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Kat’s heavy heart weighed her down as she exited Janice’s apartment. She kept her fingers crossed that Andrew would find something to lead them to her neighbor’s location. The sooner they tracked her down, the better.
Kat took the elevator downstairs and crossed through the building lobby to the main entrance. The clear, June night was pleasant, but Kat was too preoccupied to enjoy it.
She found Lucy and Bubbles standing in a well-lit grassy area off to one side. Bubbles barked when he saw her.
“Janice’s car is still here,” Lucy said.
Kat exhaled. The kidnapping scenario was looking more and more likely.
Lucy turned her back on the parking lot as if she preferred not to have further evidence of their neighbor’s troubling situation directly in her line of sight. Kat couldn’t blame her. Things were not looking good.
“How is Bubbles holding up?” Kat asked.
“Okay.” Lucy scratched the dog’s head. “Do you think he knows what’s going on?”
“I’m sure he knows something’s not right, even if he’s fuzzy on the details.” Kat could have said the same thing about herself. She still couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that someone had taken Janice. Who would do such a thing?
“What are you doing with Bubbles?” a male voice asked.
Lucy whirled around so quickly it was a miracle she didn’t lose her footing. “Ryan! What are you doing here?”
His brow furrowed. “I live here.”
“But where did you come from?”
“I guess you didn’t hear me drive up. You look like you have a lot on your mind.”
“I do.” Lucy eyed him warily. “Where were you just now?”
“I . . . I went to the park.”
“At this time of night?”
Ryan looked at the giant watch strapped to his wrist. “It’s barely ten o’clock. The sun only set an hour ago.”
Kat regarded the second-floor resident. Somewhere in his late twenties with thick, brown hair, Ryan Pollack was a construction worker and had the build to boot. Kat had never found his size intimidating before, but running into him now, after they had just learned of Janice’s disappearance, forced her to view him in a different light. And the fact of the matter was that Ryan was big—certainly big enough to carry a woman out of her apartment.
“What are you doing with Bubbles?” Ryan asked again.
“Janice is missing.” There was a harshness to Lucy’s tone that sounded almost accusatory. Apparently Kat wasn’t the only one evaluating Ryan’s ability to kidnap a woman.
“Missing?” Ryan repeated.
“Gone, MIA, vanished into thin air.”
Ryan stared at Lucy, a dumbfounded look on his face.
“We think somebody abducted her from her apartment,” Kat told him.
“Wow,” Ryan said. “That’s . . . something.”
“Did Janice happen to say anything to you about who she might be meeting tonight?” Kat asked.
“Well, yeah.”
“Really?” Hope surged through Kat. “Who did she say she was meeting?”
Ryan scratched his head. “Well, she said she was meeting you two.”
Kat deflated. Of course Janice would have said as much. After all, she had planned to meet with Kat and Lucy.
“She told me that a couple days ago when I asked her if she maybe wanted to . . .” Ryan glanced at Lucy, then averted his eyes.
“Wanted to what?” Kat prompted.
“You know.” He stared at the ground. “Grab a bite or something.”
“You asked her out on a date,” Lucy said.
Ryan’s nod was almost imperceptible. “But I guess she didn’t want to go so she made up that story about having plans with you.”
“She didn’t make it up,” Kat told him.
“Oh.” He straightened, a smile spreading across his face.
Lucy shot Kat a withering look. Evidently Kat had made a blunder by reviving the man’s hopes.
“So she’s really missing?” Ryan said.
Kat nodded.
“Are you sure she isn’t just out with her boyfriend?” Ryan asked.
“Her boyfriend?” Lucy scrunched up her nose. “Janice doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
“Sure she does. I heard her arguing with him when I was leaving.”
Ryan’s words knocked the air out of Kat’s lungs. “Janice was arguing with someone when you left your apartment tonight?”
“Yeah. It was a real heated exchange, too.”
“Could you hear what they were saying?”
“Janice sounded like she was crying, so her words were kind of muffled. But I did catch her saying something about being in permanent pain.”
