Captivated: A Colter Shaw Short Story. Jeffery Deaver

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       Thursday, August 30

      “She’s been gone for a month. And two days.”

      The man’s troubled expression suggested that he could easily have added the number of hours.

      “No contact with you at all?”

      “None.” The voice stumbled. He cleared his throat. “No, sir.”

      The two men were sitting in an Asian fusion restaurant—self-billed as such, though to Colter Shaw it resembled any other Chinese place. He was having wonton soup, concocted with homemade chicken stock, Shaw believed. It was good. The man across from him in the booth was ringed by a parapet of bowls and plates—some tofu thing, sauces, soup, egg roll and rice. One of the lunchtime combos. The man had taken two bites of the rice and set down his chopsticks.

      “I know—in my soul—I know she’s in danger. Somebody’s kidnapped her. We have to do something!” He tugged at the collar of his gray suit jacket. Brooks Brothers, Shaw had seen when the front flaps parted. The cuffs were frayed. Matthews’s shirt was white, the collar yellowing where it met his neck, and was a size too large. His tie was bold green and he sported a matching pocket square. A big gold ring encircled the middle finger of his right hand.

      “You’ve gone to the police?” Shaw asked, his voice a monotone, in contrast to Ron Matthews’s oscillating timbre.

      “Yes, of course. I called them a day after she didn’t come home. I was worried it was too soon. But the detective said there’s no waiting period or anything.”

      In most states you can report somebody missing ten minutes after they don’t show up. But unless it’s a child or there’s evidence of a crime (the standard police term really is the quaintly Sherlockian “foul play”), the authorities don’t jump on board right away.

      Matthews confirmed that this was true in his case. “They weren’t gung ho, you know. There are a lot of missing persons, he told me.”

      Thousands upon thousands, Shaw knew.

      “He asked—you’re probably going to ask me the same thing—if she’d been in touch with anybody. And, yeah, Evie called a friend the same day she was due home. She said she’d decided to travel for a while. She needed to get away. I had to be honest with the cop.”

      Always a good plan.

      Well, usually.

      “But I think the kidnapper forced her to call her friend, to make sure the police weren’t involved. She didn’t call me because the kidnapper would think I’d know something was wrong. And I would. Evie and me, we have this …” Matthews ran his hand through his thick salt-and-pepper hair. “I’d just know she was in trouble.”

      Shaw took a sip of pungent Tsingtao beer. Another spoonful of soup.

      Matthews had been sniping furtive glances at him since the businessman had joined Shaw here. He did so again, taking in Shaw’s short blond hair, lying close to the scalp, his broad but compact build, just shy of six feet. An oval face, complexion light. Eyes blue with gray influence. A few women had said he resembled this or that actor, usually some action-movie hero. Most of them he’d never heard of, since, growing up, he’d seen only two or three movies or TV shows a year—and then not until he was ten or eleven. Now, that sort of entertainment was not a major part of his life.

      The СКАЧАТЬ