DevilMayRide

22
Sadie reached Dawn’s house in record time, but she didn’t remember the drive. Her Honda had barely come to a complete stop at the curb before she was flying out of her car and hurling herself toward the house with Maeva jumping out of the passenger seat and running to catch up.
Zack stopped her in the driveway.
“Tell me everything!” Sadie said, her voice tinged with hysteria. “What are they doing to get my sister back?” She nodded toward a growing police presence in and around Dawn’s house.
“I’m sure the police are doing everything they can,” Maeva said quietly.
“They’ve got her, don’t they?” Sadie said, her eyes large and brimming with tears. “Those bikers or Satanists or whoever took my sister and they’re . . . they’re going to kill her and cut out her baby!” The last was said behind her fingers. She felt her knees buckle and Zack grabbed her by her elbow.
“You’ve got to calm down,” he said, his voice coplike in its firmness, and his jaw set in granite anger. “Time is everything right now.”
Sadie nodded and bit the inside of her cheek to stop from screaming. The part of her that was insanely angry with Zack got buried beneath the heart-pounding fear her sister could be dead.
“Oh, God, Thuggy was supposed to be watching her!” Zack’s eyes narrowed. “When did you talk to Thuggy?”>
“Earlier today. He came to my house and I told him I’d pay him to keep an eye on Dawn until I got here.”
“He wasn’t here. The cops got a nine-one-one call from your sister. She said someone was breaking into her house, but then the call ended and by the time they got here, she was gone.”
“Oh, God! Who do I talk to? What do I do?”
Zack brought her over to the detective handling the case.
“Sadie said Thuggy was supposed to be watching Dawn,” Zack said.
“Shit. There was no sign of him,” the detective said. He turned to Sadie. “You might as well know that Thuggy—or should I say Ron—is one of ours,” the detective said.
“One of yours?” Sadie blinked in surprise. “You mean . . .”
“He’s been undercover working for Egan doing meth-lab cleanup and trying to uncover more information about the meth trade. He was doing well until Egan disappeared.”
Sadie turned to Zack. “You knew this?”
“I told you I trusted the guy. There wasn’t anything else I could say.”
Sadie turned to Maeva. She was on her phone explaining things to Terry.
“I need to go inside.”
Sadie didn’t wait for permission and nobody stopped her. Zack simply fell into step beside her.
Sadie walked past the people dusting for prints and collecting evidence. Zack brought her down the hall to Dawn’s bedroom.
The bedsheets were twisted and crumpled as if someone had just woken up and hadn’t had time to make the bed. There was a glass of water and crackers on the bedside table and an open copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. The house was hot and smelled faintly of new paint from the newly finished nursery. Sadie thought about Penny Torrez and her blood-soaked dress, and a searing pain knifed through her chest.
Zack tried to hug her, but Sadie yanked away. She sank slowly to her knees and sobbed gut-wrenching cries until Maeva came to coax her out of the house.
“Zack said we should go back to your house. Someone needs to be there in case a call comes in,” Maeva said once they were back outside.
“They’re giving us the brush-off,” Sadie sniffed. “No-body’s going to call. This isn’t a ransom situation.”
“You don’t know that. I’ll drive you back home,” Zack said, and it wasn’t a suggestion. For an ex-cop, he was in full cop mode now, like it or not. He tossed his own keys to Maeva. “You take my Mustang and meet us at Sadie’s place.”
Sadie’s hands trembled as she buckled in.
“This is all my fault,” Sadie moaned. “We’ve got to find her.” She covered her face with her hands. “Oh, God, I’ve got to call John. I’ve got to call my mom and dad.”
“Wait on telling your folks until morning. The officers that tried to reach John at his hotel were told he’d already left for the airport. His plane won’t land for a few more hours. By then we’ll have good news.”
Sadie knew what Zack wasn’t saying. That if they didn’t find Dawn soon, they wouldn’t find her alive.
Once they were at her house, Sadie raced to the answering machine.
“Nothing. No ransom messages.” She turned to Zack. “This isn’t a kidnapping. They want her baby and they’ll kill her to get it.” Her voice was thin and high with emotion.
“All of SPD is on the lookout for her, Sadie.”
Maeva walked in then, her eyes a question.
“Nothing,” Sadie said. “No messages. Not that we expected any. Maeva, I need you to make some calls and find out where the hell this Witigo Alliance group meets. You’re the only one I know with those kinds of contacts.”
“I’ve already called Louise, but it went to voice mail. Terry’s working on everyone in our address book and everyone we know that was at that session last year.”
It wasn’t enough. Sadie felt useless pacing the floor.
Her cell phone rang and Sadie jumped. She nearly dropped it in her excitement to answer the call.
“It’s Egan,” Sadie announced to the room, and she stabbed the button to take the call.
“What?” she demanded.
There was no response.
“Hello?” she repeated. To Zack and Maeva she added, “Listen.” And put the call on speaker. Nobody was on the line, but there was the sound of crashing and banging before the call went dead.
Sadie looked at Zack. “The call came from his house. I’ve got a bad feeling. I think Egan’s mixed up in all this somehow.”
“I’ll call it in,” Zack said, already reaching for his own phone, but Sadie stopped him.
“What if it’s nothing and we’re pulling everyone away from leads that are really important?” she asked him.
“You two go,” Maeva suggested. “Terry’s on his way over and we’ll be making calls from here. I’ll let you know if anyone calls the house.”
Sadie was already on her way out the door as Zack shouted protests behind her.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said.
“Then stay!” She whirled and shouted at him. “But I’m not going to sit on my ass doing nothing. I’m going to Egan’s and if that turns up nothing, then I’m beating every friggin’ bush in this city until I find my sister, got it?!”
