Reunion Read online

  “Ha. Yeah, we’re a little out of touch. Gabe and I are good friends, but the whole dating thing never worked for us. What about Grant? Have you heard anything about him? Is he serious about anyone?”

  “Jesus, Patti, you’re breaking my heart here.” With a heavy sigh, RJ wanted to go back in time to thirty minutes ago and start the reunion over. Maybe talk about baseball or forest fires, or the fucking moose. Anything but a conversation about how much she wanted the missing third from their former trio. Talk about a crash and burn…

  Then again, it was really stupid to hope to start something between him and Patti. They’d lived in different parts of the country for years—his mind flashed to his computer case and the tiny device that carried his dreams of moving permanently back to the valley. Resisting the urge to shake his head and sigh, Grant knew they had completely separate lives for far too long to go back now, and wasn’t that just the crux of the matter? He was chasing an old dream, all because he was completely inept at real life. Patti and Grant had been the only ones who’d ever made him feel comfortable in his own skin. The only ones he’d ever loved. What kind of a sicko did that make him?

  She focused her clear hazel gaze on him, her eyes steady. “I am? Why?”

  The ringing of her phone spared him from admitting he was unreasonably jealous of their absent friend.

  “Damn, I thought I turned the ringer to vibrate. I told work to leave me alone.” Patti dug into her bag and retrieved the offending device, but answered despite her apparent annoyance. RJ celebrated the reprieve by taking a sip from his water glass.

  “Hello?”

  There was a short pause while Patti listened. Straightening suddenly, she pulled RJ in close and put the phone between them so they could both hear. Just as RJ was about to tell her to put the damn thing on speaker, Grant’s voice came through.

  “Patti? Are you there? Please, I need help. You and RJ, too, if he’s there.”

  “RJ’s with me, he can hear you, Grant. What’s wrong?”

  “Help. I need help. Someone’s kidnapped my daughter.”

  Without waiting to hear more, RJ stood and pulled Patti to her feet. “Get the address.” He tossed enough money on the table to cover the cost of their drinks, then started toward the door.

  When he looked to make sure she was following, Patti nodded, then the two of them were racing to the car.

  Jesus Christ. It might have been ten years since they’d last been together, but RJ didn’t even hesitate. Their funny, sexy, happy-go-lucky, softhearted, idealistic Grant was on the phone instead of here with them as planned. And no wonder. In the grand scheme of life, RJ imagined a kidnapped child was just about the worst scenario for any parent.

  Chapter Two

  Patti swung the wheel of her Jeep Cherokee, parking across the street and down a couple of houses from the address Grant provided. Unsure of the situation, she didn’t want to slow down any law enforcement efforts or make their presence obvious in case someone was watching the house.

  “Come on,” she said, tucking her arm into RJ’s and leading the way to the end of the block. They circled around back and came through the alley that was typical of many the older Scottsdale neighborhoods. The house was a well-preserved fifty-year-old cinder block construction, on a nice-sized lot. Entering through the backyard, they circled around the pool, and Patti noted the playhouse and a scattering of toys littering the small fenced-in lawn.

  Why the hell didn’t she know Grant had a family? She’d sent out her time-for-the-reunion email, blithely anticipating the men were as unsatisfied with their love lives as she was. There was no excuse. For God’s sake, she and Grant lived less than five hours apart—in the same damned state. And it wasn’t like she didn’t come to Phoenix several times a year.

  The truth was, she’d not been a very good friend. They’d all gone their separate ways, and with so many new opportunities at the time, they’d probably all been happy enough for a little while. Over time, she began to feel the loss of the best friends she’d ever had, but they were all busy, all building careers. Patti had worked around the country, usually closer to Grant but sometimes closer to RJ, but she’d never reached out because she’d always wanted it to be Grant and RJ, not Grant or RJ. One without the other was like…Oreos without the filling. Good enough, but definitely better together.

  Once they got Grant’s daughter back, and everyone went back to their own lives, Patti could take the time to mourn her lost dream. Maybe closing the door on the three of them was exactly what she needed in order to move on with her own life.

  The door opened quickly after her quiet knock and then Grant was falling into their arms and falling apart. For a long minute, they stood plastered together in the doorway while their friend cried in their arms, sobs shaking his slender body, and he held on like a limpet. Meeting RJ’s gaze over Grant’s bent head, a silent communication passed. Together they eased Grant fully inside, then RJ reached back to close and lock the door.

