“I suppose I deserve that,” I say. “C’mon.”

  As we’re leaving, I give Ed one last wave, mouthing him another “thank you”. I can’t help but appreciate the fact he has a nice smile.

  “Where are you going?” I ask Zara as she makes her way to the passenger’s side.

  “What?” she asks.

  “You’re driving while I’m eating this delicious sandwich.” I toss her the key fob over the roof of the car. She catches it in one hand.

  “Fine. But only because I feel sorry for you.” She chuckles again, shaking her head. “Always available.”

  Twenty minutes and one scrumptious turkey club later, we’re parked in front of the corporate offices of Ryde 4 Lyfe, a local ride-share service officially based in Maryland but that covers the entire D.C. metro area. Given what a pain the tube is, I imagine they have to do pretty good business. But you’d never know it to look at the place. The primary office is nestled into a strip mall in between a vacant property and a barber. There isn’t even a sign on the building above the door. Instead, there’s a few pieces of paper taped to the inside of the plate glass window identifying this place as the Ryde 4 Lyfe corporate offices.

  “What do you think? Cockroaches?” Zara asks.

  “Definitely. Maybe even a rat.” The building is located just outside Capitol Heights, and it fits right in. The parking lot is cracked and broken all over the place and the building could use a refresh, though considering the bars covering most of the windows I doubt that’s the biggest of their worries here. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

  We both step out of the car and I’m immediately aware of my surroundings. A couple of units down a man is sitting on a rusty metal chair outside, smoking. He watches us all the way to Ryde 4 Lyfe’s door. When I give it a tug, it doesn’t budge. “Locked.”

  Zara puts her hands up to the window, attempting to look in. She taps on the glass. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “I wonder if your call spooked them,” I say. “Which only makes them look more suspicious.”

  “How can they just not be here? Aren’t they running a business?” she asks.

  I pull out my phone and look up Ryde 4 Lyfe’s customer service number. I give it a quick call.

  “Hello, thank you for calling Ryde 4 Lyfe, where our priority is your destination. You’ve reached Dana, how can I help you?”

  “Dana, this is Agent Slate with the FBI, could you tell us if your corporate offices are open today?”

  The woman on the other end of the phone hesitates for just a second longer than she should. “Yes, of course. We’re open today from eight a.m. until four p.m. However if you’re having a problem with one of your rides I’d be happy to help you.”

  “I’m looking to speak with the owner of your company,” I say.

  “Oh, well,” she stutters, and I can hear the rustling of papers in the background. I look over to Zara who shakes her head. “I believe he is out for the day. But if you like I can have him call you—”

  “Listen, Dana,” I say. “You sound like you’re just trying to do your job. But I’m standing in front of your corporate offices right now and my partner just spoke to your boss not more than an hour ago. If he’s not here I need you to tell me where he is. Otherwise, you could be obstructing a federal investigation.”

  “He’s right here,” she blurts out. I suppress a smile. “He just showed me a text telling me to tell anyone he wasn’t in today.”

  “Then please, come open the door for us.”

  She hesitates again. “I’ll be right there.” A few seconds later the lights in the unit come on and a pretty, young redhead comes to the door, unlocking it. I glare at her as she holds the door open for us, though she just looks at the ground.

  “Dana!” a man calls from the back. “You’re fired!” He comes storming around an open doorway and stops as soon as he sees us. “You! You’re not supposed to be here without a warrant! I know my rights. Out! Get out!” His face is red and flushed but he’s younger than I suspected. He can’t be a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, but he’s acting like the biggest man in the room.

  “Mr.…” I begin.

  “…Aruz,” Zara says. “Robert Aruz.”

  “Mr. Aruz, we just need to ask you a few questions.”

  “No!” he calls out. “No questions, no cops. Get a warrant. Until then, we are closed!” He approaches us to usher us out the door.

  “I can assure you, Mr. Aruz, you do not want to touch us.” He stops cold, his face frozen somewhere between outrage and terror. While he’s within his rights to refuse to speak with us, he’s not doing a lot for his case here. I can understand a certain kind of reluctance, but this is outright combativeness. What is Aruz hiding?

  “I’m calling my lawyer,” he says.

  “I have to say, you seem awfully afraid of something,” I say, looking around the small space. “What are you hiding here?”

  “Nothing! I’m hiding nothing! I just don’t like people poking into my business. How many times I gotta say it? Out!”

  I have an inclination to stand here and argue with him, force him down, but I think it might be better to come back when he’s less agitated. Though part of me is afraid he might try and flee. And I need to get a look at his records. We need to make sure Hannah was dropped off at her apartment before we can proceed any further. Once we can establish where she was abducted from, we might be able to gather some clue about who took her.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I pull it out, looking at the number. I quickly put it back away.

  “Very well, Mr. Aruz,” I say. “Expect another visit from us again soon.” As we reach the door I turn back to him. “And don’t take it out on your employee here, she was only doing what an officer of the law asked of her.”

  His face contorts again. Maybe Dana would be better off with a different job anyway.

  We head back out to the car. “Did I miss something, or did we cave pretty quickly in there?” Zara asks.

