Chapter 2
She crawled into bed with the plan of sleeping well. But a strange bed and a chill in the air made it hard to drop off to sleep. Then again she hadn’t slept well for days, if not weeks. Trying to figure out what to do when there were no answers didn’t make for happy dreams.
The only good thing in all of this was the fact that she knew Joshua should be physically safe. Her son was six, very smart, and very compassionate and tender. He’d be suffering emotionally without her around. But a child custody case when you were up against a powerful presence with a ton of money was a scary thing.
She’d thought she and her husband could work it out amicably. But, once he had gotten Joshua for the first visit, things had gone to hell quickly. He’d refused to let Joshua leave at the end of the day—and she’d been kicked out alone.
She’d slowly gone to pieces as she had contacted lawyer after lawyer. Each one had given her a large bill and not much in the way of assistance. Without money, she’d gone to the police. But that was even more useless. She didn’t think there was really anybody who could help her.
She didn’t have a clue why she thought Corey was the one to call on. He’d been out of her life for so long that it made no sense to go to him.
And yet, as soon as she thought about who she could count on to have her back, his name popped up. She didn’t deserve his assistance. Plus, with so much water under the bridge, she knew it wouldn’t be an easy thing to reopen that old wound.
Finally she jumped out of bed, threw on a heavy bathrobe that had been left behind in the cabin, put socks back on and padded out to the wood stove. She tossed more wood in the fire, then fired up the teakettle again. She didn’t really want anything with caffeine, but a hot lemon tea might be nice. She thought she’d seen some lemon juice in the pantry.
She walked in and took a look. Found hot chocolate and some herbal teas. The lemon juice was open, and she had no idea how old it was so decided not to try it. She reached for the herbal teas instead. One with chamomile in it was called Sleepytime. She figured that would be perfect. It would take a bit for the water to heat up on the woodstove, but she much preferred sitting here in the dark, waiting, than turning on the light.
She walked out on the deck. A nice cool breeze drifted by. She could see a couple lights on the far side of the lake. Her aunt had bought this place a long time ago. The family had made good use of it ever since, and it was a wonderful place to live. If Angela had decent internet service, she could work from here.
That was what she’d always envisioned for herself. In the back of her mind she thought one day she’d have the house, the husband, the two kids and something like this to come to for summers, like she had experienced when she was growing up. But those dreams never came to pass. She’d been married for seven years and had a wonderful son. Only recently she’d learned of another woman with a son fathered by her husband, a son a couple weeks older than Joshua. What did one even do with that information? How did one deal with such a betrayal?
Joshua had a stepbrother.
Her husband had been having an affair for years. Hell, she didn’t know if her husband was still with his paramour. She didn’t want to know. Her husband had lived dual lives. And why he couldn’t play nice when it came to child custody, she didn’t know. But the thing was, things had gone too far. Now not only was Joshua’s peace of mind and his life with her at stake but she was afraid her own life was too.
She’d started getting letters from his lawyer and then from him as soon as she’d initially left the family home with Joshua. At first they were mild and referenced the divorce and child visitations, but then the tone had changed somehow. Becoming more demanding. Then downright threatening. Particularly after he kept Joshua. Now they were about her never seeing her son again. Of course that was after she’d dropped Joshua off to spend a few hours with his father and never got a chance to take him home again. She wondered if Greg had been listening to someone’s legal advice, but he was pretty canny by himself when it came to making someone else’s life miserable.
The letters had always been signed by Greg, but, after the tenor of them had changed, she wondered if she had ever known him. After several terrifying ones, she’d bolted. It hurt her every moment she was away from Joshua. She’d do anything to get him back. He had a cell phone, unbeknownst to his father, so she could send text messages. They were light, bright, bubbly, happy messages. They also used several apps to send silly pictures to each other. She was trying to keep him out of the nastiness currently swirling around her.
She hadn’t seen Joshua in just over a week. He hadn’t lived with her now for two weeks. Two weeks where she had desperately tried every legal loophole she could to get him back. The only reason she’d seen him last week was because she had caught sight of him in the mall. He’d seen her and come running.
