some leads-they’re working on those now.” She just looked at him, clearly unconvinced. He forced a smile. “Plus, you’ve got me. I find people, remember?”
“Kincaid.” One of the LVPD detectives-Holt was pretty sure his name was Vogel-held up an arm and beckoned him over to the desk where he was hunched over an array of electronic equipment along with a tech guy and one of the FBI agents. “I think we’re ready here.”
“Yeah…coming.” Holt slid his backside off the desk but kept one hand on Billie’s shoulder as he guided her over to where the three men were waiting. Her shoulder felt small-boned and defenseless, and he had to remind himself she was anything but.
The techie was a slightly overweight guy with thinning red hair cut short and flat on top. He looked about nineteen. He handed Billie a phone, and Vogel said, “Okay, what I want you to do is call this guy Miley Todd back at the number he called you from. That’s this number right here.” He smoothed a piece of paper on the desk with one hand, and Holt recognized the note he’d scrawled before leaving Billie’s. “We know it’s a cell phone,” Vogel went on, “so we can’t trace it. But what we can do is try and ID the tower the signal’s coming from. Understand? That’ll narrow our search area. So we need you to keep him talking as long as you can. Can you do that?”
She nodded, and Holt saw her throat move. He thought she looked scared to death.
“Tell him you need proof he’s got Hannah,” he said, drawing her eyes to him, putting all the strength and confidence he could muster into the look he gave her. “Tell him you need to know she’s all right. Keep him on the line as long as possible.”
She nodded again. The techie donned a pair of headphones and pointed to her. She took a breath, let it out and punched in the number. A moment later, everyone in the room could hear the
Once. Twice. Three times. Holt was willing to bet nobody in the room took a breath. Then there was a click, and a voice, high and scared and one he’d heard before, said, “Yeah-who’s this?”
“It’s me-Billie.” Holt couldn’t believe how calm she sounded. Angry, yeah, but definitely not scared.
Miley, on the other hand, was freaking out. Holt wouldn’t have thought his voice could get any higher, but it must be hitting close to high C.
“Billie? What the hell! How’d you get this number?”
“Caller ID, you moron,” Billie replied, and several people in the room had to stifle laughter.
“Hey, you better watch who you’re callin’ names, okay? I’m not kiddin’ around here. You better not be talking to the cops, either, you hear me? Billie? You hear me? No cops!”
“Yeah-” she cleared her throat; her eyes were closed “-yes, all right. Just…calm down, okay? Look, I’m doing what you want, I’ll be in the damn tournament when it starts tomorrow. I just want-” her eyes flicked to Holt’s for one panic-stricken moment, then she caught a quick breath and rushed on “-I need to know she’s okay.”
“I told you, I’m not gonna hurt her. That’s all you need to know.”
“Yeah, but she’s probably scared to death. Let me talk to her, okay? Just let me tell her-”
“Hey, I know what you’re doing.” His voice went up the scale again. “You’re trying to keep me talking so you can trace this call. You better not be tryin’ to trace this call, you hear me? Won’t do you any good anyway, ’cause the kid’s not here.”
Billie’s fingers were gripping the phone so hard her knuckles were white. “Where-”
“Yeah, right, like I’m gonna tell you? Somewhere safe, is all you need to know. Somewhere you won’t find her, neither, not without me. So you just better not be talkin’ to the cops. Because if the cops do find me? If anything bad happens to me, you’re never gonna find her. You hear me, Billie? Nobody’s ever gonna see that little girl again.”
Chapter 9
The weather turned warmer that evening. The wind had died down; the front, or whatever it was, had moved on east. This being the desert, the temperature had dropped with the coming of darkness, and Holt knew it would be chilly by morning, but for now it was pleasant enough that the tourists were out strolling the Strip in droves.
Billie and Holt had had dinner with Wade and Tierney, who had flipped a coin to decide which of the touristy mega-hotel/casinos they should stay in for their first trip to Vegas, and belated honeymoon to boot. The Venetian had won the toss. Holt and Billie had left the newlyweds waiting for their turn at a gondola ride and had driven back to Billie’s in time to meet the police technician who’d be setting up a monitor on Billie’s landline.
While Holt and the techie had their heads together over the electronics, Billie had wandered out onto the patio in the backyard. After seeing the techie-whose name was Riley-to his van and locking up the house, Holt found her there, sitting cross-legged on the deck beside the empty pool. She wasn’t wearing a jacket, just the long-sleeved pullover she’d put on that noon after getting the phone call from Miley. Her SWAT outfit, he thought, smiling to himself. And at the same time his heart felt curiously heavy.
“Hey,” he said, and she looked up at him, smiling just a little, but not saying anything.
“What are you doing out here in the dark?” he asked, although it wasn’t really dark, with the light from the kitchen pouring through the windows and a three-quarter moon bright overhead. He sat down beside her, not cross-legged-his joints were no longer comfortable with such extremes-but with his feet dangling over the side of the pool.
She looked down at her linked hands. “Just…you know. Thinking about stuff.”
“Yeah, well…I guess you’ve got a lot to think about.”
She took in a breath and shook back her hair. Looked up at the night sky. “Actually, I was thinking about the Grand Canyon.”
What could he say to that? Considering everything that had happened to her in the past day or so, it seemed… unexpected. To say the least. Finally, he just said, “Yeah?” hoping she’d explain.
Instead, she asked, “You ever been there?”
“Nope,” he said. “How about you?”
She shook her head. “Always wanted to. I meant to. I mean, I think everybody should see it, don’t you? It’s one of the most amazing things on the planet, and it’s right
It awakened a corresponding hum in his own chest, and he started to tell her something, then realized just in time that what he’d been about to say was, “We’ll go. When this is over. I’ll take you.” As if it was a given they’d be together then.
“How come you have a pool with no water in it?” he asked after a moment.
She gave a little half laugh, then shrugged. “I don’t know, it just seems like too much trouble. I mean, my parents had one, and they were always needing to do something to it-clean it, disinfect it, strain stuff out of it, fix the filter, heater…I think it’s kind of like owning a dog. You know? Ties you down.”
It occurred to him that he did know. That he knew exactly what she meant, because he was the same. Hell, he didn’t even have a potted plant. “You’ve got plants,” he said. “Aren’t they a lot of trouble, too?”
“Yeah, but if they die it’s not a big deal, you just throw them away and get new ones.” There was something defensive about the look she gave him. “Nobody cries for a plant.”
“No strings,” Holt said.
“Right.” After a moment, she took in another of those breaths that seemed like a portent-as if she’d turned some sort of mental page. “I was just thinking…it would be kind of nice to have water in the pool right now. I sort of wish I did. It would be nice to just…drift in the water…in the dark. You know?”
“So you wouldn’t have to think,” Holt said softly, and she gave a light laugh and said, “Yeah…”
Then she looked at him, and the naked longing in her face made him inhale sharply. He wondered if it was really the pool she was talking about at all, or if it was the strings she missed. Or if he was only projecting his own loneliness onto her. Loneliness he hadn’t even been aware of until now.
He cleared his throat and said carefully, “I don’t have a pool, but a warm bath or shower sometimes works for me.”
