“The guy came up behind her just as she got over here,” one man said.
“Didn’t seem like there was anything wrong,” another confirmed. “Looked like she knew the dude. She didn’t struggle with him or nothing. We would have helped her, if she’d looked like she needed it.”
Jason wasn’t convinced of that, but this wasn’t the time to question their likely heroics. “Describe him,” Jason demanded.
“Medium tall,” the second driver recalled. “Brown hair. Looked like he’d been playing ball or something. Had dirt from head to toe. Grass stains, too. His face was all red, like it had been too much for him.”
There were half a dozen men in the cast who fit that description, Jason thought, fighting panic. He didn’t have time to play this kind of guessing game. “Young or old?”
“Middle-aged, I’d say,” the driver who looked to be about twenty said.
“Hell, no, older than that,” the other countered. “Didn’t you see the wrinkles when he smiled at her? The man’s face crumpled up like tissue paper.”
Paul Locklear? That couldn’t be. Besides, he was balding a bit. On top of that, Regina and her friend hadn’t let the director out of their sight all day, any more than Jason had let that tabloid reporter out of his. Jason had checked with Regina and Mikel back in the park an instant before he’d gotten Hank’s message about Terry’s disappearance and taken off for the perimeter of the ball field.
The last thing he’d told them had been to keep an eye on Locklear until the director reached his own home. Mikel clearly understood the importance of doing just that. There was no way they would have failed to tail him to his front door. Surely Locklear couldn’t have given them the slip and made it to the hospital so quickly.
And whoever had Callie was also behind Terry’s beating. Locklear hadn’t been out of sight long enough to have harmed the actor. Nor had young Davis been out of his sight all afternoon.
Damn, damn, damn! he thought, running through mental images of the rest of the cast, cursing the fact that more of the men weren’t blond or old or bald.
It seemed to take forever before the right image clicked into focus: Jonathan Baines. The only other man in the right age range would have been Randall Trent, and he was much taller than the drivers had described, at least six-two and so lanky he appeared taller. He was also athletic enough that a romp on the ball field wouldn’t have winded him. It had to be Baines, then.
But what the hell did Baines have to do with this? They’d never even considered him a suspect. Jason didn’t wait to try to figure out the answer to that before punching in the number for the network switchboard and asking to be patched through to the producers. Marty Malloy answered.
“Marty, Jason Kane. I need to know an address for Jonathan Baines,” he said, hopping into the backseat of the first taxi in line. There was no time to waste running back to where he’d left Hank’s car, even though he regretted the lack of flashers and a siren to get him across town in a hurry. Of course, cabbies would drive like the proverbial bats out of hell for the promise of an exorbitant tip. He waved a large bill under the driver’s nose and they squealed into traffic at a satisfyingly fast clip.
“Got it,” he said when the producer read the address off their cast roster. He repeated it for the cabdriver, then told Marty, “No, I can’t explain right now. I’ll be back in touch. I can promise you that. If you hear from Baines, don’t let on I was asking about him.”
He paged Hank again and gave him the address. “I can’t think where else he’d go. At least it’s a starting point.”
“I’ll meet you there,” the policeman said. “Whatever you do, don’t go in without me.”
“Yeah, right,” Jason said with no intention of complying.
“Dammit, Jason! I mean that.”
Jason hung up on him, then made another call, this one to Henry. “A lunatic has Callie,” he told his driver succinctly. “Meet me at this address.”
Henry didn’t waste time asking a lot of questions. He just said, “I’ll be there, sir. No harm will come to her. We’ll see to that.”
Somehow reassured by Henry’s calm response, Jason told the driver to step on it. They careened around a corner so fast that Jason skidded from one side of the slippery backseat to the other.
“You okay, mister?” the driver asked, glancing into the rearview mirror.
“Don’t worry about me. Just get there.”
Apparently satisfied that Jason was indeed fearless, the driver tore through traffic with the skill of an Indy 500 driver trying to take the lead on the last lap. When he skidded to a stop in front of the Upper East Side apartment building where Baines lived, Jason tossed the hundred into the front seat and leaped from the taxi.
“You need any backup?” the driver shouted after him, apparently caught up in the thrill of the chase.
Jason shot him a rueful look. “That’s okay. The cops are on the way.”
More importantly, Henry, who would crawl through hot coals for Callie, was on his way. And Henry was not saddled by anything as mundane as police procedures to hamper the rescue effort.
Now that he was actually in front of Baines’s building, Jason stood on the sidewalk debating what to do next. Hank had instructed him to do nothing, but there was no way he could stand by idly while Callie’s life might be at risk just a few floors above him.
Think, he ordered himself when rage made cool logic all but impossible. Acting in haste could quite likely put Callie in more danger. The first thing he had to do was make sure this was where Baines had brought her.
Forcing a calm he was far from feeling, he approached the doorman. “I’m looking for Mr. Jonathan Baines,” he said in