She’d wanted to pick him up and escape, but she’d been quickly surrounded by her husband and his men who ushered her out to the parking lot. She’d glared at Greg and said, “Is it really so hard to let your son see his mother?”
But Joshua had been ripped from her arms, screaming, and taken away. It had all happened so fast. Her heart broke as his screams continuously replayed in her head. She’d been shaking so badly that a woman had led her to a little coffee shop close by, set her down and gotten her a strong cup of tea.
After that incident the threats had gotten much worse. Angela rubbed her face, feeling the tears once again collect at the corners of her eyes.
Her lack of sleep and too many tears shed had her eyes burning, her nose filling, and the headache just boomed twenty-four hours a day inside her skull. She was so damn tired of fighting her husband, who seemed to think that he was above the law and that he should get everything he wanted. The only thing that gave her hope was that she had something on Greg. And yet, at the same time, she knew just how dangerous it would be to take that step.
Yet she’d do almost anything to get her son back. Still, if she died in the process, that wouldn’t benefit Joshua. But she didn’t dare let him be raised by a man like Greg. She’d had no idea he was so low. He considered himself a bigwig. She considered him a lowlife, somebody who put pressure on other businesses to sell out so he could demolish their storefronts and put up new fancy commercial skyscrapers. And he didn’t do it in a nice way. He kept his business just legal enough to stay out of the eyes of the law. It would be too easy to shut him down otherwise. And that was only one aspect of what he did. She had just learned of a second aspect. As for the rest, she had no clue.
When she’d found the documents on Greg’s desk, she hadn’t thought anything of them. She’d been there dropping off her son. Greg had been on the phone, and he had stepped outside to take the call in private. She’d been anxious to spend every moment with Joshua so had been playing with him. He’d been running around the room like any young boy. He’d stopped by the table, then came giggling back to her and said Daddy was taking pictures. And she shushed him at the time, saying it was all right. But Joshua shook his head and pointed to the pictures on the table. She saw photos of several politicians in incriminating situations. She pulled out her cell phone and quickly took pictures of everything she could find.
She tried to leave everything seemingly undisturbed. When her husband had stormed back into the room, she was safely on the other side, using a pillow to play catch with her son. She’d been ushered out of the house and the door slammed in her face, never to cross the threshold again.
That had been two weeks ago.
She still had the photos. It hadn’t occurred to her to do anything with them until she’d taken a better look at several of the spreadsheets she’d also taken pictures of. They looked like blackmail payments. And she realized it might just be her ticket to getting her son back. How the hell she was supposed to do that without a lawyer on her side, she didn’t know.
And how was she supposed to get a decent lawyer when she couldn’t afford to pay one? But there had to be a way.
Greg’s threats were increasing. He’d progressed from telling her that she’d never see Joshua if she asked for any of his money to insisting she sign off on everything if she wanted to see Joshua again. He had also threatened her with what he’d tell Joshua about her so her own son would hate her. Given what Greg was capable of, she didn’t doubt he’d do it. He wouldn’t be happy until he had her son and until she was gone—preferably permanently.
She was a fool for not having considered her son might have said something to his father about the photographs. She’d laughed with Joshua at the time, making a game of her taking pictures, the same as Daddy probably had. But the timing with the threats—could that be what was behind his change in tone? If that was the case, her life wasn’t even worth two cents to Greg. But then why hadn’t he killed her yet? Why hadn’t Greg said something to her? Mentioned her actions in the letters?
Why wait this long?
Was he waiting for the right time? Did he know about the cabin? If not, it wouldn’t take anyone used to ferreting out information long to get the exact location.
With all these thoughts running around her head, she didn’t know what to do. She could hear the teakettle whistling on the stove. She got up, poured the boiling water over the tea bag and took it back out into the night.
Just as she started to calm down, her phone buzzed. She pulled it out of the bathrobe pocket, never very far away from the unit, even though it was off most of the time. However, at night, knowing she and Joshua would exchange good night texts, she took the risk of turning on her phone.
It was a text. She didn’t know the number or the name.
I know what you did.