A fist wrapped itself around Kat’s chest. That didn’t sound good.
“She’s been saying that a lot recently,” Ryan added, his tone full of sorrow.
Lucy set one hand on her hip. “You’ve eavesdropped on her before?”
“Oh, no. I wasn’t listening on purpose. I would never do that. It’s just that voices carry here, and sometimes, when I’m outside my apartment, I can hear her across the hall.”
“The insulation in this building isn’t very good,” Kat agreed, hoping he’d keep talking.
“Yeah.” Ryan’s forehead creased. “The weird thing is I never heard Janice’s boyfriend talking.”
“Maybe she was speaking to him on the phone,” Kat proposed.
“Yeah, maybe.”
Did Janice have a secret boyfriend? Kat wondered. Since Lucy hadn’t known about him Kat had to figure he was a fairly new development.
Then again, it sounded as though Janice and this mystery man had already reached a point where heated discussions were the norm. In Kat’s experience that typically didn’t happen during the ‘getting to know you’ stage. Usually that only occurred after a couple had been together for a while, when enough time had passed for little quirks to become huge annoyances.
Kat looked at Ryan. “Did you ever hear Janice mention this man’s name?”
He shook his head. “Like I said, I didn’t listen in on purpose.”
“But you’re sure he was here tonight?”
“Yeah. Unless she had him on the phone like you said.” His eyes brightened. “Maybe she was breaking up with him. Maybe that’s what they were arguing about.”
“Maybe.” And if that were the case, Janice might be in grave danger if this man hadn’t taken ‘no’ for an answer.
“I hope she dumped him,” Ryan said. “I thought about going over there and clocking him a few times, but my mama says it’s never a good idea to get involved in other people’s relationships. So I just kept asking Janice out so she’d see there are good guys out there too. A woman like Janice, she needs a man who will worship her, somebody who will treat her like a princess. She shouldn’t have to settle for someone who causes her pain all the time. The man she ends up with should cherish her like the angel she is.”
Lucy rolled her eyes at Kat. Ryan didn’t seem to notice, and Kat almost felt sorry for the guy.
Bubbles must have felt some sympathy for Ryan as well. He stepped closer and shoved his nose into Ryan’s palm.
Ryan looked at Lucy as he rubbed the dog’s ears. “You deserve somebody who will treat you like a princess, too, Lucy. You know, I’m not doing anything tomorrow night, if you want to hang out for a while.”
Lucy regarded him, steel in her gaze. “I’m not interested, Ryan. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Ryan,” Kat interjected, wanting to stay on topic, “what time did you hear Janice arguing with her boyfriend tonight?”
“It would have been when I left the apartment,” he replied. “So, just before seven.”
“Seven?” Lucy’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been at the park for three hours?”
Ryan shifted his feet. “It was a nice day. And then it started getting late, so I stayed to watch the sun set.”
“What were you doing before the sun set?” Lucy demanded.
“I was . . . walking around.”
His halting speech and the way he avoided eye contact gave Kat the impression he was lying. And Lucy’s questions had made it clear that she didn’t believe his story either.
Kat pictured Ryan slinging Janice over his shoulders and carrying her away like a sheet of drywall. He certainly would have had the opportunity to kidnap Janice if he wanted to. Janice wouldn’t have thought anything of opening her door for a neighbor, even one she didn’t particularly care for.
And Kat couldn’t deny he had motive. Not only was Janice an attractive woman who, according to Lucy, had repeatedly rebuffed his advances, but Ryan also resented how her boyfriend was treating her. He could have deluded himself into thinking he was doing the noble thing by physically removing her from a toxic situation. Then he’d made up that tale about watching the sun set because he obviously couldn’t confess to spending the past three hours looking for a place to stash his rescued princess.
Kat jolted as she cast her gaze down. Ryan’s shoes looked awfully dressy for someone who had supposedly gone for a walk in the park.
So what had Ryan Pollack really been doing this evening?
