A Trace of Vice

“You used the dampener so she couldn’t call or text?” she heard Chiqy ask from somewhere behind her.

“Yep,” Dean answered. “I watched her real close. She tried a lot but never seemed to get a connection. Did you, Sarah?”

She fumbled with the chain lock and almost had it off when a huge shadow suddenly blocked out the light. She started to turn but before she could, she felt a sharp thud on the back of head and then everything went black.

CHAPTER ONE

Detective Keri Locke’s heart was pounding. Even though she was in the middle of a huge police station, she tuned out everything around her. She could barely think straight as she stared at the email message on her phone, refusing to believe it was real.

willing to meet if you follow the rules. will be in touch soon

The words were simple but their meaning was colossal.

For six long weeks, she’d been waiting for this, hoping against hope that the man she suspected had abducted her daughter five years ago would reach out. And now he had.

Keri slid her phone away on the desk and closed her eyes, trying to stay composed as she attempted to wrap her head around the situation. When she’d first uncovered the contact information for the man known only as the Collector, she’d set up a meeting. But he never showed up.

She reached out to him to find out what happened. He indicated that she hadn’t followed the rules but hinted that he might get in touch in the future. It had taken all of her discipline and patience not to try to contact him again. She wanted to desperately but worried that if she came on too strong, he would get skittish and dump the email address completely, leaving her no way of ever finding him, or Evie.

And now, after all those torturous weeks of silence, he’d finally gotten in touch again. Of course, he didn’t know he was communicating with Evie’s mother or even that it was a woman. All he knew was that this was a potential client interested in discussing an abduction for hire.

This time she would come up with a better plan than before. The last time, she had less than an hour to get to his assigned meeting place. She tried to set up a decoy to go in her place and survey the situation from afar. But somehow he knew the decoy wasn’t legitimate and he didn’t come. She couldn’t let that happen again.

Stay cool. You’ve held out this long and it’s paid off. Don’t ruin it by doing something impulsive. There’s nothing you can do right now anyway. The ball’s in his court. Just give a basic response and wait to hear back.

Keri typed one word:

understood

Then she put the phone in her purse and stood up from her desk, too nervous and excited to sit still. Knowing there was nothing more she could do, she tried to force the Collector from her mind.

She headed for the break room to get a bite to eat. It was after 4 p.m. and her stomach was growling, although she wasn’t sure if it was because she’d skipped lunch or due to general anxiety.

When she arrived, she saw her partner, Ray Sands, rifling through the refrigerator. He was notorious for snagging any food not properly marked. Luckily her chicken salad, with her name clearly taped to the container, was hidden in the lower back corner. Ray, a 6-foot-4-inch, 230-pound black man with a bald head and a heavily muscled frame, would have to really be desperate to navigate himself down there just for a salad.

Keri stood in the doorway, silently enjoying watching Ray’s butt wriggle as he maneuvered. In addition to being her partner, he was also her best friend and lately, maybe something more. They both felt a strong attraction to each other and had admitted as much to one another less than two months ago, when Ray was recovering from a gunshot wound he’d sustained when they took down a child kidnapper.

But since then, they’d only taken baby steps. They flirted more openly when they were alone and there had been several semi-dates, where one of them would come to the other’s apartment to watch a movie.

But they both seemed afraid to make the next move. Keri knew why she felt this way and suspected Ray felt the same. She was worried that if they decided to really go for it and it didn’t work out, both their partnership and their friendship could be put at risk. It was a legitimate concern.

Neither of them had a great romantic track record. Both were divorced. Both had cheated on their spouses. Ray, a former professional boxer, was a notorious ladies’ man. And Keri had to admit that since Evie was taken, she’d been one big pulsing nerve, constantly on the verge of spinning out of control. Match.com wouldn’t be putting either of them on posters anytime soon.

Ray sensed that he was being watched and turned around, half of an unclaimed sandwich in his hand. Seeing that there was no one in the room but Keri, he asked, “Like what you see?” and winked.

“Don’t get cocky, Incredible Hulk,” she warned. They loved to tease each other with pet names that highlighted their substantial size difference.

“Who’s using the double entendres now, Miss Bianca?” he asked, smiling.

