Corbin (The Mavericks Book 17) Read online

  Shaking his head at that, he headed over to her desk. It was locked. He picked the lock and pulled open several drawers. He knew that the local cops had already been through this place, but that wasn’t necessarily a help when he would assess things differently. Frowning, not liking the way the investigation was going so far, he quickly moved through the desk drawers, but not a whole lot was here.

  When his phone rang a few minutes later, it was Hatch. “The parliament member is looking for progress.”

  “That would be nice. I’ve just gone through the three homes of the three known victims, and I’m currently at Nellie’s apartment.”

  “Anything?”

  “Nothing, as in scarily nothing.”

  “That’s not good.” Hatch swore. “Professional?”

  “Professional at something. I’m still not sure that we have the same kidnapper for all three.”

  “But Nellie was pregnant.”

  “Which is a big difference than having two kids.” He stood, looked around Nellie’s high-end apartment. “So either we have different kidnappers here or the kidnappers have evolved their game.”

  “I get it. It’s not some premise we can knock off, but I’m not sure that it’s anything that we can lock down either.” A long pause came, then Hatch asked, “Next move?”

  “I’m heading back to the university to find her friends. Did we have a list?”

  “We have very few. Just from what we know now, she was friendly with everyone but only had a rare couple of best friends, people who really got to know Nellie. I can send them to you.”

  “That’d be good. I want to talk to them and see whether she had anybody in her life recently or the father of her child was around. Plus I want to ensure her laptop was with her at the time she went missing. I found no laptops or computers at the previous residences.”

  “According to everything that the police reported, Nellie never told anybody who the father was.”

  “Sure, but, depending on who she was as a person, and her stature in reference to the baby’s father and/or her own father, one of those fathers may have just found out himself that she was pregnant. And might have been unimpressed.”

  “Yeah, the parliament member certainly is,” Hatch said cautiously, “but that’s not enough to go on.”

  “It’s not enough for anything possible yet,” Corbin murmured, “but it is enough to start the wheels turning. I need the contact information of the grandmothers in the first two cases and that list of Nellie’s friends, anyone who may have known her movements leading up to this—like where she was, where she could have gone, things like that.”

  “It’s all in the file,” Hatch noted cheerfully.

  “The file is really thin,” Corbin snapped.

  “I know,” Hatch replied, his voice lowering. “In Mary’s case, she didn’t have much in the way of friends. She was living on social security benefits and was figuring out what to do with her life apparently. I suspect she didn’t have a laptop, using her phone for everything.”

  “Right. While she was doing that introspection, raising those kids would have been her priority.”

  “It was evident that she was a devoted mother, and somebody noticed. The kids have been to the doctors a couple times over their young lives but no red flags. They weren’t school age yet, so no public records there.”

  “Okay, have the team continue to hunt down answers for me, and I’m heading to the university.”

  With that, Corbin hung up on Hatch and headed back to the university. By going to Nellie’s dean’s office, he accessed the schedules for Nellie’s student friends. With that out of the way, he quickly contacted several of them on the phone. Two people answered, both female, and—when he explained what he was doing and what he needed—he arranged for them to meet. Both agreed.

  Setting the interviews at forty-five minutes apart, he met them outside the cafeteria, where he sat with them for a cup of coffee. When he watched one woman approach—Carly, his first interview—looking around nervously, he quickly got up and identified himself.

  She nodded and sat down beside him. “I need to see some ID.”

  “Good enough.” And he held out his ID.

  She studied it, nodded. “I don’t understand.”

  “What’s to understand?” he asked, frowning. “Your friend is missing.”

  “I know, but I thought the local police were looking into it.”

  “Her father has asked my department to look into it as well,” he said quietly. “So I need to know everything about her.”

  Carly winced at that. “She wouldn’t like that. She is a very private person.”

  “Maybe normally she would mind, but not if she’s in trouble, right? Her privacy won’t matter as much, if she needs help.”

  Her friend’s shoulders sagged, and she nodded. “Nellie and her father didn’t get along particularly well, since the pregnancy …”

  “He didn’t want her to keep the baby?”

  “He was mad that she wouldn’t tell him who the father was.”

  “Ah, well, that’s definitely an issue too.”

  “She had a couple long-term relationships, and her father blew them up, both of them. Nellie figured that, at this point in time, her father would always interfere in her life, so she tried to cut him out, but it wasn’t working.”

  “Fathers have a tendency to get a little heavy-handed.” She eyed him sideways, and he shrugged. “And obviously, in this case, it was too heavy-handed.”

  “You don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “No, I don’t, but it would be nice if I had an idea of what was going on.”

  “She wanted to disappear. Nellie wanted to have the baby, without her father hassling her or coming by the hospital and telling her again to abort or at the very least give it up for adoption.”

  “I doubt adoption was on her mind.”

  “Well, she thought about it, but only when she was majorly depressed and usually because of her father.”

