PIERCE STEPPED OVER the ruined valves that controlled the sprinkler system, and stood on one of the few portions of dry lawn in Madison’s backyard.
Braedon shook his head, his hands on his hips, as he surveyed the muddy mess. “Someone deliberately cut every wire and broke the valves, causing the sprinklers back here to go nuts and flood the yard. Why would anyone do that?”
“My guess is whoever did this doesn’t want you digging,” Pierce said. “The question is, are they trying to stop you from digging—specifically—or just from being here at all.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Matt said. “We weren’t even supposed to be here until next week. No one could have known we’d be here today to dig the footers.”
“Good point.” Pierce glanced around. “This is recent, within the last few minutes. The water has just started to pool around the side. If you hadn’t shut it off, the water would be running into the street by now. Whoever did this wasn’t trying to hide their work.”
“The ground is soaked,” Braedon said. “We definitely can’t do any digging today. We’ve turned the water off to the house. We’ll have to put a shut-off valve on the main sprinkler line like it should have been done in the first place before we can turn the water back on.” He shook his head. “Sloppy work not to have a proper shut-off valve. Just sloppy.”
Pierce glanced over at Hamilton. “You’re not going to try to blame this on her too, are you?”
He shook his head, looking just as perplexed as Pierce felt. “No, I don’t see how she could have done this. She didn’t have the opportunity.”
“I’ll have to go to a supply store to get what we need to fix this.” Matt motioned to the rest of the B&B workers. “You all might as well go back to the office, see what other projects you can work on. Braedon and I can handle this mess.”
“What are you going to do, Lieutenant?” Pierce asked.
“We’ll do what we always do—investigate. I’m not assuming anything. We’ll go around the neighborhood, see if the neighbors saw or heard anything. Does that satisfy you?”
Pierce nodded. “That’s what I would do.”
As Hamilton got on his cell phone, Pierce headed around the side of the house to the front. He nodded to Officer Williams who was standing outside the front door, and headed inside. He was surprised when Madison didn’t meet him right away with a barrage of questions about the vandalism. Maybe she was in the kitchen.
He slid the pocket door open between the family room and kitchen, but the kitchen was empty. He checked out the mother-in-law suite, the mudroom, and made a complete circuit of the downstairs.
“Madison, where are you?” he called out, but no one answered. The first stirrings of unease flashed through him.
“Madison,” he said, louder this time, as he hurried through the rest of the rooms on the ground floor.
The front door opened just as he was starting up the stairs. He turned around, disappointed to see that it was only Officer Williams.
“Where’s Mrs. McKinley?” Pierce asked.
Williams’s face showed his surprise. “She should be inside, sir. No one has gone past me except you.”
“Search the basement while I look upstairs. The entrance is in the closet in the back hall.” He pointed toward the hallway, then jogged up the stairs to the second floor.
A minute later, full-blown panic had him running back down the stairs. Williams was waiting, along with Hamilton.
“No sign of her in the basement,” Williams said, before Pierce could ask.
“What’s going on?” Hamilton asked.
“She’s gone.” Pierce headed toward the front door.
“Wait a minute. What do you mean she’s gone?”
Pierce yanked the door open and paused. “Missing, vanished, gone.”
He slammed the door on Hamilton’s next question, then jogged down the front steps. He walked around the house’s foundation, looking for footprints, something to explain how Madison had left the house without anyone seeing her. On the right side of the house, away from the driveway where all the trucks were parked, he stopped at the entrance to the basement.
He punched the speed dial for Casey as he bent down to study the ground outside the basement steps. The grass, even though it had turned brown in the cold weather, was still too thick to show any useful impressions. But it was bent back, showing someone had recently passed this way. Or, possibly, one person carrying another?
“Pierce,” Casey’s voice sounded through the phone, obviously recognizing his cell number. “What’s up?”
“Madison McKinley is missing.” He straightened. “It looks like someone left the house through the basement, but I can’t pick up any distinct footprints.”
He tightened his hand around the phone and followed the faint impressions in the grass out to the street where they abruptly ended. “The trail ends at the street. No tire tracks.”
“What are you thinking? She left, without telling you?”
“No, she wouldn’t do that.” His heart slammed in his chest. “He’s got her, Casey. Damn it. I shouldn’t have left her in the house alone. The alarm was off because the cops were here, going in and out. I shouldn’t have left her. Her stalker, Damon, whoever . . . he’s got her.”
“I’ll help in any way that I can. Hamilton won’t be pleased about my involvement since I’m focusing on the ‘Simon says’ murders. I’ll send Tessa over, unofficially—as your friend. That should placate Hamilton. But I’ll do what I can behind the scenes. Give me the address.”