Keri saw his face darken and realized she hadn’t done a good enough job of hiding her nervousness about the Collector. He knew her too well.

“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately.

“Nothing,” she said as she brushed past him and bent down to grab her salad. Unlike him, she had no problem navigating tight spaces. While she wasn’t as small as a fictional mouse nickname might suggest, compared to Ray, her 5-foot-6-inch, 130-pound body was Lilliputian.

She could feel his eyes on her but pretended not to notice. She didn’t want to discuss what was on her mind for a couple of reasons. First of all, if she told him about the email from the Collector, he’d want to break it down in detail with her. And that would undermine her efforts to keep sane by not thinking about it.

But there was another reason. Keri was under surveillance by a shady lawyer named Jackson Cave, who was notorious for representing pedophiles and child abductors. To get the information that led her to find the Collector, she’d broken into his office and copied a hidden file.

The last time they’d seen each other, Cave had hinted that he knew what she’d done and said outright that he had his eye on her. It was clear to her what he’d meant. Ever since, she’d done regular sweeps for listening devices and been careful to only discuss the Collector in secure environments.

If Cave knew she was on to the Collector, he might warn him. Then he’d disappear and she’d never find Evie. So there was no way she was going to mention anything about it to Ray here.

But he didn’t know any of that, so he pressed her.

“I can tell something’s up,” he said.

But before Keri could diplomatically shut him down, their boss burst through the door. Lieutenant Cole Hillman, their immediate supervisor, was fifty but looked significantly older, with a deeply wrinkled face, uncombed salt-and-pepper hair, and a growing potbelly he couldn’t hide with his oversized dress shirts. As usual, he wore a jacket and tie but the former was ill-fitting and the latter was ridiculously loose.

“Good. I’m glad you’re both here,” he said, skipping any kind of greeting. “Come with me. You’ve got a case.”

They followed him back to his office and both took seats on the weathered loveseat against the wall. Knowing she likely wouldn’t have a chance to eat later, Keri scarfed down her salad while Hillman read them in. She noticed that Ray had already finished the sandwich he’d stolen before they sat down. Hillman dove right in.

“Your possible victim is a sixteen-year-old girl from Westchester, Sarah Caldwell. She hasn’t been seen since lunchtime. Parents called her multiple times, saying they couldn’t reach her.”

“They’re freaking out because their teenage daughter didn’t call them back?” Ray asked skeptically. “Sounds like pretty much every family in America.”

Keri didn’t reply despite her natural inclination to disagree. She and Ray had argued this point many times. She thought he was too slow to sign onto cases like this. He felt that her personal experience made her far too likely to jump in prematurely. It was a constant source of friction and she didn’t feel like getting into it at this moment. But Hillman apparently was willing.

“I thought so too at first,” Hillman said, “but they were very convincing that their daughter would never go this long without checking in. They also tried to check her location using the GPS on her smartphone. It was turned off.”

“That’s a little weird, but still,” Ray reiterated.

“Listen, it may be nothing. But they were insistent, panicked even. And they noted that the policy of being missing for twenty-four hours before starting a search doesn’t apply to minors. You two don’t have any pressing cases right now so I told them you’d stop by to take their statement. Hell, the girl may be home by the time you get there. But it won’t do any harm. And this keeps our asses covered on the off chance something is up.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Keri said, standing up to go with her mouth full of her last bite of salad.

“Of course it sounds good to you,” Ray muttered as he took the address from Hillman. “Another wild goose chase for you to drag me on.”

“You know you love it,” Keri said, walking out the door ahead of him.

“Could you two please be a little more professional when you get to the Caldwells’?” Hillman shouted through the open door after them. “I’d like them to think we’re at least pretending to take them seriously.”

Keri tossed her salad container in the trash and headed for the parking lot. Ray had to jog to keep up with her. As they reached the exit, he leaned in and whispered to her.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook on whatever it is you’re keeping secret from me. You can tell me now or you can tell me later. But I know something’s going on with you.”

Keri tried not to visibly react. There was something going on. And she did plan to fill him in when it was safe to do so. But she needed to find a more secure location to tell her partner, best friend, and potential boyfriend that she might be on the verge of finally catching her daughter’s abductor.