The backhand to her face was unexpected and jarring.

  “I don’t want to hear your remarks. I want to hear everything you know about Norma-Jean, The Gifted School, and all of her organizations.”

  Addison moved her jaw, testing the muscles and working out the sting. “I don’t know anything about her organizations beyond the school.”

  Her breaths were coming in short, and she started coughing again, jolting her broken hand and arm. She focused on the pain to stop the racking in her lungs.

  “You see, we were getting somewhere.” He sat on the stool again. “Now, we’re not.”

  The doctor returned with a tray in his hands, a pre-filled syringe sat on the shiny metal. The guard looked over at him before nodding towards her.

  Addison was curious, she wanted to know what she was about to be injected with because she doubted it was for her guard.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing of your concern,” the masked man barked back at her.

  The doctor that had been in to see her earlier slowly made his way toward her still tied form. “I’m going to give you an injection,” he spoke those words aloud while speaking in her mind, “There’s pain medication mixed in.”

  “Figured that,” she answered in a similar manner. “Thank you.”

  All she had to do now was wait for the medication to kick in and hope that whatever other drug was in that needle wasn’t going to affect her ability to hold her tongue.

  Chapter Ten

  The door that had been shut for the better part of the day flung open and smashed against the wall without warning. Max was startled out of the Chief’s chair and stood to face whatever onslaught was coming his way.

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Heath’s face was red with rage, his chest puffed with air and his body stiff as a board.

  Max chose his words carefully. “I don’t know what you are talking about, but if what you’re asking about is what I suspect it is, then I honestly had no idea.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Heath scowled, but at least his demeanor had changed slightly. There was less tension in his shoulders and the blood vessel in his neck was no longer popping out.

  “How the hell could you not have known? You practically live with both of them!”

  Max shook his head and glanced to the ground. He said, “I don’t know. James is my best friend, and I had no idea. Two years of it, almost? You’d think she would have told me.”

  He was sitting back in the chair that his boss normally occupied, but she was missing. She had been missing for at least two days, confirmed. Five days by Max’s count. His hands ran through his short locks as he tried to let his mind wrap around the fact that they were gone without a trace. The idea that he might never see James’ smiling face again, that he might never hear his boss laugh at one of the recruits’ mistakes, that the little girl Lily might never get the chance to grow up was too much to focus on for long. When Max looked up at Heath again, everything had changed. The anger was gone and replaced with trepidation and a deep worry.

  “Have you heard anything?”

  Heath shook his head. “Have you?”

  “From who? You’re supposed to keep me in the loop, and you’re the one that’s supposed to know more than I do.”

  The police officer sat in the wooden chair usually occupied by James and let his body go lax. “I don’t know anything more than you do, Max. It’s an ongoing investigation, and it’s been handed off to detectives. It has a high priority because it’s James and Addy and the kid, but they haven’t found anything.”

  He started to pick at his already incredibly short nails.

  “Well, how did they even get kidnapped? Those two aren’t exactly lazy, they’re in amazing shape. For someone to take both of them down…”

  He didn’t want to think about what might have happened, but it was a question that he needed to ask.

  Heath nodded. “The milk was drugged, as well as all the juice and basically anything liquid in the fridge and cupboards with a removable lid. Whoever did this wanted to take them, and they weren’t going to wait around for it to happen.”

  “So we’re talking a planned, professional deal here. Not something that was in the moment?”

  When Heath nodded in agreement, Max’s mind turned to the interesting and annoying man that he had met. Addison’s brother. At least that had been what he claimed. There was a war waging between his morals and his desire to keep some things to himself as he debated whether or not to tell Heath about Rob and their conversation.

  “This was definitely planned, and it was planned with precision. The only problem is that no one can find any type of motive for whoever took them because there has been no ransom. But I have motive according to the detective on the case. I seem to be one of their main suspects. I’m actually surprised that I haven’t been suspended yet.” His eyes turned down, and his shoulders slumped.

  “You?” Max gave the man a sharp look demanding an answer. “Why would they think that?”

  “Addison and I were engaged. For just over a year before she broke it off.” He quieted a moment before continuing, “I didn’t handle it the best that I could have.”

  Turning his chin up, Max made a quick connection. “Leaving you is the reason that she moved here.” At the solemn nod, he started to understand a bit more. “And why did she leave you?”

  Heath licked his lips and his cheeks turned red, his face hardened, and his jaw clenched. “She caught me in bed with another woman. On more than one occasion.”

  Max left the silence as it was; he figured there was far more to why Addison had left. She was much too closed off for it to be only an affair. The silence was becoming longer and Max wished that the man would just and leave. He really didn’t want to deal with Heath unless he had more information. He was sure that the officer felt horrible and guilty, that his feelings for Addison were genuine even if misguided and not returned. Max knew that Heath was struggling with Addison’s kidnapping and his own issues at work, but he hadn’t exactly been a friend to Max. He was also sure that Heath had nothing else to offer him.