  Blinking against the bright overhead lights, Patti took stock of the room. Although not quite old enough to qualify as the original appliances, the kitchen would need a serious makeover to qualify as the last decade’s latest design. A bulky microwave took nearly one-third of the available counter space. A drip coffee maker and wire dish drainer completed the trifecta and left no room for food prep in the kitchen itself. Unless you counted the pullout wooden slide that had fallen out of favor with builders years ago. The kitchen opened into a small, boxy dining room that in turn opened into the living room, which was where Patti steered them.

  “Come on, Grant, honey. Tell us what’s happening.” Her earlier fears went unrealized—she would have known him anywhere. Of the three of them, he’d changed the least. He still had the body of the cross-country runner he’d been in high school and college. All long legs and arms, flowing rhythmically when he was running, his pace smooth, motions fluid, somehow turning into a tangled, gangly mess when he was walking around. Dressed in a light blue denim button-down shirt and a pair of khakis, he looked more like he’d just come home from a day at school rather than like he’d been getting ready to go out on their date. His sandy brown hair spiked around his head, as if he’d raked nervous fingers through the short curls. Watery blue eyes blinked rapidly past the sheen of tears as Grant shuddered with the effort of bringing himself under control.

  “Thank you—thank you for coming. I don’t—didn’t—” Grant sucked in a deep breath and swallowed hard before he continued. “I don’t know what I would have done. All I could think was my best friends were here and I needed you. I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “How about the cops, Grant? Did you call the police?” RJ looked around the room as he asked, as if he thought the officers might be hiding. He put an arm around Grant’s lean shoulders and pulled him to a denim slip-covered over stuffed sofa piled high with brightly colored throw pillows. Patti sat on the other cushion and took Grant’s icy hand.

  “The note said not to call the cops. It said they’d kill her. Oh God! My baby…someone has my little girl.”

  Patti squeezed his fingers and leaned into his face to keep his attention focused. “Stop it, Grant. You have to tell us from the beginning. Do you have the note?”

  “I do.” With shaking hands, he reached into his shirt pocket and Patti tried not to wince as he smoothed the wadded paper over his knees. The words were handwritten in block letters, all caps and smeared, either from sweat or tears. More likely a combination of both. As a former law enforcement ranger, Patti knew they’d have to call the cops, sooner rather than later, and this bit of evidence was severely compromised. Peering over at the note, she read:

  We have your daughter. No cops if you want to see her alive. Get $50,000 in unmarked bills by tomorrow. We will call with instructions.

  Don’t make us kill her. Small bills. Don’t tell no one.

  “When did you realize she was—what’s your daughter’s name?”

  “Annie. Her nam
e is Annie. I didn’t know about her. I mean, her mother—I just got— Oh God!” Tears welled in his eyes, but Patti didn’t have time for tea and sympathy. The faster they brought in professionals the better—she needed information right-the-fuck-now.

  “Pull it together, Grant. We have to help Annie here.” Her voice was sharp, and RJ’s head snapped up to look at her before he slid an arm around Grant’s shoulders. Great. Good friend, bad friend. Maybe it would help.

  “When did you discover Annie was missing?”

  Grant’s gaze drifted to his watch. “Uhm, a little over two hours ago. I was making her dinner before the sitter got here. I was going out…I never go out, but tonight…” She knew there was guilt seeping in about coming to meet them. It was a useless emotion right now.

  “Okay, so you were making dinner in the kitchen. Where was Annie?”

  “In the backyard playing. It’s what we do every night. I make dinner and she plays outside. I can see her almost the whole time. But I couldn’t—”

  “How old is Annie?” Patti cut off the self-recrimination.

  “Four. She’s only four.”

  Making a decision, Patti pulled out her phone and thumbed through the contacts.

  “What are you doing?” Grant made a panicky grab for her cell phone. “They said not to call the cops— God, stop or they’re going to kill her!”

  “Grant, honey. We have to get help, and I know just the right person. Do you have fifty thousand lying around? Do you know anyone with easy access to that kind of money?”

