The Blind (20 page)

Wednesday, November 4
8:53 p.m.

J
ack's Audi looked out of place in her motel parking lot next to an old Impala and minivan with missing hubcaps. The driver, on the other hand, looked very right.

Evie hitched her bag on her shoulder and climbed out of her Beetle. She stepped into the circle of Jack's arms, leaning into a cloud of air that smelled of Jack, although tonight's version had a dash of dust and sweat.

“How was your day?” she asked. Such a mundane phrase, one she'd heard thousands of times from her parents and her brothers and their wives. She had no idea how good asking this of someone could make her feel.

“Got a new goat,” Jack said. “And you?”

She held up her hand, one of her knuckles still swollen. “Got in a fistfight.”

Jack took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Tell me about it.”

“I'm fine.”

He pulled her hips to his and leaned against the car. “Talk.”

She ran the knuckles of her good hand along the front of his shirt. “Not much to talk about. The homicide cop popped off, and I popped him. Won't be the first time cops took a swing at each other in the heat of an investigation, and it won't be the last.”

Jack tucked her hand into his arm and escorted her out of the parking lot. “Hayden said Knox deserved it.”

Evie pushed him away. “You know about the fight?”

“I'm keeping abreast of things.”

She shook her head in awe. “Have I mentioned lately your issues with control?”

He drew her to his side. “Have I mentioned I'd like to take a crack at Knox? Hayden said he's been yanking your chain since the day you arrived and that there wasn't a person in that conference room who wasn't cheering you on.”

“Now you're acting borderline stalkerish. You realize that, don't you?”

“From the way it sounded, it's a good thing you got to Knox before Hayden did.”

“My team has my back. Always have. Always will.” She ground her boot heel into the loose asphalt. Unless the president booted her from the team. “The whole thing should have never happened. I swear it's Houston all over again. I'm tired of having to prove myself.”

“So stop.”

“Says the person with the Y chromosome.”

“I'm serious. You're the best, Evie.”

She tucked her arm in his and headed for her motel room. “You're just saying that because you've seen my Saturday panties.”

“I'm saying it because it's true.”

“Okay, I'm one shade shy of wonderful. So let me get a fresh set of clothes, then we'll go back to your place and I might let you see my Wednesday panties.”

Jack coughed out a laugh that turned into a smile. She loved that smile, and she could seriously get used to seeing it every night as she drifted off into sleep.

Inside her room, she tossed her bag on the bed and dug out a clean pair of jeans and two T-shirts and pairs of underwear. In the bathroom, she reached for her toothbrush and froze. A card was perched next to the tiny coffeepot. Someone had scrawled,
Evie
, on the front and placed a heart over the
i
. Red ink.

She tore open the envelope, and silvery confetti poured out. No, not confetti. Twisted bits of metal. A razor-sharp sliver speared her palm. Plucking out the metal shaving, she ignored the trickle of red oozing from her hand and took out the card, which was a photograph of a brown-haired young woman holding a blond-haired child. Both were wide-eyed and terrified.

The earth tilted. She grabbed on to the bathroom counter with both hands. Her stomach heaved, and she swallowed sickness brought on by a sick man. The sick, twisted son of a bitch.

“Evie, what happened to your h—” Jack's gaze shifted to the photo, and he rested a knuckled fist on the bathroom counter. “He has his next victims.”

Evie pulled in one breath, then another. “This is good.” Another breath. “This is good because right now we know that this woman and this child are alive, and they will be for at least another day.” She grabbed a washcloth and pressed it into her palm. “Call Ricci. I need to talk to Mrs. Francis, the night manager. Her office window faces the parking lot, and she pays attention to who's coming and going.” Yes, this was very, very good.

She sprinted to the manager's office. “Mrs. Francis!” Evie pushed open the door to the motel's front office so hard the door handle dented the wall. Yeah, she was fired up. The desk was empty. “Mrs. Francis?”

Evie took a deep breath. Mrs. Francis was already baking. Banana nut muffins. She flipped open the desk gate, her boot heel sliding on something slick and shiny red.