She dropped the phone on the small table, wrapped her arms around herself tightly, and rocked back and forth. “What do you know?” she asked the endless night. “I haven’t done anything.”
But of course she had. She’d taken pictures of something she wasn’t supposed to know about. And now she knew. Most likely her son had mentioned something to his father. She had always hoped maybe Joshua wouldn’t, and she had told him not to, but who knew what would pop out of a child’s mouth from one moment to the next?
Now she needed to get a new phone, unregistered, a throwaway one. And that meant a trip back into town. And a drain on her finances yet again. Which would cut out her connection with Joshua as well as to Greg. She couldn’t get rid of her only tie to Joshua.
Tired, worn out, mentally exhausted, she sipped her tea while she figured out her next step. The trouble was, she had very few options.
Finally she got up and went back to bed and fell into a fitful sleep.
*
Corey gave his sister a big hug. “Are you sure you don’t want to come to Angela’s place with us?”
“No, this is your specialty. I won’t know if anything’s missing, and, if you have any questions, just call me. I’d come if I didn’t have this presentation tomorrow, but I’m just so not ready for it.”
He leaned over, kissed her on the temple and said, “It will be fine. We’ll take a look and see if there’s anything to see. We’ll return here afterward.”
She nodded. “The spare bed is made up, and there’s always the couch.” She turned to Warrick. “Thank you for coming.”
He gave her a big smile. “No problem. Let’s hope we can find out what’s going on real fast.”
“Please do. I feel terrible knowing Angela was in trouble but wouldn’t let me know how bad it was …” She gave them a small smile as the two men stepped out of her apartment.
Outside, Corey checked the address. “She only lives a couple blocks away. I suggest we walk.”
“I’m game.”
The two ate up the sidewalk with their long legs. Both men were well over six feet and physically fit. They approached the apartment building and saw it was an older complex, only four floors high and probably only four units to a floor.
Corey approached the front double doors, looking for security. There was a call box on the side. He pressed her number, not expecting to get a response, but he needed to know for sure.
Somebody walked toward them from inside the building. He pushed open the door and held it for them to enter. Corey thanked the person and entered. He had the keys to get into Angela’s apartment. But, even if he hadn’t, Angela lived on the ground floor. If he couldn’t have gotten in through the front entryway, he would have gone inside via the sliding door.
People liked to think they were safe inside locked doors. But he could get into almost anything in less than a minute.
Walking to her apartment, Corey had the keys in his hands. Glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, he popped the lock and stepped inside, Warrick on his heels. As soon as they entered and locked the door behind them, they realized this was a bigger deal than anything they’d expected.
Her place had been trashed. Kitchen cupboards had been emptied and dumped out; shattered glass was all over the floor; food spoiled in the opened refrigerator.
They walked through the small galleylike kitchen to the dining room area, which was just a four-by-four space with a small bistro table in the center.
They carried on to the small living room, finding the couch upside down, the cushions with the zippers opened and the foam pulled out. Next was the bedroom. Relieved when he found no body, Corey took a good look at the destruction. The bedroom was in the same state as the main living area. The bedding had been pulled off, the mattresses taken off the frame and slit; the closet doors were wide open, and the dresser drawers were dumped. Only the bathroom was left to check. The apartment was damn small. Maybe eight or nine hundred square feet total.
He took a step back and turned to look at Warrick standing in the middle of the living room, his hands on his hips, slowly turning, cataloguing the damage in his mind.
“Do you think they found it?” Warrick asked.
Corey said, “I don’t think so. But I’d sure like to know what it is that they were after.”
Warrick nodded. “Yeah, I don’t think they did either. But they went to an awful lot of effort looking for it.”
“Which means Angela is in a lot more danger than she knows.” His voice grim, he pulled out his phone, scrolled the contacts to his sister and hit Dial. “Bridget, Angela’s place has been completely trashed.” He heard her short gasp from the other side.
“We need to call the cops,” Bridget instructed. “Let them know.”
