Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
“I’m starting to get a really bad feeling.” Eliana turned around in the waiting room. “He said he was here, so where is he?”
When she and Tony had stepped off the elevator a short while ago, coming back from searching the cafeteria for sight of Carlos, a nurse and an aide from transport had been escorting an elderly woman in a wheelchair into the elevator car.
If they needed to, they could ask the staff here if anyone had seen him.
There was no way Carlos would have left without telling her where he was going. But what else could possibly have happened other than him leaving of his own accord, or bumping into someone he knew? The doctor might have even taken him back to see Luci.
She swept past Tony and went to the reception desk, where it took the staff member a second to look over from her computer.
The lady tugged off the reading glasses she was wearing, letting them hang on the chain in front of her.
The name tag on her peach-colored sweater said Megan, and she was at least sixty. Not much older than Eliana’s mom.
“Hi.” Eliana smiled at her. “I was wondering if you have seen my friend? His sister Luci Ryson is back there, and he might have gone to see her?”
Megan shook her head. “No one has been in or out in the last hour. Your friend, the one sitting with you before, was here. I don’t know where he went.”
“Thanks.” Eliana went back over to Tony. “She doesn’t know where Carlos went.”
Tony frowned, dark circles under his eyes. This guy was no spring chicken, either. But then, even she was tired right now after such a long day, and her throat still hurt from that Dreamer trying to strangle her. So she figured she didn’t look that great either right now.
She wanted to slump into a chair and close her eyes, but that wouldn’t relieve the fear in her heart that something had happened to Carlos. “I want to walk around to look for him.” She headed toward the elevator, but Tony tugged on her arm.
“Let’s try someplace else, since we’ve been up and down the elevator already, and he isn’t in it right now.” He motioned toward the stairs. “While we do that, why don’t you call him again and see if we can hear it ring?”
“Good idea.” She dialed Carlos’s number.
Why wasn’t he answering his phone?
Hers rang against her ear, but she couldn’t hear Carlos’s cell phone anywhere. Not until Tony pushed open the door to the stairwell. And then, she could hear the distinct chime of his phone echo up toward them. “He’s in here.”
She ended the call and tucked the phone into her back pocket.
Tony raced down the stairs ahead of her, faster than she would’ve thought he could move. Not that he was a slouch. He seemed to react more quickly than she did, as if training had ingrained those tendencies in him.
Added to the fact that he was intent on protecting her because of some debt or something he owed to her mother, Eliana didn’t figure that anyone would be leaving her alone anytime soon.
“He’s here!” Tony rounded the landing at the floor below. “Wait. Who is this?”
She scrambled down, almost falling to her knees before she managed to stop herself beside a body lying at the base of this set of stairs. “It’s Officer Halstood.”
Tony rolled the cop over to his back, revealing the badge clipped to his belt. No gun in his holster. The older man looked around. “Someone got into a fight.”
She spotted Carlos’s phone and a discarded pistol.
Tony lifted his chin. “Would Carlos maybe have killed this guy?”
“Only in self-defense,” Eliana said. She just knew that Carlos wasn’t the kind of person who took a life without serious consideration. “Halstood must have attacked him. But where would Carlos have gone after that? He left his phone here.”
“Maybe this Halstood guy tried to protect him from someone else, someone who killed Halstood and took Carlos?”
He’d been kidnapped?
Eliana straightened out of her crouch. “We need to go after them!”
“This guy hasn’t been dead long.” Tony pulled out his phone. “Let’s go, but I’m first, and you are not my backup. You’re the one I’m protecting.” He darted down the stairs.
Eliana scrambled after him, bringing Carlos’s phone with her.
Tony put his phone to his ear as he raced down the last couple of floors to the exit door at the bottom of the stairs. “Yeah, it’s me. Someone may have just kidnapped Carlos Ryson. They killed his partner in the stairwell at the hospital and took him.”
Considering they didn’t know for sure what had happened, Eliana thought that maybe it was too soon to make declarative statements like that. But was that only because she didn’t want to believe what was plainly obvious?
Carlos was gone.
Like Luci had been, and now Carolena.
Was she going to lose him the same way she was losing everyone else in her life? Maybe not her family, but the people she cared about in Chicago appeared to be in genuine danger.
Tony pushed out the exit door at the bottom of the stairwell, his phone now put away and his gun in one hand. He swept up with the barrel, aiming as he rushed outside.
She hesitated for a second, then saw over his shoulder that a dark four-door car idled in the alley.
The driver hit the gas, and the car started to speed away.
Carlos’s face appeared in the back window, and she saw his mouth move but couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Eliana pushed past Tony and ran after the car. Within two steps, he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to a stop, lifting her off her feet with one arm and spinning her back toward the door. It clicked shut behind them, no handle on the outside.
Eliana screamed out her frustration and tried to push out of his hold, still determined to go after Carlos.
He didn’t let go of her. “There’s nothing you can do!”
“I’m not just going to stand here! They’re kidnapping him!”
Finally, he let her go but swung her around to face him. He leaned in, glaring at her. “And I suppose you’re going to single-handedly race after the kidnappers with no vehicle, catch up, and somehow disarm them and get your friend back?”
