I knew he didn’t know the full story, but he was the kind of asshole who wouldn’t have cared, anyway. He was just looking for the quick score and didn’t care what the result was.

“Where’d she go then?” I asked.

“Shit, I don’t know, dude,” he said, rolling his one good eye. “I just had to make sure Jess got clear. I didn’t babysit the bitch.”

My right fist struck his left eye flush, my knuckles cracking against his eye socket. He stumbled backward and fell against the car, then down to the curb.

Lauren touched my arm and Kitting dropped the shades from his head to his eyes, but no one else moved.

“Get up,” Anchor said.

Mikey lolled around for a moment, caught between the car and the curb. He pushed himself to his knees and got up slowly. The good eye, the one that I’d hit, was now swelling and there was another cut on the bridge of his nose, a slow trickle of blood dancing out of it.

“I believe a question was asked. Where did Mr. Tyler’s daughter go after she exited the restroom?” Anchor asked, staring at Mikey.

The arrogance was gone from Mikey, his shoulders slumped, his posture sagging, his bottom lip quivering. He wasn’t nearly as tough as he wanted to be.

“She stood outside the bathroom for a minute,” he said quietly. “Then she walked toward security. Then she turned around and went back toward the bathroom. She sat down at a table at the donut place. She was still crying. She put her head down on the table. That’s when I bolted.”

The image of Elizabeth, alone and crying by herself at a table in some food court, pierced me and it took a moment to catch my breath. If I’d been alone with Mikey, he wouldn’t have walked away. I was ready to empty every ounce of my anger into him.

“The money,” Anchor said. “You have the money from the purse.”

Mikey started to reach for his back pocket, then stopped. “It’s in my pocket. I can reach for it?”

Anchor nodded.

Mikey pulled a wad of cash out of his back pocket and held it out to Anchor. Anchor nodded at me and Mikey frowned, then held it out to me.

I took it and counted it out. Four hundred bucks.

“Take anything else out of it?” I asked, handing the money to Lauren. “Credit card? Anything?”

He shook his head. “Cash only. I don’t mess with credit cards. And there wasn’t nothing else in there to take.”

I looked at Lauren. She dropped the money in the bag and closed it up, then put it over her shoulder.

“Why’d you use the phone?” I said.

He scowled, his entire face wrinkling up with irritation. “I didn’t. Jess did. Which we don’t ever do. But she had to call her friend and tell her about the score.” The irritation faded. “Four hundred was biggest score in awhile. She was bragging.”

Anchor tilted his head toward Kitting.

“That’s accurate,” Kitting said. “Girl confirmed and I checked with the friend. Nothing there.”

Anchor nodded, then looked at me. “Anything else?”

I shook my head.

Anchor opened the door and Mikey slinked back into the car. Anchor closed the door behind him, then walked over to Kitting. They exchanged several words, Kitting nodded and headed for the driver’s side of the Escalade. We stood there silently as the SUV pulled away from the curb.

“I’m sorry there wasn’t more information to be had,” Anchor said. “But at least you have her belongings back.”

I nodded.

“Can I ask a question?” Lauren said.

“Certainly.”

“Do I want to know what your guy is going do with them now?” she asked.

Anchor chuckled, pulled his phone from his pocket and began thumbing away at the screen. “You make it sound so sinister.”

“In some ways, it sort of feels like it is,” she answered.

Anchor made a non-committal shrug. “Perhaps.” He put the phone back in his pocket. “They served their purpose. We have no further interest in them and we don’t need to draw any attention their way or ours. Ellis will return them home safely.”

Lauren exhaled.

“But they will be reminded that they never saw us or met us or had this conversation,” Anchor added.

“How does that happen?” Lauren asked.

Anchor smiled. “You don’t want to know, Ms. Tyler.”

TWENTY-THREE

“Do you want to see what’s in here?” Lauren asked.

We were sitting in the hotel bar. It was late and most of the tables were empty. A group of businessmen sat at the bar, nursing drinks and watching ESPN on the TV mounted on the wall. Anchor had excused himself and told us he’d be back in an hour. He didn’t say where he was going and we didn’t ask. We’d gone to the bar, both of us claiming to be hungry, but judging by the picked over food on our plates, we weren’t starving.

Now, she had Elizabeth’s bag open.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“There’s nothing crazy in here.”

“That’s fine. But I don’t think so.”

She set the bag on her lap. “Why not?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It just freaks me out.”

“Why?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I said. I picked up a French fry but didn’t eat it. “I just don’t want to see. It doesn’t feel good to me.”

She stared across the table at me. “It makes me feel closer to her. To see what’s in here. To see her driver’s license, her lipstick. Brings her to me.”

I nodded. “Good. I’m glad. It’s just different for me.”

She nodded, but I wasn’t sure she understood. I wasn’t sure I did, either, but I thought it was tied to getting my hopes up. I’d been burned too many times before and I wasn’t going to let the thread of hope I was clinging to morph into anything more. Not yet. I needed to keep some distance.

“Anchor scares the shit out of me,” Lauren said. “If I hadn’t already mentioned that.”

“He’s on our side,” I reminded her. “That’s all that matters.”

She toyed with her fork, moving around pieces of lettuce in her salad bowl. “You think he would’ve killed that guy if he’d lied to us?”

I thought for a moment. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Are you okay with that? With working with someone like that?”

