Chapter 8 #3
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you talking about?” Rubin asked, turning to her.
Tricia frowned. “Obviously I’m part of the whole kidnapping thing, but I wasn’t supposed to be there on the London campus that weekend.
Yet I changed plans at the last minute because of the concert.
So, when walking to the dorms from the special campus concert, I made a trip to talk to one of my instructors.
That’s when I was taken,” she explained.
“If I hadn’t gone to the concert and hadn’t missed that one class, I wouldn’t have headed to that campus building, and then it wouldn’t have been an issue. ”
The two men looked at her, Hayden through the rearview mirror, with Rubin twisting to stare at her. “Seriously?”
“Yes. So, the question really is, how did they know where to find me on campus in London to kidnap me?” she asked.
“You just answered your own question.”
“What? What did I say?”
“It’s that campus schedule. You probably confirmed you would go the concert, right? Nobody would have known that you would be there except for that damn schedule, which then implies—”
“Yes,” she muttered, “it implies that Arlene is connected, and that’s how they found me, which also means that there’s a good chance that she saw me back there at the gas station—since I saw her too. So now we’ve really got a problem.”
In an instant reaction, Hayden hit the gas pedal, and the vehicle flew down the road faster than ever.
She sat back, groaning. “I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
“It’s not about stupidity,” Rubin argued. “You weren’t looking to be knocked down, to be kidnapped. You weren’t expecting somebody to come to a university where you would be for only one semester, and attack you there. So you can’t be upset that you didn’t see that coming and somehow prevent it.”
“Of course I’m upset that I didn’t see it,” she snapped. “I never liked that woman in the first place.”
“Right now,” he began, his tone smooth and calm, “you need to tell me absolutely everything you know about her.”
“Arlene has a boyfriend for one, and he’s not supposed to live there with her in the dorms, but she keeps letting him in.”
“Has anyone ever reported her?”
“We don’t say anything, and no one that I know ever did because,” she stopped and added, “well, we don’t say anything because it’s not really our thing to say, but, yeah, okay.”
“But,” he said, “what if it was related to her boyfriend? What if he was getting information on the students? God-only-knows what he would want on a campus, but maybe grant money, ID thefts?”
“I don’t know,” she muttered. “If she didn’t know who I was, as in really didn’t know I was a US senator’s daughter, then I guess the student files probably would have told her.”
“That’s possible more than anything else,” Hayden noted, speeding down the road. He was clearly not planning on slowing down anytime soon.
“How many times did you see the boyfriend?” Rubin asked.
“A couple,” she said, “and nothing was nice about him. I never wanted to be around him. He was creepy. I didn’t understand why Arlene wanted to hang out with him in the first place, and all of us avoided him.”
“Which is also a great cover because, if he’s her boyfriend, everybody’s happy to just leave them alone, right?”
“Yes,” she conceded, “especially since he was so creepy.”
“When you say, creepy, what does that mean?”
“Creepy,” she repeated, throwing up her hands.
He chuckled, giving her a look. “No need to tone it down. We’re guys. Creepy to us may be something completely different to the creepy you mean.”
“What Rubin means is, be specific,” Hayden supplied.
“Okay, so the kind of guy you don’t want to walk past in a dark alleyway,” she described.
“The kind of guy who looks at you as if you’re nothing but an object and as if you have no purpose in being but to serve him, if and when he feels like you should have a moment of his time.
” She shuddered thinking of him staring her down, feeling his eyes in the back of her head. “That kind of creepy.”
“Okay, that’s a whole lot more definitive, thank you.”
“Yeah, you’re not kidding. Believe me, if I said creepy to any other woman, she would have known exactly what I meant.”
Hayden smiled. “News flash, honey, we’re not any other women.” It startled her into laughing out loud, and he grinned back at her in the rearview mirror. “See? Laughter is good for you.”
“Maybe,” she muttered, “and you’re right. It does feel a little bit better.” Then she groaned. “Even thinking that Arlene was part of this seems so strange, and, of all the places in the world, why would she have been back there at that gas station?”
“Did she see you?” Hayden asked.
