Kiss Me Awake (27 page)

“What?” Auggie unclipped his cell from his belt, looked over the unit and swore. “It isn’t working. When did you call?” 

“About an hour ago.”

“What do you have?”

“Nothing, but why did you have me following Palermo? He’s one of us.”

“Why aren’t you following him now? You have someone else on him?”

The man shook his head. “No. Palermo spotted me, got out, and we had a few words. Figured you’d made a mistake. I tried to call you to see who I was supposed to be tailing, but I wasn’t getting an answer.”

Auggie spewed out a sentence in Spanish. The man shrugged. “Sorry, man. I didn’t know. A little information goes a long way. You should have told me who it was. Have you heard from Jaida?”

“No. Phone’s not working, remember?”

“So you think Palermo has something to do with her going missing?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Shows what I know. I thought this was over Gale’s money.”

“What money?” Spencer asked.

“
I’ll catch you later, Caleb.” He shifted into drive and took off.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing,
Garcia, but this is my wife we’re talking about, and I expect you to be forthcoming.”

“All right. Long story short, eight and a half million dollars belonging to Gale, vanished from his accounts. Jaida was in possession of the account numbers at the time, and Gale accused her of taking it. That’s why her house was ransacked. He was looking for it, looking for a bank book.”

“Why did you lie to me?”

“I didn’t lie. She was investigating him, and he took her. And that’s what I told you. What difference does the money make?”

“I could have paid it. Put an end to all this.” Why hadn’t she come to him? Asked him for it? She knew he would take care of it…take care of her.

They drove a few miles east then pulled into a residential driveway where a two-story house sat on top of the rise. A man emerged from the side gate, a harnessed German shepherd at his side. Auggie threw the vehicle into park, hopped out, and opened the back door, ushering them inside.

“Spencer, this is Carl Brooks. Carl, Spencer Gordon.” Auggie ran the introductions while he backed out of the drive.

“Good to know you, Spencer.”

“Same here.”

Carl stroked the thick fur around the shepherd’s pointed ears. “This is my girl, Tobi.”

Auggie took over and filled the man in on the details: where they were going, the potential danger involved, and the layout of the grounds.

“Carl has a hundred percent rescue rate.” Auggie said it with a confidence Spencer hoped the man was worthy of. He looked over the team—man and dog—and wondered how many of those rescues were live ones and not just recoveries.

Carl said, “Actually, Tobi is the one with the skills. I just follow her lead.”

Spencer didn’t care which one of them was the lead or who took the credit. He just wanted Jaida found. Alive.

Spencer shifted to get a better look at Carl. “So, Carl, how exactly does this work?” He didn’t want to dawdle over details and directions; he wanted to be prepared before they arrived, wanted to hit the ground running.

Carl slid to the center of the backseat and leaned forward. “Tobi is an air-scenting dog. She works off-lead, which means I direct her in a search pattern, and she sniffs the air to catch the scent we’re looking for.”

His hands moved rapidly, explaining as much as his words. “You see dogs can discern one particular odor in a sea of odors.” His eyes dropped to Spencer’s lap. “Is that the sweater Auggie mentioned?”

“It belongs to my wife, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Carl’s brows rose as he shot a surprised look at Auggie. Guess he must know Jaida too. The wife part managed to leave everyone who knew her dumbstruck. 

“Can I see it?” Carl recovered admirably, bypassing the uncomfortable questions.

Spencer handed it back, and Carl held it out to the dog. “I can smell perfume on the sweater, but a trained dog will home in on the odor of skin cells that flake off the body, the scent enmeshed in the fibers. Skin cells float in the air and then fall to the ground, and once the dog knows the scent, she can track it.”

“What about bloodhounds? I thought they were better for hunting down missing people,” Auggie asked.

“That’s a prime breed for picking up older scents, but since it’s only been a matter of hours, Tobi can handle it.”

Carl’s passion for his work was evident, and he ran with the opportunity to share what he did in depth, but after his initial questions were answered, Spencer retreated into his own little world, Carl’s raspy voice fading into a distant drone. 

The day he told Jaida that he wanted her to love him, he was asking the impossible, and he knew it. Events of the past week had opened his eyes to the truth. And he was through waiting, done humiliating himself. 

Love suffers long.
Isn’t that what he’d just told Auggie? The reason he’d given him for not divorcing Jaida? He might be labeled a hypocrite, but he knew when he’d been beaten. It was time to let her go.

He wouldn’t stop searching until he found her, and when he did, he would set them both free.

H
e was a monster, not a man. In the aftermath of his tirade, a calm fell over the house.
Jaida lowered the curtains from her face and breathed in the quiet. 

The natural light in the room had dimmed, the sun reaching its peak some time ago. She pushed the covering to her waist then sat up. From prone to upright, a wave of dizziness assaulted her. Afraid to move another inch, the board under her bottom slouched even more at her centralized weight.

Everything around her was still. Was he in the house? She dumped the twisted pile of fabric to the floor, a cloud of dust rising on impact. She needed the bathroom. Needed it now. Slowly, softly, she slid from her perch and dropped to the floor without a sound.

At the end of the hall to her right, sunlight cut a wide swathe across the living room carpet where the front door had been left open. He didn’t close it this time. Why? Was it a trap?
To the left was the bathroom. She darted inside, closed the door and locked it.

