Grab (8 page)

“I thought we weren’t doing strings. I don’t do boyfriends, Jordan.”

He kick-started the Harley and pushed his sunglasses up on his nose with his finger. “You do now.”

She opened her jaw to say something, but he interrupted with a casual, “I’ll be back to pick you up after work.” Then he roared off before she could contradict him, a ridiculously feeling of accomplishment rising in his chest.

Mike sat cross-legged on the floor of Mia’s apartment, beyond frustrated. Misty hadn’t worked out any more than Evelyn had, but he vowed Mia would be different. He hadn’t meant to hurt Evelyn, and he hadn’t hurt Misty. As soon as he saw she wasn’t working, he’d put her in the garage, with Evelyn. He would figure out what to do with her later.

Clenching his fists in his lap, his thoughts swirled around in his head—a loud blur, screaming around so fast he couldn’t grab hold of what to do. So he did the only that made sense.

He went after the next one.

But it wasn’t off to a great start. He’d watched her, like Misty. That part seemed to work out okay for him. So he’d repeated it. And then he’d followed her home, so he’d know where she lived. But some guy was there when they got home, and he couldn’t act that night.

He’d waited, his head screaming in that psychedelic blur of noise he’d gotten used to. Slashing her tires had made him feel marginally better, but not much. She hadn’t come home that night, and he could only assume she went to her boyfriend’s place. He may need to do something about him. The guy could be trouble. That wasn’t part of his plan, though, and the swirling screams inside his head weren’t conducive to making plans involving new people.

Now, he sat in her closet, surrounded by clothes coated in the cherry-flavored perfume he hated. Evelyn wore White Shoulders, a sweet, floral scent that reminded Mike of his childhood and better times. He could get Mia to wear that when he got her home, and things would be better.

If he could just get her home with him,
everything
would be better.

So he would wait—wait for days if he had to. She had some food in her fridge. It wasn’t the type of stuff Evelyn would have eaten. Evelyn liked to cook and had a fridge full of ingredients, no ready-made stuff and leftovers. But that was okay. Mike had all the time in the world.

If he could just get the screaming in his head to stop.

Jordan kept his mind off Mia that day by focusing on the case at hand. Misty was a barista in a coffee shop on Sixth Street. She’d shown up at work one day, complained to her friends about a guy staring at her through most of her shift, then went home. That night, she disappeared. Everyone Jordan and Ryan interviewed believed she’d been followed home by the guy and grabbed, but nobody could agree on what he looked like.

The punk who’d stared Mia down at the diner surfaced in Jordan’s uneasy conscience, but he didn’t match any of the descriptions given by Misty’s friends. He was heavy, he wasn’t, he was brunette, he was blond, he was young, he was old… The renderings from the police sketch artist were so all over the place to be useless. Every person who said they saw the suspect gave a different description.

Eye witnesses were notoriously unreliable.

Jordan put the pasty-faced asshole at Mia’s restaurant out of his mind and focused on Misty’s case. Jordan would work Mia’s tire slashing when he wasn’t being watched. He’d already asked Evan to let him know when he got into the camera images, and he said he had shit running and would let him know, whatever that meant.

Misty’s shithole apartment gave them nothing, same as her neighbors. The police were actually cooperative, which told Jordan they wanted Pierce Securities working the case. They were short-handed, and they apparently trusted Simon. That actually went a long ways for Jordan. If the cops were willing to copy most of their files for Ryan and Jordan, maybe he’d been a little quick to judge.

His perspective of his workplace was changing, and just like he’d settled into his revelation with Mia, Jordan adjusted to the idea that this job wasn’t going to eat his soul like he’d initially thought.

By the time Jordan was on his way to pick up Mia, he and Ryan had interviewed almost every one of Misty’s friends and co-workers, searched her apartment, and skimmed the police files. He had them in his knapsack and was planning on looking over them again for anything he missed while he had a beer sometime tonight.

But there was some sex to be had first. And he planned to tell Mia he’d changed his mind and was serious about the boyfriend comment. Jordan wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted. He didn’t know her well enough to spout the word ‘love’ at her, but he knew enough about her to know she was worth more than a series of booty calls.

The waitress working the diner told Jordan it was slow tonight, and Mia had been sent home early. Annoyed she hadn’t called him, he sped home to tell her how their new situation was going to work. He was her ride for now until they figured out who had slashed her tires.

It may be heavy-handed, but she was in danger now, and as he parked his bike in the garage he paid more for than his apartment, he tried to calm himself. She wasn’t going to react well if he went in there all cave-man on her. It was just getting dark out, and she didn’t need to be walking alone.

But as he came around the corner, thoughts of heavy-handedness fled as he watched a man shove her into a van right in front of him. She was fighting and saw him when he turned the corner. Her eyes widened, and he was shocked nobody was stopping this. She was being abducted on the street.

“Jordan!” The sound ripped his heart out of his chest, and Jordan’s arms and legs started pumping in a sprint for his life. He had to get to her. Mouth open in a silent scream, she was frantically kicking, fighting her attacker for all she was worth. Jordan yelled, but the man slammed the doors shut and raced around to the driver’s side, tossing a look over his shoulder at Jordan. It was the guy from the diner. No doubt.

And the few people who were on the street were just standing there, doing nothing to stop it.

Wheels on the van spun around, trying to catch purchase, giving Jordan time to catch up a bit, but when the rubber finally gripped asphalt, the van shot away from the curb and down the street. Veering back and forth, Jordan prayed the driver would lose control, but it turned the corner, and with that, the dirty, windowless van was out of sight.

