Chapter Twenty-Two

 

Ash didn’t like it, not one bit. Colby had gone back to Beacon Hill looking for her mum, while he canvassed the streets closest to the harbor looking for Bella. The daft woman had been told to stay put in her hotel room. Could none of the Quaid women do what they were told? Obviously not!

Bella was Colby’s mother after all. Like daughter, like mother. Or was it the other way around? He didn’t know any more, but they were both driving him to the edge of insanity this morn. Bella, because he could nah find her!

Colby, because she was not with him where she should’ve been, damn her obstinate ass. With every blind alley and dead end, his angst ramped up. Didn’t matter, wherever she was, he couldn’t protect her, and with his brother now in the picture, Ash very much needed to know precisely where she was. Right this very minute!

The police had already been alerted and were looking for Bella. Back toward the harbor Ash stalked, his eyes and ears tuned toward the sight or sound of a pigheaded woman in a powder blue turban and a bed jacket. That should’ve made Bella easy to spot, but was it? Not so much. Bloody hell, he’d even checked the Boston T’s Downtown, South, and Harbor Street train stations. No luck.

The only thing happening in the city today was the impending sense of doom gripping the back of his neck like the sharpened claws of a schoolmarm from hell. He could nah shake the disquiet that Liam was behind all of this, the fires and Bella’s vanishing act included. ’Twould be like him to stalk the people who meant everything to Ash. To strike at the heart of him.

Christ Almighty! It’d kill Colby if anything happened to her mum.

“Bollocks!” he hissed, his head lowered and glaring at the world from behind his thick brows. What should’ve been a merry day in bed with the lady of his heart was now a day spent combing the streets in panic.

Bella can nah have gotten this far, he thought grimly, not as old as she is.

So where was she then? Who’d lured her out of the hotel to begin with? All Tula knew was she’d been in the shower when the phone rang. By the time she’d toweled off and stuck her head out the bathroom door, the hotel room was wide open, and Bella and Pierre were gone. At first blush, Tula thought Bella had simply gone to catch that dastardly cat of hers, that they both might be wandering the floor in search of each other. Not so.

With determination, Ash’s legs ate up the sidewalk to Long Wharf and its steady crowd of tourists. It’d be easy to get lost there, or simply turned around in Bella’s case. She was a pint low in her thinking.

At the corner of State and Atlantic he saw her—thank God!—sitting across the busy way under several shade trees that lined the dock. She didn’t look hurt, more baffled was all. Watching the tourists stroll by and waving. Smiling. Fluttering her fingers on her knees, then ducking her shoulders as if she were nothing more than a little lost girl.

Which she was. The sight tore at him. Bella was more daft than he’d suspected. Well, he had her now. Against the green light he ran, dodging cars, bikers, and the ever-present power walkers America was known for, to reach Bella before he lost sight of her.

“Bella!” he called out, waving frantically.

The silly woman waved back, a vacant smile on her face that scared him to death.

At last he crouched at her knee, breathing hard but not wanting to frighten her. “Bella. Everyone’s been looking for you. What are you doing here?”

She peered at him, her sweet face crinkled and her brows knitted. “Do I know you?” she asked with her nose up.

“Yes, Mum, you do. I’m Ash Callahan, your daughter’s friend. Colby sent me to find you. She’s worried out of her mind, Mum.”

Bella shook her head, grays hairs coming loose from the turban. “You’re wrong. Colby left me. She’s in the Army now.”

“No, she came home to see you and…” He tried again, frustrated at her forgetfulness. “I carried you out of the fire yesterday. Remember?”

She must have. Bella’s gaze flitted over his shoulder to the tourists behind him, the ones coming from the same part of town where he’d just searched high and low for her. “I can’t leave. She told me to wait right here, said she’d be right back.” Her gnarled fingertips set to drumming on her knees again. She seemed to be unraveling as quickly as her turban.

“Who told you to wait?” He scanned the tourists for anyone headed in Bella’s direction.

“That woman.” Bella fluttered her fingers at him dismissively. “You know. That… woman.”

He didn’t have a clue what Bella thought she knew. “What’d she look like? Can I help you find her?” he asked kindly as he captured Bella’s hand in his.

Another headshake and her gaze made a nervous dart to busy Atlantic Avenue. “She’s a tiny thing, but she’s very strong. She’s got gorgeous hair. Her head is covered in ringlets, but I didn’t catch her name,” Bella admitted with a crack in her voice as she patted her turban. “She never told me, but she said she knew me, and she wanted to show me something.” One balled fist went to Bella’s mouth, now bracketed in worry. “Oh, dear. Do you think she’s lost? She said she’d be right back.”

Without releasing her fingers, Ash dragged his cell phone from his jean’s pocket with his free hand. The sound of Colby’s voice would surely soothe her mum’s nerves. “Aye, she might have gotten lost. How about I wait here with you until she comes back?” he asked, Colby’s number ringing in his ear. “While we wait, I’ll get you a nice lemonade or an ice.”

The phone kept ringing.