She turned a circle in the cramped space. A thin, yellowish flow of water trickled from the spigot on the sink. Her hand was bleeding again. She used the facilities then searched the mirrored cabinet for bandages. An empty prescription bottle and an uncapped tube of lip balm was all she found.

                                          *

The front tires of the Expedition rolled over the cracked lip of the entrance and bounced over the chunked cement. A thin layer of gravel covered the rest of the driveway.

The property was private. Cloistered by sweeping willow branches, dense boxwoods, and junipers left to grow wild, it was an ideal environment for detaining the unwilling.

The dollhouse-sized dwelling at the end of the drive stood alone, an outcast; its humble structure banished from the notable houses on the property’s outer perimeter. Spencer had made a call to a realtor, confirming the house was vacant. It was a foreclosure on a single-acre parcel, but the name on the loan wasn’t familiar to any of them. 

Car doors opened. The posse exited the vehicle. Tobi strained against the leash, and Spencer fell in behind her, curbing his instinct to rush ahead. It was all on the animal now.

                                           *

Jaida stilled. He was back, and from the sound of it, he wasn’t alone this time. Had he called in reinforcements?

The window was her only way out. There was no screen. She rolled open the privacy glass in the track, boosted herself up on the toilet and climbed out. 

                                     *

The front door was open. Auggie entered first. Weapon drawn, he announced his presence. But Tobi fought for first position with an urgency Spencer understood.

When there was no response from within, Auggie let the canine lead. The animal circled the living room, homing in on the center then followed the invisible trail of skin cells down a narrow hallway. His adrenaline spiked. She was here. Or had been.

Spencer started to follow then broke from the pack, checking out a coat closet at the front of the house then heading into the kitchen. His shoe hit the side of an empty can, the hollow tin ringing out as it tumbled over the tile. He looked down at his feet.
Duct tape.
Two half circles of layered duct tape were discarded on the kitchen floor.

He picked them up, looked over the side with the adhesive then walked to the window and held them up to the light. A thin layer of blue lint coated one of the bands; fine blonde hair on the other, with a crimson stain.
Blood?

“Hey, Auggie,” he yelled, fear doing a number on his heart. He was no detective, but even to the layman, it was clear that the tape was used to lash hands and feet. Jaida’s? But where was she now?

He spotted two stains on the floor similar in color to the one on the tape. Spencer bent and pressed his finger into the center of the larger one. It came away wet.

“You find something?”

Spencer stood and held out his stained finger. “Blood.”

Auggie grabbed his wrist and looked for himself. “Where did it come from?”

“The floor, this.” Spencer held up the duct tape.

Auggie swiped a hand over his mouth. “We’re closing in,” he said. “Tobi is picking up a strong scent at the back of the house.”

They may be closing in, but what were they going to find?

Carl joined them in the kitchen, Tobi at his side. “Looks like our girl slipped out the bathroom window.” 

                                            
*

Jaida stood at the front door of the adjacent house and jiggled the button on the doorbell. It was stuck, jammed in the socket. She knocked on the door and then the window.
Please, please, let me in!

Inside, the television blared. She cupped her hands on the window and looked through the layer of sheers. A table lamp lit up the far corner of the room, and beside the table was a man slumped down in the recliner, asleep. She tapped on the glass again.
Wake up! Please!

He didn’t rise, didn’t so much as flinch. She could smash in the front window with a rock. That would wake him. He would call the police, report her vandalism, and she would be safe. But the commotion would alert more than the sleeping man, and she knew it wouldn’t be the police that got to her first.

Jaida kept out of sight, her body pressed close to the house. She looked to the tree line that separated the two properties and pressed her eyes closed against the sudden sting of tears. What was she doing out here playing hide-and-seek with a lunatic? She pounded on the door this time then shook the knob. “Let me in!”

It was useless. He wasn’t going to hear her.

She tripped and nearly fell as she scurried around the far side of the house to the back deck. It was two steps up, a rectangle constructed from redwood planks. Jaida tried the sliding glass door and the two windows that ran along the back wall, but they were locked…all of them.

She turned at the unsettling sounds of rustling and the whispers of movement all around her. Fear played tricks on her eyes—his face was hidden in the collage of leaves, and then it was gone. He was out there watching, waiting for her.

She scanned the grove of trees at the back of the lot. She was trapped. Where could she go for help? She looked out toward the canyon then back at the house she’d fled. There was no safe place.

“Under the shadow of your wing…”
No safe place but there.

Voices carried from the house next door. They grew louder, closer. Jaida ran. Hurtling the steps of the deck, she stumbled in the dirt, caught herself with an outstretched hand and sprinted into the canyon.

“Into the canyon and out to the road,” she said, repeating her plans like a mantra. Her legs flew in long, unsteady strides over uneven ground, carrying her deeper into the canyon.

A fresh spate of blood rolled from her palm and dripped from her fingertips. Her head throbbed. Somewhere behind her a dog barked, but she didn’t stop, didn’t look back. 

S
pencer stood in the center of the yard feeling utterly lost. He intended
to go after Jaida, but which way should he go? How long had it been since she left? Was her exit made by force, or had she slipped from captivity unseen?

Carl exited the front door, the leash wrapped around his wrist. The dog leading, the two of them took a turn around the house, Jaida’s sweater still bunched up in Carl’s hand.

Auggie came to stand beside Spencer. “I know this is hard on you, but we’ll find her. If she did go out the window, it’s likely that she got away. She might be on her way home right now or headed to the police department.”