Colby Brass

Then she turned, facing Victoria’s direction, and trudged forward, her bare feet faltering clumsily through the ankle-deep snow.

Victoria’s lips parted with a sharply indrawn breath.

The front of the woman’s yellow blouse was stained a deep crimson. Droplets of that same startling color dripped from the fingertips of her right hand and onto the newly fallen snow, leaving a horrifying atlas of her jagged path.

Victoria’s gloved hand slid into her coat pocket, wrapped around her cell phone even as a sort of shock held her unable to look away … unable to properly react. Who was this woman? What had happened to her?

She stumbled closer. “Can you help me?” Her lips were cracked from exposure and her skin was deathly pale from the icy cold.

Instinct kicking aside the shock, Victoria bolted forward just in time for the woman to collapse into her arms.

“Help me,” she begged, her eyes wide with fear and glassy with whatever physical trauma she had suffered. Her left cheek was swollen. Blood had trickled from her nose and coagulated on her skin.

Victoria hit speed dial for the office as she lowered the woman onto the cold blanket of snow. “Mildred,” she said before her personal assistant could launch into her practiced greeting, “I need paramedics. Now! I’m on the street in front of the office. I have a female, mid-to-late twenties, who is injured and bleeding.”

Victoria surveyed the woman. The bleeding appeared to start at her left shoulder. “Make the call and get me some help out here!”

Tossing the cell phone aside, Victoria opened the bloody yellow blouse to assess the injury. A penetrating wound on the left shoulder. Deep. Still oozing precious blood.

“Please,” the woman urged, her voice scarcely a gasp. “Help me.”

“I’ve called for help,” Victoria assured her as she shrugged off her coat and ripped the scarf from around her neck. With one hand she pressed the scarf over the wound to staunch the bleeding while spreading the coat over the woman’s body with the other.

A sharply indrawn breath jerked Victoria’s attention upward. A man, cell phone in hand, stared at the startling sight.

“Take off your coat,” Victoria ordered him, “wrap it around her feet and legs.”

Still frozen, the man blinked.

“Do it!” Victoria demanded.

His movements stilted, the man shouldered out of his heavy winter coat and moved to do as he had been instructed. “What … what happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Victoria told him. “Help is on the way.” To the woman whose lips were still moving with inaudible words, Victoria said, “Can you tell me your name?”

A weak gaze locked with Victoria’s. “Help me,” she murmured.

“You have my word,” Victoria promised. “But I need your name.” Sirens wailed in the distance, providing some amount of relief. Help was on the way. Thank God.

“My baby …” The rest of the woman’s words were thready, indistinct whispers. “He took my Lily.”

Victoria leaned closer. “Please, tell me your name.” She wanted desperately to pursue the subject of the baby, Lily, but she needed the woman’s name first.

“Wanda …” She moistened her cracked lips. “Larkin.”

“What happened?” Victoria’s son crouched on the other side of Wanda.

As if a shot of adrenaline had renewed her, Wanda Larkin frantically grabbed at Jim’s shirt with her right hand. “He took my little girl,” she cried. “You have to help me!”

Victoria’s gaze collided with Jim’s for an instant before returning to the woman’s.

“Who took your baby?” Jim asked, his voice gentle.

“The paramedics as well as Chicago’s finest are here.”

Victoria glanced up at Trinity Barrett, a member of her staff. Like Jim, he hadn’t taken the time to grab his coat before rushing out into the harsh weather. Victoria nodded, thankful the slippery streets hadn’t slowed down the arrival of emergency services.

“Who took your baby?” Jim repeated a bit more firmly.

“My ex-husband,” Wanda murmured. “He took my baby.” Tears leaked from her glazed eyes. “I tried to stop him. Outside the toy … store.” She gestured feebly in the direction from which she’d come.

As Trinity filled in the paramedics, Jim prompted more answers from the victim. Where did she live? What was the name of the toy store where the attack and abduction had taken place?

Victoria cleared her mind and took mental note of the information Wanda managed to provide before her ability to listen and respond faded further. Victoria grabbed her phone from the snow and put through another call to Mildred with instructions to send Von Cassidy to the major toy store only a few blocks away. It was the only one in the direction Wanda had indicated. Every moment that passed lessened the likelihood of finding witnesses to the incident. There was no time to wait for the police to react.

Victoria and Jim moved aside as the paramedics took over care of the victim. While the police attempted to question Wanda, Jim gave Trinity a nod and they both slipped away. Victoria covered for them when the questioning turned to her and the man who’d reluctantly helped by giving up his coat.

By the time the paramedics had taken Wanda away in the waiting ambulance and the police had gone with a warning that there would likely be additional questions, Victoria was freezing. “Thank you,” she said to the man whose name she couldn’t immediately call to mind.

“I’m just sorry you had to ask for my help.” He shook his head and offered a bewildered shrug. “You see these things on the news … in the movies …” He shook his head again. “But you never expect to be the one …”

“You reacted commendably,” Victoria assured him before he trudged away. She surveyed the sidewalks where those who’d stood by watching now went on about the business of hurrying to their destinations.

When, she wondered, had helping one’s fellow-man become more a spectator’s sport than a call to action?

She peered at the bloody snow where the victim had lain, then up at the sky. Victoria closed her eyes and let the falling snow sting her cold cheeks. Who was this woman? This Wanda Larkin?

Was the incident related to a custody battle?

Or was this something far more sinister?

Either way … a child was missing.

Whatever the motive behind the act—Victoria shifted her gaze to the building where her staff waited—the Colby Agency would find the missing child.

And the man responsible for this unthinkable tragedy.

Chapter Two

Humboldt Park, 3:30 p.m. (2 hours missing)

Trinity Barrett surveyed the block surrounding the apartment building where Wanda Larkin lived. Jim Colby reached for the unsecured door leading into the building. Trinity followed his boss inside the dingy stairwell. The wails of an infant somewhere above the first floor were underscored by at least one blaring television. A woman shouting at someone who had evidently made her unhappy drowned out the rest of the cacophony.

Jim studied the row of mailboxes on the wall to the left of the entry door. “Third floor, 306.”

Wanda Larkin had given them the street address, but the apartment number she’d murmured had been inaudible.

Three flights of stairs later, Trinity approached Larkin’s apartment first. A metal number six identified the unit.