While You Were Dead (6 page)

“Bathroom,” he muttered, and settled down to eat his cold ravioli. He watched the door of the women’s room, visible across the cafeteria, and managed to eat two bites before he lost interest in food. “Damn you, Lizard. I told you to stay put.” An eerie chill played tag down his spine. Max put down his fork. He knew that feeling. Hadn’t felt it for years, but he knew it well. It didn’t belong here, in this life. Max balled up his napkin and threw it on the table.

Stay put. One little request. Fifteen minutes. Sure she’d felt abandoned when he didn’t let her come with him this morning, but damn it, sometimes the kid drove him crazy. Six hours in the car with her was too much to ask, wasn’t it? Especially when Miriam, always knowing what he was thinking, insisted Lizzie stay with her. That was no excuse for her to be deliberately punishing him.

He spent the next five minutes trying to tamp down the horrible feeling in his gut. The dread only grew. Two minutes later, he offered a white-aproned busgirl five bucks to haul Lizard’s butt out of the can. He watched the dark-haired girl enter the bathroom but was on his feet before the door closed behind her. Long furious strides took him to the door where he paced around a wet floor cone for sixty seconds more. What was taking so long?

When the girl’s apologetic face appeared again, he stared hard into her brown eyes. Was Lizzie hiding? Had she cajoled this girl into going along with her game?

The food-service worker shrugged. “No girl, sir,” she offered, but Max cut her off.

“Anyone in there?”

“No, sir.” The woman backed up a step, obviously alarmed and held out his five dollars.

Max scowled and waved away her return offer. “Stand watch.” He flung open the door, revealing two sinks and four stalls. “Lizzie!” The doors of the stalls slammed open one at a time. All empty. Damn her! He stormed out of the bathroom and back to the table, ignoring the anxious stare of the busgirl who’d obviously heard his angry search of the bathroom.

Where was she? His gut twisted. Max refused to listen. Maybe she’d forgotten something in Miriam’s room and went back to get it. Max started for the sliding doors of the cafeteria. The voice in his gut got louder.

What if she didn’t?

Max stopped. Turned toward their lunch table. Halted again. If he stormed into Miriam’s room and Lizzie wasn’t there. . .he couldn’t do that to his sister. But where else could Lizzie be?

His cell phone. He stabbed in the speed dial for the nurse’s station and waited for a long twenty-seconds. Ninety more passed while the nurse checked.

Lizzie wasn’t with her mother. Anxiety churned in his stomach as he helplessly listened to that voice in his gut get louder. More demanding.

Secure the area.

Max wanted to scream. There was no need to secure the area. Lizzie was just. . .off somewhere. Doing some Lizard thing. Hiding from him. Paying him back for being gone all day.

Secure the area.

Still denying the need, he turned in a slow circle, eyes searching for every possible hiding place. Anywhere she might even now be watching him get angry, laughing at him. . ..

The busgirl timidly touched his arm, then nodded at a Hispanic janitor who stood beside her. “You look for girl? This tall?” The man gestured a height close to Lizzie’s.

“Yes.” The growl was all he could get out of his throat.

“She went out.”

“Out where?” His hands twisted to claws at his side.

“Outside. After you. With,” the janitor held up two fingers. “With two mans.”

Max closed his eyes when a sucker punch of helpless defeat leveled him nearly to his knees. As it was, he had to shuffle back a step until his legs were stiff enough to hold him again. He bit back the roar of denial building in his chest and opened his eyes.

“Nobody leaves this room,” he said, and shoved open the door to a dark corner of his soul. The motion allowed orders, actions and responses to flow automatically from that place inside he’d sworn never to visit again.

Voice calm, he turned to the busgirl. “Get your boss. Here. Now.”

His gaze pierced the janitor as his fingers curled around his cell. “Guard that door. Nobody out. Nobody in.” He stabbed 9-1-1 into the phone and faced the only other exit to the room, backing away from his lunch table as he did. It was now a crime scene.

