Innocent Prey

Mason whistled softly, drawing my attention away from both my dog and my guilt trip. “What?”

He was looking at the phone, holding it with his napkin and using the stylus to touch the screen. “She’s been calling Jacob Kravitz. Frequently.”

“Jacob,” I said, reviewing the details he’d given me on the way over here. “Oh, Jake. Wait a minute, isn’t that the ex-boyfriend?”

“Yep.”

“Huh. Doesn’t sound all that ex, does it? How about the current love interest? Kirk what’s-his-name?”

“Mitchell Kirk. And yes, there are two. One incoming, one outgoing.”

“Sounds like trouble in paradise.”

“All the calls to Jake were outgoing. Less than a minute each.”

I nodded. “So she was calling him. Maybe leaving him messages. But he wasn’t answering.”

“Or calling back,” Mason said, tapping the screen with the stylus but not saying much, until he finally seemed satisfied and dropped the phone back into its plastic bag. “Nothing much on there. Nothing that jumps out at me, anyway.”

I looked at my watch, grinning because I didn’t have to feel it. Yes, still, after almost nine months of being sighted. Hell, I still smiled when I opened my eyes every morning and found I could see. I’d had no idea just how much I’d been expecting the transplant to fail, my body to reject the new corneas the way it had all the others, and my world to be plunged back into darkness all over again, until I noticed just the other day that I’d stopped expecting that. There had been some kind of bowstring tension inside me. Waiting for the axe to fall, that sort of thing. And then one day I noticed its absence. Such a different feeling. Like I’d become seventy pounds lighter overnight.

“Rache?”

I realized I had been staring at the ticking second hand. “Sorry. I was just wondering what’s taking Amy so damned long.”

“I’m here, I’m here!” she called from about fifteen feet away. She was scurrying toward our bench with a paper bag in her hand. She wore a black T-shirt dress with a neon green geometric design over leggings and black leather boots. She had spiked her purple-and-black bangs with more gel than usual, and her nose stud was winking in the sunlight. “Sorry I’m late. My mother called just as I was heading out the door. What’s the emergency?”

Myrt lifted her head at the sound of Amy’s voice. She was one of Myrt’s favorite people, probably because Amy was the one who’d rescued her and brought her to me, then used skillful emotional manipulation to trick me into falling in love with the mutt. I don’t know exactly how. Introducing us, I guess.

“It’s all good. How’s your mom?”

“Excellent, as always. Sends her love, says she’ll send you that stuffing recipe from Thanksgiving. She won’t, though. She never shares her secret recipes. Says I’ll get them all when she’s dead.” Amy took a seat on the bench next to ours, opened her bag and took out a bag of chips. She ate one, gave one to Myrtle and flashed the bag at me when I scowled at her. “It’s all right, see? They’re baked. And it was just one.”

“You know by the time each of you and everyone else in that dog’s life gives her ‘just one bite’ it adds up to a couple of extra meals’ worth of food a day,” Mason said. “At least.”

“Life’s short. Dieting only makes it seem longer,” I said.

“Oh, that’s a good one, Rache. We need to put that one on a mug.” Amy yanked her smartphone from her bag, wiped her fingers on her black spandex leggings and started tapping the screen. “‘Life’s short. Dieting only makes it seem longer.’ Rachel de Luca.”

Mason frowned at me.

“She’s working on some new merchandising for me. We’re adding mugs and mouse pads to the affirmation cards and perpetual calendars.”

He tightened his lips and nodded. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking and was afraid he thought I was greedy. Well, hell, maybe I am. If there’s more money to be made, I’ll go for it. But I share. A third straight off the top to Uncle Sam to pay for bombs and guns, of course. And I give bushels to my charities on top of that.

“So, Amy,” he said, turning his full focus to my assistant. Hard not to. “I wanted to talk to you about last Thanksgiving.”

She stuffed her cell phone back into her oversize bag. Black. Of course. “When those two pervs snatched me off the side of the road?” she asked. Then she looked up at him. “How come? Did you finally catch the second guy?”

“No. Just want to keep it fresh in my mind.”

For a detective, he was terrible at deception. Amy saw right through him. “You didn’t catch him. Then there must have been another kidnapping.”

“No,” Mason said at the same exact moment that I was saying, “We’re not sure yet.”

He shot me a quelling look. I waved a dismissive hand. “What? Like she’s gonna go Tweet it to the world?” I looked at Amy sternly. “This is strictly hush-hush. Spill it and you’ll nix Mason’s shot at the chief’s job.”

“You told her that, too?”

“She’s my personal assistant, Mace. I tell her everything.”

“Yeah,” Amy said. “Nice job in the sack, by the way.”

He looked like he was gonna pass out before I said, “I don’t tell her that, for crying out loud.”

He closed his eyes and gave his head a rapid shake.

“So, Amy,” I said. “Yes, a girl is missing. And the truth is, she might just have run off. But I keep getting a feeling it has something to do with what happened to you.”

“And we all know better than to ignore her feelings,” Mason added, probably relieved that I hadn’t blurted out Stephanie’s name, address and phone number while I was at it.

“I am so dying to help out on a case,” Amy said.

“You’re not helping out. And it’s not a case.”

I clapped a hand onto Mason’s thigh. “You are helping out, and it’s not a case yet. But it might turn into one if she didn’t leave voluntarily. So if you can stand to go over it one more time...”

“I was driving to my mother’s in Erie for Thanksgiving,” she said, nodding. “I stopped for gas and noticed these guys in a white pickup pulling in behind me. I went in for the restroom and some snacks for the drive, and when I came out, they were still there. Not buying gas, not shopping, just sitting there.”

“Right. We saw the surveillance footage,” Mason said. “What do you remember about the second guy?”

“It’s all in my statement,” she said.

“I know, but you might have left something out that didn’t seem important, or remembered something since. Maybe there’s something you thought you told us but didn’t. Just humor me, okay?”

“Okay.” She ate another chip, handed one down to Myrtle, then took her sandwich out of her bag and unwrapped it slowly. “I didn’t really look at the guys in the truck at that point. I just sort of noticed the truck was there as I left. I didn’t get any bad vibes until I saw them pull out behind me. And even then, I thought I was just being a drama queen.”

I nodded and said to Mason, “She can be a real drama queen sometimes, so that adds up.”

Amy threw a chip at me. It landed on the sidewalk and Myrtle snapped it up before it settled. “Then my tire went flat. I still wasn’t overly concerned, until they pulled over in front of me. That’s when my alarm bells started going off. I snapped a quick pic of the truck with my phone and slid it under the car just in case.”

“Remind me how smart she is if I ever even consider letting her go, Mace.”

“I promise.” He nodded at Amy to keep going.

“After they dragged me into the truck, the driver dropped the second guy off. Do you need me to describe them again?”

I looked at Mason to answer that one. He shook his head. “No, the driver’s dead, and we have the sketch you and the police artist did of the second guy on file. We’re just trying to figure out why they took you. Did they say anything that might be a clue? Maybe something you’ve remembered since the incident?”