Sleight Mistake (Stone Investigations Book 2) Read online

  A woman was walking down the street and Lacie saw nothing peculiar about that except she was heavily pregnant. From the shadow of an alleyway, a man ran out with a balaclava over his head. He grabbed the woman who tried to struggle and when he began to pull her backward into the alley, another man came into the shot and ran into the shadow of the alley as well.

  ‘That was Ryder,’ Lacie breathed.

  ‘Yeah,’ Toby said, pressing another button on the keyboard to rewind the footage. He paused it when the angle of the man who ran in was best and there was no mistaking his identity. ‘He doesn’t come out again. None of them do.’

  The men considered this and Lacie tried to decipher what that would mean. If they didn’t come out then they had to still be there. But the only reason they would be there all of these hours later would be if…

  ‘Is he dead?’ Lacie asked and lost control of the tears she’d held in.

  ‘Ty, take Will,’ Gabe said and the men headed toward the door.

  ‘I want to come,’ Lacie said, but Will stopped her again and this time held her forearms to walk her back against the table.

  ‘You’re staying, princess.’

  ‘I can’t just stay here and do nothing,’ she said.

  ‘If there is anyone capable of surviving a lunatic on the street it’s Ryder,’ Will said. ‘Just because they went in that way doesn’t mean they left that way. The alley has to let out somewhere and even if it doesn’t have an obvious exit point, there are buildings on either side. Ryder might have gone into one of those buildings and come out a different way, sometimes these buildings are interconnected. There’s every chance he went up too, there could be a fire escape or a way onto the upper floors of each structure. Just because we don’t see him walk out of there doesn’t mean he didn’t make it.’

  That did make her feel better, there was still hope, and she didn’t want to witness what they might come across if there had been carnage. ‘Ok. But you be careful too.’

  ‘We will,’ Will said. ‘You have to stay here and keep the fire going under the asses of these guys.’

  He leaned in to kiss her forehead and she was amazed that the man who had always been an opponent to her presence was taking the time to console her. He and Ty went out and she went back to looking at the picture on the screen, which was still down.

  ‘We have work to do,’ Gabe said and someone turned on the lights, which dimmed the image of Ryder on the screen, but didn’t erase it.

  It was just like him to see someone in trouble and run to their aid. But a woman, and a pregnant one at that, he wouldn’t have walked away from her suffering. That he was such an honourable man was one of the things she loved about him, she just didn’t want that honour to cost him his life.

  When she had last been involved in an incident room such as this, Ryder had been in prison and they were working to get him out. At the time, Lacie thought it was one of the hardest things she’d had to endure, knowing her love was being imprisoned for something he didn’t do. She had underestimated the power of knowing where he was though. This not knowing was worse, tenfold, and now she got a taste of what Ryder had experienced when she was taken from him.

  Everyone went back to their bustling, then an intercom buzzed on the conferencing unit in the middle of the table. Gabe leaned over to press a button. ‘Chantelle?’ Holding her breath, Lacie waited for news of Ryder.

  ‘There’s a man and woman here with a baby,’ Chantelle said with the snarl of disgust in her voice. ‘They say they are looking for Miss Hart.’

  It was nice to know that Lacie’s first experience with Chantelle had taught the receptionist not to be so judgemental. That aside, Lacie glanced at a clock on the wall to see she’d missed Sorcha’s release from the hospital.

  ‘I’ll take them upstairs,’ Lacie said to Gabe who nodded and went back to his work.

  Lacie wanted to be helpful, but she didn’t have the skills to find Ryder. Before she had been able to make calls in an attempt to gain information or pull strings. This time, there was no one to call, at least not yet.

  So she went out to reception and Sorcha’s snit vanished as soon as Lacie came into view. ‘What’s wrong?’ Sorcha asked, coming to her friend’s side.

  ‘Upstairs,’ Lacie said, with a sideways glance at Chantelle and Bruce. ‘We’ll talk upstairs.’