Kat pasted a smile on her face and sat down in front of her mother. She didn’t get a chance to deliver her rehearsed greeting.

“What the hell happened to you? You look like death. It’s that shark, isn’t it? I told you he was a no-good attorney and now look at you! We should have stuck with Jonesy. I liked Jonesy.”

Her mother had hated Stephen Jones as much as she currently professed to hate Lincoln Goldberg. Kat gave her head a shake, waiting for her mother to take a breath. “It’s not Mr. Goldberg, Mom. Just a bad week. You’re looking well.”

“Don’t know how I could. What’s new? Did that shark make good on his promises? Do you have a new trial scheduled?”

“Mr. Goldberg didn’t promise a new trial, Mom.” There was absolutely no reason for a new trial. Kat revisited the original trial every time her mother got fed up with her attorney and hired a new one. “I haven’t heard anything from him lately, as a matter of fact.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Cold suspicion glittered in Ellen’s green eyes.

Kat released a little sigh. “I’m here to see you. I love you.”

“Hmmph! If you loved me you’d have me outta here by now. Do you know how many years it’s been, Katherine? Do you have any idea what it’s like for me? Day after day, week after week. . .”

“No, Mom.” Kat tuned her out. She tried not to, she really did, but each and every visit boiled down to the same thing and she couldn’t take it, not today. Not when she’d spent the entire plane trip rehashing her ridiculous conversation with Max. What happened to her backbone? She’d discovered she had one–even faced down some of the most vicious defense lawyers in the country and walked away unscathed. But thirty seconds of Max seemed to have destroyed years of meticulously-built self esteem.

“I know, Mom,” she muttered at the right spots, interspersing it with, “of course you don’t, Mom.” So why was she here? Every month, an entire day away from her practice, for what? Her mother’s words suddenly echoed her thoughts.

“Why do you come, Katherine? You’re not going to help me, that’s clear, so why?”

“I love you, Mom.” It was all she could offer, all she had to give. Sad, really, because it was never enough. Not for her mother. Not for Max. Kat forcibly straightened her shoulders and cleared her throat. “I’ll give Mr. Goldberg a call as soon as I get home. Is there anything you need?”

“Smokes, of course. And candy. The library worker’s new and she likes candy.” Her mother suddenly leaned close, looking conspiratorial. “Has Mitch been in touch with you?”

“Mitch? No. Who’s Mitch?”

“Shhh!” Ellen shook her head. “He will be. Just do what he says. It’s for the best, I think.”

For the best? “Who is he?”

“He’ll tell you. You’ll like him. He’s got pretty eyes.” Her mother made a motion to leave.

“What does he want?” Kat had learned long ago to be wary of her mother’s schemes.

“He’ll tell you,” Ellen repeated. “Gotta go, baby girl. Behave yourself. Make me proud.”

Kat smiled. It was the closest to “I love you” her mother ever got. Kat relished every word.

##

Max sat alone in an interview room at police headquarters in Denver. His cell phone was the only thing on the table in front of him and he eyed it like he would an enemy. He’d spent the afternoon on the phone, calling in old favors. The news wasn’t good and got worse with each tick of the clock. He knew the chances of finding Lizzie rapidly diminished after the first twenty-four hours.

Time for the final call. The one he’d vowed he’d never make. Resolutely, he picked up the phone.

“Viper, it’s Ice.”

The silence that followed his declaration didn’t surprise Max. Their last conversation, seven years ago, had ended with Max vowing his unit commander would never hear from him again. Viper’s chuckle a long second later didn’t surprise him either.

“Took you long enough.”

“Nothing’s changed. I need a favor.” His voice calm and steady, he outlined the facts of Lizzie’s abduction. His ability to detach himself emotionally had earned him his code name. Inside his unit, code names were the only ID ever used. When he finished, he heard Viper’s soft inhalation.

“That’s low, Ice. What do you want?”

“The best.”

“Naturally.”

