Page 111 of Lethal Threat
Marshall's eyes move over the piles of Sierra’s personal items that have been strewn about. He’s pissed. “The door chain is cut. The apartment is trashed… her brother’s team is after her.”
I’m filled with angry disbelief. This can’t be happening.
Marshall holsters his gun. “She could have left before this happened. It will be hard to tell if she left or was taken.”
Taken?
My heart flat out stops. The idea of Sierra being taken by someone consumes me. A blanket of rage covers me like a tidal wave of blackness.
Swallowing down the fear that’s exploding inside my chest, I stalk down the hallway toward the kitchen. “Her Honda SUV… it’s usually in spot 44. If she left on her own, she might have taken it.”
Simona trots after me, close on my heels. “On it. I’ll check the car!”
Roark, looking big and lethal, steps into the living room. “I’ll call this in to the cops. You two look for her ID and credit cards. Remember, everything here is evidence. Don’t touch a thing. If she left under her own power, she’s more likely to have taken her passport, so we need to see if that’s still here.”
Roark’s a good man for keeping my head on straight.
All I want to do is smash things, but that’s absolutely the wrong thing to do since her chain was cut and we’re standing in the middle of a crime scene of some sort—a break in, or a kidnapping, I don’t know.
We carefully search the all the rooms. I’m rattled hard when I see the condoms spilled on the bathroom floor nextto a bunch of tampons. “What the hell is up with the condoms?”
Marshall leans into the small room. “Looks like the medicine cabinet exploded.”
That’s when I see the bottle of pain medicine and a glass of water on the sink. The nerves in my gut tighten even more. “Man, I was afraid of that. Sierra might be suffering from the effects of her head injury. It’s hard to tell what condition she’s in.”
When I storm back into the living room, Roark raises his eyes to mine. He covers the phone with his hand. “Did you find her passport or credit card?”
I shake my head. He turns and paces away as he continues to speak to the 911 operator.
Simona bursts through the doorway, coming back from the parking lot. Her brows are drawn into a hard line. “Car’s been tossed too. No sign of her personal items.”
I shove my hand into my hair. “Fuck me. So, nothing conclusive. She’s gone. Her personal effects are too. But not her car.”
Simona taps her chin. After looking around for a beat, she frowns. “So, do you think she came back here and found the apartment like this?”
Pushing past me, she heads to the bedroom. A few seconds later, she shouts from the back of the apartment. “The bed’s been slept in and the window’s open. That’s weird in the winter, and it was cold last night.”
I stand in the doorway of the bedroom, sensing for anything else we’re missing. “They—someone—could have come in through the window.”
“Maybe. But something seems off,” Simona says as she stares at the bed like she’s in a trance. “I can’t put my finger on it. But I’m just not getting any sense of struggle.”
“The car alarms—” Marshall and I say at the same time.
Simona says, “We need to get the exact time of that call to 911, because it has to be related.”
“It was before Cade called. He mentioned his neighbor hearing it on the scanner. But it couldn’t have been that much earlier. At least, it sounded like it had happened shortly before. We’ll have the call record on the satellite phone. Fuck.”
Simona twists at her long ponytail. “I can probably get the call recordings, but figuring out how it’s related to this might be trickier.”
I stick my head out the window. That’s when I see something silver. Stretching out, I pick up the little piece of metal off of one of the shingles.
My mouth goes dry. I turn the tiny airplane charm over in my hand. “Mother fuck. She went out that window.”
I hold open my palm so they can see. Grim sounds come from the team.
I look around the room again. Everything makes more sense. “They came in the front door while she was sleeping. She went out that window. I’m gonna hunt those fuckers and make them suffer for this.”
Roark stalks in, glances between us. “They’ll send an officer, but as I suspected, they want to wait twenty-four hours before they file a missing person report.”
