Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Emmett stared through the door’s small window at the battered woman asleep in the bed. The bastards couldn’t get to Janie, so they’d chosen to go after her friend. A move none of them could have seen coming.
“So.” Boone stood at his left. “You had your guy Savage look into me, huh?”
“You say that as if you haven’t looked into all of us.”
“Fair enough.” A deep chuckle shook the other man’s shoulders as his attention went back to the patient sleeping in the next room. “Why do you think she came to town?”
“No clue.” Emmett shrugged with a sigh. “Hopefully she’ll wake up soon, and we’ll be able to ask her directly.”
He looked away, watching and waiting for Janie’s return.
“Is your girl okay?”
Emmett turned his body to face the hallway where Janie had last been seen. “She’s tough. She’ll be fine.”
“It does make you wonder, though. Doesn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
Boone turned a slightly arched brow in Emmett’s direction. “If those two are such good friends, why didn’t Devon tell Janie she was coming to D.C.?”
Why, indeed?
But another thought came to him at the same time, making him wonder if the detective’s question went down the wrong track.
“Where was Devon staying?” he asked Boone, assuming the man had done his due diligence.
“Her name didn’t pop up in any of the local hotels’ systems.”
Emmett thought for a moment. “Was her car anywhere near where she was found?”
Boone shook his head with confidence. “We did a full sweep of the area, but none of the vehicles there were registered to her, and the three rentals we ran came back to other people.”
“She could have taken a rideshare, once she got into the city,” Emmett proposed.
“But to where?” The guy’s slid his hands into his pockets. “She was found on a street with filled with boarded-up buildings. Nothing to find around there but trouble. No way a woman like that would go there on her own.”
Emmett yanked his phone from his pocket and made a call. With the device to his ear, he waited while it rang.
“Who you calling?” Boone asked.
“Savage,” he answered. “We may not know why Devon’s here, but he should be able to figure out when and how she got to D.C.”
“I don’t want to know how your teammate is going to go about finding that information, do I?” The other man sent him a look.
“Probably not.”
Another ring later and Blake’s greeting came through the phone. “Savage.” His voice was rough from sleep.
“Sorry to wake you, but we’ve got a situation.”
“Janie?”
The sound of sheets rustling reached Emmett’s ears. “Not her.” This time. He quickly relayed the situation. And then, “I need you to see if you can figure out how long she’s been here, where she’s been staying, and how she got here from St. Louis.”
A short stretch of silence filled the phone’s speakers before Blake spoke up again.
“Is this the same friend Janie told us about before?” Blake asked. “The one who looked into Amy Weaver’s background before Janie came to us for help?”
“Devon Brighton.” Emmett confirmed the woman’s name before filling his teammate in on the situation. “Yeah. It’s her.”
A low curse reached his ears before Blake’s seething voice returned.
“The assholes beat her?”
“Yeah.” Emmett swallowed. “Did a damn good job of it, too.”
For a moment, Blake didn’t say anything more. When he spoke up again, he sounded . . . different.
“I’ll see what I can find out and call you back.”
“Thanks, man.”
“No thanks needed.” His teammate ended the call.
“He’s a talented guy, your friend,” Boone mused.
Emmett’s grunt was his only response as he looked across the nurse’s station in hopes of Janie’s return. He frowned and glanced down at his watch.
“She’s been gone too long. I’m going to go check on her.” He took off in that direction.
“Don’t mind me,” Boone called after him sarcastically. “I’ll just be here. You know…waiting.”
His lips twitched at the corners as he rounded the nurse’s station. Though he’d never admit it out loud, he was beginning to think there was a chance he and Lincoln Boone could be friends.
Emmett entered the long hall, his chest tightening somewhat when he found it empty. His pace quickened, his focus homing in on the door with a small sign protruding overhead.
Women’s
The bold, black letters stood out clearly for passersby. He walked faster, intentionally making his strides wider as he continued that way. Emmett got to the door at the end of the hall, and without hesitation, he lifted his fist and knocked.
“Janie?” He waited, tilting an ear closer to the door. When no response came, he tapped his knuckles against it again. “Janie, it’s Emmett. Are you okay?”
When he was met with nothing but silence again, Emmett grabbed the knob, his stomach dropping when it turned easily in his grasp. He shoved open the door and turned on the lights, and his stomach dropped.
She’s not here.
The room was empty. Janie wasn’t anywhere in sight. He spun on his heels and shot back out into the hall.