She stared at him, breathing hard.
“Instead of trying to do things all by yourself, maybe it’s time to actually lean on your family for once, realizing that the people you know care about you and Carlos are all-in to help you find him. But if they don’t even know he’s missing, what can they do to help?”
She didn’t even know what to say to that.
Tony said, “Call Maizie.”
“What does my sister have to do with this? She’s a cop in Milwaukee. She doesn’t have any jurisdiction down here.” But she got her phone out and unlocked it with her thumb.
Tony snatched it from her.
“Hey!”
He put the phone to his ear. “It’s not Eliana. It’s me.” Grief flashed across his face.
Eliana didn’t think it had anything to do with Carlos. More likely something else entirely. But it gave her the momentary distraction she needed to grab the phone back from him and walk away with it, putting it to her ear.
“… happening.”
“Listen to me,” Eliana said. “Two cops just kidnapped Carlos. Somehow, you’re supposed to get him back?” She squeezed her eyes shut.
“What kind of vehicle was it?” her sister asked. “Do you know the license plate number, make and model?”
“It was a dark color. Maybe Tony knows more than that.”
“Yeah, we can talk about him later. If it’s who I think it is, you aren’t in danger from him. But I’d be careful how much you trust him.”
He moved to stand in front of her as Maizie was saying that. “Put it on Speaker.”
Eliana lowered the phone and tapped the button.
Tony said, “I need you to get me access to the traffic cameras. Or you find him and tell us where they’re taking him.”
“I can’t do that,” Maizie replied. “I took an oath.”
Eliana ducked her head and looked at the ground, not wanting to acknowledge that her sister refused to break the law to help Carlos. She wanted the people she loved to have integrity, and that meant their hands were sometimes tied by legalities.
But did that mean she had to like the fact that Carlos was currently suffering?
Given the fact that Lydia Rosenberg seemed to be in the middle of all of this, Eliana knew who she wanted to blame.
In fact, she wanted to march right up to the woman and demand to know where Carlos had been taken. That was the route she’d use to find him. Not traffic cameras…
And she realized Maizie had been talking while she was ranting in her mind about what to do next.
“Seriously, Bear?” Maizie said. “I cannot even with you right now. We need a statement, and we need someone to go before the judge, to get a warrant to look at traffic cameras.”
“There’s no time for that, and you know it.” He shook his head.
Eliana saw drops of something dark and wet on the ground. She crouched and touched her fingertip to the liquid, which came away red and bright. Not car oil. This was blood.
Carlos had put up a fight, and now he was bleeding.
Eliana sucked in a breath that broke a couple of times, but she got the air she needed and her throat didn’t hurt too badly right now.
“Just find the car and tell me where it went so I can get Carlos back.” Tony jabbed a finger on the screen.
Eliana looked over at him. Taking her phone back at the same time, she said, “Bear?”
“Long story.” He looked at his watch, the screen glowing against the gray of his eyes. “Sylvia is in the lobby. Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“You can stay in the waiting room and wait for word about Luci. Or I can take you home and someone will stay there with you.”
She would rather go to Carlos’s house, but wasn’t sure that would be an option right now. As if she really wanted to sit around and do nothing? That’s what Tony seemed content to have her do. Eliana would quite like to hit the streets and start searching.
“We should call the FBI.” She glanced over at him as they turned the corner at the front of the building, circling around the hospital to get back to the lobby. “Get them to help us search for Carlos. Since it’s connected to their case.”
Tony made a noncommittal noise in his throat.
Around the front of the hospital, a line of three taxis sat in front of the building. She slid her phone back into her pocket and said, “Seriously, Carlos was probably targeted because he ID’d Maloney to the FBI. This is all connected to the Reverence Sisters.”
She couldn’t figure out why else they might have taken him.
“If you get their number, you can loop them in.” He pushed open the front entrance door and headed inside, probably presuming she was right behind him.
Eliana spun toward the street, dashed up to a taxi, and jumped in the back. “Drive fast!”
The taxi driver flinched, glancing at her. His tablet was on his lap, resting against the steering wheel.
Tony pushed back out the front door, looking for her.
“Go!”
The driver hit a button on his dash, put the car in Drive, and pulled out. Not exactly quick, but it was enough to get her away from the hospital.
He said, “Anywhere in particular?”
“Just drive.” She used the phone to search the web for Lydia Rosenberg, but it wasn’t as if her name was listed on any local county property deeds. Her life was likely hidden behind company assets.
But Eliana found the number people were instructed to call to get compensation after what happened with the canisters and all the chaos. She dialed the number and waited.
When the call connected, she said to the person who answered, “Tell Lydia Rosenberg that Eliana Jaxton wants to talk.”
She hung up.
The cab driver turned a corner and merged into traffic, slowing to the steady crawl of cars around them.
Eliana sat back in her seat for only a moment before her phone buzzed. She half expected it to be Tony, or someone else, telling her she should quit being crazy. But it wasn’t—and they knew exactly where she was. The Shrine could track her phone, surely.
The buzzing didn’t quit.
Eliana gave the driver her home address, then answered her phone. “Hello?”