“We need to know if they came earlier. In which case, that gives us a timeline for when the place was trashed.” He pulled out a pad of paper. “I need to know the name of the detective you spoke with about Angela so I can get in touch with him directly.” With the name written down, he ended the call and dialed the police station. After introducing himself, he said, “We used my sister’s keys to get into Angela’s place. I don’t know if you’ve been here yet or not but we found her apartment trashed.”
“Trashed?”
“Yes. There isn’t a single dresser drawer, kitchen cupboard or anything left unturned. It’s a huge mess. If somebody was looking for a specific item, it doesn’t look like they found it.”
“I’ll be there in five. Stay where you are,” came the stern retort.
“What does he expect us to do? Run?” Warrick asked when Corey told him the detective’s instruction. “I guess they have to say that. They’re cops. They need to know who we are to see if we had anything to do with this.”
“Right. Like I would walk into a stranger’s house, completely destroy it, then call the cops and say, Hey, this is how I found it.”
Warrick grinned. “We’ve seen a lot of similar kinds of issues. So we’ll stay here until the authorities get here. Is there anything you think we can look through that will help get us answers?”
“You know what I don’t get?”
Warrick turned to look at him.
“She does website design. I presume she has her laptop with her. But would she need anything else? I don’t see any other electronics here. In today’s day and age, she’s probably got several laptops. Maybe some peripherals, like a tablet. But not too many people have the big desktop computer anymore. They don’t need them.”
“The new wave of computers—portable.”
“Look at us,” Corey said. “We have laptops. I think only Mason has a desktop, and that’s because Tesla keeps going in there and upgrading it.”
“She can come and upgrade my system anytime,” Warrick said. “Damn, Mason lucked out with her.”
“I doubt Devlin’s life is any better in that sense. Although Bristol is probably not concerned about his system as much as getting his help with her system.”
“She’s got a new drone to release soon too, doesn’t she?” Warrick wandered over to the side bar, lifting couch cushions, looking for what might be of interest beneath.
“Yeah, she does. It’s got some new infrared radar on it.”
Warrick turned to look at him. “Really?”
Corey nodded. “Yeah, she’s constantly developing cutting-edge stuff. I just want to play with the toys all the time.”
“Devlin should do that, have a big barbecue, and let us come over and play.”
The two men were still chuckling when a hard rap came at the door. They looked at each other. Warrick stepped out of view as Corey opened the door. There was the detective, shield in hand, held out for him to see.
He nodded and stepped back.
The detective walked in, stopped and let out a long slow whistle. “Wow.” He stopped in place and did a slow circle. “I need to get techs in here and go over the place.”
“I don’t know what they were looking for, and I highly doubt they left any fingerprints, but this is the biggest lead we have that she’s actually in trouble.”
“I hear you. I had wondered myself if she had just disappeared. She’s under a lot of stress right now apparently.”
“Why is that?”
“She’s in a custody battle with her soon-to-be-ex-husband over her son.”
Corey felt everything inside go still. “Custody battle?”
The detective nodded. “She’s come down a couple times to the station, looking for help. She dropped her son off about two weeks ago. Her husband refused to release him to her custody at the end of the visit. He’s launched a series of lawsuits against her, saying she’s an unfit mother. And I have to admit, some of her stories about her husband sound pretty crazy.”
“She’s a good person,” Corey said.
The detective didn’t turn his gaze away. “Exactly what is your relationship with her?”
“She’s my little sister’s best friend. I used to see her a lot back then.”
“But nothing since?”
Corey frowned. “Out of the blue she contacted me two days ago, said she wanted to talk to me. I met her at a coffee shop. She was really nervous, restless. Finally, after just a couple minutes, she jumped to her feet, said she was stupid to have come and basically ran. I walked her out to the car, trying to convince her to come back inside and have the meal we had already ordered, but she was too nervous. She got in her vehicle and drove away.”
“Right. Your sister told me about that.”
“Did you check the traffic cams to see if anybody followed her?”
“I did. And there’s no sign of her after she left the city limits. And, no, it didn’t appear anybody followed her.”
“Did anybody find an address book?” Warrick asked, as he joined in the discussion.
Corey and the detective both turned to look at him. “Why?”
“Just wondering who she has for relatives, where she might have gone.”
