Jason Pinter - The Stolen

"Hello?"

"Henry, everything all right? I've been trying to reach you all day."

"Not really. Jack was admitted to the hospital this morning. Alcohol poisoning. I walked in on him sitting in a pile of his own vileness."

"Oh, God. I remember a while ago you thought he was drinking too much."

"Yeah, I just never thought it would get this bad."

"I'm so sorry to hear that. I called you at the office, and got worried when I couldn't find you. After the past few days my mind's been all out of whack."

"I'm at home now. Having a beer. Feel the same way as you."

There was a pregnant pause, and then Amanda said,

"Mind if I come over?"

Without waiting, I said, "No. That'd be nice."

"Be there in half an hour."

After we hung up, I got up and poured the rest of the beer into the sink. Then I sat on the couch and waited.

I wondered: Would Dmitri Petrovsky still be alive if we hadn't followed him? Possibly. But what the hell was he mixed up in?

I still didn't know exactly what his link was to Danny and Michelle. He was their pediatrician, but somehow he was connected to my friend the Chesterfield-chainsmoking sociopath. One more trail to follow. I needed to know who that man was, who lived in that house, and what

Dmitri Petrovsky knew that made necessary his permanent silence. One thing was for certain, my digging had opened a can of worms someone very badly wanted kept closed.

I looked around my apartment. Humble even by humble's standards. I knew when I moved to New York that it was one of the most expensive cities in the world, but nothing prepared me for three-dollar cups of coffee or twelve-dollar movie tickets. I was paying about sixty percent of my income to a landlord I never met, who took longer to fix my air-conditioning than it would have taken me to install a hot tub into a Buick Skylark. I had no idea how long it took Jack to make a decent living, but I hoped it wasn't too long in the waiting.

Twenty-five minutes later my buzzer rang. I peeked out the window, saw Amanda standing on the street. She looked up at me, waved. I let her in.

She came upstairs and sat down across the couch from me. Hands folded under her chin. Her hair fell over her shoulders, worry lines at her eyes. Though she was still beautiful, the past few years had aged her slightly. We'd been through so much together, yet strangely I'd known this girl for less than two years. I still saw that brown hair and remembered that on the day we met, despite the circumstances, she had made everything stand still, if only for a moment. Women like Amanda, who were beautiful almost in spite of their lack of effort, beautiful without trying at all, they didn't come along too often.

We sat there in silence. It was the kind of quiet I hadn't experienced with many other women. I longed for that sense of confidence. Of comfort.

After a few minutes had passed, Amanda said, "What do you think the cops will do now?"

"You mean the dedicated men and women of the Hobbs

County PD? Probably nothing. I'd bet my life savings that the same guy that mistook me for a barbecue started that fire, but I can't imagine the cops will work very hard to prove it. They want to wipe this whole mess under the bed and be done with it."

"What about Petrovsky?"

"I don't know. They claim they never found a body, either in the driveway or inside the bonfire. All they did was file a missing persons report when his secretary said he didn't show up at work. Petrovsky isn't married, no children, no real family in the States, so until enough time has gone by they won't have anything breathing down their necks. And the press won't be putting pressure on them if there are no weeping widows or no orphaned children to plaster on the front page to stir sympathies."

She looked sad. "It's like a crime was never even committed."

"It wasn't," I said. "Until a body turns up. Or we catch these assholes."

"If someone is willing to kidnap two children, kill a doctor, torture you and set a house on fire, I have a feeling they wouldn't think twice about disposing of a body."

"Tomorrow," I said. "We start from the other end. We've been looking for what happened to Michelle Oliveira and

Daniel Linwood, who kidnapped them and why. And we haven't made a lot of headway on that end. So now we follow this." I took a crumpled piece of paper from my pocket. Tossed it at Amanda. She uncrumpled it, read it.

"The receipt," she said. I nodded.

"Toyz 4 Fun," I replied. "Let's see who was buying a young girl some early Christmas presents. And I'll bet whoever it is has another child. Someone who hasn't been reported missing yet. Someone who in a few years is meant to be another Danny Linwood."

James Keach walked down the off-white hallway, still shaking after nearly tripping over an old man and his walker, just thankful he didn't rip the old guy's IV from his arm. James's jacket was unzipped, one hand in his pocket while the other one hung loose. Just like Paulina had taught him.

Be cool, she said. If anyone asks, you're visiting a relative. It's okay to be nervous-nobody likes being in a hospital-but nurses and orderlies are trained to sniff out anyone who doesn't belong. You belong, right, James?

Just tell yourself you belong and you'll act like it. Just don't be a pussy, James, and you'll be fine.

He still couldn't get over that word. His friends used it in casual conversation all the time, usually out at bars or while watching lumberjack competitions on Spike TV.

He'd never been called one. And to be called that name by a woman, his boss, on a regular basis, was something

James still hadn't come to grips with.

Once this task was complete, he was going home, getting under the covers and sleeping. Tomorrow he'd be joining his father on a golf outing with Ted Allen, and he'd need to be up for that. James knew his father had cashed in a favor in getting Ted Allen to hire him at the Dispatch.

That didn't bother him much. Everybody had connections and used them. That was the point. Besides, wouldn't you rather get a recommendation from a close friend than have to slog through identical resumes from overachieving losers? That he got stuck working for Paulina Cole was something totally unexpected. Unlike any boss he'd ever worked for, Paulina actually scared the piss out of him.

James felt the thin camera in his pocket. Point. Click.

Done.

That's it. This guy from IT, Wilmer or Wilbur or Wilfred or something, showed him how to use it. Idiot proof was his term. James laughed at that. Wondered who the idiots were they had to design it for.

He knew the tip was good. Paulina's tips always were.

And while James was used to Paulina's volcanic temperament and mercurial attitude, James had noticed something different about her the past few weeks. Her moods had swung heavier, her demeanor more vicious, her attitudes more severe. Like she was gearing up for something big, steeling herself. Though he'd been running errands for her for going on a year now, she was never totally candid with him. He knew she was working on something big, but she refused to share the details.

In good time Jamesy, she'd said.

He counted off the doors as he walked down the hall.

703.

704.

705.

706.

He was there.

But the door was closed.

It wasn't supposed to be closed. He hadn't expected it

to be closed. He assumed it would be wide open, people coming and going, nobody noticing a thing. But opening a hospital door, man, someone would definitely notice that. If not a nurse then another patient. He couldn't see inside. A curtain was drawn. If a nurse was in there she'd sure as hell see him, and there was no way he could get it done without drawing suspicion and ruining the whole thing.

James stepped back. Took a breath. Leaned against the wall. He knew this was the very antithesis of what Paulina had advised, but fuck it, he needed a moment to regroup.