Chapter 10
T
he following afternoon, Katrina hummed as she entered Boyd's apartment with a bag of groceries in each arm. She'd left him and Lewis directing the following up of leads and had come back early to prepare a home-cooked meal.
A knock on the door interrupted her before she could begin unpacking her groceries. Looking through the peephole she saw Lewis, his expression grim. Panic that something horrible had happened to Boyd caused her knees to weaken. Opening the door, she tried to speak but her vocal cords refused to work. All she could do was stare at Lewis with a question on her face and fear in her eyes.
“May I come in?” he asked.
She stepped aside.
Once inside, he closed the door, insuring their privacy.
“Boyd?” she managed to choke out at last.
“He's fine.” Lewis's features had relaxed into a more comfortable expression but his gaze remained cold.
Katrina tensed. Something was wrong. “What's going on?”
Lewis drew his gun and motioned her further back into the living room area. “You might have managed to convince Boyd that you're legit, but I'm not buying it. You and I are going to find your aunt.”
“I don't know where she is,” Katrina insisted in clipped tones.
“You'd better. Your life depends on it. Otherwise, I'll have to shoot you, make it look like one of the hoodlums after the award did it, and hope your aunt meant it when she said she'd turn over the evidence if anything happened to you. However, I'd prefer not to go that far.”
There was a fanatical glint in his eyes that told Katrina he meant what he said. Thinking quickly, she said, “All right. I'll help. But we need to contact the rest of the team for backup.”
He sneered at her. “I'm not stupid. You've got Boyd hoodwinked. The minute he and the others showed up, you'd tell them that you didn't know anything and he'd believe you.” He motioned toward the desk against the far wall. “Sit down. You're going to write a farewell note. You're going to tell Boyd that you're going to meet your aunt and that it's no use for him or any of us to continue looking for you because you and she have devised a plan that will make it impossible for you to be found.”
Fear for herself was outweighed by the thought that Boyd would think she'd betrayed his trust. “This is kidnapping. You're supposed to be upholding the law, not breaking it.”
“Write the note.” He gave her a shove toward the desk.
“I suppose a quarter of a million dollars can corrupt anyone,” she muttered, seating herself.
Lewis snorted. “The money means nothing to me. I want the evidence to put that scumbag Garduchi behind bars.”
Katrina heard the hatred in his voice. She took a calming breath. She had to think clearly. Taking a blank sheet of paper out of the desk drawer, she began to write:
Dear Boyd,
I realize that because of our intimacy you thought we'd formed a partnership.
“Keep it simple. Just say what I told you to say,” Lewis ordered curtly.
“You want him to believe the note, don't you?” she replied.
“I said keep it simple,” he repeated threateningly and began to reach for the paper to destroy it.
“I care about Boyd. I don't want him coming after us.” Her gaze met his. “I get the feeling that you don't intend to let anyone stand in your way.”
He stopped in midmotion. “You're right. I don't want Boyd getting suspicious. I'd hate to have to hurt him. Go on, but keep it as short as possible.”
Mentally Katrina patted herself on the back and continued writing:
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I enjoyed our time together, but you were right about trust. Sometimes it gets misplaced. I do feel badly about this. Perhaps in your line of work, not trusting anyone is for the best. I'm on my way to meet my aunt. It will be a waste of your time to try to find us. We have devised a plan of escape by which we will disappear forever.
I will miss you,
Katrina
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“Good,” Lewis said reading over her shoulder. “Now put it on the kitchen counter by the bags of groceries and get your things together.”
Pretending to scratch her ear, she loosened an earring and carefully dropped it out of Lewis's view between the two bags of groceries as she placed the note in plain view. She hoped the wording of the note and finding a single earring would cause Boyd to realize she hadn't left voluntarily. More importantly, she hoped he would get the message about not trusting anyone.
After making certain there were no weapons in her satchel, Lewis followed her as she moved around the apartment picking up her things. When that was done, she casually reached for her purse hoping her behavior would make him think there was nothing of importance inside.
“Just leave that where it is,” he said. “And step back.”
Mentally cursing the fact that he was so thorough, she watched him open the purse and take out her gun. Tossing the purse to her, he slipped her gun into the pocket of his jacket, holding it ready to be fired and aimed at her through the fabric. Then he reholstered his gun.
Clever, she admitted. If he shot her, it would be with her gun and Boyd would think some hoodlum had found her.
“We're going out the back door. Anyone who sees us had better think we're just a couple leaving on a trip, or you're dead and them, too. I can't leave any witness to identify me.”
She didn't doubt he meant it. His car was parked by the Dumpster. He opened the trunk, had her toss her things inside, then opened the back door for her and waited for her to climb in. Taking a prescription bottle out of his pocket, he handed it to her. “Take two.”
She recognized the name of the drug. It was a sedative. She read the directions. “It says to only take one.”
He scowled threateningly. “Don't argue. There's bottled water on the seat.”
She took two pills out of the container, then opened the bottle of water. Plopping the pills in her mouth, she held them under her tongue and took a drink of the water.
He put his face near hers. “I'm being nice keeping you alive. It'd be a lot easier to just leave you dead in the Dumpster. Now swallow the pills.”
She scowled at him. “You're keeping me alive because you're not certain my aunt will keep her word about turning over the evidence.”
