VANISHED, A Romantic Suspense Novel (Edgars Family Novel) (19 page)

* * * * *

What kind of place was this?
Huddled on a bare mattress on the floor of what looked like a basement, Brianna tried to adjust her eyes to the dim light filtering in from the small window above her. The last clear thing she remembered before waking up here was Dylan coming into the room where they’d been torturing her, grabbing the cell phone and removing the battery.

“
Who were you trying to call, Brianna? Someone at the Abbey where you left the files?”

Her mind must be muddled. He thought Abby was a place? Like a church? He didn’t know who she was? Abby was still safe. She hadn’t told him. Thank God she listed Abby under her hated middle name Prudence.

“
Well, they’ll be too late to find you now.”

And then he hit her in the jaw.

A few times she woke in the back of the van, jostled when it hit a bump or tracks, but not long enough to see who had her or where they were taking her. She had a vague memory of being carried over someone’s shoulders down some steps. Must’ve been when they brought her to this basement.

Was it morning? Or still night? How long had she been here?

Muffled voices sounded above her. Was it Dylan? One of his men? The man with the knife who’d sliced the skin on her arms open? Or one of those thugs who’d beaten her and burned her with cigarettes?

A tremor ran through her. She didn’t think she could take any more. If they came at her again, she’d probably tell them what they wanted to know.

You’re stronger than you think
. Abby’s voice sounded in her head.

Abby.

The only person she could ever depend on. She couldn’t let them know she was a person and not a church. She’d dragged her naïve friend into this. If anything happened to sweet Abby, it would be her fault. But she’d needed to tell someone what she’d found out. Someone she could count on to do something. Someone she trusted.

Had Abby found the flash drive? She’d had to hide it quickly once she realized she’d been followed. Surely Abby would’ve figured out where. Or the code. Abby would’ve found it, would’ve known what it was when she studied it. Then she would’ve use it to crack her work files, wouldn’t she? Please, God, she didn’t want to have suffered all this for nothing.

Heavy footsteps sounded above.

What did they plan to do with her now?

Can’t take much more. Wish they’d just kill me and get it over with.

Did she really want to die? And for what? To save women she didn’t even know? Damn her perpetual need to stick her nose into things.

“
Your curiosity will be the death of you, Brianna,” Sister Compassionatta said, staring down at her where she sat in the principal’s office.

“
But I only wanted to see—” She started when the ruler landed on her knuckles. She resisted pulling them back, as she knew from experience the sister would inflict more punishment if she did so.

“
I do not need to know what you hoped to see in the boys’ locker room, miss. It’s sinful and you will not appease your sinful, willful, curious nature while you remain at the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, do I make myself clear?”

She’d agreed and made the proper promise not to tempt fate again. If only she’d heeded the warning and learned her lesson, she might not be in this predicament. Worse part, aside from the pain and eventual death? Damn Sister C was going to be right. Her curiosity was going to get her killed this time.

Voices again.

She strained to hear what they were saying. Wait. There were female voices mixed in with the rumbling sounds of men. Had they taken her to one of the houses she’d managed to map out? The houses where unusual shipments had been sent? Houses where she suspected the women from the files had gone. Did they mean to make her part of this house?

Oh, God. There was a fate worse than death.

Slavery.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Frank watched the pair fight then Luke pull Abigail in tight.

The guy was a goner.

The moment he’d gotten Luke’s call yesterday, Frank had a feeling things were more complicated than the kid let on. Serious wasn’t part of Luke’s usual act. Cocky, irritating, a wise-ass—he had those in spades. So when he heard that Edgars’ my-woman’s-in-trouble-and-I-have-to-protect-her voice coming out of the youngest brother, he’d made the decision to come find out what was really going on. And what did it have to do with the secret investigation that Luke was doing for his older brother Dave, into Senator Klein?

He hadn’t expected kidnapping, torture, and charred bodies, although given the last time he helped his adopted family save one of their own there’d been bombs and hostages, so why should any of this surprise him?

Giving the couple a moment to pull it together, he lifted the file Jeffers had brought in with him. “So tell me about these women. How do they fit into our case?”

