Little Girl Gone

17



So far Logan seemed to have been doing a lot of catch up. What he really needed to do was get ahead of the game. To accomplish that he needed to find someone who could help him, whether they wanted to or not.

As he saw it, he had three choices: Aaron the not-boyfriend, Ryan the neighbor, or Angie the roommate. Aaron and Ryan, because of their sudden absences, would take time to find, if Logan could locate them at all. Angie, on the other hand, was still around, or at least had been when he’d talked to her that morning. Hopefully, she wasn’t gone, too.

Logan made a quick stop at the Home Depot in Playa Vista, then got to the girls’ apartment by 7:30 p.m. With the exception of the sun having gone down, nothing else had changed—Ryan’s apartment was still empty, and the curtains were still pulled across the windows of Elyse and Angie’s place. Logan rapped on the door, but, like before, heard nothing from inside.

Working security in trouble spots around the world meant knowing a variety of skills. The more you learned, the more likely you’d stay alive. As a trainer, it was Logan’s job to teach the men some of these skills. Skills like how to pick a lock.

Wearing the thin rubber gloves he’d purchased at the hardware store, and using the other items he’d bought to serve as a makeshift lock-pick set, Logan set to work on Elyse’s door, and had it open in less than thirty seconds.

He quickly slipped inside, then stood still, listening. Though the apartment was quiet, he was relieved to see it wasn’t empty like Aaron’s or Ryan’s places. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean Angie was still around. The apartment had been Elyse’s and her other two roommates’ before Angie had moved in, so there would have been no reason to remove all the stuff.

The place was basically a mirror image of Ryan’s apartment. In this case, the living room was to the right, and the dining room/kitchen to the left. Logan checked the kitchen first. There were several dishes in the sink, and a box of cereal sitting on the counter, but nothing that really told him if Angie had bolted or not. He headed into the back of the apartment.

There were two bedrooms at opposite ends of a short T-bone hallway, with a bathroom smack between them. Each bedroom was loosely divided into two separate areas, with beds, dressers, and, in three cases, small desks.

He found Elyse’s room first. He knew this because of the framed picture on the desk under the window. In it, Elyse, Lara and Anthony were mugging for the camera somewhere along the beach.

There were several paintings on the wall next to her bed. The images were almost cartoonish. Illustrations, he guessed you’d call them. The common thread in each was a young girl who looked more than a little bit like the girl in the graduation picture Tooney had given him. In the paintings, she seemed to be playing the role of the observer, not quite part of whatever was going on, but always hovering nearby. The girl in the one that stood out most to Logan had wings far too large for her body, and was sitting in a barren tree watching some other kids go by. If the colors hadn’t been so vibrant, and if there hadn’t been a mischievous smile on her face, it would have been depressing, but it was far from that. When he looked at the bottom corner, he wasn’t surprised to find it was signed Elyse Myat.

He moved to the other half of the room. There were a dozen photos pinned to the wall, but the girl who reoccurred in most of them was not Angie, so Logan assumed Elyse’s roommate had to be one of the other two girls.

He walked over to the second bedroom, and quickly determined that the bed nearest the door belonged to the last of the long term roommates.

The other half of the room, Angie’s half, was considerably less lived in. She had no desk, and what pictures she’d taped to her wall were limited to ones taken right there in the apartment. It was as if she had no life before moving in.

When Logan looked around the bed, he stopped and stared.

Sitting on the floor were a suitcase and a backpack. He checked inside each. They were stuffed with clothes and a few personal items. He zipped them up, then looked through the dresser he figured belonged to Angie. It was empty.

Clearing out, he thought, but not cleared out.

He thought for a moment, then walked back to Elyse’s room, and found a clear spot on the floor next to the wall to sit.

An hour and twenty minutes passed. Several times during that stretch he wondered if Angie might have left town without her bags. It was always a possibility. But then a key entered the lock, and the door swung open, and someone stepped inside.

He sensed more than heard the person rushing through the apartment.

A light flicked on in the hallway spilling into Elyse’s room. Quietly, Logan rose to his feet, ready to act if Angie or whoever it was decided to come his direction. Instead, the person entered the bathroom.

Logan repositioned himself so that he could see into the hallway, but wouldn’t be noticed without effort. Soon the toilet flushed, then water ran in the sink. A few seconds after it shut off, the person stepped back into the hallway.