“I’ll drive,” he said, walking toward his Mustang.
Zack steered out of the neighborhood as Sadie impatiently tapped her foot while sitting on the passenger side.
“Can’t you go faster?”
“I don’t want to get us killed,” Zack grumbled, but it was useless. Sadie didn’t care at this point who died. As long as it wasn’t her sister or her future niece or nephew.
Sadie tried to call back Egan, but there was no answer. She didn’t want to tie up her phone, so she gave the number to Zack. He dialed it on his own cell and left it on speaker while it rang and rang.
A few minutes later Zack eyed her curiously when Sadie gave him directions.
“Isn’t Egan’s apartment just up the road?”
“Yeah, it is, but he wasn’t calling from his apartment. He’s got a place in Bellevue.”
“Why the hell does a single guy need two places?” Zack asked.
“His dad died a few months ago and left the house to him. He plans to move into it eventually, but it needed a lot of work, so he’s been doing renos on the weekend. He’s there enough he had a phone installed. We’ve talked on the weekends, so I had the number programmed into my phone.”
Sadie cursed as a light turned red. She closed her eyes and muttered a silent prayer.
They drove to the address she had and found themselves in an area of middle-class two-level homes. Each home had a tidy postage-stamp yard and a single attached garage. They pulled up the driveway and stared at the house. It was completely dark.
They walked together to the front door and Sadie pressed the bell, tapping her foot as she waited.
“You don’t honestly expect he’s going to answer, do you?” Zack asked.
“At this point, anything’s possible,” Sadie replied. She rubbed her forearms. The weather had finally turned and she could feel moist cool air drifting in off the Pacific.
Zack rapped his knuckles sharply on the door.
A narrow window ran parallel with the front door and Sadie was trying to peer between tight blinds.
“I think I see a light, but it might just be a reflection.”
“Wait here.” Zack turned to go. “I’ll check around back.”
After what felt like forever, the front door opened and Zack ushered her inside.
“How’d you get in?” Sadie asked as she closed the front door behind her.
“Looks like someone already beat us to it. The lock on the patio door was broken and the door was wide-open.”
The two-level home opened onto a short hall with stairs leading up to the second level. To the right was a closet, and to the left was a spacious living room and beyond that was the kitchen. To Sadie’s surprise the place was fully furnished and didn’t look like a place undergoing renos.
“Looks like the renovations are done,” Zack said drily. “Hell, you should see the stuff this guy’s got.” Zack led the way through the living room that boasted a massive plasma-screen TV and a new butter-soft leather sofa and chairs cozied up to the fireplace. An amazing multicolored area rug divided the living area from the dining room.
“That rug still has the price on it,” Sadie said.
She knelt, lifted the tag from the carpet, and let out a low whistle. “Two thousand smackers for a six-by-eight rug?” She got to her feet and turned slowly, taking in expensive art on the walls.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Zack asked.
“That Egan’s business has done really well?”
“That Egan’s got his fingers in other pots besides meth cleaning if he’s living this well, and I doubt it’s legal. . . .”
“You don’t know that,” Sadie said, even though she’d been thinking the same thing. “Where’s the phone?”
They looked around and found the base for a cordless phone but no handset.
“Must be upstairs,” Sadie said after checking the modern-age kitchen with the stainless Sub-Zero refrigerator.
She turned and walked back to the front foyer and took the stairs up to the second level. Zack was right behind her.
“You take the bedroom,” Sadie said. “I’ll take the den.”
Egan’s office was a chaotic mess of paperwork, but he had a new fax machine in the corner. On his desk, being used as a paperweight, was a bottle of Carsebridge Scotch whisky. Sadie didn’t know much about Scotch, but she knew expensive when she saw it.
Almost hidden under a stack of manila folders was Egan’s cell phone. Sadie picked it up and began scrolling through all the recent incoming and outgoing calls from Egan’s number. She snagged a notepad and pen and began writing them down.
“Nothing unusual in the bedroom,” Zack said. “Unless you count a bedspread that looks like it’s spun from gold.” He pointed. “Hey, that bottle of whiskey’s gotta be worth nearly two hundred bucks. Egan’s got expensive tastes.” He walked over and picked up the bottle. “Think Egan would mind?”
“Huh?” Sadie was busily checking Egan’s calls.
Zack put the bottle back.
“You checking who called?”
“Yeah.” Sadie continued to scroll through the list of incoming callers. The last few were from Sadie’s and Zack’s cell phones. Then she stopped abruptly and she felt her face pale.
She stared, unblinking, at the number on the display and swallowed.
“Two days ago somebody called him from Onyx House bed-and-breakfast,” Sadie said. “Small world, huh?”
“It isn’t that small,” Zack replied tightly.
“What the hell is going on?” Sadie asked quietly. “I’m going to try calling this house again.”
She picked up her phone and dialed the number for the house they were in. Her cell phone rang in her ear as they walked back downstairs.
Zack tilted his head. “Do you hear that?”
“What?” Sadie pulled her phone away from her ear but didn’t disconnect. A phone was ringing somewhere. “Doesn’t this place have a basement?”
Zack had his gun in his hand and headed to a door in the hall. He opened the door and peered into the darkness. The ring of a phone could be heard coming from downstairs. At the same time it went to voice mail at Sadie’s end, the ringing sound stopped.
The light was on in the basement.
“Stay here,” he told her.
“Like hell.”
The basement was small but held a finished rec room that reeked of new smells. New carpet. New paint but no furniture. There were two things wrong with the room.
First, a large hole had been punched into the wall and the drywall torn apart.
Second, David Egan was slumped in a corner with a bullet hole between his eyes.