Page 72 of The Best Trick

So who had Doris?

“What the hell?” Odin said, swiping and tapping furiously at the screen of his phone. “I can't get this text to Ferdinand to deliver. Ice, I’m texting you. See if you get it.”

My phone dinged with a text from Odin. “Got it.”

“So it's not my phone,” Odin said.

“You’re texting Ferdinand?” I asked.

“I'm trying to follow up with him. Remember the list he was supposed to pull together of the people Wilson traveled to Italy with? Maybe there’s a lead on that list.”

Zeus tried texting Ferdinand on his phone, and eventually they gave up and just called the guy.

“No longer in service,” Zeus said.

We all perked up.

In my mind, I thoughtdum-da-dum,but I didn't say it out loud. I just stuffed the last of my fries in my mouth because we were going to be leaving this restaurant very soon. Zeus threw a few big bills onto the table and signaled the waiter.

Minutes later we were on the road, palm trees and pastel buildings flying by.

“Ferdinand,” Thor said. “What are you up to?”

“Maybe his phone is broken,” I said.

“No, it's out of service,” Odin said. “He gave up the number, or it was disconnected by the carrier. It's what you do when you go on the run.”

“It's what a newbie does when he goes on the run,” Zeus said. “Freaking overkill. All he'd have to do is turn his phone off.”

“Damn,” I said.

“How could we have been so wrong?” Odin seemed mystified. “Does Ferdinand want Wilson out of witness protection after all? Could Ferdinand have the dog?”

“Or does he know where she is?” I added.

“I was so sure he had nothing to do with anything,” Odin said. “Is Ferdinand more of an operator than I’d guessed?”

We drove on in silence, all trying to make sense out of the idea of Ferdinand fooling us so thoroughly.

“It seemed like such a good idea to put Alfred onto Ferdinand, to distract him that way,” Zeus said. “Did Alfred question him and spook him?”

“I still don't understand how it could be Ferdinand,” Odin said.

We didn’t bother buzzing this time; we went right in and up the stairs. Nobody answered when we knocked, so Odin let us in.

Ferdinand's apartment was messy, but it was more someone-packed-in-a-hurry messy than ransacked messy—kitchen cupboards stood open. Coats were draped on the couch back. Bedroom drawers were open. Zeus decided that Odin would go through the place for clues about where Doris might be or where Ferdinand might have gone while he and Thor and I went to question the neighbors about a dog.

“Yeah, I heard a dog in there,” said the woman who lived next door to Ferdinand. “Barking its head off.”

“How long?” I asked.

She figured it had been there for around a week or so. Which exactly fit the time frame of Doris’s kidnapping.

“Did you ever see the dog?” I asked.

“Nah,” she said. “Someone said it was a German shepherd.”

“Ferdinand took off,” Thor said. “We really want to talk to him. Did he say anything about where he’s going?”

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