True Colors (21 page)

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Authors: Joyce Lamb

Tags: #Fiction, #Suspense, #Romance, #Paranormal

BOOK: True Colors
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Just give me a minute.
My teeth are close to the dickhead’s throat, and I snarl and snap but catch nothing but air.
He’s yelling my name—not
my
name, but the name he gave me—over and over again, fumbling behind him for something, for . . . what? And I see it. I see it!
The stun gun.
I roll, because my hands are cuffed behind me. On my back, I grope frantically for the weapon I can no longer see.
He finds it first.
And he shoves it against my belly.
While I’m writhing from the first shock, my lungs in spasm, while I’m fighting the darkness clawing at my vision and screaming—“Run, Brian! Run! Run!”—he reloads and zaps me again.
Reloads.
Zaps.
Again.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
S
tanding in the kitchen door, watching two crime scene guys go over every inch of the living room for evidence, Logan glanced down at his cell phone for the hundredth time to make sure it received a signal. All the bars were present and accounted for. And yet no one called. Likewise, no one answered Alex’s cell each time he tried her number.
Behind him, Charlie said, “You’re not doing her any good by staring holes into the CSU guys’ backs.”
He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He already knew that terrified looked pale on her, pale and hollow-eyed. Like Alex had looked last night and this morning. God, he was an ass. He should have listened, should never have walked away. If he’d stayed to talk things through . . .
Useless to think like that. Useless to regret. But what he was doing now—watching other people do their jobs while he did nothing—there wasn’t much more useless than that.
He wanted to look for evidence. He wanted to canvass the neighborhood with the rest of his fellow cops, looking for someone who might have seen something. He wanted to
do
something other than stand around like a jerk and wait for someone else to find the woman he loved. And, God help him, he
did
love her. No way could he feel this helpless and sick, this certain that life would end if anything bad happened to Alex, about a woman he only liked.
He heard Noah walk up behind him but was glad the other man didn’t do anything supportive, like pat him on the shoulder. It wouldn’t take much to send him right over the edge, and he wasn’t even sure what going over would look like. Howling, screaming rage probably.
“You said the guy mentioned a brother,” Noah said.
Logan swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded. “He said I took his brother. I must have arrested him at some point, maybe sent him to prison.”
“Anyone stand out in the past few months or so? Maybe someone who made a threat?”
“No. No one.”
“What about arrest records?” Charlie asked. “We can start with the most recent and work backward.”
Noah shook his head before Logan had a chance.
“What?” Charlie asked, looking from one to the other. “We’re just going to sit around and wait for something to drop into our laps?”
Noah crossed to her and cupped her face in his big hands. “We know what we’re doing.”
She grasped his wrists, as if to hang on. “Can you please do it faster? Alex . . .” She trailed off, unable to finish.
“We’ll find her,” Noah said, then rested his forehead against hers. “We’ll find her.”
Logan looked away and swallowed hard. He sided with Charlie. They weren’t going to find Alex by waiting around for the phone to ring or a magic DNA sample or fingerprint to turn up that told them exactly where to look.
But he didn’t know where to begin. Even if he arrested on average one man a week who ended up in prison, there’d be more than a hundred after two years. And that assumed he was one lazy-assed cop, which he was not. The most unhelpful part, though: Family connections weren’t listed in arrest records. There was no way to know which men he arrested had brothers.
The back door opened, and fellow Lake Avalon police detective Don Walker stepped inside. He was tall and thin, with angular features and a full head of floppy dark hair. He looked more like a thirty-year-old Paul McCartney than a man in his fifties thinking about retiring into a less-demanding job with regular hours.
A young woman with short blond hair and a sun-reddened nose followed Don into the kitchen. Logan recognized her as the owner of a pug who lived several houses down. Alex didn’t always remember the names of neighbors who shared her street, but she knew their animals without fail. She referred to this woman as Clarence’s Mom.
“Hi,” the woman said with a small, nervous smile.
Don gave Logan a significant look that said, “We’ll find her, man,” before consulting a small spiral-bound notebook. “This is Rose Brown. She saw Alex with a man this afternoon.”
A surge of questions rushed to Logan’s tongue, and he must have taken a sudden, eager move toward her, because Rose stepped back and bumped against Don’s arm.
“Oh, sorry,” she said.
Logan forced himself to back off. He trusted Don. The man was his friend and a damn-good detective. He wouldn’t fuck this up. But, God, it was
Alex
.
To Rose, Don said, “Tell us what you saw. Every detail you can remember is important.”
She nodded, her cornflower blue eyes wide. “I’m so sorry I didn’t call 911 when it happened—”
“Start from the beginning,” Logan cut in, then seeing Don’s arched eyebrow, he added more softly, “Please.”
“I was walking Clarence. It was about two thirty. I come home every day at that time to walk him. I wasn’t even paying attention, actually. Too busy thinking about what to fix for dinner later, when Clarence started barking.” She paused with a tremulous smile. “He loves Alex. She always has dog biscuits in her pockets and knows the proper way to do a belly rub.”
Logan’s throat felt too thick to swallow. Alex, God, Alex.
“So Clarence started barking and going a little bonkers,” Rose went on. “And that’s when I saw the man carrying Alex to his car.”
Logan’s vision washed white for an instant. “He was carrying her?”
“He said she fainted, and he was taking her to the emergency room.”
“And you let him take her?” He could do nothing to temper the edge of hysteria in his tone.
“Logan,” Charlie warned.
Logan glanced at her, and he wondered how the hell she was managing to hold it together. But then he saw: Her hands were clasped so tightly with Noah’s that their fingers were white. They had each other, and he was losing Alex.
Rose said, “He told me he was her cousin from out of town. He said she’d had the flu and was probably dehydrated and got dizzy. He was certain she was okay, but he wanted to be sure. He even invited me to go with them. He seemed . . . sincere.”
“What kind of car?” Don asked.
“A new Mustang convertible. White. A rental.”
“How do you know it was a rental?” Logan asked.
“It had one of those bar code stickers on the windshield.”
“Rental indicates he’s not from around here,” Logan said.
“What about the tag number?” Don asked, nodding and taking notes.
“I caught a glimpse as I walked away. Florida plate. JR something. I remember only because I noticed it was the abbreviation for junior. My ex is a junior. Maximilian Endicott Jr. I should have known he would be a dud just by that name.”
“Can you provide a description?” Don asked, steering her back on track.
Rose winced, her freckled forehead creasing. “I know this is no help, but he just looked normal.”
“Tall? Short? Thin? Heavy?” Logan had to fight to keep his tone patient.
“Medium height, I guess. Not short, but not six feet tall, either. Regular build. You know, not skinny but not muscular. Short brown hair. A little curly, but it was short, so not a lot curly.”
“Wearing?” Don asked.
“Jeans. A gray T-shirt. It had a band insignia on it. Something from the nineties, like Nirvana. Something with an N. I think.” She sighed, blowing at her wispy bangs. “I know this isn’t helping.”
“You’re doing fine,” Don said. “What about glasses? Tattoos? Scars?”
“He wore sunglasses. I didn’t notice scars or tattoos. It’s not like I talked to him for ten minutes. He put Alex in the car and took off. He even said he’d call Logan”—she glanced at him—“on the way to the ER. Everything he said sounded right. I’m so sorry I didn’t—”
“Did he have an accent?” Don asked.
Logan had to concentrate to keep from groaning. He’d talked to the guy himself, and he hadn’t detected an accent.
The question drew Rose’s eyebrows together, and she squinted. “Like Southern?”
“If he wasn’t from around here,” Don said, “he might have had a regional inflection in his voice.”
Rose’s eyes widened as she glanced at Logan. “Actually, he sounded a lot like you.”
Logan turned away and took a few jerky steps. “Shit.”
“What?” Charlie and Noah asked at the same time.
“He’s got a Midwest accent like me. The son of a bitch is from Detroit.”
 