Pierce rattled off Madison’s Gaston Street address. “She was taken within the last half hour.”
“Get me a vehicle description.”
“Working on it.” He hung up and headed around to the other side of the house. He expected to see Madison’s little red convertible parked in the driveway on the other side of Braedon’s massive B&B work truck.
The car wasn’t there.
He frowned down at the tire tracks. Again the grass was too thick here to offer any viable footprints to tell him who had moved the car. It could have been anyone.
Even Madison.
What the hell? Had she been abducted or had she snuck out and left on her own? Why would she do that?
He turned back toward the house and stood in indecision. Hamilton was waiting for him on the front porch. The two officers he had brought with him were heading down the sidewalk in opposite directions, canvassing the neighborhood.
Just like they should.
Hamilton was following procedures.
Just like he should.
Was Pierce the one who wasn’t keeping an open mind? Was he allowing his past with Madison to cloud his judgment? Was the flooded backyard a diversion? To get everyone in the backyard? His brothers may have turned off the water earlier than the perpetrator would have expected, but eventually the water would have run to the front street. Someone would have noticed, and knocked on the front door to get whoever was inside the house to go around back.
Wait, that didn’t make any sense. It couldn’t have been a diversion. Madison wasn’t staying in the house. No one could have known she’d be there this morning. If Pierce hadn’t brought her to get her laptop, she’d never have been here in the first place.
Unless she’d called someone, to tell him she was there, to tell them to help her get out of the house, away from Hamilton.
She could have called from the kitchen. She’d been in there with the door closed.
Again, that didn’t make sense. Madison would have been outside if Pierce had let her.
Or would she? Maybe she assumed he would stop her?
He shook his head, but even as he told himself that thought was crazy, he couldn’t help but think that it made a bizarre kind of sense. Madison had been hiding something from him, all along. He’d known that, and had hoped she’d eventually trust him enough to confide in him.
Was it possible that whatever she’d been hiding from him all this time was something that could put her in jail? That would certainly explain why she didn’t want Logan involved. She didn’t want her police chief brother to have to choose between his career and helping his sister.
Especially if she were guilty.
Of what? What could she have done?
He raked his hand through his hair. Had she been abducted? By her alleged stalker? Or was she on the run, afraid of what Hamilton might find on her computer? The note had said: I’M COMING FOR YOU. That could be a threat, sure.
Or it could be a promise . . . from someone she knew, someone who was helping her get away, perhaps a lover.
He closed his eyes, surprised at the pain that flashed through him at that thought.
“Buchanan? You coming?”
He opened his eyes. Hamilton was staring at him, waiting. Pierce headed back across the yard and up the steps, sparing Hamilton only a quick glance before opening the front door. There on the wall to the left of the entrance was the hook where Madison always hung her car keys.
Her keys weren’t there.
The only way to get the keys was to go into the house. The only way in the house was past the police officer who’d been stationed out front.
Or through the basement.
The question was whether someone entered the basement and took Madison, or whether she’d left the house, of her own free will.
“I assume you called your boss. Did you find anything out?” Hamilton asked.
Pierce studied the other man. No censure, no anger that Casey might be giving him advice, or even helping. Hamilton looked genuinely curious, concerned—an officer helping a fellow officer. Had Pierce only imagined Hamilton was biased against Madison this whole time?
Hamilton was patiently waiting for an answer.
“Casey’s still working the ‘Simon says’ case, but another agent—Tessa James—is coming over, unofficially.” His hands tightened into fists. “I found a path through the grass leading out of the basement to the street. I couldn’t tell if it was one person, or two. Madison’s car is missing, along with her keys.”
Hamilton seemed to digest that for a moment. “What do you think happened?”
“I wish to God I knew.”
MADISON STRUGGLED AGAINST the cloth that bound her wrists, but her awkward position, with her hands behind her back and her knees drawn up and her ankles tied together didn’t give her any leverage.
She was in a car trunk. She knew that even without any light. The fluorescent emergency trunk release glowed in the dark, tantalizingly close but out of reach.
She remembered going into the kitchen for more coffee. Someone had grabbed her from behind. He’d put a sweet-smelling cloth over her nose and mouth. After that, everything went black. He must have somehow taken her out of her house, and put her in this car.
But who? Damon? Or someone else?
From the aches and pains in her back and hips, she knew she’d been in the trunk for quite some time. She shivered, the cold seeming to seep into her bones without the benefit of a coat. But she was thankful it was cold outside. If she’d been left in a car trunk in the heat of summer, she would have baked to death.