  “He’s not going to give us anything in that state,” I say. “But he’s way too defensive for someone in his position. I want to go back and run some checks on him. See what Robert Aruz is really doing in there.”

  She nods, then indicates my phone. “Who buzzed you?”

  “Dry cleaning is ready,” I reply, getting back in the car. “I also want to start looking at those men from Arnie’s. Maybe we can get a hit on these two guys in the facial rec system.”

  “You okay?” Zara asks. It’s like she can sense something is off.

  “Fine,” I reply, starting the car. “C’mon. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  Chapter Eight

  I pull into the mostly empty parking lot surrounding J.R.’s diner, which is close to Michigan Park. I dropped Zara off back at the office, telling her to get started on the men from Arnie’s and to see if she could find anything we could use to persuade Mr. Robert Aruz to allow us access to his records without needing the warrant, which will take more time than we have. I feel bad about lying to her, but right now, she wouldn’t understand. No one would. And this is something I need to keep quiet. It’s better for her career and her overall wellbeing that she doesn’t know.

  Since it’s well past noon, the diner looks to be in a slump, which is perfect. And hopefully we’re far enough away from most of my usual travel routes that I don’t see anyone else I know here. Even if I do, I could always explain it away as meeting a C.I. or having something to do with this Stewart case.

  Speaking of which, I already have one voicemail on my phone from Judge Stewart looking for an update. But until we have something more concrete, I’m not about to call him back just to say we only have a few leads and no idea where his daughter is. I feel guilty enough as it is by taking time away from her case to deal with this, but it’s important. And Zara is still on the job, so it’s not like we’ve abandoned Hannah. Not at all.

  I step into the diner, the smells of fried food and salt permeating the air. A waitress serving drinks to an occupied table looks over at me, but I wave her away. I spot the man I came here looking for in the far corner, reading a newspaper.

  “Mr. Parrish,” I say, taking the booth seat across from him.

  He drops the paper lower so I can see the spectacles on his eyes. “Agent Slate.” He folds the paper neatly, setting it to the side. In front of him is a mug of steaming coffee. The waitress comes over, her pen and pad ready.

  “What can I get’cha, hon?”

  “Just a water,” I say.

  Parrish arches his eye. He’s probably in his late fifties, with a full, graying beard hiding a tight expression. He’s still got most of his hair, though it’s beginning to thin near the top. He’s also a man who looks like he could hold his own in a fight, but who has also slowed down in the past few years. “Surprised you’re not hungry,” he says.

  “I just ate. Working on a case.” I nod to him. “Find anything?”

  “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” he says. He begins to make a move under the table but pauses when the waitress returns with my water. She doesn’t even give us any further consideration, instead heads back to the kitchen in a hurry. It looks like she’s the only one working the entire diner. Thankfully, it’s slow.

  Parrish produces a manilla folder, sliding it over to me across the table. “It’s like you said. There isn’t much there. I spent two weeks going over that place, inch by inch, and still, this was all I was able to come up with.”

  Intrigued, I open the folder and remove a series of 8x10 blown-up photographs. They’re all grainy to some degree, but they all show the same subject: a woman in a black coat, walking away from the camera.

  My heart jumps, my adrenaline beginning to pump. “You found her,” I say.

  He chuckles, but it’s mirthless. “If you call that finding someone, I’d hate to see what success looks like in the eyes of the FBI.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” I say, looking at the pictures. “Up until now, I’ve had nothing. No other witnesses. No photographic evidence. Nothing. But this is her, this is the woman I saw in the hospital.” I look over the pictures again. I can just barely make out her long, blonde hair flowing over her coat as she walks away. “Where did you get these? I already checked all the hospital cameras.”

  He leans forward. “These two were from a dashcam in a Ford F-150 parked about a hundred feet away in the hospital lot,” he says. “This one is from the bank that sits a block away from the hospital, which is why it’s such bad quality, and this one is from a traffic camera at the intersection across from the hospital.”

  “Is there video to go along with this?” I say, my pulse racing. He nods to the envelope again and I reach back in, feeling a data drive inside.

  “All show the same thing. The woman walking away from the front of the hospital, then she disappears off all the cameras a few minutes later. I can’t find her after that, though I assume she got in a car and drove away. The nearest bus station is in the opposite direction of the way she’s going.”

  I flip through the pictures again. To have actual photographic proof that I’m not crazy, that I did see someone at the hospital and that she most likely killed Gerald Wright—and probably my husband too—is such a weight off my shoulders. I can’t even describe it. “I don’t guess you found anyone else who saw her that day?”

  He shakes his head. Not long after I got back to D.C., I hired Parrish to go back to Stillwater and begin investigating this woman, since I couldn’t do it myself. He’s a retired cop who works as a private investigator now, and he’s good. Expensive, but good. I can see now he’s already been worth the money. But until I can actually put this woman in the same room with Gerald Wright, I’m still up a creek without a paddle. All this does is prove she exists. It doesn’t give me any way to identify her or actually charge her with a crime. But I am dead sure that if I can get her in an interview room, I can get her to admit to both Wright and Matt. And then I can start getting some real answers.