  Lulu was in a stroller, so they pushed her into the elevator and went upstairs, using the new security code that had been updated this week. Bruce came with them and Lacie was uneasy. Shep had told her not to tell Sorcha about Bruce’s infidelity. But Gabe had told them to keep the information top secret, so Lacie couldn’t reveal all to Sorcha in front of Bruce.

  But the man wasn’t taking the hint. They got upstairs and Lacie took Sorcha into the kitchen on the hope of getting her alone, but it seemed that Bruce didn’t want to be alone with his daughter because everywhere they went, Bruce followed on.

  Lacie gave up trying to shirk him and settled them all in the living room that the elevator opened to, she didn’t want to miss anyone coming in and she still held a hope that Ryder would come back and laugh at them all for making such a fuss.

  ‘If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I’m going to go crazy,’ Sorcha said, taking a seat beside Lacie and snatching both of her forearms. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Ryder,’ Lacie said, glancing at Bruce who was standing in front of a tall window. ‘He didn’t come home last night.’

  ‘He didn’t…’ Sorcha said and her shoulders fell. ‘Do you think something happened to him?’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to ascertain,’ Lacie said. ‘The guys are downstairs looking into the possibilities.’ Much as it pained her not to be doing anything to help locate Ryder, Lacie turned her attention onto Lulu. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Loud and smelly,’ Sorcha said, unfastening the restraints from Lulu. Lacie smiled when she saw Sorcha smiling at the baby who was fast asleep. Sorcha might want the world to think that she was complaining, but this was a woman glowing.

  ‘Can I hold her?’

  ‘Sure,’ Sorcha said.

  They talked about and to Lulu for the next hour and after her cuddle, Sorcha had one and Bruce refused so Lulu was put back into her stroller for a sleep. Sorcha did look tired, but really appeared to be taking to motherhood, which pleased Lacie because it was what she had hoped for.

  When the elevator pinged, Lacie thrust up to her feet and all of the pleasantries were forgotten. It seemed to take an hour for the doors to open and she took an involuntary step toward them, praying for Ryder to walk through when they parted.

  He didn’t.

  Gabe, Sonny, and Rocco were in the elevator and when they came in she saw another man behind them. Shep. All thoughts of what drama could be caused departed her and she ran over to him.

  Shep exhaled with a whoosh when she landed in his arms, but he held her all the same. ‘It’s ok, Little Lady, we’re going to find your fella.’

  Squeezing her eyes closed, a tear escaped each duct and she sniffed. Shep had helped Ryder to find her, maybe that was why she felt such an affinity for him now. It could just be that they had bonded last night over ice cream and margaritas, and she needed some comfort now just like he had the previous night.

  ‘What is he doing here?’ Sorcha demanded.

  ‘He’s here to help and we need all of that we can get,’ Gabe said. Lacie noted an edge of aggression in his tone that made Lacie lift her head from Shep’s chest to see all of the men were fixated on Bruce. ‘Mr. Booth, I think your business is concluded here, is it not?’

  ‘You’re kicking me out?’ Bruce demanded and glanced to Sorcha. ‘Are you going to let them throw me out?’

  Lacie turned around, but stayed against Shep. ‘Thanks for your patience, Bruce,’ she said, pleased that she wasn’t the only one creeped out by him. ‘But we really need family around us now.’

  ‘Family?’ Bruce said, striding over the room with an outstretched finger in
Sorcha’s direction. ‘She’s not blood. None of you are blood.’

  Lacie would cite Ryder’s proclamation to her that she had blood in the game. Bruce could argue that he had spilled blood himself, but his trauma was born out of his own selfish greed. No one here had invited damnation the way that he had.

  ‘You’re also a criminal,’ Shep said.

  ‘A criminal,’ Bruce said. As long as he provided evidence in Wallace’s trial, he wouldn’t see the inside of a jail cell himself. Although the police had an open investigation on him with regards to his embezzlement of money with his previous employer.

  ‘Yeah,’ Shep said, moving her aside to approach Bruce. ‘And no one here trusts you. Not one person.’

  Bruce glanced back at Sorcha, as if he expected her to come to his defence. He was disappointed because she was wiping drool from Lulu’s chin.