“
Mierda
!” She dropped to her knees next to Mrs. Francis. Mouth still. Chest still. The only movement was the blood trickling from a hole on the side of her neck. Evie slid her fingers to the older woman's wrist. No pulse but still warm.

A shadow sliced across her. She recognized the smell.

“Get down here,” she told Jack. “Press your handkerchief against her neck.”

Evie straddled the older woman and started compressions. “Come on, Mrs. Francis. Come on.”

“What happened?” Jack asked.

Push. Push. “GSW compliments of Vandemere.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Without stopping compressions, she aimed her chin at the older woman's torn sweater, a square patch of raw flesh showing on her shoulder.

Within four minutes, the first squad car arrived. In eight minutes an ambulance pulled into the pocked parking lot, and only then did Evie step away, dragging Jack with her. Like her, his arms and knees were streaked with Mrs. Francis's blood, and his face was deathly white, as if his blood had spilled onto the cracked tile of Mrs. Francis's office. Regardless of what he saw during his street years, there was nothing compared to this ugliness. A world where white-haired old ladies who needed to supplement their Social Security income worked as motel night managers and got shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her bloody hands fisted.

Another car with flashing lights turned into the parking lot, this one with the word
Detective
written on the door.

Like Jack she believed there were pockets of beauty. Of goodness. Of justice. And she was grateful for men and women who fought for justice with passion and force.

Evie met Detective Knox at the door of Mrs. Francis's office. “You see her, Knox? That's Dottie Francis. She has fourteen grandchildren and bakes the world's best blueberry muffins. The secret is lemon zest in the batter. She is Our Girl, Knox. You hear me?” She thumped Knox on the chest. “Our. Girl.”

Knox's jaw tightened, along with his fist. “You're damn right.”

11:47 p.m.

Ding.

The elevator doors leading to his penthouse slid open, but Jack couldn't bring himself to step into that small, brightly lit box with its mirrored walls and creamy white Italian tile. He stared at the congealed blood on the side of his shoe. The knot in his stomach lurched.

“You want to take the stairs?” Evie asked.

Twenty-four flights of stairs is exactly what he needed: the singular task of putting one foot in front of the other, the pounding echo, the narrow upward chamber with no distractions. “Do you mind? I missed my workout this morning. Not that I'm complaining.” Had it only been this morning that he and Evie shared a bed and fresh-squeezed orange juice? Jack tried to smile, but it never reached his lips.

Evie opened the door to the stairwell. “Let's go.”

As they headed up the stairs, he forced himself to walk, but by the third floor he was jogging, and at floor six, he took off at a sprint. At the tenth floor he finally slowed and Evie, who'd stuck with him, said, “You can never outrun it.”

A deathly pall. A sickly odor. The ugliness continued. Dottie Francis, the sixty-eight-year-old manager of the EZ-Rest Motel, was pronounced dead upon arrival at Good Samaritan Hospital. He wore the stain of that death, a stain that sickened and angered him.

He slowed, and they took the next two floors at a slow walk until Evie stopped and held up her hand. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Listen,” she said. “This place is like an echo chamber. Someone's on the stairs below.”

He pulled himself out of the deathly fog. Evie pulled out her gun and flattened herself against the wall.

Footsteps sounded below, slow, almost plodding. Heavy breathing. The air in the stairwell thinned. A shadow appeared on the floor below.

Evie extended her arms. “Get your hands in the air.”

The footfall stilled, but not the huffing and puffing. “Whatever you say, Lady Feeb.”

Thursday, November 5
12:07 a.m.

Evie jammed her sidearm back in her holster. “Dammit, Freddy. I'm going to take your camera and throw it down the stairwell.”

Freddy came around the corner, sweat pouring down his face, hands raised. “No camera.” Huff. “Just me.” Huff, puff.

No slickster grin. No sickly sweet smell of watermelon bubble gum. He sank onto the landing and clutched his chest. “I bequeath my camera to my niece, Lilliana, and you, Evie, can have my superhero lunch box and thermos.”