The detective looked relieved to have something else to focus on, too. “I’m not sure how they’re connected, but if any of the bodies turns out to be one of these women and Ms. Mathews’ blood was at the scene, they’re connected somehow.”

“If no one was looking for them, who reported them missing?”

“Employers, landlords, acquaintances. But no one really pressed the issue. Until my niece came to me about her friend.” Jeffers lifted the picture of a plain-looking, mousy blonde. “Her name’s Casey Timmons. She and my niece worked together. When Casey didn’t show up for work for a week and no one heard anything from her, the boss assumed she’d quit or left town. My niece didn’t think it sounded like something her friend would do, so she went to her apartment to check on Casey. Somehow my niece convinced the landlord to let her in. All of Casey’s belongings were still there. It was as if she just…vanished.”

“Was the apartment trashed like Brianna’s?” Abigail asked, coming back to the bar.

Frank glanced at his friend, who stood behind Abigail’s chair and returned his look stonily. Yep, Luke was in Edgars-family-protect mode.

“No. It was pristine. Nothing out of place. No missing computer, laptop or iPad. I promised I’d look into her disappearance, but really couldn’t find anything.”

“How’d you connect the other women?”

Jeffers shrugged. “Dogged determination. I like a good mystery. Casey’s disappearance was so complete, I started wondering if there were any others who had slipped through the cracks. All five disappeared over a period of three years. When I started looking closer, there were similarities in backgrounds—no families, few friends, low-level positions at work.”

Frank laid out all the pictures. “All rather ordinary looking. Not ugly, but not stand-out pretty, either.”

“No, they would’ve been called spinsters a hundred years ago,” Abigail said. “Wallflowers.”

The detective nodded. “I thought the same thing, which lead me to thinking what else they might have in common. None of them had memberships to the same gym, if they had one at all. None frequented the same bars or restaurants on a regular basis. Those with church ties were on the fringe and none of the same denomination.”

“But you found something,” Luke said over Abigail’s shoulder.

“I did.” Jeffers pulled out one of the papers in the file behind the pictures. “What if they wanted to meet someone, but didn’t feel comfortable doing it out in public because they’d blend in with the surroundings?”

“That can be very depressing. Nothing worse than going out to try to meet someone and ending up by yourself.”

Abigail stared at the pictures. Frank blinked at her comment then exchanged puzzled looks with the detective and Luke. How could she have such empathy for the women? No way would she ever fade into the background. Or had she—before Luke and this case drew her out of the shadows?

When no one spoke, she lifted her gaze to them. “What? You don’t think being taller than most boys in school, smarter than most of the class and pretty much a math geek didn’t have me sitting on the bleachers during dances or in the corner at parties? Working for the Treasury department hasn’t exactly helped the reputation, either. I’ve spent many a night alone in a bar or restaurant, simply because I didn’t want to stay home, but had no date.”

Frank swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly dry from her confession. Luke settled his hands on her shoulders and squeezed, he, too, unsettled.

“Well, yeah, anyway,” Jeffers stammered as he laid the paper out for the others to see. “That got me to thinking. What if they tried to do a little shopping at home?”

“Shopping at home?” What the hell was the cop talking about?

“An on-line dating service.” Luke said. “That’s why you asked us yesterday about whether Babette had been a subscriber to one.”

“Brianna,” Abigail automatically corrected him. Frank wanted to comment on the name errors, but it seemed to be some odd game the two were playing. “And no, she wouldn’t need to use one.”

Frank pulled up the list of URLs Abigail had written down earlier, reading down the list. A number of the sites were dating services. “Well, she certainly was looking at them.”

Jeffers pointed to the eleventh line of the list. “That’s one of the sites all my missing women frequented.”

“Do you think your friend learned something about these sites? Would that be why she was searching them?” Frank asked.

Abigail shrugged. “She could’ve been, but why call me? And what would it have to do with her job or whatever it was she wanted to tell me? I wish she’d left me some clue as to where the information was.”

“Maybe she tried to send it some other way. If she’s as smart as you say she is, wouldn’t she have made a separate file from Hollister-Klein’s financials and posted them email?” Frank said.

