Tess Gerritsen - Vanish

“Mila,” said Jane. “Tell me where we can meet. Please, I need to talk to you. I promise, it will be perfectly safe. Anywhere you want.” She heard the click of the receiver hanging up. “Shit.” Jane looked at Moore. “We need her location!”

“You got it yet?” he asked Frost.

Frost hung up the conference room phone. “ West End. It’s a pay phone.”

“On our way,” said Crowe, already out of his chair and headed toward the door.

“By the time you get there, she’ll be long gone,” said Gabriel.

Moore said, “A patrol car could be there in five minutes.”

Jane shook her head. “No uniforms. She sees one, she’ll know it’s a setup. And I’ll lose any chance of connecting with her again.”

“So what are you saying we should do?” said Crowe, pausing in the doorway.

“Give her a chance to think about it. She has my number. She knows how to reach me.”

“But she doesn’t know who you are,” said Moore.

“And that’s got to scare her. She’s just playing it safe.”

“Look, she might never call back,” said Crowe. “This could be our one and only chance to bring her in. Let’s do it now.”

“He’s right,” said Moore, looking at Jane. “It could be our only chance.”

After a moment, Jane nodded. “All right. Go.”

Frost and Crowe left the room. As the minutes passed, Jane stared at the silent phone, thinking: Maybe I should have gone with them. I should be the one out there, looking for her. She pictured Frost and Crowe navigating the warren of streets in the West End, searching for a woman whose face they didn’t know.

Moore ’s cell phone rang and he snapped it up. Just by his expression, Jane could tell that the news was not good. He hung up and shook his head.

“She wasn’t there?” said Jane.

“They’ve called in CSU to dust the pay phone for prints.” He saw the bitter disappointment in her face. “Look, at least we now know she’s real. She’s alive.”

“For the moment,” said Jane.

Even cops needed to shop for milk and diapers.

Jane stood in the grocery store aisle, Regina snug against her chest in a baby sling, and wearily surveyed the cans of infant formula on the shelves, studying the nutritional contents of every brand. They all offered one hundred percent of a baby’s daily needs from A to zinc. Any one of these would be perfectly adequate, she thought, so why am I feeling guilty? Regina likes formula. And I need to clip on my beeper and get back to work. I need to get off the couch and stop watching those reruns of Cops.

I need to get out of this grocery store.

She grabbed two six-packs of Similac, moved down another aisle for the Pampers, and headed to the cashier.

Outside, the parking lot was so hot she broke into a sweat just loading the groceries into her trunk. The seats could sear flesh; before strapping Regina into her infant seat, Jane paused with the doors open to air out the car. Grocery carts rattled by, pushed by perspiring shoppers. A horn honked, and a man yelled: “Hey, watch where you’re going, asshole!” None of these people wanted to be in the city right now. They all wanted to be at the beach holding ice cream cones, not trapped elbow to elbow with other cranky Bostonians.

Regina began to cry, her dark curls sweaty against her pink face. Yet another cranky Bostonian. She kept screaming as Jane leaned into the backseat and buckled her in, was still screaming blocks later as Jane inched through traffic, the AC going full blast. She hit another red light and thought: Lord, get me through this afternoon.

Her cell phone rang.

She could have just let it continue ringing, but she ended up fishing it out of her purse and saw on the display a local number that she did not recognize.

“Hello?” she answered.

Through Regina ’s angry wails, she could barely hear the question: “Who are you?” The voice was soft and instantly familiar.

Jane’s muscles all snapped taut. “Mila? Don’t hang up! Please don’t hang up. Talk to me!”

“You are police.”

The traffic light turned green, and behind her, a car honked. “Yes,” she admitted. “I’m a policewoman. I’m only trying to help you.”

“How do you know my name?”

“I was with Olena when…”

“When the police killed her?”

The car behind Jane’s blasted its horn again, an unrelenting demand that she get the hell out of its way. Asshole. She goosed the accelerator and drove through the intersection, the cell phone still pressed to her ear.

“Mila,” she said. “Olena told me about you. It was the last thing she said-that I should find you.”

“Last night, you sent policemen to catch me.”

“I didn’t send-”

“Two men. I saw them.”

“They’re my friends, Mila. We’re all trying to protect you. It’s dangerous for you to be out there on your own.”

“You do not know how dangerous.”

“Yes I do!” She paused. “I know why you’re running, why you’re scared. You were in that house when your friends were shot to death. Weren’t you, Mila? You saw it happen.”

“I’m the only one left.”

“You could testify in court.”

“They will kill me first.”

“Who?”

There was silence. Please don’t hang up again, she thought. Stay on the line. She spotted an open space at the curb and abruptly pulled over. Sat with the phone pressed to her ear, waiting for the woman to speak. In the backseat Regina kept crying and crying, angrier by the minute that her mother dared ignore her.

“Mila?”

“What baby is crying?”

“It’s my baby. She’s in the car with me.”

“But you said you are police.”

“Yes, I am. I told you I am. My name is Jane Rizzoli. I’m a detective. You can confirm that, Mila. Call the Boston Police Department and ask them about me. I was with Olena when she died. I was trapped in that building with her.” She paused. “I couldn’t save her.”

Another silence passed. The AC was still going full blast, and Regina was still crying, determined to make gray hairs pop out on her mother’s brow.

“Public gardens,” said Mila.

“What?”

“Tonight. Nine o’clock. You wait by the pond.”

“Will you be there? Hello?”

No one was on the line.

The weapon felt heavy and strangely unfamiliar on Jane’s hip. Once an old friend, it had sat locked up and ignored in a drawer these past few weeks. Only reluctantly had she loaded it and snapped it into her holster. Though she’d always regarded her weapon with the healthy respect due any object that could blast a hole in a man’s chest, never before had she hesitated to reach for it. This must be what motherhood does to you, she thought. I look at a gun now, and all I can think of is Regina. How one twitch of a finger, one wayward bullet, could take her from me.

“It doesn’t have to be you,” said Gabriel.

They were sitting in Gabriel’s parked Volvo on Newbury Street, where fashionable shops were preparing to close for the night. The Saturday restaurant crowd still lingered in the neighborhood, well-dressed couples strolling past, happily sated with dinner and wine. Unlike Jane, who’d been too nervous to eat more than a few bites of the pot roast her mother had brought to their apartment.

“They can send in another female cop,” said Gabriel. “You can just sit this one out.”

“Mila knows my voice. She knows my name. I have to do it.”

“You’ve been out of the game for a month.”

“And it’s time for me to get back in.” She looked at her watch. “Four minutes,” she said into her comm unit. “Is everyone ready?”