 
Butch checked his watch for the twentieth time and suppressed a loud groan. He’d moved his numb butt from the cold concrete to the cushioned seat of the chair an hour ago. At his feet, Alex Trudeau lay unconscious, her shallow breaths hitching every few moments.
She must be epileptic. What else would explain the sudden violent convulsions that had flung her from the chair, bouncing her head against the hard floor of the storage unit? She’d had a seizure, plain and simple. Her nose bled like she’d been punched, but luckily she hadn’t bitten off her tongue. That would have severely limited his entertainment. More than it was already limited.
What disturbed him more than anything, though, was what she’d screamed as her body repeatedly seized.
Run, Brian! Run! Run!
He wondered if her Brian had obeyed—and how weird was it that they both had a Brian that they’d urged to run? His Brian hadn’t obeyed. Butch had opened his eyes to find himself back on his bed in his room (cell), muscles still quivering from stun gun aftershocks. And there at the foot of the bed sat his newest best friend.
Brian Lear.
At least that’s what the dickhead said Brian’s name was. But it could very well have been that he liked Lear jets. Or Norman Lear sitcoms. Maybe
All in the Family
set him off.
Butch had gotten his name because the dickhead liked the Janis Joplin song “Me and Bobby McGee.”
Which Butch found a bit ironic these days, considering. If freedom really was just another word for nothing left to lose, then he was about as free as you could get. John Logan took away everything that was important to him, and now he had nothing to lose by making the son of a bitch pay.
A soft moan drew his gaze to the floor, where his captive shifted, eyelids fluttering.
He sat forward in the chair, elbows on his knees. “Alex, my sweet. You’re testing my patience. We’ve spent several hours together now, and we haven’t played at all. You do know that’s not fair, right?”
When she made no response, her chest barely rising and falling, he nudged her in the ribs with the toe of his new Nikes.
Nothing. Not even a twitch this time.
What a buzz kill.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
I
n Alex’s backyard, surrounded by oddly subdued pooches, Logan made a cell phone call to Detroit. The single light by the back door pushed back the midnight darkness, and the air hummed with the sounds of busy insects and the occasional call of a bird. The night smelled earthy and a bit musty, humidity thick and swirling like a cloud. Lightning flashed among the dark clouds in the distance as a storm rolled east across the state from the Gulf. A muted roll of thunder followed.
“Lieutenant Packard.” The memorably gruff greeting tweaked Logan’s guilt.
“Phil, it’s John Logan. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
A long pause competed with the crackle on the line, followed by a muttered, “Hell, no. I’m sitting here channel flipping. How long’s it been, asshole?”
Logan laughed in response. Asshole. Fucker. Dickweed. Shithead. His friend’s casual use of expletives hadn’t faded in two years. “Too long. I’m sorry about that.”
“You should be. I thought we were buddies.”
“We were. We
are
. I just . . . I needed some time.”
“Time to forget you have goddamn friends here, apparently.”
“I never forgot that, Phil. And, hey, congrats on the promo. Lieutenant now, huh?”

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