She strained against her bonds again, twisting and pulling, trying to get her hands up under her bottom and over her legs to get her hands in front of her. If she could do that, she could pull the trunk release and try to get away before her captor came back.
Several minutes later, she collapsed back against the carpeted trunk bottom, gasping in deep breaths of chilly air. No luck. She was still trussed up just as soundly as she’d been when she woke up.
How long could she survive in this trunk? If she didn’t die of hypothermia, she’d run out of air soon, wouldn’t she? Or were trunks not airtight these days? How many more minutes, or hours, of good air, did she have left?
God, please don’t let me die. Not like this.
If someone were near the car, would they hear her in the trunk? What if the man who’d taken her was standing outside? She couldn’t lie here and just do nothing. She had to take the chance that someone might hear her, and would help her.
She drew a deep breath and screamed.
TWO HOURS.
Madison had been gone for more than two hours, and Pierce still had no leads about what had happened to her.
He and Matt were the only ones in Madison’s home office right now. The police had executed their search warrant, and Hamilton and the others were in the family room discussing next steps.
Matt had surprised Pierce by wanting to help. He’d organized the B&B crew and his brothers, and they were out driving the roads. But in spite of all that manpower, and the BOLO the police had issued to be on the lookout for Madison’s bright red convertible, no one had spotted her car.
“It’s a lot of area to cover.” Matt traced his fingers across the map spread out on Madison’s desk.
“I appreciate your help.”
“That’s what family’s for.”
Pierce gripped Matt’s shoulder and gave him a nod of thanks. He was only just now beginning to realize how much he’d distanced himself from his family over the years as he worked on the serial-killer task forces he used to be on. But his brothers had forgiven him and were doing everything they could to help, pulling together like families were supposed to.
A commotion at the front door had Pierce and Matt looking up. A moment later, Tessa stepped into the room. From the look on her face, Pierce knew he wasn’t going to like what she had to say.
“Thanks for coming. This is Matt, one of my brothers.”
She shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.” She glanced over at the detectives and police officers in the next room. “We need to talk, in private.”
“There’s a mother-in-law suite off the kitchen. We can go there.” Pierce led the way through the family room, avoiding Hamilton’s curious glance when he, Matt, and Tessa stepped through the archway into the kitchen.
“Is he coming with us?” Tessa looked pointedly at Matt.
“He can hear you just fine, and yes, he is coming too.” Matt stared at her, as if daring her to try to stop him.
Pierce opened the door to the sitting room that was part of the mother-in-law suite, and ushered the others inside before closing the door behind them. “Matt’s helping with the search, and he’s smarter than you and me combined. He wants to help.”
Tessa shrugged and turned her back on Matt to face Pierce.
Matt, having none of that, sidled around to join the three of them.
She ignored him. “I’ve got a confirmed sighting of Madison’s car at a motel outside of town, just off the interstate.”
Relief poured through him. “Let’s go.”
She grabbed his arm. “Wait, you need to hear all of this.”
His stomach clenched. He was already dreading what she was going to say. “Go ahead.”
“The car isn’t there anymore, but the motel manager saw it, and he verified the tag number when the woman driving rented a room.”
“Woman?” Pierce asked.
“A petite woman with shoulder length, dark hair.” Tessa pulled a photograph out of her purse. “I personally checked the motel manager’s story, and got this picture from the still camera at the check-out desk.” She handed it to him.
He stared at the grainy black and white photo, then held it closer for a better look. “It looks like Madison. I’ll admit that. But the woman in the picture is wearing sunglasses, inside. Seems suspicious.”
“Agreed. Which is why I triple-checked the credit card information. The woman in that photo was driving Madison’s car, and paid with Madison’s credit card. What was Madison wearing when you last saw her?”
He was holding the picture so hard that it started to crinkle in his hands. He forced himself to relax his grip. “Jeans and a white blouse, with little pink flowers on it. Just like the outfit this woman is wearing.”
“This is looking less and less like an abduction,” Tessa said.
Matt crossed his arms. “That’s just stupid.”
She gave him the kind of look someone would give a fly buzzing around their head. “It’s a reasonable deduction, based on evidence.”
“None of this makes sense,” Pierce said. “Why would Madison sneak out of the house and run off to a motel? She’s an adult. If she wanted to meet some man . . .” he swallowed and cleared his throat. “If she wanted to do that, she’d do it. She wouldn’t sneak around.”
“I agree,” Tessa said. “Which is why I’m going back to the motel. I’ll dig deeper, see if I can find other witnesses. I need a picture of Madison for when I question people. I saw some photographs in her home office. I’ll go grab one of those.” She started toward the door, but Pierce stopped her.