  It might not be much, but it’s a step in the right direction.

  “Do you want me to keep digging?” Parrish asks, breaking my train of thought.

  “Is there anything else to find there?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “I was thorough. I went through every resource I could think of. A few people working at the hospital thought they might have seen her, but none could be a hundred percent sure.”

  I sit back in the booth, already feeling the deflation setting back in. While it might be a step in the right direction, it feels more like a tiptoe.

  “You look upset,” he says.

  I try to reset my face. “It’s not because of you. You’ve made a huge difference for me. I just wish I had a little bit more.”

  He nods. “I understand. A grainy image of a woman in a black coat isn’t exactly compelling evidence.” He reaches down and hands over a second envelope.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “Well,” he grins. “I was planning on charging you extra for this one. But seeing as how important this is to you, it’s on the house. Call it a professional courtesy.”

  I open the folder and this time instead of a grainy black and white image, this one is in color, and it’s a front shot of the woman, full body. Enough to where I can see her face clearly.

  “Holy shit!” I exclaim. Everyone in the diner looks up for a moment, then returns to their meals. Parrish chuckles again. “Where did you find this?” I whisper.

  “This was captured by a surveyor almost a quarter mile away,” he says, proudly. “They were doing some work for the city and taking full land surveys with a six-thousand pixel camera. It took his computer three minutes to resolve the entire image, and then we went in looking. There’s no video here, but one of his images caught her as she was leaving the hospital. And it was high-res enough that it was relatively clear, even though he was thousands of feet away.”

  “Parrish,” I say, “This is incredible! This is clear enough that I can run it through the FBI databases. I could get a hit!”

  He pinches his features. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, seeing as it isn’t a real case?”

  “It’s a case all right,” I say. “They just don’t know it yet. Gerald Wright was murdered, and this woman was responsible. I just need to find a way to prove it.”

  “Didn’t you say his toxicology report came back negative?” Parrish asks.

  I nod. “So did my husband’s. But Wright swore up and down that someone killed him. Then less than two days later he’s dead himself? Tell me that’s not suspicious.”

  “No, I have to give that to you,” he replies. “Do you think this is enough to convince your bosses to reopen the case on Wright?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. But maybe if I can identify this woman first, then figure out what her agenda is, then I’ll have enough. And I can finally put the questions about my husband to rest.”

  “Well, I wish you luck with it,” he says. “I’ve seen cases with a lot more languish for decades. I hope that’s not your experience too.”

  “Thank you,” I say, gathering up all the photos and data drive again. “Really. This is a game-changer. I’ll send the final payment via bank transfer.”

  “Works for me,” he says, reaching across the table. “Good luck, Agent Slate. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  I take his hand and give it a firm squeeze. “I definitely will.”

  Chapter Nine

  The first thing Hannah realizes when she wakes up is she’s cold. She looks down, realizing that wherever she is, she’s been stripped down to her underwear. She sits up, her head pounding and making her dizzy before she can regain her bearings. Once the room stops spinning, she takes a moment to look around. There are some clothes on the chair next to the bed, but they aren’t hers. Right now, she doesn’t care. She pulls the fitted dress on and slips on the flats, finding they’re the perfect size for her.

  As best she can tell she’s in someone else’s bedroom. Her first thought is she’s been drugged and raped, but she’s not sore anywhere and she doesn’t see any bruising. Still, her head is foggy and it’s difficult to tell what’s happened.

  All she can remember is getting into that ride-share and realizing they weren’t going back to her place. The driver had locked the doors, then before she could call someone, he’d stuck her with something…a needle. After that…she can’t remember anything. But her mouth is dry and her muscles ache, like she’s been out rock climbing or cross-country running. She looks around for something to soothe her throat, only to see a door placed opposite the bed. Opening it, she finds a small bathroom, complete with shower and toilet. The sink has a small glass with one toothbrush sticking out of it. Wherever she is, this person lives alone. She grabs the glass and fills it with water from the tap, drinking the whole thing in one go. Then she drinks another glass before finally replacing the toothbrush.

  Where is she? And who brought her here? She returns to the bedroom to find there is another door, right beside the dresser. Though this one looks a little different. She tugs on the handle, trying to twist it, only to find it won’t move. The entire door doesn’t budge no matter how much of her weight she seems to put into it. She gets down on all fours, trying to see under the door itself, but it’s sealed tight. No light escapes beneath it.

  So she’s a prisoner. Is that it? She looks around for the rest of her stuff, her phone, purse…anything she could use but it’s all missing, just like her regular clothes. She goes to the far wall, expecting to find windows beyond the large curtain that covers the entire wall, but when she pulls it back, there is nothing but a blank slate.

  “What the hell?” she says as her heartrate picks up. No windows? No doorway out? Someone has locked her in a box, no matter how much they try to fancy it up. Hannah grabs one of the lamps from the side table beside the bed, intending to use it to break off the handle of the door, only to find it bolted to the nightstand. When she tries to move the nightstand, she finds it is bolted to the floor. The room might look like a bedroom, but it is obvious someone has worked very hard to disguise its true purpose: a prison.