Emmett looked to his left, where he’d just come from before swinging his frantic gaze to his right. He took off in a jog, stopping at the hallway’s intersection to look both ways. He did a visual search, looking for a beautiful woman with long, brown hair ,wearing jeans and a light blue sweater.
She wasn’t there.
She’s not here.
Janie wasn’t anywhere in sight. But she had to have come this way, otherwise he would have passed her.
His gut pulled him to the right, and he tried like hell not to freak out. Emmett’s mind raced with possible, plausible explanations as to where she could have gone.
She was hungry. Got thirsty. Needed a minute to stretch her legs.
But none of those things excused her taking off without coming to him first. Janie knew the risk. She’d just seen her best friend lying in a bed covered in bruises.
She wouldn’t have come this far without me.
He stopped mid-stride to look around again.
Emmett ignored the strange looks from the nurses and other visitors as they walked past. Something was pulling the strings of his operator instincts, but he didn’t know what. Glancing to his right, his gaze fell on a round, metal trash can against the wall, a few feet away.
His heart flew into his throat when he saw what appeared to be a section of thin, brown leather sticking out from its opening. Emmett hurried over, praying it wasn’t what he thought. But when he reached the shiny receptacle and pulled out Janie’s purse, he knew the truth.
She’s already gone.
Bile rushed to the surface. He swallowed it back and took off in Boone’s direction. As he did, Emmett retrieved his phone from his pocket and put in a call to Blake.
“Hey, man.” Blake sounded much more alert than the last time they spoke. “The program’s still running a search, but I’m in the car and headed your—”
“She’s gone.” He blurted the words he thought he’d never have to say.
“What? Who? You mean Devon?” The man’s rapid-fire questions flew Emmett’s way. “What do you mean, gone? You don’t mean like—”
“Not Devon,” Emmett clarified. “It’s Janie.” Damn, that hurt him to say. “She went to the bathroom, but when I checked on her, she was already gone.”
I never should have let her go to the bathroom alone. I should have escorted her there and waited by the door until she was done.
It was a mistake of massive proportions, and one that would haunt him for as long as he lived. But when Blake responded, the other man didn’t sound nearly as concerned.
“Did you see if there’s a vending machine nearby? Maybe she just needed a little snack.”
“She didn’t go looking for a snack,” he snapped back. “I just found her purse in the fucking trash.”
“Ah, hell.” His teammate finally caught up to Emmett’s level of concern. “Okay, listen. I’m about ten minutes out. Once I get there, I’ll hack into the hospital’s security feed to see what I can find.”
Ten minutes. So many things could happen in that short amount of time.
Focus, Shaw. You have to stay focused. Janie’s life depends on you being at the top of your game.
“I’ll call the others.” Emmett swallowed down the giant knot at the base of his throat. “And Blake?”
“Yeah?”
“Hurry.”
He ended the call and raced through the halls on his way back to Detective Boone.
“What’s the matter?” the intuitive man asked with a dip of his brow.
“Janie’s gone.” Emmett swallowed again. “She wasn’t in the bathroom, so I went looking for her. Found this in the trash.” He held up the purse in his fist. “In a completely different hallway.”
“Ah, hell.” Boone ran a worried hand over his bearded jaw. “Don’t worry. I’ll call it in.”
“Don’t.” Emmett gave a curt shake of his head.
“What do you mean ‘don’t’? Why the hell not?”
“Because we still don’t know all the players in this thing, yet.”
The other man’s expression turned incredulous. “So now, all of a sudden, you think there are cops involved?”
“It isn’t all of a sudden, and can you guarantee they’re not?”
Boone held his gaze a beat longer. “I can’t ignore a possible kidnapping, Shaw. Not even for you.”
“And I can’t run the risk of getting her killed, Lincoln.” Emmett tapped the screen on his phone.
“Now who are you calling?”
He met the other man’s inquisitive gaze. “The only people in this city I know I can trust.”
It only took two rings before Draven answered his phone.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Shaw. I need you and the others to meet me in the E.R. at George Washington University Hospital.”
“The hospital?” His teammate cleared the sleep from his throat. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but . . . Janie’s gone.” The words tore at his aching heart.
“Gone? What do you mean, she’s gone?”
“Just wake the others. Blake’s already on his way. I’ll fill you all in once you’re here.”
“Copy that, boss.”
Emmett ended the call and shoved his phone into his back pocket. Boone’s gaze met his as the other man kept his voice low.
“This is so messed up.” The man looked pissed. “My chief finds out I had knowledge of an abduction and I sat on my hands and did nothing, it’s my ass. You get that, right?”