  ‘Fuck all of you,’ Bruce said, and stomped his way to the elevator, which opened as soon as he pressed the call button.

  When he was gone, Gabe bent to catch her hand and he led her into the kitchen to talk alone. ‘What have you found out?’ Lacie asked. Gabe appeared serious, but didn’t seem to be packing bad news, not if his unchanged expression was any barometer of his mood.

  ‘We called Detective Deacon,’ Gabe said, Deacon was their cop contact. ‘We can’t get anything more on our own. Toby is trying to find footage of how they exited the alley. Will and Ty are keeping their boots on the ground. They have surveyed the area and have found no evidence that any of the three marks are still in the alley. No bodies. No blood. No scuffle.’

  Hearing that Ryder wasn’t dead was a relief. Until they could actually find him, her heart rate would remain erratic. ‘So you called the cops?’

  ‘Getting his description out there is helpful and they have greater manpower than we do. Sometimes a random traffic stop is all that’s needed. It would be foolish of us to assume that we were the only ones with the intelligence to crack this, not when our resources are limited.’

  ‘Ok. That makes sense,’ she said, she didn’t care who found Ryder, as long as someone did. ‘Will he file a report?’

  ‘Not at the moment,’ Gabe said. ‘If we don’t have him back by the morning, you can go down and register him officially as a missing person.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘He’s a grown man and at liberty to go wherever the hell he wants,’ Gabe said. ‘I told Deacon about what we found so far and with the suspicion of foul play, we might get some air time on the police radios but… they have other priorities.’

  Police forces went all out for missing kids or vulnerable adults, but a man like Ryder who was capable and fit, it would be assumed that he could take care of himself, which was what everyone here had assumed too.

  ‘We were all so busy looking at me,’ she muttered.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Could this be connected to what happened to me?’ she asked.

  ‘It could be and we’ve been working that angle,’ Gabe said. ‘But the setup doesn’t seem right. Your pursuer didn’t create a diversion. All evidence suggests that he was working alone. He couldn’t have known that Ryder was going to meet with Graden or known that the woman was going to be walking along the street when she was.’

  ‘You have suspected Elijah since the beginning, all of you have.’

  ‘Ty and Will are going to talk to him, to try and get a measure of his honesty.’

  ‘He might not see them,’ she said. ‘He’s a busy man and if he doesn’t recognise—‘

  ‘Will and Ty can be persuasive when they want to be. Elijah’s assistant is a petite redhead,’ Gabe said, resting a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘Do you think there’s a better man than Ty to charm a woman?’

  ‘No,’ she said, embracing herself again while a smile found her face.

  ‘We can’t be sure of much at the moment,’ Gabe said. ‘But if this was just an assault gone wrong, Ryder would have come out or been left at the scene as would the woman. Something else is going on here, whether it’s related to your crazy or not, we don’t know and we’re keeping our minds open.’

  ‘Two crazies at once seems unlikely,’ she said. Gabe’s face remained static and she was impressed by his ability to conceal his emotions. ‘But you don’t want me to blame myself, so you’re trying to make me feel better.’ Groaning, her head fell back and she closed her eyes. ‘Ryder taught you all well. He’s looking after me even when his own life could be in peril.’

  ‘I guess that’s what love is,’ Gabe said. ‘Ryder told us that you were priority one and all of his orders remain current.’

  He’d said something similar to her, so all she could do was breathe through her frustration and be warmed that his love was still here even if he wasn’t.

  ‘I’m going to check on Sorcha,’ Lacie said and Gabe let her go.

  Moving through the house, her brow came down when she heard Sorcha laugh. Creeping up to the entrance to the living room, she saw Sorcha and Shep kneeling on the floor together with Miss Lulu on a changing mat in front of them, diaper off and surrounded by every baby product that ever existed.

  Sorcha laughed again and picked up a packet of wipes. ‘You have to be quick,’ Sorcha said, tugging out a few wipes and trying to hand them to Shep.

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ he protested, but when Sorcha shook them closer, he grumbled and snatched them. ‘Well, hold her legs or something. Jeez, kid.’

