Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(36)

Then she heard it, the answering sound. Metal against metal.

“I’m here! I’m here!” Shouting, she scrambled to her feet. “I’m Mary Kate Covino!”

She thought, as she strained her ears, she heard a faint cry in return. So she tried again. “Are you locked in? Who are you? I’m Mary Kate Covino!”

She did hear something! She couldn’t make out the words, but she heard a voice. She tried shouting louder. “Can you hear me? Bang once if you hear me.”

When the single bang sounded, she closed her eyes, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m Mary Kate Covino. Can you yell louder? Can you tell me your name?”

It came in a high, thin scream she could barely make out. “Anna? You’re Anna. Bang once for yes, two for no. One bang, okay, okay. Anna,” she said aloud. “Are you chained up, too? One bang. God, God.” She sipped some water, cleared her throat, shouted, “Do you know how long you’ve been here?”

Two bangs.

She leaned against the wall, tried to clear the fear. She shouted questions. Added three bangs for I don’t know.

It felt like hours, she couldn’t be sure, they communicated. Once in a while she made out a few words.

She learned the crazy man had grabbed Anna and locked her in a room just like hers. Chained up, no window, drugged.

When her voice gave out, she pushed her burning throat one last time. “I’m sorry, Anna, I can’t yell anymore. I have to rest, but I’m here.”

After the single bang in response, Mary Kate drank the last swallow of water, then crawled onto her cot.

She needed to rest, to think.

She wasn’t alone.





8





When she couldn’t find a new angle to probe, when she found herself circling the same path with the same results, Eve pushed away from her command center.

There was simply nothing more she could do. A part of her believed Anna Hobe’s time was ticking down, but there was nothing she could do to stop that clock.

The lab, she thought as she walked to the board again. She had to hope the lab provided some leads, some data, some something she could get her teeth into.

It cycled through her brain again. Tattoo, piercings, makeup, hair products, perfume, clothes, shoes.

She’d given the lab rats a big goddamn bouquet of forensics. They’d better come through.

She walked into Roarke’s office to find he’d switched to water while he worked. He’d shed his tie, his suit jacket. Rolled up his sleeves, tied back his hair.

How appalled would he be if he knew she thought of this as his Roarke-cop mode?

Very, she concluded, so she’d save that for when she wanted to annoy him.

“Anything I can use?”

“A large area,” he reminded her. “With plenty of buildings, commercial, residential, a combination, rented, owned, condemned, in the rehab process, that could meet your criteria.”

“I’ll take them.”

He glanced over at her, and immediately saw both stress and fatigue. “It would take you days if not weeks to vet all that fall into the general parameters. It’ll take a bit more time to refine and eliminate some of the possibles.”

“It’s going to be a single man.”

“Understood, but a single man may own or rent under another name, a business name, a false front or legitimate one. A single man may have recently broken ties and not yet changed the ownership or lease—or may be legally bound to hold said ownership or lease in a business name, a partnership—marriage or business—and so on. And you know all that as well as I do.”

Since she did, she walked to his window, back again, then dropped down on the slick new sofa he’d installed when they’d redone their offices.

He’d kept the portrait she’d given him for their first anniversary on the wall across from his command center. It made her feel a little sentimental to see the two of them under that arbor of flowers on their wedding day.

And reminded her, with a kind of jolt, their third—Jesus!—anniversary was coming up in a few weeks.

Which meant she had to come up with another gift.

It never ended.

She scanned his office as if an idea would jump out and dance. All she saw equaled attractive, efficient, stylish, and important.

And she realized she’d never really looked at his space from this angle. She’d never actually sat on this sofa.

He had shelves with stuff on them—artfully arranged. She noted the photograph he’d asked her for, and she’d hunted up. One of her in her Academy days. He had the medal the NYPSD had bestowed on him—their highest civilian honor. Some books—actual books because he liked actual books—held upright by a pair of what she thought were dragons.

And among the other bits and pieces, some of which looked old, some of which were likely priceless, the photo of his mother holding him when he’d been an infant.

The child she’d never had the chance to raise.

Personal, she thought. All of it. Things he kept at home rather than in his big, fancy office in Midtown.

Looked like she had to think of something personal.

She scanned the office again. It sure as hell didn’t strike her he needed anything else in here.

“What’s this wall color?” she wondered out loud.