“We have a phone call in to her aunt. Of course there’s the husband and her son. I believe she has a couple cousins. But we’re still tracking down people.”
Corey pondered that. “I’ll talk to my sister a little more, see if we can dredge up some of her memories. They’ve been friends for a long time. She must know some place Angela would run to. Also, if you could check the city cameras and check if she’s being followed, that could give us a lead.”
The detective nodded. “Also I want contact information from both of you. And keep in touch. Let me know if you find out anything.”
As soon as they exchanged cell phone numbers, the two men walked back out into the front yard.
“I want to take a walk around the building,” Corey said. “Let’s make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
They did a thorough search. But it looked like the intruder had gone in through the apartment door. As Corey stood there, he pondered, “I wonder if we should ask the neighbors if they saw anybody?”
Just then a forensic team came to the apartment. Warrick motioned toward them. “They’re going to do that. Let’s get to your sister before they come after her too.”
Corey winced. “Yeah, the detective probably already called her.” They walked back in the evening light, their footsteps clipping on the hard cement. “For whatever reason, Angela knew to get the hell out. That information is likely to be on her emails, laptops, cell phone, and any other electronic device she’s using.”
“Well then, let’s hope to hell she has all that with her. Because you know, as soon as these assholes get hold of them, they’ll have tracked down exactly where she is and could be there within minutes.”
Corey nodded. “Which means we just have to get there first.” He walked up to his sister’s apartment, rapped on the door and stepped inside. She was working away on her laptop at the kitchen table.
She looked up with a smile, only to have it fall away. “Do you think something’s happened to her?” Her fingers clenched and unclenched the pen in her hand.
“Yes, I do. And, if it hasn’t happened yet, it’ll happen soon. I’m hoping she’s holed up somewhere safe.” Corey sat down, reached across the table and clasped her hand in his. He covered it, warming it up. “Bridget, you need to tell me where she would run to. Her place has been trashed, but there’s no sign she has been there since.”
Bridget took a deep breath. “The only place I could even begin to think of is a cabin where she spent a lot of time during the summers. I was there once, and it was a place to remember.”
Corey frowned. “Is that when you went out to the lake for a couple weeks? When was that, eleventh grade?”
She nodded. “I think it was somewhere around then. We spent two weeks with her aunt.”
“Any idea how to contact the aunt?”
Bridget started clicking away on her laptop. “I set up a file for all my friends at one point.”
Warrick laughed. “You set up a file on your friends?”
She shot him a look. “I forget things easily,” she confessed, “so this file has their addresses, phone numbers, family contacts, things like that.”
“Did the police ask you for it?”
She looked up, and her gaze widened. “No. And I didn’t even think about it.”
“Well, they’ll probably ask you soon. Now, if you’ve got a printer, you want to hand that off to us or at least bring it up on the screen, and we’ll take pictures. Then we’ll head to the cabin.”
“It’s a four-hour drive from here,” she said worriedly. “You shouldn’t be leaving right now.”
The two men looked at each other, then at their watches. “We could pull out at three in the morning and get there at dawn,” Corey said. He looked over at Warrick for his agreement.
Warrick nodded. “That works. We can catch a few hours of sleep and hopefully still get there before she’s up and panicking.”
“You think I should let her know you’re coming?” Bridget asked.
“If she’s smart, she’ll have ditched that phone a long time ago.”
Bridget picked up her phone and sent a text. “She hasn’t responded to any phone contact, but maybe she’ll get it in an email. Or a text. I just told her that you are both on the way, and you will be there very early in the morning.” She sat back down and looked at her brother. “Please help her out. I hate knowing she’s in trouble. I know she was struggling to adapt to being a single mom, but I’ve been so buried in my schooling that I just didn’t realize something bad was going on. She was looking for a private investigator, but I never really asked why. I should have.”
Warrick’s phone went off. He excused himself and stepped out into the hallway.
Corey hugged his sister but inside he was reeling. Why hadn’t Bridget mentioned Angela’s husband and child? “Why?” he asked in a strangled voice. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
She winced. “I was afraid she still mattered and that her marriage and family would be a blow to you all over again.”