I pulled my napkin from my lap and tossed it on my plate. “Being okay with it has nothing to do with it. He can help us. That’s all I care about.”

“So if he had intimated he was going to kill that guy, you would’ve let it go?” she asked.

“It’s irrelevant,” I said. “He’s not going to kill him. Probably going to kick the crap out of him. Scare him. But that’s it. So it’s irrelevant.”

“I’m asking hypothetically.”

I leaned over the table. “Look, that kid was a scumbag. Who knows what else he’s done to people? He had zero problem stealing from our daughter and leaving her high and dry. He wasn’t sorry, even with Anchor and Kitting standing there. He didn’t care and he’ll run the same game tomorrow. And all I care about is getting Elizabeth back safely. Anchor can help us do that. So do I give a shit if Mikey or some guy like him ends up being collateral damage? No. I don’t. All I care about is finding Elizabeth. That’s it.”

My words came out sharper than I intended, but I meant everything I said. I didn’t care about anyone else, especially some piece of crap thief. And I didn’t have a problem working with Anchor or Kitting, as long as they could get me closer to Elizabeth. I’d come too far to start worrying about the gray ethical areas we might or might not have been entering.

Lauren laid her own napkin on the table. “Okay.”

“Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bite your head off,” I said. “But she’s the only thing I care about.”

She pursed her lips. “I could never care about just one thing.”

“I know that.”

She started to say something, then stopped. Then she looked at her watch. “He’s going to be back soon. Can we run back up to the room really quick?”

I nodded. “Sure.” I signed my name to the check and we headed to the elevator on the other side of the lobby. We stepped into the car and she punched the number of our floor and the doors closed.

She circled her arm around mine. “I’m not judging. I swear I’m not. This is just a different world for me, Joe.”

“I know that.”

“And I’m glad you’re the way you are,” she said, looking at me. “You’re the reason we’re going to find her. I don’t need to understand it all. As long as you do, I’ll be alright with everything.”

The doors opened and we walked down the long hallway to the room. I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure what to say. I wasn’t sure there was anything
to
say.

Lauren slid the key card into the door, the lock clicked and she pushed on the door.

There was a loud beeping noise that we both heard immediately.

Her hands went to her pockets. “Jesus. That’s my phone. I left it in here when we were hurrying to get out of here.” She strode across the dark room while I fumbled with the light switch. The phone was laying on the table and she picked it up.

“It’s Morgan. A text.”

Blood pulsed in my ears.

Lauren touched the screen. “She has a number.”

“Did she send it?”

“She says to call her.”

“Do it. Now.”

She already had the phone to her ear. “Morgan, it’s Lauren Tyler. Can you talk?” She pulled the phone from her ear and touched the screen. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah, I can,” Morgan said. “I texted you like half an hour ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Lauren said. “I left my phone in a hotel room.” She shook her head in disgust, like she couldn’t believe she’d been so careless.

“You have a number, Morgan?” I asked.

“She got another phone,” Morgan said. “One of those pay-as-you-go thingies. I don’t know how they work.”

“Give us the number,” I said, grabbing the small scratch pad and pen from the table.

Morgan recited it and I wrote it down.

“Did she say where she was?” I asked.

“No,” she said, the tone of her voice changing.

“Why not?”

“I tried to reason with her,” she said. “I told her I talked to you guys.”

I winced. “Okay.”

“And I think she was afraid I’d tell you. And she was totally serious. She doesn’t want to see you right now.”

My stomach sank.

“There’s something else,” Morgan said.

Lauren and I stayed silent, staring at the phone.

“She saw a postcard,” Morgan said. “In a drugstore or something. Of some blue bridge in San Diego.”

A chill ran down my spine.

“She thinks she’s supposed to go there,” she said. “She said it felt familiar.”

“Was she going there? Tonight?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “She kept saying tomorrow.”

Lauren sat down on the foot of the bed, steadying herself with her hands.

“And she wouldn’t say where she is tonight?”

“No.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s alright. This is all good. Is she going to call you back?”

“Yeah,” Morgan said. “I made her promise.”

I made a fist. “Good. When?”

“Before she goes to sleep,” she said. “Tonight. I told her that I needed to know she had a place to sleep for the night and the only way I wouldn’t call you guys was if she promised to call me.”

“That’s great, Morgan,” I said. “That’s a great job.”

“Thanks, I guess.” Her voice faltered a bit. “I don’t like lying to her.”

“You’re helping her. Think of it that way.”

“I guess.”

“Here’s the deal,” I said. “Stay close to your phone. We’re going to try and track down the phone. We might need your help. I’ll call you back. If you haven’t heard from me by the time she calls, make sure you call us the second you hang up with her. And if you can find out where she’s at, even better.”

“Okay. I’ll try.”

“I’ll talk to you soon,” I said, and we hung up.

Lauren was sitting ramrod straight on the bed.

I set the phone down on the table. “You okay?”

She shook her head. “No. Not really.”

I sat down next to her. “Talk to me.”

“I’m scared,” she said. “Scared what’s going to happen to her. Scared she’s in danger. Scared she’s going to think all of this is our fault. Scared she won’t love us anymore.”

“It’ll be okay,” I said, putting my arm around her.

She rested her head on my shoulder. “You don’t know that, Joe. You don’t know that.”

She was right. I didn’t know that.

But I wanted to believe it.