“No. More than likely it was on a flash drive. Easily copied too, small enough to hide somewhere to get it out of the building,” Luke said. He looked at Abigail in question.

She shook her head. “I didn’t see a flash drive anywhere.”

They both looked to Jeffers.

“Nope,” he said, holding his hands out. “No flash drive was listed on the evidence list from the townhouse.”

“Emails can be traced by the company. Many corporations have spyware for employees’ emails just so they can track them.” Luke pulled up his laptop and started clicking away. “But she might’ve set up a dummy file buried in some other files with a personal code on it.”

Screens flew by as they watched. Abigail had to admit he knew his way around the internet and computer security systems.

“There. That’s the one,” he finally said, pointing to a folder inside a folder marked hairstyles.

“How do you know that’s it?” she asked.

“Because it doesn’t belong and when I try to enter it this happens,” he pressed the enter key and a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark popped up. “Problem is, I’ll bet your girl has it rigged so that if anyone enters the wrong code the whole thing deletes.”

“That doesn’t do us much good, if we don’t know the code then,” Jeffers said.

“Sudoku,” Abigail said, her mind already pulling up the image she’d discarded as useless.

“Sudoku?” Frank looked at her.

“There was one on top of her day planner. I just assumed it was one she’d finished. She was addicted to any games involving numbers.” She stared off into space and studied the picture of the puzzle closer. Then she noticed the odd pattern. “There’s numbers in all the boxes, but the numbers don’t solve the puzzle. No two numbers are supposed to repeat in the boxes or the same vertical or horizontal lines.”

“What are you seeing, Abby?”

“Double numbers, one in each box.” She looked at Luke, his fingers poised to type. “Six, four, seven, three, nine, eight, two, six again.”

He typed them in, his finger hovering over the enter button. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. I told you she’s brilliant when it comes to numbers.”

Without questioning her further, he gave her a nod and hit enter.

The screen flickered, the file disappearing and Abigail sucked in her breath. What if she’d been wrong? What if she’d just erased all the information to find Brianna?

The screen flashed again and up popped up pages and pages of spread sheets.

“Whoa!” Frank leaned in closer.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

“Damn, she must’ve copied the company’s entire financials,” Jeffers said.

“Yep, and it’s going to take a while to decipher it all and figure out what she found.” He looked up at her. He was right. It would take both of them to wade through this mess.

A knock sounded on the front door and the group stilled. Luke took up position between Abigail and the door while Frank pulled his weapon from his shoulder holster and headed for the door, Jeffers to the other side.

Frank looked through the peephole and shook his head at the others. He resisted the urge to grin as he opened the door. “It’s just Kirk Patrick.”

Kirk stopped just inside the door, seeing guns in both Edgars and Jeffers’ hands still trained on him. “Hey, don’t be shootin’ the delivery man.”

Frank nodded and the others lowered their weapons as he holstered his own. “’Bout damn time, kid. I should shoot you myself. I’m starving.”

“Well, you could’ve eaten the frozen stuff in the freezer like most normal peeps, old man,” the kid said, sauntering past with his arms full of groceries. He looked Abigail up and down as he sat the bags on the counter. “Hello, pretty lady.”

“Keep your eyes to yourself, unless you want to lose them,” Luke growled out, stepping between them.

Kirk tilted his head and eyed the gun Luke had replaced in his shoulder holster, moving back and hands out in submission. “Hey, man. No disrespect meant.”

The kid had major street smarts and common sense enough not to mess with a man armed like Luke. He also read people well and knew an alpha protecting his turf when he saw it. Those skills were the reasons Castello had plucked Kirk off the streets and set him up as his caretaker on this unit. He’d set the kid and his grandma up in a unit two doors down, with a few rules for Kirk. He maintained the Caddy and made it available when Frank called. He kept watch over this unit, kept it clean and the freezer stocked. He stayed out of the gangs, kept his grades up and had a part-time job working for a caterer. In return, Frank paid the rent and utilities on both places and had helped secure a scholarship for Kirk to go to college. Hadn’t surprised him in the least when Kirk decided to major in criminal justice.