Evie took a seat next to him.

“Man, you stink, Lady Feeb.”

Of blood and sweat as she'd tried to bring a dead woman to life. “You too,” she said. Sweat soaked Freddy's shirt, but there was no camera hanging there. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“My landlord locked me out of my place. I was hoping you could loan me a few bucks.”

12:29 a.m.

When she was a little kid, Sabrina hated the dark. At night she'd huddle under the covers, trying not to think about the monsters lurking under her bed, behind her curtains, and in her closet. The worst ones lived in the closet. Really bad ones with sharp fangs and red, bulging eyes, always ready to pounce on her and tear her apart with claws as long as her fingers.

Her mom finally gave her a bottle of pink glitter body mist to keep by her bed.

“Monsters are afraid of the color pink and anything that sparkles,” her mom had said.

Stupid, but at the time, she'd fallen for it. The body mist with its pretty pink pump and swirly label still sat on her dresser in her bedroom even though she didn't believe in monsters anymore, at least not the kind that lurked in closets. Her chin trembled. The real monsters lurked outside of closets. Right now she wanted that bottle of monster spray. She wanted her mom. A cry lodged in her throat. Today she was in a dark closet, and a monster stood outside the door.

Her throat spasmed, but the duct tape across her mouth stopped the cry rushing up her throat. The bundle in her arms whimpered.

Angela. Her baby.

A baby raising a baby
. That's what everyone said. That she was too young to raise a kid.

Despite what they said, Sabrina was trying to do things right, like this whole thing with Angela's ear. Her baby had been up all night last night, tugging at her ear and fussing. This morning the fusses had turned into screams. Her mom was working and so was her grandma. She could have waited for one of them to get off work, but she'd done the responsible thing. She'd bundled up little Angela and took the bus to the pediatric urgent care clinic, the affordable one downtown where she'd waited patiently for the doctor to see her baby. The doctor said Angela's ear was red and bulging and gave her medicine that smelled like bubble gum. She'd done the right thing.

Until she got to the bus stop.

The man driving past the bus stop had offered them a ride. He didn't look like a monster. He was in a nice shirt and shiny shoes. Little Angela was exhausted and still fussy, and Sabrina was tired and fussy because neither of them got any sleep the night before.

That was the problem. She'd been too tired to see the monster behind the man, but she heard him now outside the closet where she was trapped. Metal against metal. Clinking and sawing.

Angela, her beautiful angel-headed daughter, cried out, and Sabrina held her to her chest and cried like the baby she was.

Thursday, November 5
6:55 a.m.

Y
ou know, I could really get used to the good life.” Freddy pulled the lever, and a cloud of milky foam plopped into his coffee cup. “Maybe you and The Suit can adopt me after you get married.”

Evie bulleted a croissant at Freddy's head, but he snagged it in the air. “Fast hands,” he said with a chuckle as he tore off a bite. “So where's The Suit this morning?”

“Running up and down the stairwell.”

“Why?”

“Because it's an efficient use of his time.” Evie understood so much more now about Jack. He didn't have time for gym memberships or hobbies that netted him exercise, so he ran stairs. Those tight stairwells also helped him think or rather corral and control his thoughts, feelings, too. She'd seen that last night as he'd dealt with Dottie Francis's death.

She curled her fingers around the gold-rimmed coffee cup and pictured the plain Jane paper cup she'd found in Carter Vandemere's trash. So far they'd had no luck in tracking down the shop where the cup had come from. Today she planned on hitting more coffee shops.

“Didn't you two get enough exercise last night?” Freddy leered at her.

Evie took a long draw of rich, steamy gourmet coffee. “This is so not a good way to wake up.”

“Don't blame me, Lady Feeb. You invited me.”