“I’ve been out too long to know who, so I’ll leave that up to you. I’ve already got a guy from CBI and a local detective I know. They’ll cooperate with whoever you send. The vic was abducted two hours ago.”

“Gotta hand it to you, Ice, you’re cool as ever. This is your niece we’re talking about, correct?”

“Yes. Elizabeth Marie Clark.”

Viper chuckled again. “That’s what I like about you. You do one thing at a time and you do it better than anybody else.

It was true. Worry for Lizzie would consume him again. But not now. “That’s me. Will you help?”

“Of course.” Viper was all business now. “I assume you’re talking inter-agency?”

“Right.”

“I’ll see who’s available and have them ship out tomorrow. We’ll find her, Ice. I guarantee it.”

“Thanks.” As much as he hated reforging his severed ties, the gratitude was real.

“Once we’ve got her back, then we can talk about your return to the unit.”

Max could hear the smile in Viper’s voice. “Not in this lifetime, boss.”

“I’ll get back to you with names and ETAs. We’ve got your number.”

“Right.” Max ended the call and dialed Kat. Running into her in Lizzie’s bedroom just hours before Lizzie was taken was quite the coincidence. Max didn’t believe in coincidences.

As the spring daylight faded from the sky two hours later, Max admired Kat’s sophisticated alarm system in detached silence. It was state-of-the-art. It was also no match for him. He’d had her address before he crossed the Wyoming/Colorado border. Unable to stop himself, he’d driven by her house before going back to the hospital, pulling up just in time to see her silver Lexus departing. He didn’t know where she’d gone, only that she wasn’t here now. Max’s smile was cold. No one was home. He could wait for her inside or out, his choice.

Her home sat back from the street in an upscale neighborhood, which fit with what he knew of her life now. Her house reminded him she wasn’t his Kat any longer. The trust fund her father had left her used to make her uncomfortable. When they’d met, she lived in a run-down, fourth-floor walk-up over a bar in a terrible neighborhood. Not any longer. This new Kat was upper-class and comfortable with it. Was she like her house? Was she fenced off, perfectly groomed. . .and empty? Max wouldn’t let his mind wander to why he was here. Or to what he’d say when she got home.

Detective Reicher, the best cop in Denver on missing kids, was on the case. Special Agent Jack Myles, the best FBI field agent in Colorado, was too. Thanks to Viper, long-lost co-workers from initialed agencies up and down the East Coast were flying in overnight. The knowledge didn’t help.

Somewhere in the dusk, his little Lizzie was alone with two men who’d snatched her from under his nose. Detective Reicher had calmly banished him an hour ago.

With nothing but roiling anguish in his gut and empty time on his hands, his thoughts had turned back to Kat. She was something he could do. He began to wonder. He was glad she wasn’t home, glad at last for the time he had. He needed time to get a plan together. Oh, yes, he most definitely needed a plan. A better plan than go to her house and make up the rules when you get there.

He’d let her get away twice. She wouldn’t get a third try. Not with Lizzie missing.

##

Kat, exhausted, arrived home via taxi at nearly midnight. Two blown-out tires had capped the excitement for her terrible day. Or so she thought.

Max came out of nowhere, sending her keys scattering, slamming her into the garage door so hard her brain rattled right along with the door. He crushed her arms in a bruising grip. “What the hell were you doing at Miriam’s this morning? Where is she?”

Kat, overwhelmed, shook her head. “I didn’t—she usually—when I didn’t heard from her, I was worried, so I–“

Max gave her a brutal shake. “I swear to God, Kat! Where the hell is she?”

“Who? Miriam? I don’t know,” she managed at last. The man in front of her bore only a token resemblance to Max. The stranger’s eyes were icy cold in the flood lights, and furious with a rage she could only guess at. Fear licked at her spine.

“Where is she?” he demanded again.

Kat stared helplessly. “Max, what’s wrong?”

Max abruptly released one arm, while he caught her chin and forced her eyes up to his. Now the only sound was Kat’s sudden hiss of terror.