Power Play. Beverly Long

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СКАЧАТЬ his direction. “This must be your new favorite place,” he said, acknowledging that he recognized Trey from the night before.

      “Thought of something I needed to tell Kellie,” Trey lied.

      “She’s not working tonight.”

      Trey studied the man’s face. Something wasn’t right. “I thought she worked every Friday and Saturday night.”

      “Well, she was a no-call, no-show tonight, which puts her in enough hot water that she’s going to be lucky to keep this job.”

      Hagney was acting as if he couldn’t care less, which totally didn’t jive with the interactions between Kellie and Hagney that he’d witnessed the previous night. “Does she frequently no-call, no-show?” Trey asked.

      Hagney shrugged. He looked at the napkin. “You want a drink or not?”

      No, he wanted answers, but it didn’t look as if any were forthcoming. He pulled a business card from his pocket. “Take this. If you think of anything that might be helpful, I’d really appreciate a call.”

      Hagney’s only response was to slip the card into his shirt pocket. Trey was out of the bar and back to his truck. The attendant looked at him as if he was a crazy man to have paid thirty bucks to park for five minutes. He didn’t care.

      He didn’t for one minute think Kellie was the type of employee that was a no-call, no-show problem. She worked two jobs. She’d gotten a damn doctorate in geosciences. On her own dime. Next to the word responsible in the dictionary was her picture.

      He pulled out his phone, found his contacts where he entered the number Anthony had provided and clicked on it. It went directly to voice mail. “This is Trey Riker. I stopped in at Lavender and you weren’t there. Call me, please.”

      He called the number again. To voice mail again. He did not leave a second message. He pulled out of the lot. The drive that had taken fourteen minutes last night took almost twice that now. By the time he arrived at the two-story brick apartment building, he had imagined several different horrible scenarios.

      He parked on the street and verified that her old gray Toyota was still in its parking place. Then he went in the front door and took the elevator to the second floor. He knocked on her door. No answer. He turned the knob. Locked. No problem—nothing that couldn’t be handled with a credit card. He was prepared for the bolt lock to also be engaged but it wasn’t.

      He opened the door and caught his breath.

      The apartment was trashed. Furniture upended, books and other items dumped from the five-shelf bookcase. The drawers of the entertainment center had been ripped out, the contents emptied onto the floor, and holes punched through the cheap bottoms.

      Terribly afraid of what he was going to find, he moved through the apartment. It was a one bedroom, one bath. The bedroom was in a similar state, with the mattress and box spring tossed around and slashed and everything pulled from the closet. But there was no Kellie. Not on the bed, under the bed or in the closet.

      She was gone. What the hell did that mean?

      He was going to have to call Anthony. The man deserved to know what had happened. Then the police.

      His cell rang, a number he didn’t recognize. “Riker,” he answered.

      “This is Hagney, from Lavender. I’ve thought about what you said and I might know a little something.”

      He was going to take a chance. “Did you know that her apartment was trashed?”

      The man sighed, loudly. “No, but she suspected that someone was there.”

      Suspected? Her door had not been damaged or tampered with. No way to imagine the chaos inside. Yet she’d suspected? That didn’t make sense. But he needed to focus on what was most important. Hagney had lied when he’d said she’d been a no-call, no-show. He had definitely talked to her. “Where is she?” Trey demanded.

      “I don’t know for sure. But she came to my house last night. Said that she had to get out of town for a couple days and needed some cash. I had a couple hundred bucks and gave it all to her. Then I dropped her off at the bus station.”

      She had a car. Why the hell wasn’t she driving it? “Where was she going?”

      “She didn’t say.”

      There couldn’t be that many buses leaving Vegas at that time. He could figure this out. “Why did she need to leave town?”

      “I really don’t know. She wouldn’t say, said it would be better if I didn’t know. Told me not to tell anyone, but I’m worried because I think she was really scared. After ten-plus years as a bartender, I’m a pretty good judge of people and I don’t think you want to harm her. I hope to hell I’m not wrong.”

      “You’re not,” Trey said. “I tried her cell phone. It went right to voice mail.”

      “She left her phone with me, with the battery out.”

      The only reason she would have done that was because she was afraid that somebody would use the phone to track her. Who? The people who had ransacked her apartment?

      He needed a better timeline. She’d walked out of Lavender at 2:30. She’d been back to her car by shortly after 3:00 which meant that she’d likely arrived home by 3:15 or so. He knew her car had been parked in the carport at 3:28 when he’d cruised by. “Did she walk to your house?”

      “Yes,” Hagney said. “She was cold. I gave her one of my wife’s sweaters.”

      “What color?” Trey asked automatically.

      “Pink. A cardigan.”

      “Okay. What’s your address?”

      Hagney gave it to him and Trey quickly plugged it in and mapped the distance between Kellie’s apartment and Hagney’s place. His phone said it would take forty-six minutes to walk there. Of course, she could have taken a cab, but if she was cold when she arrived, the likelihood was that she’d hoofed it. His gut tightened at the thought of her being outside in the middle of the night, easy prey for any of the many crazies out and about at that time. “Hagney, what time was it when she arrived? The more exact, the better.”

      Hagney sighed. “I didn’t look at a clock but I think I’d only been in bed for maybe fifteen minutes. I wasn’t sleeping yet. I left Lavender at 3:30.”

      “You know that for sure.”

      “Yeah. I have an alarm on my phone. It rings and I’m out the door. That’s the agreement I have with my wife. A few times I got home when the sun was coming up and she wasn’t too happy about that.”

      “What’s your drive time?”

      “That time of the morning, it’s twenty minutes.”

      “How long were you home before you went to bed?”

      Hagney laughed. “Like a minute. I’m beat at the end of a shift.”

      Trey did the math. Hagney had arrived home around three fifty, gone straight to СКАЧАТЬ