Evie had been around controlling Jack too long because last night she'd insisted Freddy crash in one of Jack's spare bedrooms. He'd been booted from his apartment, and she was worried about him staying in a cheap motel because clearly Carter Vandemere could get in and out of cheap motels. She grabbed another croissant and was about to dunk it in her coffee. She frowned. Since when did she have croissants and gourmet coffee for breakfast? Since Jack. She dunked and took a bite. Delicious.

At her elbow, her phone lit up with a text. “Looks like we're tied.” She clicked on the photo accompanying the text and showed Freddy. “My youngest brother and his wife had their first child last night. That makes eight nephews.”

“Congratulations, Evie.” Freddy's smile was genuine. “Everything go okay?”

“Everyone's healthy and happy.” Her phone buzzed with another text. She groaned out a laugh. “Except my mother, who felt compelled to remind me that I am now the only one of her children who has not blessed her with a grandchild or ten.”

Freddy spread raspberry preserves on another croissant and topped it with a sliver of dark chocolate. “You and The Suit would have some good-lookin' kids.”

She pictured a collection of little people: all with Jack's denim-blue eyes, his royal jaw, and really great hair. They'd also have his drive and intelligence but her sense of humor and spirit of adventure. Everyone needed to get a little dirty once in a while. The pictures were shockingly clear. A breath froze in her lungs because they shouldn't be. She'd never wanted children. Ever. She was dedicated to her career and to being the doting aunt. Hell, she was going to have her nephews' initials tattooed on her ankle, that's how serious she was.

People change.
That's what she'd been saying about the obese image of young Carter Vandemere.

A wave of something warm—something that had nothing to do with Jack's coffee—settled in her midsection.

The bronze door of Jack's penthouse opened, and he jogged in, a towel looped around his neck. No sweat. Prince of his world. And hers?

He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “Let me grab a shower, and I'll be ready to go.”

Freddy took a sip of his espresso. “Did you feel that, Lady Feeb?”

She wrapped her arms around her midsection. “Feel what?”

Freddy licked the foam from his lips. “The ground shifting beneath your feet.”

7:11 a.m.

Hayden Reed reached across the bed and hugged air. His eyelids flew open. The right side of the bed was empty. He threw off the covers and poked his head into the bathroom. Also empty. Pulling on his trousers, he checked the adjoining living room. A door on the other side of the room opened, and Kate walked in.

“He's gone,” Kate said around a frown. “Smokey Joe is not in his room.”

Hayden slipped his arms around his fiancée's waist and pulled her to him. He'd gotten very used to waking up with Kate in his arms. He planted a kiss on her irked lips. “Did you check at the coffee machine in the lobby?”

“Yes. I also checked the hotel's exercise room, garden, smoking area, and the little bakery around the corner.”

“Maybe Smokey took a cab and went to the police station early. He's been poring through those phone calls for days. Really, he's been impressive, Kate.”

“Not this morning.” Kate pulled her phone out of her back pocket and jabbed at the keys. “He could have let me know where he's going.”

“Yes, he could have, but he's mad at the world about being forced off his mountain. Let me make a few phone calls and see if I can track him down.”

8:22 a.m.

With a fat marker Evie wrote on her white board:
1
. She had one day to catch a killer.

Freddy pushed himself back from the desk in Evie's LAPD office and squinted at the image on his laptop. “You think Ricci will put me on payroll for this?”

“No,” Evie said. “But maybe you'll earn yourself a get-out-of-jail pass or two.” She stood over his shoulder and stared at the face he'd been working on all morning. An artist LAPD regularly used for age progression had modified the sketch of young Carter Vandemere, but they weren't getting any hits. Since Freddy was so well versed in altering images, she'd asked him to do some of his Photoshop magic.

“What do you think?” Freddy asked.

Evie stared at the altered image. Fifty pounds thinner, fifteen years older.
People change
. “Jack, come take a look at this.”

Jack, who'd been studying the portrait of the woman in the red dress, joined her. “He doesn't look familiar, but send it and any others to me, and I'll forward them to the office for Brady, Claire, and Adam.” All people who could have ties to the bomber.