“I'm keeping you alive because I don't like killing people unnecessarily and I'm hoping you'll cooperate. But if you make this difficult, I'll take my chances Leona meant what she said.”
She believed him. And as long as she was alive, there was hope she would escape or be rescued. With another gulp of water, she let the pills go down.
Lewis closed the door and climbed in behind the wheel. “We'll just sit here for a minute and give them a chance to work. You should be feeling drowsy already. I remember the first time I took one. It was after my daughter's death. I hadn't slept for a week.”
Katrina felt a fog closing in over her mind. Giving up a useless fight to stay awake, she curled up on the back seat as a blank darkness enveloped her.
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Boyd had given Katrina his car to run her errands. Taking a taxi home, he had the cabby stop on the way so that he could pick up a bottle of wine and some flowers.
“Heavy date?” the man asked with a knowing grin.
“Maybe,” Boyd replied. He knew getting more deeply involved with Katrina at the moment wasn't smart but he hadn't been able to keep his eyes or his mind off of her all day. After she left, she'd continued to haunt him. It was time to throw caution to the wind.
Opening the apartment door, he was surprised that there was no aroma of cooking food. He called out to her, but got no answer. Striding through the living room to the kitchen area, he saw the bags of groceries still on the counter and the sheet of paper nearby. Glancing through the note, he felt as if he'd been kicked in the stomach. He'd played the fool.
“It's what you
really
expected,” he growled at himself. Her face filled his mind. No, it wasn't what he'd
really
expected! He had truly believed she was being honest with him.
Grabbing up the phone, he called the task force and had them put an all-points bulletin out on her. It was Jane Forester who answered and he could almost hear the snicker in her voice. They'd all thought he was an idiot to trust her...everyone but Lewis.
He paced the floor to cool down. As he got his temper under control, something about the note began to nag at him. He read it more closely a second time.
She talked about intimacy, but there hadn't been any between them. He frowned at the unpacked bags of groceries and a glint of gold caught his eye. It was one of her earrings.
She hadn't left of her own free will! He fought a bout of panic as he read the note a third time looking for any clues as to who had taken her.
The part about not trusting anyone was most likely a warning. Could someone on the task force be involved? He studied the note again. The word “partnership” taunted him. Surely she couldn't be implying that Lewis was involved in her disappearance. Lewis was the best, most by-the-book lawman he'd ever worked with. And, after part-nering with him for three years, Boyd would have sworn Lewis was one of the most honest. He was reading more into the note than was there.
He started for the door then stopped and went to his computer. Connecting with the department files, he called up Lewis's file. What was available to him was short and concise...name, family members, marriage status, address and brief summary of Lewis's career.
The man had a distinguished record. “This is ridiculous,” Boyd muttered to himself. Still, he read through the personal data in the file. He'd known Lewis had a daughter who'd died about five years ago from a drug overdose. He'd been to Lewis's home and seen the photos of the girl in the living room. She'd been pretty. And he knew that the death of the girl was a driving force in Lewis's life, but it was no reason for Lewis to cross the line in this case. They'd worked together nailing another crime boss and Lewis had insisted they go by the book. And he'd been the same way in the Garduchi case. He hadn't wanted to do anything that would get evidence thrown out of court.
Boyd looked back at marital status. From the dates in the file, about a year after the daughter's death, Lewis's wife had divorced him. But there wasn't anything unusual about that. There was a high divorce rate among lawmen. If there had been any problems in the marriage, the death of a child could easily have been the final rift. Boyd noted that Lewis's address hadn't changed following the divorce and recalled someone mentioning that Lewis's wife had moved back to California to look after her parents.
He leaned back in his chair and rubbed the back of his neck. But if it wasn't Lewis why would Katrina use the word “partnership.” There were a dozen other phrases she could have chosen... “because of our intimacy you thought I was someone you could trust” or “we'd formed a bond.” But she'd used “partnership.”
“They say everyone has a price,” he muttered. Maybe Lewis's was a quarter of a million. The expression on his face turned grimmer. He didn't want to believe that.
Forty minutes later he was parking in the driveway of Lewis's home. The meticulously maintained ranch-style house was located in one of the older middle-class communities beyond the beltway.
Lewis opened the door as Boyd reached it. “You look like hell. Come on in,” he said sympathetically, stepping aside to give Boyd room to pass him.
Boyd accepted the invitation.
“I thought Katrina was going to fix you a nice home-cooked meal. What happened? You find out she can't cook?” Lewis said teasingly.
“She's gone.”
Lewis's expression became serious. “Gone? As in left your apartment to go to a hotel or âgone' as in disappeared?” Worry etched itself into his features. “Do you think one of Garduchi's men got her?”
Boyd had to admit the man seemed genuinely surprised and concerned. Still, he decided to pretend he believed the note. “Gone as in left town on her own.”
“Did she say where she was going?” Lewis motioned for Boyd to go into the living room.
“She's on her way to join her aunt The two have devised a scheme to disappear for good.”
Lewis shook his head. “I've always been able to trust your instincts before. That cynicism of yours makes it difficult for anyone to earn your approval. You said she was on the level and that was good enough for me.”
“I thought she was.” Boyd lowered himself into a chair.
Lewis eased down on the couch. “How about we order a pizza, have some beer and watch a football game? I've got the sports station on my cable.”