  At that, Corbin studied her. “Is there something I need to know about her relationship with her father?”

  “Only that it was always fraught with difficulty,” she murmured, “and I know for a fact that he didn’t want her to have anything to do with keeping this child.”

  “She must have figured that her father would never ease up. So she decided to go ahead and have it anyway?”

  Carly nodded at that. “That was my take on it, but we didn’t really talk about it. I did ask her if she was scared about doing this alone, and she said yes, but she was also determined.”

  “Right, because anything else would be too hard to live with.”

  She looked over at him in surprise. “You do understand.”

  “I understand human nature,” he murmured.

  “She’s a really nice person. I hope everything is okay.”

  “Do you think she’s really missing, or do you think she’s just disappeared to be on her own?” At that, he got a flat stare.

  “I don’t know. I would have hoped that, if she had decided to disappear, she would say something to me.”

  “And I guess that’s the question that I’m coming to right now.” He stared at his first witness intently, but she didn’t flinch. “I’m afraid something’s seriously wrong. I know the police are very concerned, but they’re also toeing Daddy’s line. She’s been reported missing, so, therefore, as far as the police are concerned, it’s a big deal on its own. However, we also have several other cases of missing women.”

  “Of course you do.” She shrugged and stared at a spot behind his shoulder. “Hey, it’s not like people don’t go missing nearly every day. The public thinks it won’t happen to them. Plus I think Nellie was totally focused on having this baby and avoiding her father.”

  “Safety is an interesting thing. It’s not always what it appears to be.”

  “You know what? That’s something she would agree with. She would totally say that safety was an internal thi
ng and that she wouldn’t ever really feel safe again.”

  “Did something happen to her before? Something that triggered this reaction in her, so that she didn’t feel safe?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes, absolutely. It was another kidnapping attempt from quite a few years ago, and I think it’s also why her father is so protective.”

  He pulled up Nellie’s file on his phone. “I don’t have any listing of any such prior incident.”

  “Not too many people even know about it. It wasn’t public knowledge.”

  “So what happened?”

  “There was a kidnapping, about ten years ago maybe.” She stopped, frowned. “It could have been even further back than that, maybe thirteen years ago.”

  “She would have been about sixteen?”

  Her friend nodded. “Yeah, so would have been around then.”

  “What happened?”

  “She woke up to an intruder in the house. He had a gun and forced her out of the home, where he walked her down the block to his vehicle. He tried to get her into his vehicle, and she fought back. As soon as she started screaming, making a ruckus, rather than shooting her, he hopped into the front seat of the vehicle and took off.”

  “Interesting. That should be in her file.”

  “No, I think her dad squashed it pretty good,” she said, with a wry look. “After that, everything became even more impossible. Nellie felt smothered constantly. And every time she had a boyfriend, her dad would tear apart his life. He had a knack of finding something and then used it to force the guy away.”

  “So her father is very controlling.”

  “But he also came close to losing her so …”

  “Got it,” he murmured. “Sounds like I need to have a follow-up with dear old dad.”

  “I highly doubt that this old event is related to her disappearance.”

  “Maybe, but it’s also possible she has taken off on her own, rather than letting her dad in on her life.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” She stared at him pensively. “Nellie should have at least let somebody know, so that we could tell the family that she’s just choosing to not see anybody.”

  Privately Corbin thought the whole thing was a nightmare, but people, especially when threatened, acted unpredictably. And when hormones were added into the mix and a pregnancy …

  Nellie Abrahms opened her eyes and then slammed them shut again. “How many times do I have to do this?” she whispered. “It’s a never-ending nightmare.”

  A snicker came from beside her. “Hey. It’ll still be the same when you wake up in a day or two. It is all your life is now.”

  “Does it ever change?” she asked quietly, her eyes still closed.

  “Yeah, when they come,” the other woman whispered, dread in her voice. “You don’t want that.”

  “No, I really don’t.” Nellie’s hands protectively cradled her pregnant belly. “Are you pregnant too?” she asked, her worst nightmare leading with the questions.

  “No,” she hesitated, then reluctantly added, “I have a one-year-old.”

  “With you?” she asked in horror.

  “Yes,” she whispered, but such defeat filled her voice. “She’s in another room. I get to see her every once in a while—if I’m good.”

  “Dear God.”

  “I know, and, before you ask, I don’t know what they’re doing with us. I don’t know why they want us. I don’t know what they’re doing with my daughter. But she appears to be happy, outside of the fact that she can’t see me anytime she wants to, but she’s doing okay.” Her voice broke at the end of that sentence.

  “Well, that’s something,” Nellie said in a hoarse whisper.

  “It is, but it’s not enough.”

  “Of course not.” Nellie shifted onto her elbows to look around the small room, empty but for the two beds. “I would really like to know what the hell they’re planning for us here.” She studied the other woman in the gloomy light. “Is it just you and me?”