“That won’t be necessary.” He pulled his wallet out of his pants pocket. He took out a picture of Madison he’d taken when they were dating, a picture he’d been unable to throw away. Without a word, he handed it to Tessa.
She gave him a sympathetic look, making him grit his teeth.
“I’ll make sure you get this back.” She headed out the door.
Matt frowned after her. “I’m going to call Braedon and update my map to show where he’s searched already.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “You coming?”
Pierce pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I have to make a call first, something I’ve been putting off. Be there in a minute.”
Matt nodded and headed into the kitchen.
Pierce moved to the window overlooking the backyard, and punched up a number on his phone. The same number he’d been threatening to call since the morning of the shooting.
“Hey, Pierce,” the voice on the phone said. “This had better be good. I’m a bit . . . busy at the moment.”
Pierce leaned his forehead against the cool glass and closed his eyes. “Logan, Madison’s in trouble.”
MADISON DREW IN another breath to scream just as the trunk popped open.
A patch of bright blue sky had her blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light. A dark figure moved into her range of vision, and suddenly a rough cloth was held over her nose and mouth.
She thrashed and tried to turn her head away from the sweet-smelling cloth, the same smell she remembered from back in her kitchen. She tried to hold her breath as she struggled against his hold. Her lungs started burning. Spots flashed before her eyes, and she finally had to draw a breath.
Her world went dark.
PIERCE REFUSED TO leave Madison’s house in case someone called demanding ransom.
Hamilton refused to leave in case Madison magically appeared on her own. He still wasn’t convinced she’d been abducted. Neither was Tessa.
But Pierce no longer had any doubts.
Madison had been gone for over six hours now. She wouldn’t be gone that long without contacting him. She’d know he would worry, and she wasn’t the kind of person who would want him to worry, no matter what kind of problems they had with each other. Something bad had happened. He knew it. He just prayed he could find her soon.
He refused to even consider that he wouldn’t find her.
Tessa sat down on one of the two couches in the family room to give her latest report to Lieutenant Hamilton and Pierce. Matt was out searching with the B&B crew. And Pierce had already updated Hamilton about the picture Tessa had from the motel.
The lieutenant was eager for help closing the case, so he wasn’t upset at all that Tessa had been digging around. He was a little too happy, in Pierce’s opinion, because the evidence wasn’t backing up the abduction theory.
“Okay,” Tessa said. “Here’s where things stand right now. I’ve spoken to several eyewitnesses who said a woman matching Mrs. McKinley’s description, driving Mrs. McKinley’s car—as confirmed by still images of the license plate—was seen at the Super 8 motel out on I-95, just south of town approximately thirty minutes after her disappearance. The subject used Mrs. McKinley’s credit card to rent a room.”
She glanced at Pierce, an apologetic look on her face. “Subject was seen entering the motel room with a man closely matching the description of the man Mrs. McKinley recently chased through Forsyth Park, the same incident in which Special Agent Buchanan was shot. The subject and the unidentified man were seen leaving the motel room half an hour later, and they drove off in Mrs. McKinley’s vehicle.”
Pierce tightened his hand around the arm of the couch. “If that woman was Madison, she was under duress. The man with her must have had a gun pointed at her.”
She shook her head. “Not according to the eyewitnesses.”
“He could have had the gun hidden beneath his jacket. Just because they didn’t see a gun, doesn’t mean there wasn’t one.”
She put her hand on Pierce’s shoulder. “They were seen kissing, passionately, in the parking lot. I saw the still photo from the security camera.”
He shook off her hand. “I know everyone thinks my judgment’s clouded because of my past relationship with Madison. Maybe you’re right. But there are too many things that don’t add up here to ignore.”
“Like what?” Hamilton asked. He held his hands up when Pierce frowned at him. “I’m serious. If there’s something I’ve overlooked, I want to know about it. You accused me of jumping to conclusions too quickly. I’m just as willing as you to admit I could be wrong. Give me something to go on. There’s been no ransom demand, no note, no phone call, nothing to suggest that Mrs. McKinley was taken against her will. And everything we’ve seen points to just the opposite. So, go ahead, please. Give me something to help me see your side.”
Pierce blew out a frustrated breath. “Aside from the glaring fact that Madison has no motive to lie to the police—”
“That you know of,” Tessa said.
“All right. That we know of. Aside from no motive, everything else is too . . . perfect.”
“Like what?” Tessa asked.
“The motel, for one. How did you find out about it in the first place?”
