I nodded numbly and Will took the phone from my hand, murmured a few words to Sampson, and ended the call.
“Kayleigh,” Will said.
I felt the tears stinging behind my eyes, but before I would let them fall, Will wrapped me in his arms, his lips warm against the part in my hair.
“We’re going to get her. We’re going to get both of them home,” Will said.
I looked up and caught his eyes—they were fixed, hard but open, the golden flecks dancing like firelight. I don’t know if it was my scrambled emotions or the steadiness of Will’s gaze, but suddenly, it was he and I against a kidnapping murderer and we were going to do whatever it took to bring Alyssa and Kayleigh back—regardless of who was willing to help us.
“All right, then,” he said, breaking the silence. “You going to wear that?”
He gestured to the sweats I was wearing and I cocked an eyebrow. “To do what?”
Will grabbed his keys, his jacket, then turned to face me. “To prove that Janitor Bud is the man we want.”
Chapter Sixteen
Other than navigating from the printed sheet Will handed me, Will and I didn’t speak for the entire car ride over to Bud Hastings’s Fillmore-area apartment. My whole body was humming by the time we entered the vestibule. My mind was on a constant spin cycle trying scenarios and considering locations. Will was energized and as chipper as a robin. He buzzed number seventy-four and we both waited, silently.
No answer.
Another buzz—this time Will mashed his index finger against the buzzer and held it there. Still, no answer.
“Probably because he’s out looking for another girl to attack,” I told him.
Will mashed another button.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
“Manager.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Centuri, is it? My name is Will Sherman from Scotland Yard and I’m afraid we need to get into apartment seventy-four, currently rented by a gentleman by the name of William ‘Bud’ Hastings?”
Mr. Centuri launched into a significant series of horrible-sounding coughs, further cementing my desire to never, ever take up smoking.
“Scotland Yard?”
“Yes, sir.”
Another cough. “You guys have, uh, what’s that? Jurisdiction out here?”
“I’d be happy to show you my credentials if you’ll just show me into Hastings’s domicile, sir.”
Centuri clicked off the intercom and another series of coughs and labored breathing began, this one coming from the door of the apartment right in front of us. The door snapped open halfway and a squat man built like a fireplug leaned out toward us.
“What’d you say your name was, again?”
“Holmes, Doctor, and this is my associate Mrs. Malaprop.”
Centuri’s beady eyes scanned me suspiciously and I broke into a polite smile and a heavily accented, “Good evening, fine sir.”
Will shot me a look, but it went right over Centuri’s head as he apparently assumed Will’s credentials were in my bra.
“Bud in some kind of trouble?” Centuri asked my tits.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Will said, his English sharp and clipped.
“He’s a good tenant. Always pays his rent on time, never been no kind of problem. On vacation or something right now.”
“The key, sir?”
“Yeah.” Centuri disappeared into his apartment and reappeared with a single key pinched between forefinger and thumb.
“Aren’t you going to escort us?”
Centuri waved a handful of Vienna sausage fingers through the air. “Eh, you’re cops. Jeopardy’s on. Just lock up after yourself and give a knock when you’re leaving. Drop the key through my mail slot.”
“Brilliant.”
“Pip, pip,” I put in.
“Pip, pip?” Will asked, once Centuri shut his door.
“I was playing a part. Trying to make it believable.”
“Thanks for going to the trouble, but I don’t think our landlord there is going to mull too much over.”
“He could. He asked you your name and about Scotland Yard.”
“And he bought that I was first Will Sherman and then Dr. Holmes and that you were a wily English woman from a Sheridan play.”
“Hence the pip, pip.”
“This one’s seventy-four.”
Will knocked. “Mr. Hastings? This is Dr. Holmes from Scotland Yard. Please open up.”
I crossed my arms and cocked out a hip. “You’re really digging the Scotland Yard thing, aren’t you?”
“Pip, pip,” Will said over her shoulder as he sunk the key into the lock.
I sucked in a sharp breath, feeling my eyes widen. “Oh my God.”
“What? Looks like a regular ol’ place to me.”
I pumped my head. “I know. Regular. No to-the-ceiling collections of doll heads or empty terrariums. There’s a couch and a coffee table and an old television set.”