  “No, two more women are one room down.”

  When her roommate fell silent, Nellie felt compelled to keep asking, “Are they okay?”

  “From the sounds I hear, they fight with the guards every time.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then they get beaten up,” the woman snapped. “I can’t get close to them to tell them to stop, but I don’t even know if those two women realize anybody else is here. I think the two of them are pretty panicked.”

  “That makes sense then, doesn’t it?”

  “It does, but it would be nice if we could let them know that we’re here too, that they are not alone.”

  “Have they got they’re children too?”

  “I would presume so. There are other kids who play with my daughter all the time.”

  “They’re okay with that?”

  “I think it’s a punishment for them. The mothers can’t see their kids, if the mothers don’t behave.”

  “Well, I would behave immediately,” Nellie whispered.

  “Yeah, but these two have had a little more fighting spirit, and maybe … I don’t know.” She stopped speaking for a moment, then reluctantly added, “I think it’s too easy to judge.”

  “What about any others?”

  First came silence. “There was one more.”

  “And what happened to her?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Oh, no.” Nellie bolted into a sitting position to stare at the only door in terror. “Oh, God, will that happen to us?”

  “Well, we can hope not.” The other woman glared at her. “It’s a hell of a way to keep us in line.”

  “Yet it’s not keeping the other two mothers in line.”

  “I’m not sure that they know about it yet. Although the sounds were hard to miss, considering she was killed here.”

  “Shit. How?”

  “They put a bullet in her.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Yeah, sure I do. She fought back and almost took them out. They decided that she was way too much trouble. Believe me. They told me all about it.”

  “Please don’t tell me that she had kids too.”

  “I presume they each have two because I count six other kids with mine.”

  “Jesus. Do any of the kids ask for their mothers?”

  “No, at least I’ve never heard them.”

  “Maybe they don’t think their mothers are here anymore.”

  “I hope they didn’t see the one die,” the other woman whispered. “That would be my wish.”

  “Can you tell me how long you’ve been here?”

  “A couple months now.”

  “Jesus, and you still don’t know what they want?”

  “They want our kids,” the other woman said quietly. “And, as much as you’ll say they can’t have yours, I’m telling you that … you might as well get used to it. Because they have no intention of letting you leave with your baby. Chances are good that you won’t leave at all.”

  Chapter 2

  Nellie curled up in a ball, her hands hugging her belly, as she thought about everything the other woman had said. She’d fallen quiet and since then hadn’t answered any whispered questions. Nellie didn’t know whether her roommate was sleeping or just keeping silent, but her breathing was slow and even.

  They were now in complete darkness, and it appeared to be some underground room, as far as Nellie could tell. Underground may not be likely, but there were no visible windows, or maybe something covered the windows. What she didn’t know was what this was all about. Or why it was happening in the first place.

  If she hadn’t been so pigheaded about keeping her father out of her life—and his private security detail—someone would know that Nellie was missing. But she made a point of telling even her friends about her aversion toward her father’s methods and her wish to be strictly on her own. They quite possibly thought she’d left on her own.

  Right now, she just wanted to know someone was looking f
or her. Maybe even her father. She knew how angry her father was about her pregnancy and how absolutely unimpressed he was that she was planning on raising this child on her own. He was incensed that she wouldn’t even tell him who the father was. … That was an explosive situation. But, all their differences aside, she knew he loved her, in his own controlling way.

  So why the hell had it taken until now to realize that? She could have put her foot down, somewhere along the line, and made him understand her point of view. She clearly had had plenty of chances. She just hadn’t addressed the problem. Instead, rather than have that conflict, she had avoided it. And now look where the hell she was?

  She ran her hand over her face, wondering how she would get out of this. She wasn’t somebody who got into trouble, but wow. … She’d done it this time. What a nightmare.

  She rocked herself slowly to sleep, waking with bits and pieces of the nightmare coming back to her over and over again. She’d been walking along the campus, heading toward home, when two men came up on either side of her, had thrown a bag over her head. Before she’d had a chance to react, she’d been picked up and tossed into the back of a vehicle. Then there was a period of blackout. Since waking up here, Nellie had been supplied with only food and water, and that was it.

  She didn’t even know how many days had gone by. She woke at the sound of the door opening. Immediately she scrambled upright on the bed and pulled up against the headboard. The room was dim, and she could only make out a hulking shape.

  “Good, you’re awake,” said the man from the gloom.

  She nodded slowly. “I am,” she murmured cautiously. “What do you want with me?” Only silence came. “May I go to the bathroom?”

  “Ah, yes, nothing like pregnant bellies for bladder control.” He laughed. “Sure, come on.” And he reached out a hand and grabbed her by the arm and squeezed. “If you try anything? … Believe me. It won’t go well for you.” She didn’t say anything but let him lead her into a small room, dimly lit. Still the light cheered her.