  When the phone rang shrilly into the room, Max breathed a sigh of relief. Anything to end the quiet was a blessing. He picked up the headset and pressed it to his ear after giving an apology to Heath for needing to take the call.

  “This is Interim Chief Maxwell. No. No. I think you have the wrong number. Oh, that’s okay. Yeah, goodbye.”

  Max set the phone down and shifted in his seat as he prepared to dismiss Heath, but the knock on the door was a relief. Max let out a breath he had been holding in his chest.

  Horace popped his head in. “Dinner’s ready, Chief.”

  It was as if every ounce of air had been sucked out of the room and left all three of them gasping to survive. Yes, he was the interim Battalion Chief, filling in until the real boss was back, but no one had dared call him that yet. Max’s eyes turned to the recruit as he started to struggle for words.

  “I’m sorry—I didn’t—”

  “It’s fine, Horace. Thanks, I’ll be right out.”

  The tension was broken, but the brick remained heavily on his chest. She had to come back. This wasn’t the job for him; this wasn’t what he wanted to do. He wasn’t made to be filling out paperwork and making schedules. That was her job. The air escaped his lungs, the sigh echoing into the room as he pushed himself up.

  “You’re welcome to join us, but if you don’t have any more information I don’t know how happy the guys will be.”

  Max left the tiny office at the back of the station, knowing that when he returned Heath would be gone, that he would not follow Max out into the main room.

  That dinner was the quietest meal Max ever experienced in the station house. It had been noisier after the announcement that they were missing, but Max suspected that the news and the women being gone was finally starting to sink in. It wasn’t until almost everyone had finished eating that Max remembered the card Rob had given him. Slipping back into the office, he pulled it out of his wallet and flipped it over several times contemplating. If he called, it wouldn’t be likely that he would get answers to his questions. Rob may have agreed to keep him in the loop, but in all honesty, how much could the odd man tell him? But if Max didn’t call, then he would never know. For an hour, he sat there in the quiet room as the sun set and the new debate started in his mind.

  Picking up the bulky office line, he carefully and slowly pressed the ten digits and waited as the phone rang in his ear.

  Max listened as the high voice spouted words at him. “Are you calling me from the office line?”

  The question took him off-guard, and Max had to think about his answer before replying. “Yes. Why?”

  “Hang up.”

  Max was startled when the line went dead, and he awkwardly set the headset back in the holder, staring at the offending piece of plastic. Shaking his head, he rethought what had just happened with Rob. It didn’t take long for the anger to bubble from his gut into his chest.

  The words burst forth without warning, “What the hell?”

  He went from confused, to panicked, and then to back to anger. “That was extremely rude and unreasonable. He’s the one that gave me the damn card in the first place,” Max growled out. In frustration, he tossed the piece of paper with Rob’s name and number into the trash bin and stood up glaring at the telephone.

  “Fucker.”

  The word slipped through his lips. It was rare that he cursed, but the harsh word sounded throughout the deadly silent room and filled him with a sense of pleasure.

  “Mother fucker!” He shouted it louder this time.

  The knot that had been held tightly in his chest and stomach released and everything tumbled down. He sat back in the chair, his hands covered his face, and his mind reeled with the reality.

  The tears fell unbridled.

  His best friend was gone. Twenty plus years of seeing her just about every day and she was gone, vanished, disappeared, completely void from his life. She might never come back. He might never know if she was living in horrible conditions for the next twenty plus years or if she had been killed along with so many others in whatever crime web had taken hold of her precious life. God, nothing could be worse than the thoughts running around his head.

  Max had no idea how long he’d been sitting like that. He was disturbed out of his reverie when there was yet again a quiet knock on his door. Collins was standing there with an awkward and pained expression covering his face like he’d planted face first into a mud pile.

  “What is it?” Max asked tentatively.

  “This came for you.”

  “It came for me?”

  The short man walked in with a small box in his hands and the look still gracing his features. “Yup, carrier brought it.” He handed the brown box to Max and quickly exited the room.

  Max turned the cardboard over awkwardly in his hands and read his name neatly printed on the top with the address of the station house and nothing else. There was no postal stamp, no certification of having gone through the process of being mailed. Just his name. His full legal name that no one knew except his boss and best friend, he might add. Glancing at the clock above the door, he noted that the time was far too late for any postal service to be delivering.

  Taking a risk, he reached for a pair of scissors and slid the sharp end through the tape. Popping the top, he dumped it over, and shook it hard. Styrofoam that was just small enough to fit inside the cardboard slid out with a bit of effort and landed on the desktop. Taking the scissors again, he cut the tape that wrapped the Styrofoam and pulled the two pieces apart revealing a sleek, black burn phone.

  Hesitantly, he reached forward and grasped the hard plastic, turning it over in his hands and turning the screen on. The power was already on and it surprised him to see a text message on the front screen. Following the instructions, he dialed the number in the message, which was also the one that the message had been sent from, and waited as it rang in his ear.