Bella brightened. “I have a cat you know,” she said cheerily, the smile on her face as innocent as a newborn babe’s. “He’s such a rascal, but I love my Pierre’s wicked ways.”

“Aye, you’re a rascal, too, but a prettier one.”

“She has the most peculiar cape,” Bella blurted, her head cocked as if she’d just remembered that important detail.

At last. Something to go on. “A cape you say? What color? How tall was she? What color hair?”

That same tired, daft smile curved the corners of her lips. Bella shook her fingers out of his grip and cupped his chin. “Blue, I think. Her eyes were blue… like yours.” The poor thing looked so mixed up and—

“She kept singing that silly song.”

Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. “What song?” he asked, needing her to focus.

Bella’s head bobbed to the right, then the left as she hummed some old nursery song Ash couldn’t place. This was getting him nowhere. Still crouched there on the sidewalk with one elbow to his knee, Ash pivoted on the ball of his boot, scanning the sidewalk with fear alive in his heart. Colby hadn’t answered as she’d promised. Why was that no surprise?

Acid pumped like a fire hose in his gut. This was a set up. Some woman with blue eyes, wearing a cape—maybe—had intentionally lured Bella into the street for one of two reasons, either to kill her, or to get Colby out in the open. But why?

He swallowed hard. Where the feckin’ hell are you, Liam? I know ‘tis you. Show yourself. You and your latest treacherous girlfriend. I know you’re out there.

Colby finally answered, only she didn’t. “If you’ve reached this recording, I’m busy. Take a chance. Leave a message. I might call back, but then again...”

He waited the pre-requisite number of heartbeats to the beep. “Call me, darlin’,” he begged. “I found your mum. She’s safe, but Colby. Liam’s behind all of this. Call me!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She couldn’t get her bearings, not with her head pounding like some FNG, as in fucking new guy, had launched an M320, 40mm grenade launcher inside of her skull. Christ, it was dark. Shivery dark. Not a speck of light shone anywhere in this—place.

Dropping her forehead to her wrists, which were bound together with what felt like one of those damned plastic zip-ties, and were also lifted and secured to something like a cold, lead pipe over her head, Colby growled. She’d been blindsided. Now she was a prisoner. The nerve.

It was cool and dank, like basement or old cellar dank in this… this… wherever she was. Not a wine cellar kind of cool though, more like dirt and wet concrete cool. Her nostrils flared. Maybe urinal cool, too.

Something with ticky feet skittered up her bare ankle. Before she had time to react, it dived off her knee and scurried away. Creeped out now, goosebumps raced up the back of her neck. Somehow she’d lost her shoes. Colby couldn’t remember how or where. No Ranger would’ve let herself be knocked senseless and…

Shit. She swallowed hard, face to face with not a glimmer of light except for an occasional twinkle at her peripheral, most likely from being bludgeoned. It didn’t get any better than this, being scared of the dark—in the dark—with a rat.

“I want my gun,” she told the blackness enveloping her, but her voice came out timid and quivering. She’d left her weapon at home when she and Ash had gone to speak with Kevin. Felt like days ago.

Rubbing her ankles together, she felt her knife holster, unreachable for the moment, but there. “But I still want my gun.” Okay, so there was no monster that she knew of. And she hadn’t dreamed up a snake—yet.

The thing with ticky feet came back, but this time Colby was ready. Cocking her knee, she gave it her best soccer kick, a well-timed toe shot, with a vehement, “Get the hell away from me!”

Up, up, and away it sailed with a shrill squeak before it hit something solid and close. Something like a wall. Heart pounding now, Colby twisted her neck to take stock of her prison, which was beginning to feel more like a closet. But there was nothing to see but darkness. “Damn it, who’s out there? Who did this to me?”

Like radar, the volume and tone of her voice brought scary information back to her. There was no echo to her voice. No depth. The space she was trapped in sounded hollow and small. Isolated.

Using her bound wrists to pull up to her knees, Colby’s forehead met the low ceiling with a bump and a well-earned, “Son-of-a-bitch!”

Traffic rumbled from a not too distant street. Car horns honked. She could smell exhaust fumes even as the ground vibrated from the engine of a large truck, maybe a bus.

Don’t panic. Isn’t that what everyone says before they start screaming? Rattled to her core, Colby drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to calm her heart rate. She would NOT dissolve into tears and hysteria. Not her.

Think. What happened to me?

She recalled running up her mother’s front steps, ripping the police-tape out of her way before she unlocked the door and shoved her way home. Admittedly, she also wanted her pistols and ammo, enough to confront Ash’s terrorist brother if she were lucky enough to meet up with him.

Then… nothing. Her world went black. Someone was waiting for her. Liam? If he’d set the fires like Ash thought, then he was behind this. You ass! You ambushed me! Me! A highly trained Army Ranger. How pathetic is that?

“When I get out of here, I’m going to kick your ass!” she yelled to the ceiling.

In times of stress and losing streaks, she’d found that boisterous defiance actually—helped.