Mallory Kane - Sanctuary in Chef Voleur

“Hey, Hannah Martin,” the dreadful menacing voice said.

Terror arrowed through her. She wanted to drop the phone and smash it, but her fingers clutched it tightly and she pressed her other hand against her chest as she waited to hear what he said. She shouldn’t have answered. She should have let it go to voice mail so she’d have a record of what he said.

“Not talking? That’s okay,” the voice said conversationally. “I just wanted to let you know I’ll be seeing you soon. Very soon. You’ve got something that Billy Joe promised us.”

She didn’t speak, wasn’t sure she could. She pulled the phone away from her ear. She needed to record him if she could just find the record button.

“Wh-what are you talking about?” she rasped, hoping to keep him talking. Where was the stupid button? She pressed Menu, Settings, every button she could think of. Then finally, there it was. Memo Record. She jabbed it.

“You know what I’m talking about,” the man was saying. “You ran off with Billy Joe’s car and we need to get it. Why don’t we meet and I’ll trade you my brand-new car for that beat-up Toyota. Oh, and I can pick up that other little item, too, that Billy Joe gave you. I’ve got to say, Hannah, it’ll be good to see you.” The voice was barely audible, but Hannah heard every word. There was no mistaking the implied threat. “Now, remind me where you’re staying.”

“I don’t know who you are and I don’t have anything. Billy Joe didn’t give me anything!” she cried. “Leave me alone!”

“Don’t act all innocent, Hannah. Billy Joe was fighting for his life. Why would he lie? But you were there. You know what he said. He said you stole Mr. Ficone’s money. He said you’re the key to the missing money.” He paused, but she didn’t take the bait. She didn’t answer.

“Hey, that’s okay. I’ll call you back once I get closer to you. I’m driving right now and I really shouldn’t be on the phone. So I’ll be talking to you later, once I get to that town. Watch yourself, Hannah. Don’t make the mistake of lying. You’ll end up like Billy Joe.”

She gasped. “You killed him. I know you did. I saw you.”

“Oh, Hannah, you really should try to control that imagination of yours.” he said, his voice as gentle and sweet as a new father’s. “Oh, by the way, your mom says hi. Bye-bye, now.”

“Wait!” she cried. “You know where my mother is—?”

The line went dead. “Wait—please. No, no, no.” She stared at the display. The icon indicated that the computer was recording. With a shaking finger, she stopped it.

Your mother says hi. That couldn’t be true, could it? The man with the red tattoo couldn’t know where her mother was. Only Billy Joe knew and the man had killed him.

She held her finger over the play button, but after a few seconds, she shuddered and dropped the phone into her purse. She couldn’t listen to it again. Besides, he was lying about her mother. When Billy Joe told him he’d kidnapped her, the man had sounded surprised and shocked. Then Billy Joe had died right in front of him. No. He didn’t know where her mother was. He couldn’t.

Could he?

* * *

MACK DRUMMED HIS fingers on his kitchen table as he waited for the search results to show up on his tablet. He’d input “Stephanie Clemens, Texas.” There were eleven Stephanie Clemenses in the state, apparently, not to mention all the Clemenses that weren’t Stephanies and all the Stephanies that weren’t Clemenses.

He’d found one whose age was about right in a town called Dowdie. She was listed as forty-two years old and living with Hannah Martin, age twenty-five. Mack sat back in his chair, staring at the screen. So Stephanie Clemens was his odd visitor’s mother. She was forty-two, which meant she’d been seventeen when her daughter was born. Mack shook his head. Children having children.

There was a telephone number listed beside Stephanie Clemens’s name. He entered the number into his cell phone under the name Hannah Martin. Then he dialed it. There was no answer. Probably a landline.

He input Stephanie Ann Martin Clemens, Dowdie, Texas, into a search engine, and three police reports popped up. The first, dated two years previously, was a call regarding drug activity at her home address. Mack skimmed the short paragraph. No arrests. Clemens claimed she used marijuana to alleviate nausea from an illness. Although she couldn’t produce a doctor’s order or even a note confirming that, the police hadn’t placed her under arrest.

The second and third calls were for domestic disturbances. The location was the same address, but were four and five months before. They involved Clemens and Billy Joe Campbell, age thirty-eight. One of the calls had been made by Hannah Martin.

Mack typed in Hannah Martin, Dowdie, Texas, but found no other references to her. He sat, staring out through the French doors that opened onto the small patio behind his house. St. Charles Avenue, but what he saw wasn’t a big concrete fountain and fish pool, it was Hannah. He should have known the instant he’d laid eyes on her that she’d be trouble. He should have recognized the signs.

“Two domestic disturbances involving your mother and her boyfriend,” he said aloud. “That’s been your life, hasn’t it, Hannah? Watching your mother get beat up by thugs that didn’t deserve her. She’s the only role model you’ve ever had, isn’t she? That’s all you’ve ever known!” His voice gained in volume as anger built inside him.

Suddenly, the house was too small and hot for him. He vaulted up out of his desk chair, sending it crashing into the kitchen counter behind him. Then he threw open the French doors and stepped outside, gulping deep breaths of the cool breeze that had blown in with an afternoon thunderstorm. It was unusual for a summer storm to cool the air, but he wasn’t complaining. After a few moments, the pressure in his chest and the heat along his scalp dissipated.

Mack knew too much about women like Stephanie Clemens and Hannah Martin. And he knew way too much about abusive boyfriends. He’d been six years old the first time he’d seen blood dripping from his mother’s nose. Her boyfriend had slammed her face against one of the tall columns of the four-poster bed. Mack had flung himself at the guy, trying to break his nose, but at six, he wasn’t strong enough or tall enough.

The jerk had swatted him away like a bothersome fly, then bent down to whisper in his ear, “If you try that again, your mom will hurt worse. Understand?”

Mack’s hands cramped and he looked down to find that he’d clenched his fists. Carefully, he relaxed them, shaking them a little to ease the cramping. He took a few more breaths of chilly air, letting it flow through him, cooling the frustrated anger.

He found himself once again wishing Billy Joe Campbell were alive, because he’d like to have a few minutes with him, just long enough to give him a taste of his own medicine. But Mack had more sense than that, and more self-control—and Billy Joe was dead. He took one more deep breath, filling his lungs with the scent of damp earth and fresh rain, then went back inside.

As he was retrieving his chair and rolling it back up to the table, his phone rang. He looked at the display and sighed. It was Sadie, the woman he’d been seeing. “Hello,” he said, making sure his voice was bland.

“Hey,” Sadie said. “What happened to ‘hi, doll,’ or ‘sexy Sadie’?”

“Busy,” he said impatiently, not really trying to mask the frustration in his voice. He looked at the clock in the corner of the screen.

“Well, business can wait until tomorrow. I’m back in town and I want to see you,” Sadie said in her low, sexy voice. “Come over.”