“Eve!”
She’d vanished. He took the curving stairs three at a time and bolted through the office, back into her apartment. Her purse was still on the counter. The pegs by the back door held her car keys. On the landing he scanned the empty alley, then dashed down the wooden staircase and around the side of the building. The parking lot was empty but for his Jeep.
Cold certainty crawled up his spine and settled into the base of his brain. She was gone, taken from the apartment from under his nose, while he was in the shower.
He was drowning. He knew how it felt, a deceptive lack of feeling that marked the leading edge of a tsunami. Then the surge hit. He stood stock-still as the wave engulfed him—fear, anguish, terror, anger rising inside him, forcing their way up his chest, into his throat—then he was moving. He had to get away from this rampaging, acid-skinned, sharp-clawed thing inside him, threatening to gut him from the inside out.
He was headed for his Jeep, when his phone, slipped into his front pocket, buzzed. Chad’s cell had a distinctive ringtone. Matt’s was an old-fashioned bell-tone ring. He pulled it from his pocket. Eve’s cell number appeared on the screen.
Oh shit.
He tapped Answer.
“—a little over the top back there, don’t you think?”
He immediately muted the call, so he could hear her but nothing from his surroundings would be audible to Eve or anyone with her. Her voice sounded distant, melded with the radio, like the phone wasn’t up to her mouth.
He could make out Lyle’s voice, but his reply was too muffled to understand. But it sounded dismissive. As if Eve didn’t matter anymore.
“Would you turn that off, please? I hear music so much at Eye Candy, I hate listening to it when I’m not at work.”
That was bullshit, pure and simple. She must have gotten an assent, because the background noise shut off.
“Much better,” she said. A pause, then, “Travis, I heard Maria’s working at Two Slices. Is her mom watching the kids?”
Fight back the terror, the emotion that would get her killed. Phone to his ear, he sprinted to the sidewalk and pulled up a mental map of Thirteenth Street, running through the East Side, thirteen blocks from the river that formed the city’s eastern boundary. The next mention will either be Spattered Ink or the crazy psychic doing business out of her house with about thirty cats for company.
“Can you believe Madame LaMoue is still in business? She gets a booth at the East Side street fair every year. Local color. That’s how I describe her to people considering opening up shop on the East Side. Every community needs someone with the eye.”
No response from Lyle, but Matt was in the Jeep, the gas pedal floored. He used Chad’s cell to dial Sorenson.
“Lyle’s got Eve,” he said when she answered. “Took her out of the apartment while I was in the shower. They’re moving south on Thirteenth Street. I’m on my way to the precinct.”
“Shit is about to go down,” Sorenson said. “Caleb Webber just came in. He got an anonymous call suggesting he track down his father. Pastor Webber made it to the men’s breakfast at seven but not the volunteer lunch at noon. No one’s seen him since eight a.m.”
“Not answering his cell?”
“He doesn’t carry one. Caleb checked the restaurant because sometimes his dad stays and works there, and his car’s still in the parking lot, doors locked. No signs of his dad.”
“It wouldn’t take much to overpower him,” Matt said. “I’m ninety seconds away.”
He braked to a halt in the parking lot at the back of the building. Both phones in hand, he sprinted through the back door, shouldering aside officers in his haste to get to the team. Hawthorn, Sorenson, McCormick, and a couple more uniforms crowded into a conference room with Caleb Webber.
Caleb looked over Matt’s shoulder. “Where’s Eve?”
“Gone,” Matt said, then set his phone down on the table.
“Jesus fucking Christ! You said you’d—” Caleb began, but the sound of Eve’s voice echoing tinnily from Matt’s phone cut him off mid-bellow.
“Where are we?” Matt could hear the fear running under Eve’s question. A car door slammed shut, then Eve said, “Is that the old Tyson plant?”
“Has she been relaying her position the whole time?” Lieutenant Hawthorn asked.
“Yes,” Matt said. “She’s dropping hints like bread crumbs, and there’s long stretches of silence. Two Slices, Madame LaMoue, then a shooting that happened at Lassom Park.” All heading toward the river, toward the maze of abandoned warehouses weighing down the East Side.
“Counselor, make a list of places your father could be,” Hawthorn said. “We’ll dispatch a squad car to check them out.”
“Mom checked his appointment book. He wasn’t due anywhere until this afternoon,” Caleb said.