Ricci popped his head in the doorway. “Just got a call from Huntington Park PD. A teenage mother and her baby were reported missing this morning.”

The air rushed from Evie's lungs. She'd been expecting this call, but that didn't soften the blow. “Got a picture of them?”

“Check your e-mail.”

She spun toward her computer. Until she joined the army, Evie had struggled with patience, but working with military ordnance taught her a good deal about taking her time. Jack could use a lesson or two from her army days. He paced back and forth before the portrait, his jaw so tense, she could see the contour of bone.

Part of his agitation had to do with finding the bomber, but he was also waiting on word from Jon about his sister.

A file appeared, and Evie enlarged the image. A woman, more like a girl who couldn't be more than sixteen, popped onto the screen. She held a blond-haired baby in a christening gown. Evie took the photo she received with the metal shavings and set it next to the photo of Sabrina Delgado and her six-month-old daughter, Angela.

Next victims confirmed.

Jack let out a growl. She grabbed her purse. At this point she no longer expected Jack to stay put.

10:47 a.m.

Screaming babies were everywhere.

“It's that time of year,” Vivian Becker said as she led them down a hall to an office at the pediatric urgent care clinic on the east side of downtown Los Angeles. Becker was a physician's assistant and presumably one of the last people to see Sabrina Delgado and baby Angela before they went missing. “Kids get germs and share germs. The office was jam-packed yesterday from the time we opened our doors.”

“What time did Sabrina and Angela arrive?” Evie asked.

The woman sat behind a desk and clicked on a computer. “Our registration clerk has her checking in just after noon. The child presented with irritability and tugging at her left ear. We had a few broken bones, a concussion, and lacerations with higher urgency, so I'm afraid to say she waited a number of hours before we were able to get to them. I personally examined Angela at four in the afternoon.”

Evie couldn't imagine holding and trying to comfort a fussy baby for that long.

“But we got the little thing fixed up,” Ms. Becker continued. “Antibiotics to fight the infection and acetaminophen for pain and fever.”

“What time did Sabrina and her daughter leave?”

“A little after five. I'm sure because the receptionist had already locked up and left for the day. I had to unlock the door for Sabrina.”

“Was there anyone waiting outside for her? Did you see where she went?”

“No ride. I believe she was walking to the bus stop.” This made sense, as the girl had no car.

“Did you see her get on the bus?”

“No. I had one more patient to see, but you may want to ask the people at the insurance office next door. A few employees from there take the bus every day.”

As they left the urgent care clinic, Jack settled his hand at her back, and she moved closer to him, not because she needed his protection but because she liked the feel of him, solid, steady, and anything but cold.

A trio of women from the insurance office next door who took the bus yesterday was soon gathered in the reception area.

“Yes, we saw them,” one of the women said. “Poor little baby. Screaming its lungs out. Honestly, we were all a little relieved when the man drove up and offered her a ride.”

“Are you sure the driver was a man?” Evie asked.

“I think so. I didn't get a good look at him, but I remember his voice. Definitely male.”

“Did you notice anything about him? Hair color? Ethnicity? Clothing?”

“He didn't get out of the car, so we didn't see him.”

“What kind of vehicle was he driving? Make? Model? Color?”

The woman frowned. “I…I…I have no idea.”

“Wait a minute,” another woman said. “Wasn't he driving a minivan?”

“I'm not sure.” The first woman knotted her hands at her waist.

“Yeah. I'm pretty sure it was because I remember thinking, oh, good, he probably has one of those child safety seats that come with minivans.”

“Is there anything else you can remember about the man or the vehicle?” Evie asked.

“You know, there's one more thing, Agent Jimenez,” the third woman said. “I noticed a badge thingy clipped to his car visor. I remember because it was really pretty. It had a painting of a pretty ballerina with a ribbon around her neck and flowers in her hair. I think they were yellow and…”

“Orange,” Jack said softly.

“Yes, orange!”

“It's a replica of a work by Degas.” Jack's skin was the color of his snow-white shirt. “The person we're looking for works for Elliott Enterprises.”