It was Angie, and she was obviously in a hurry as she all but sprinted into her bedroom.

Logan stepped lightly out of Elyse’s room, and into the dark living room to wait.

It was only a few moments before he heard the suitcase bang against something. Once Angie reached the hallway, she stopped just long enough to flip off the light, then enter the living room.

Logan remained motionless as she lugged her bags toward the front door. As soon as she passed his position, he moved silently in behind her, then reached out and grabbed a loop on her backpack, and gave it a tug.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

She swallowed a scream as she whipped around, nearly losing her balance in the process. Logan held tight to the loop of her backpack, so as she’d turned, the bag slipped from her shoulder and off her arm, until he was the only one holding it.

“Who are you? What do you want?” she asked.

“Just wondering where you were going,” he said.

She took a hard look at him, then her eyes widened. “You’re that guy from last night. Logan Hooper.”

“Close enough.” He glanced at her suitcase. “You seem to be in a hurry.”

“I am.” She tried to grab her backpack from him, but he swung it out of her reached. “Give it to me. It’s mine.”

“You and I need to have a talk.”

“I need to get out of here. Give it back!”

“Talk first.”

“I don’t have time to talk with you.”

“And why would that be?” he asked.

She looked at the backpack, then said, “Keep it.” She picked up her suitcase and headed toward the door. But Logan got there first, and put a hand against it before she could pull it open.

“Please, let me go!”

“Once we talk, you can go anywhere you want.”

“No! Please! If I stay here I’m dead!”

For a half a second, he was struck silent. Not by her words, but by the utter fear behind them.

“All right. Then we’ll go somewhere else,” he said.

“Fine,” she said quickly. “Just, please, let’s go.”

He moved his hand, and let her open the door. Once they reached the ground level, she turned toward the back of the small complex, presumably heading for the tenant parking area.

“No,” he said, then motioned in the direction of the street where his El Camino was waiting. “This way.”

“Hell, no! You’re crazy if you think I’m going to come back later to get my car. I’m taking it now.”

They locked eyes for a moment. “All right,” he said. “But you’re crazy if you think I’m going to let you drive on your own. We’ll go together, then you’re going to have to drop me off close to here when we’re done so I can get my car.”

“Whatever. No problem.”

Logan knew she had no intention on dropping him off anywhere near this area. In fact, he was sure she planned on getting into her car, and leaving before he had a chance to join her.

He let her lead them down a windy stone path to the pack parking area. Most of the dozen or so spaces were full. Angie headed toward a blue Mini Cooper near the left end.

“I’m going to have to pull out first,” she said. “The jerk in the slot next to me always parks too close.”

As they got closer Logan could see that she was right, but he had no illusions she would actually stop to let him in. He was about to tell her they would both get in on the driver’s side when a man stepped from the shadows, a gun in his hand.

“No one’s going anywhere,” the man said.

Angie reflexively brought the suitcase in front of her like a shield, but unless the clothes inside were made of Kevlar, her luggage wasn’t going to do her much good.

The man walked steadily toward her, moving his gaze back and forth steadily between Angie and Logan. It was Tooney in the refrigerator at Coffee Time all over again. Logan knew instantly this man was only here for one purpose, to deliver the death Angie had been trying to avoid.

Logan had only one shot at this, and he knew it. He watched the man’s eyes, and the moment they flicked from him back to Angie, Logan drew his arm back a few inches, then swung it forward, letting Angie’s backpack fly from his hand on a low trajectory, straight at the man’s knees.

Immediately, he followed.

The motion of the bag caught the gunman’s attention. He turned, then twisted to the side to get out of the way. The bag missed him, but Logan didn’t.

He slammed into the man’s shoulder and pushed him face first into Angie’s Mini. He wrenched the gun away, then landed two quick blows to the guy’s kidneys. The man rolled onto his back, and threw a punch that grazed Logan’s chin.

Logan didn’t want to waste any more time, so he kneed him in the groin, and shoved him to the ground.

The man writhed in pain, and wasn’t getting up any time soon.

When teaching self-defense techniques, Carl had always said, “Hit ’em fast, and hit ’em hard. Don’t ever give them a chance.”

Check. Check. And check.

Logan turned, intending to grab Angie and get the hell out there. But while her suitcase was sitting in the middle of the pavement, she was gone.