“I traced her credit cards, found she’d made a charge and went to the motel to investigate. Standard operating procedure.”
“Exactly. Madison’s brother is a police chief. Before that, he was a detective in New York City. Madison and Logan are close. I know for a fact that he’s discussed police procedures with her on numerous occasions. She knows standard operating procedures. If she wanted to disappear, she wouldn’t use her credit cards. And she sure as hell wouldn’t drive a flashy, red sports car.”
Hamilton looked thoughtful. “When you put it that way, it does sound far-fetched. Considering how carefully everything else was done, I wouldn’t expect these kinds of mistakes.”
Pierce nodded, relieved to see that Hamilton was at least listening. “The sprinkler system was also overkill. If Madison wanted to create a diversion so she could get out of the house without anyone noticing, wouldn’t she have chosen something more reliable or predictable? She didn’t have any way of knowing the B-and-B contractors were coming out this morning, or how long it would take the water to go out to the street if they hadn’t come along. It could have been a long time before someone actually noticed. As a diversion, the sprinkler system wasn’t a good plan.”
Hamilton tapped his hands on the table. “Maybe,” he admitted. “It could also be that Mrs. McKinley panicked when she realized I was going to get a search warrant. Busting the sprinkler was the only thing she could think of to create a diversion. It wasn’t perfect, but it did work. She could have gone outside through that back bedroom, the in-law suite. No one would have seen her.”
Pierce crossed his arms over his chest. It was difficult to argue when what Hamilton said made sense.
Tessa pulled a manila folder out of her purse. She placed it on the table, and took out a small stack of black-and-white photos. “These are the still pictures from the motel security camera. They’re not the best quality, but I felt they were pretty definitive. You can clearly see the license plate on the car.” She handed the photos to Pierce.
He looked at them for a full minute before tossing them back on the table. “That’s Madison’s car, but that isn’t Madison.”
She picked up the photos and studied one of them. “What makes you say that?”
“Something is off, but I can’t put my finger on it. It will come to me. But one thing I can tell you, whoever the woman in that picture is, she’s doing her best not to let the camera get a clear shot of her face.”
Tessa slowly flipped through the photos. “You’re right. Not one of them shows her full-on. She’s wearing sunglasses in half of them, and has her head turned to the side in the rest. All I can say for sure is she has dark hair, the same general build as Mrs. McKinley, and she’s wearing the same clothes.” She glanced up. “You’re not disputing the clothes are you?”
“No, those are Madison’s clothes.” He didn’t allow himself to think what it could mean if someone had stripped her clothes from her body. It hurt too damn much to go down that road.
“Let’s say you’re right, that she’s the victim in this. What’s your theory?” Hamilton asked.
“Madison came to Savannah in the first place because someone had impersonated her and fired her property management company. And the person who used to take care of the yard each week has disappeared. Or at least, that’s my opinion. Have you actually seen Newsome since we were at his house the other day?”
Hamilton shook his head. “No. But no one’s filed a missing person’s report.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have any family to file a report,” Tessa offered.
“Possibly. I can get someone to dig a bit more.”
“That’s a start,” Pierce agreed. “Now, why would someone fire the property management company and possibly be responsible for the yardman’s disappearance?”
“Because he, or she, didn’t want anyone checking on this house,” Tessa said.
“Right. If we assume Madison really was abducted this morning, the person who abducted her knew this house intimately. He knew another way inside so he could take her without anyone seeing him. And if we add in all the notes, the phone calls, the vandalism—”
“It’s all about the house,” Tessa said.
Pierce nodded. “Seems that way. I think someone was living in this house and wanted to get rid of the property manager and yardman so no one would report that he was here. Half the neighbors aren’t around this time of year, so no one would even know there wasn’t supposed to be anyone in the house. They wouldn’t report anything if they saw lights on at night, or a car outside. When Madison came down to check on the house, and ended up staying, the man who’d been living here decided to try to inconvenience her enough, or spook her, so she’d leave.”
“If that’s the case, why abduct her?” Hamilton asked.
“To make sure she got the message,” Tessa said.
“And what message is that?” the lieutenant asked.
“He wants her out of the house.”
Pierce shook his head. “I don’t think so, Tessa. I think he started out trying to scare her away, but now he’s having too much fun. He’s changed his plans. He’s not worried about the attention he’s attracting, or that cops are involved. Think about it—if he was still trying to get her to leave, so he could live in the house, he’s ensured that’s not feasible by involving the police. He could never live here now, with everything that has happened.”
“Then what’s his new plan?” Tessa asked.
His fingers tightened so hard on the chair they started to ache. “I have no idea.”