  “I see you got my gift.” The voice that resounded was eerily familiar.

  Max rolled his eyes and rested back in the rolling chair, reclining and holding the phone to his ear. He was wondering if he was crazy or just plain desperate.

  “Hello, Rob,” Max sneered.

  “Glad to see you remember me.”

  “How could I forget?” Max huffed and smiled.

  The man was growing on him a bit, in a crazy and annoying way. Max waited for a second as quiet passed between them. He listened to the deep breaths of the other man and the small chatter that he could hear going on in the background of a man and woman speaking quickly. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he wasn’t going to try very hard to figure it out.

  “Well, did you call for something?” Rob’s voice interrupted Max’s thoughts.

  Furrowing his brow, Max racked his brain. He had called. “Yes, you said you would keep me in the loop about what was going on.”

  “Not much to keep you in the loop with.” There was a pounding sound that was hurried, fast, and consistent, as if the man was typing on a keyboard with rapid fire pace. “We haven’t found a lot.”

  “Not a lot, but you have found something.”

  Max was quick, but Rob hadn’t exactly hidden the statement well. Max didn’t think that he was very good at hiding things. Addison had obviously received all that talent.

  “We have narrowed down their location.”

  Max pulled in air between his teeth, creating a high pitched squeal.

  He used it as a second to think before speaking. “You narrowed it down? Does that mean you know who took them?”

  “Not really, that’s all still up in the air at the moment.” Again, the clicking at the keyboard sounded. “You see, when Addison was kidnapped six years ago and taken to an unknown location, it was the second time. This would be the third, in case you lost count. Anyway,” Rob heaved a rather large sigh, “We had a sub-dermal tracking device implanted under the skin in her arm. It’s really harmless actually, quite like micro-chipping a dog that tends to escape and runs away when not wanted.”

  “Rob.”

  “Right. So, we’ve been working on tracking this device. But we’ve run into a few issues. For starters, someone wiped it from our system, which shouldn’t have happened. We had to back track on an old non-networked computer in order to find the damn coding for it.”

  Max rolled his eyes, hoping that what the man was saying was true and not just a bunch of gibberish to throw him off. “But you found the coding, right?”

  “Yeah, a little bit ago.”

  “A little bit?”

  “Like an hour.”

  Again there was the clicking of keys, and Max was fairly certain that he had lost the man in his own little world.

  “Rob.” Max took a breath and waited. “Rob.” Huffing the breath through his nose, Max started again, “Rob!”

  He had to say the name at least three more times before he got the man’s attention.

  “You said you narrowed the location. Where did you narrow it down to?”

  “Um… not sure I should tell you that, but seeing as how it’s a rather large location there really can’t be that much harm, can there?” The pounding that seemed to be a constant throughout their conversation came back. “Since they were taken by the same group we can assume that they were kept together for at least a small amount of time, but we cannot assume that they are together now. However, we’re pretty sure that they only know about Addison and the kid so that could mean that James is already in a different location and it’ll be crazy hard to find her.”

  “Rob.”

  “Oh right, they’re located somewhere in the southern part of the country. But I’m having some issues narrowing it down further than that. Actually, a lot of issues.”

  Max made to remember the information, not daring to write it down. “Southern? As in Southwest? Southeast?”

  “In the middle? I’m not sure on that. And I’m not sure even on how southern. It’s kind of ridiculous actually how this is not working. I can’t seem to get a clean lock. It’s like every time I run the program they’re in a different location. And it’s like that location is making leaps that are impossible to cover in the amount of time that I am leaving between each run of the program. It is utterly and completely frustrating.”

  There was a smash and a shattering sound of breaking pieces as they spurted from whatever two things had collided.

  Max listened intently for the release of a breath and smirked. “Feeling any better now?”

  “Yeah, surprisingly, I am feeling moderately better.”

  “That’s good.” Max was placating. “What’d you break?”

  “The keyboard.”

  The tone of Rob’s voice said he was incredibly embarrassed by the situation. However embarrassed the man might be, Max was glad he’d done it. It showed that he actually cared about what was happening and even though he was happy-go-lucky ninety-nine percent of the time that he was just as worried as Max was himself.

  “I can fix it, though.”

  “I’m sure that you can. So, you still have no idea who took them?”

  Rob shuffled and hummed before he spoke. “We have a few ideas. Narrowed that down too, but that’s not really my department, so I don’t have the latest up-to-date information on that. We’re looking at two fanatic groups within the Gift and one not associated with it. The hard part is that each is rather large with many, many factions, so eliminating some of those factions from our watch list is proving to be difficult.” There was a screech of metal against cement. “But we’re still working on it, like I said. Addison was an important part of this work and until she is recovered we will not stop.”

  “Will you stop if you find her and not the others?” It was the question that Max had wanted to ask but was completely dreading the answer to. Luckily, he was not disappointed.