still on, and that she hadn’t taken any luggage with her would Rafael begin to think that something might have happened to her and he’d have his men start searching for her. They would concentrate on the area around the library. If some honest soul had found her discarded wallet and turned it in to the library personnel, then he might even call the cops.
Now there was an entertaining scenario: Rafael Salinas, going to the police for help. She’d almost pay money to see that.
He’d check with the hotels in the area, to see if she’d registered. Given how much he thought of her brainpower, he’d expect her to do something obvious, which was a big point in her favor.
She wasn’t that far away in terms of actual distance, but she was in a different state, and Rafael would never in a million years think she’d go to Elizabeth, New Jersey. He wouldn’t even expect her to leave Manhattan.
Later, when he discovered that she’d robbed him blind, he would focus on her hometown. She knew he’d had her investigated, that he knew her real name and all that, but that didn’t matter because she wasn’t going back to her hometown. She had no intentions of ever going back to that place. She thought some cousins still lived there, but she hadn’t contacted them since she’d left and had no reason to ever get in touch with them.
Jimbo, her older brother, had left before she had, and she’d never heard from him again. Good riddance, anyway. He was nothing but a loser. Her parents were divorced and had both sort of drifted away, too, focusing on their own lives and not much caring about their two offspring. Drea had deliberately cut ties with them, too. She had only herself, which was the way she liked it.
The taxi deposited her at a motel that at least looked clean, which was the best she could say for it. For just one night, she figured she could stand a lot worse than this.
She registered with a fake name, and paid cash. The bored clerk rattled off a list of rules and instructions, and slid a key to her. She was on the second floor, which was fine with her as she didn’t have any luggage to haul up and down.
The carpet in the room was stained and worn, the furniture was rickety, but at least the room didn’t stink. Drea ignored her surroundings and looked for a phone book. When she finally found it-secured on a chain-she flipped to the yellow pages and looked for a hair salon that was close to the bank, then she began calling. She called four before she found one that could give her an appointment at ten in the morning.
That was that. When the bank opened in the morning, she would withdraw her hundred thousand dollars, then go straight to the hair salon to have her hair cut and colored, and she’d be good to go. She’d buy some secondhand car, pay cash, and head west.
She was free.
8
RAFAEL TRIED TO LET ONLY ANGER SHOW; HE DIDN’T WANT any of his men to think Drea was actually
A stupid thief would take the cash and the credit cards and go on a spending spree that would lead the cops right to him. A smart thief would take the cash and leave the cards. Her driver’s license was gone, too. Identity theft was a big business, and a valid driver’s license was a valuable thing to have. When he added Drea’s disappearance to the fact that the credit cards were right there, not a single one missing, the most probable scenario wasn’t a good one. He couldn’t even hope the feds had picked her up-though fat lot of good Drea would have done them, unless they wanted to find out all she knew about shopping-because they wouldn’t have stolen her cash and tossed the wallet.
He had enemies, a lot of them. If one of them had grabbed Drea, then she was as good as dead. She might be kept alive for a while to be used as leverage against him, but he’d never see her again except in bits and pieces. In his world, violence was commonplace; the only things of value were money and survival. It was a world he thrived in, a business model he excelled at, but now it made him sick to his stomach to think of sweet, dumb Drea being raped and tortured.
He had all of his men gathered in the penthouse, the one place he was certain his conversations couldn’t be monitored. Orlando knew what he was doing, so Rafael had sprung for all the fancy safeguards that kept the feds from listening in on everything he said. “Somebody had to have seen something. There are cameras on all the entrances and exits, right?” He directed the last question to Orlando.
“Should be, but who knows what kinda security they got? Who breaks into libraries? I’ll see what I can find out.”
Obtaining a search warrant was out of the question-no one even suggested it. Call the cops? What a laugh. The cops would piss around with all their legal shit-and that’s assuming they’d do anything at all. Rafael wasn’t wasting time with that; he’d do things his way. He’d find out who had snatched Drea, and then he’d hit the fucker with everything he had.
“Maybe, when she found out she’d lost her wallet, she went looking for it,” Hector offered.
“Dumb ass,” Amado replied in a sour growl. “Why doesn’t she answer her cell phone?”
“So maybe somebody grabbed her purse, and she chased after him and got lost.” Hector was grabbing at straws, and the sadness in his dark eyes said he knew it, but he still felt compelled to offer every possible alternative to what they knew had probably happened.
“She wouldn’ta done that,” Amado said. “She turned her ankle getting into the car, and she was limping. She couldn’ta chased nobody down. Besides, if somebody grabbed her purse, she’d of screeched to high heaven, and everybody in the library would’ve known about it.”
“Whoever grabbed her was slick,” Orlando said. “When she comes out, put an arm around her like you’re friends, only your other hand is holding a gun shoved in her side. She’d have gone with him without making a sound.”
If the snatch had happened outside, the library cameras might not have caught anything, Rafael thought, then he realized it didn’t matter. Whoever had grabbed Drea would want him to know, because they’d grabbed her for a reason. Just to take her and kill her didn’t make any sense; probably whoever had done it would be contacting him soon, asking for money, or maybe something else. He thought furiously, wondering if whoever it was knew what he’d hired the assassin for and had figured out who was behind it. He was pretty sure there was no way. And even if someone had, if killing Drea was vengeance for what he’d done, whoever had done it would want him to know, otherwise there was no point.
“We don’t have to check the library’s security,” he said heavily. “Whoever took her will call.” One way or another, whether Drea was dead or alive, they would call. Until then, all he could do was wait.
Unable to stand there in front of his men any longer, Rafael abruptly turned and left the room, going down the hall to her bedroom. Pushing the door open, he stepped just inside, then halted as if he’d hit an invisible wall. Her presence was so strong he could almost touch it. The scent of her perfume hung in the air. The television was on, as usual, the voices of the shopping channel hosts so cheerful they reminded him of chirping birds. Her laptop was open, because she never closed it, and though the screen was dark the power light told him it was in sleep mode and would come to life at the touch of a key. The closet door was standing ajar, the light on inside so the jumble of her clothing was clearly visible. Costume jewelry was scattered across the top of the dresser.
Drea was like a magpie, going for the shiny and colorful. She was messy, careless, and childlike in her enthusiasms. She deserved better than to die a brutal death at the hands of men to whom she meant nothing.
His vision clouded, and to his dismay he realized he was getting teary-eyed. He couldn’t let anyone see him like this, so he forced himself to walk farther into the room, to look into her bathroom where the vanity was littered with cosmetics and the air was even thicker with her scent, a feminine mixture of perfumed bath gel, scented candles, lotions, and sprays. Drea loved-had loved-all the frills of being a woman.
There was a huge weight on his chest, and an emptiness inside. He could barely breathe under the pressure,