“I don’t know. I just walked past and didn’t really see her face, but then, as I looked back, something about the tilt of her jaw got me thinking. Huh, I know her, and then I wanted to go back to confirm, but Rubin wouldn’t let me.”
He snorted, still looking down at his phone. “No, I wouldn’t let you, and the answer is yes. She did recognize you because I saw her face as she turned, filled with shock and maybe even some anger, but it was definitely not a good look.”
She stared at him. “Honest to God, she’s one of those people who never really adjusted to the fact that her life was not our life.”
He frowned, just waiting.
She shrugged and explained, “We were privileged, entitled brats in her eyes, and she was—” Tricia shrugged and added, “Arlene didn’t have the money or the connections, the prestige, all of that.
It’s something we come across somewhat regularly, so we insulate ourselves to it.
However, in her case, it was obvious that she was not happy about who we were, where we were in life, why we were there at a private university. ”
“Strange then that she chose to work there,” Rubin noted.
“You’re right,” Tricia agreed. “It is strange and not something I really questioned. I assumed, obviously incorrectly, that she really wanted to be there. The position is administrative, but it’s still a prestigious institution, and anybody would consider themselves lucky to be there.
I didn’t think I was a snob, but I assumed that she was there because she needed to be, and, like most people, just minded my own business.
I don’t make waves as a rule and was trying to just stay on task and to do what I needed to do to graduate.
I was in London to get through the semester abroad, then planned to move back to New York City to complete the last of my grad courses.
It’s not as if I was sitting there and waiting for life to happen.
I was trying to get moving myself, and I wasn’t really paying attention to anybody else. ”
“Was anybody else you knew of there connected?”
“I’m sure most everybody was,” she stated, turning to look at them.
“It’s a private university. Some students would have been financially connected, others would have been politically connected, and others would have been just, you know, connected.
Networking is the biggest advantage when it comes to a school like that.
It’s all about who you know.” She rolled her eyes.
“So, yes, I’m sure all the students were connected, one way or another. ”
Rubin considered that for a moment. “Do you know of anybody else who may have disappeared recently or just didn’t show up when expected or even left suddenly?”
“Well, … not personally,” she began, staring at them.
“When I tell you that I was there to get my degree and to get out, that is literally where my focus was. I wasn’t some frivolous college kid, wasting my tuition by going to frat parties and dating every jock or skipping class.
” She took a deep breath and continued. “I wasn’t worried about making friends in that way.
Still, I’ve made a lot of friends through my years there, and I don’t know of any who disappeared.
However, I’ve lost touch with a bunch of them, so I can’t say for sure.
… You are kind of scaring me right now.” When he didn’t reply, she looked at him with a puzzled expression and asked, “Are you thinking that somebody else may have gone missing?”
“I don’t know about right now,” he clarified, stealing a glance at Hayden, “but, if it worked for one, why wouldn’t it have worked for others?”
“Oh God,” she muttered. “I didn’t even think of that.”
“No, because you aren’t trained to look for those things, not like we are.
Yet I am wondering about it now,” he admitted.
“Just think about somebody in Arlene’s position, where she could vet all the students and could know your location at any time of day or night.
She could be using blackmail tactics or could be involved in kidnapping students to put pressure on their families to do things they want them to do.
And the students or their families all have enough money on hand that, should something happen, they would likely pay to have the issue go away. ”
She sank back into her seat and frowned.
“Now that you’ve mentioned that, one of the students had a bad experience.
I didn’t ever know the details, but her father was some kind of retail baron I guess you could call it, like the Walmart family but not.
There was talk about her having a problem, and she left school and didn’t return.
I just figured she was pregnant, but now I wonder if she had been kidnapped or something drastic like that. ”
Rubin nodded. “That’s the last thing we would want to put her through, and lots of students leave schools for other reasons.
Still, it does make me wonder if this Arlene woman has a history as someone who basically spends her time finding victims. We can’t ignore this angle, not when we know it happened with you when you weren’t even on the New York campus. ”
She stared at him in shock. “And then what does she do with her victims? Sell them to the highest bidder?”