  Lacie couldn’t see his expression, but he sounded sufficiently disgusted, though he still worked on cleaning Lulu up. ‘You’re a natural,’ Sorcha laughed.

  Tiptoeing backwards, Lacie left the couple alone. Sorcha was revelling in motherhood and Shep seemed willing to embrace that. It was about time Sorcha had some security in her life. Lacie just hoped that Shep didn’t fall as hard for Lulu as he did for Sorcha.

  Chapter Eighteen

  To give them some space, Lacie had gone back to the incident room with the other men and been given the task of watching video footage of one of the alley exits. Not all of the exits were covered by cameras and those that were weren’t always public cameras. Lacie thought it best not to question where Toby got this footage. She was set up in a corner and watched every second that was put in front of her, but she didn’t see any of the three people who entered the alley together or any vehicles of note.

  When she did see a vehicle, she noted the timestamp and what she could of make, model, and licence plate then handed that information off to Toby for further investigation. No one had come back to her to say any of them were significant, so she assumed they were all dead ends.

  No one ate dinner. No one even suggested food. Night drew in. Shep came in to work with them after he dropped off Sorcha, but when it got to midnight, he came over to her in the corner.

  ‘Time for bed,’ Shep said to her and offered a hand.

  Scanning the room, she didn’t see anyone else showing signs of slowing down. ‘No. I have work to do.’

  ‘If Ryder comes back and sees you haggard, he’ll tear us all a new one,’ Shep said. ‘You’re only going upstairs. If anything breaks, we’ll come and get you.’

  Gabe was in the far corner and he made eye contact with her and nodded. ‘I guess you guys have taken a vote.’

  ‘Yeah, and it was unanimous,’ Shep said, picking up her hand from the desk. ‘Come on. I’ll tuck you in.’

  Rising, she followed in his wake. ‘You think if you hit on me that Ryder might materialise to kick your ass?’ she asked, curious if that had been his reasoning and it didn’t sound too far-fetched to her because Ryder didn’t want any other man touching her.

  ‘If you want to make out a bit or get naked, I’m your man,’ Shep said. He took her through the darkened S.I.S. floor, past Chantelle’s abandoned desk, and into the elevator.

  ‘I don’t think you mean that,’ Lacie said as they travelled up. Shep was being polite in offering to violate her and she was surer than ever that he was in love with Sorcha. �
��What did you think of Lulu?’

  ‘She’s whiney and demanding,’ Shep muttered, lowering his gaze as if to hide his expression. A moment later, he inhaled and returned to his impatient self. ‘Just like her mother.’

  ‘No wonder you’re in love with her then.’

  The elevator doors opened and Shep went out, so she followed. ‘You’re looking out for Sorcha even when Ryder is god knows where.’

  ‘I’m looking out for you too,’ Lacie said, going into the bedroom with him. ‘You two need to have a conversation.’

  Shep closed the curtains and turned down the bed when she sat on the end and slipped off her shoes. He came to her and stroked her hair. ‘You’re something special, Lace,’ he said. ‘We’re going to find Ryder for you.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t leave me. He promised he would never leave me.’

  ‘And we’ll make sure he keeps that promise.’ Shep bowed and kissed the top of her head, then turned off the light as he left the room.

  Lacie was tired, she had to concede that. Emotional fatigue became physical exhaustion and now that she had been given the excuse by Ryder's man, she knew it was pointless to object because they were right.

  Going through her routine to prepare for bed, she told herself that Ryder was in bed waiting for her every time she was hit with a pang of sorrow.

  The lights were already off. So when she was finished in the bathroom, she crawled into the bed with her eyes closed, still desperate to cling to her illusion of Ryder's presence.

  Facing the truth that her illusion was in fact a delusion, she took a breath and told herself to keep hope alive. Just as she was about to open her mouth to talk to him through the darkness an intrusive ring pierced the silence.

  Only one phone would ring that loud in this space—Ryder’s private line. Just as in the old SW complex, Ryder had a private, direct line to the bedroom. Few people had the number, and Gabe was one of them. Throwing back the bed covers, she pounced out of the bed and ran to the handset, ripping it off the base, which was attached to the wall.