Jordan continued his sprint after it, yelling Mia’s name, pushing people out of his way. But the van was gone by the time he got to the end of the block. Breathless, he yanked his phone out of his pocket and dialed his brother. Hands on his knees, he took huge gulps of air, trying to fight the nausea rising in his gut at his failure to get her from him.

“Evan, I need you to run a plate on a white van, number 5-Echo-something-Delta-something-Quebec.” His breathing was rough, but he managed to still hear his brother’s scoff.

“Your Mia has a date and you running the plates?”

“My Mia’s been grabbed! Just run the fucking plates!” Jordan was beside himself and couldn’t take the unintentional teasing. He knew Evan didn’t mean anything by it and wouldn’t have said anything if he’d realized the severity of the situation, but it didn’t stop the rock that plummeted through his gut, ripping out his insides as it did.

Jordan ran back to his apartment house and raced up the stairs, into Mia’s apartment. The door was hanging open and all Jordan could do was look at his surroundings.

She hadn’t gone quietly, and Jordan fought the rising guilt at not being there for her. He knew, just from looking, if he’d been here, he could have stopped this. There was no way he wouldn’t have heard what happened in this room. There was broken glass everywhere, torn fabric, splintered wood… Mia had fought.

Possibly for her life.

No. He couldn’t think like that. If the guy wanted to kill her, he would have done it. He wouldn’t have put her in a van and driven off with her. He had another purpose, and Jordan had an idea what that purpose was. He had to find her before the purpose could be fulfilled.

He called the detective on Misty’s case and reported the kidnapping, formulating a plan.

Suddenly, Misty’s case and Mia’s case didn’t seem so unrelated. He cussed himself mightily for not calling her with a warning today. He could have done something to prevent this. Instead of spending two days following a bunch of dead ends, he could have been here, protecting her. Making that connection earlier could have helped.

God dammit.

In his apartment, Jordan shut himself in his bedroom and went to his closet, pulling out two enormous duffel bags, calling Evan again.

“Dude, I need an address,” he growled when his brother answered.

“I’ve got one, but if it’s legit, I’ll eat my shoes. The plate is registered to Ethyl White over on Westlake Drive. That’s one of the most expensive parts of town, hardly a hideout for a kidnapper. My guess is the plates are stolen.” Evan’s voice was grim. “It’s probably a gardener’s van or something, and she hasn’t even noticed it’s gone.”

“Roger that.” Jordan hung up, not defeated, but not coming up with anything else. He had to wait for the cops to show. He filled his duffel bag with everything he would possibly need to find Mia, as soon as he had a location, then put it back into the closet. It wouldn’t do any good for him to have his arsenal laid out on the bed when they got here.

A rough knock sounded on the door, and Jordan took the four steps necessary in his tiny apartment to reach it. Detective Hollerman stood there, concern etched on his features. “Jordan.” Holding out his hand in greeting, the grave look on his face wasn’t exactly reassuring. “You know her?” A pair of uniformed officers were already across the hall, while another one was knocking on doors down the hallway. As if the people in this neighborhood would talk. Yeah, sure. The pimp down the hall would be
real
eager to talk to the cops.

“Yeah, Mia. She works at the Twenty-Four Diner over on Sixth Street and there was a guy in there yesterday and the day before, staring at her for hours, like Misty. I didn’t put it together until now, but it’s got to be the same guy. I got a good look at him. But the more time we waste here, the longer he’s got her.” Jordan was well aware of the fact he sounded like a whiney pussy but couldn’t stop it.

“Can you talk to a sketch artist and give us something concrete to work with?”

“You bet your ass, but can we do it quickly?”

Detective Hollerman quirked an eyebrow at him but didn’t say anything out loud. His thoughts were loud and clear, though, and Jordan read them. Hollerman didn’t want Jordan going all cowboy and messing up the investigation, but Jordan was going to do what he could to catch the asshole who had his girl. That was a no-brainer.

“The escape vehicle? Did you get a good look at the plate or anything?” The detective’s notepad was out and he was taking notes.

Jordan toyed with the idea of letting Pierce handle this, since he had faith in himself above all else, but a rare sense of desperation made him talk more openly with Hollerman. Another set of resources wouldn’t hurt, would it?

“Yeah. I got a partial plate. Late model van, white, dirty, no windows.” He gave the plate numbers he had and added, “Evan already ran it, he said it was an address on Westlake Drive.”

Hollerman’s eyebrows slammed down above his eyes. “Listen. I know you’re invested in this case, but we have to go by the book.” Slapping his notebook shut, he continued, sitting on Jordan’s futon. Jordan didn’t want to see the man sitting, he wanted him to be up and moving around, finding Mia. “You guys have gotten involved in several investigations I’ve been doing in the past, and I’m not gonna lie. Y’all have fucked some shit up for me with my boss. In the end, you always get the bad guy, which makes the Mayor look great, but I cannot let you go all renegade on this investigation. Mia’s in danger, and we have procedures in place to convict this guy when we catch him. We
have
to do this by the book. Understand?”

Jordan gritted his teeth together and nodded, not intending in the least to stand by idly.

“You know we’ve been hired on Misty’s case, so I’m going to go on the assumption it’s the same guy, based on the similarities in MO.” Jordan spoke when he was able to control his emotions. “We’ll do whatever it takes to find her, and Mia, too.”