  “I do.” RJ’s comment was quiet, but he was reaching for his own cell phone as he spoke. “I can have the money here…” he checked his watch. “I think I can arrange to have the money tomorrow. Maybe. It’s a weekend.”

  Nodding, Patti thought getting the men to work on the money would give them focus while she reached out to some professionals who might just be able to get Annie back before any money changed hands. Because once the money was paid, the odds of recovering the little girl decreased dramatically.

  “Enwright Security. How may I direct your call?” With a silent thanks that despite the late hour she reached a living person instead of a maddening menu of options, she gave her name and asked to speak to Michael Enwright. While she was waiting to be transferred, she realized she could have called his cell phone—somehow a kidnapping merited a workplace official call. Probably a good thing, because the calls to the office would be recorded, and this was going to have to be reported eventually.

  “Patti, nice to speak with you. Are you here in the valley for the weekend?” Michael, Graeme, and Liz had started as friends of a friend, but they’d quickly discovered they had a lot of things in common and she often gave them a call when she was in town.

  “Michael, this is serious business. I have a friend with a four-year-old daughter who was abducted about two hours ago. Can you help?”

  “Yes. Give me the address first and I’ll get rolling. You can give me details on the way.” That was what she loved about the man. When it was time to get down to it, he was all business. And his company was the best in the security and protection field. She passed over the address and listened to a quiet murmur as he spoke to someone else. With a series of clicks, another voice joined the conversation.

  “Patti, this is Graeme. Michael is monitoring from the office, I’m on my way to your location. ETA ten minutes. Can the father or mother overhear you?”

  “Yes, the father.”

  “Okay, keep the answers short and to the point, let’s minimize the drama. Have the cops been called?”

  “No.”

  Graeme chuckled darkly. “That’s to the point. I take it there’s a note threatening harm if the cops are brought in?”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “Is there any chance the father is involved?”

  “None at all…although. Do you mind if I ask Grant…ask the father a question?” Patti was quickly piecing together what Grant had said so far, and in missing children cases, the first job was to rule out the parents and other close family members. “Grant, honey? You said you just got Annie? How long has she lived with you? Could her mother have taken her?”

  Grant hiccoughed and scooted closer to RJ. “N-n-no. She…uh…Annie came to live with me after her mother died. Do we need to go into this? Shouldn’t we be doing something to find her?”

  “We are doing something. Enwright Security is sending over one of their partners to help us, Grant, but we need information.”

  RJ’s head whipped to her for a second, then he turned back to face their distraught friend. “Come on, Grant, Patti’s right. We need to know,” RJ said.

  Nodding slowly, Grant reached for Patti’s hand. “Sorry, I know we have to do this. I-I just hate that Annie’s out there somewhere all alone. She’s just now getting used to our routine. The nightmares are going away, too. Now this.” Grant dropped his head in his hands and the tears fell again.

  Chapter Three

  Grant heard a quiet knock at the back door and his heart raced with a forlorn hope that Annie must have wandered off but now was home. Patti jumped up, phone still to her ear as she headed to the kitchen. She returned a moment later with a tall, lanky cowboy-looking sort, who leaned lightly on a silver-handled cane. Despite a slight limp, the man moved swiftly through each room of Grant’s small house, closing the curtains and turning off all the lights except for one dim lamp in the living room.

  Before he spoke, he pressed the nearly invisible earpiece, waited a bit, then began. “Michael, I’m here. I assume you will monitor the situation and that we are recording. Just speak up if there’s something I miss.” There was a long pause, then the man turned his attention to those in the room. “I scouted the area for any obvious signs of someone watching the house. It’s unlikely, unless they have a neighboring property. No sense in letting anyone see us in here talking though. I’m Graeme Kennedy. You must be Grant Anderson?” Graeme stuck out his big paw and waited.

  The stranger oozed confidence, and with a sense of desperation, Grant clutched at the offered hand. “Can you get my daughter back?”

  “Yep. That’s what I’m here for. Let’s get the details nailed down—where’s the note?”

  After studying the ransom demand, Graeme said for the benefit of the man on the phone, “We have a handwritten note, block letters.” He read aloud, pausing after each sentence. “The last two sentences appear to have been written by a different hand. The press of the pen is less defined, the shape of the block letters slightly different, and the tone of the language is distinctive—less refined. Given the plural in the text of the demand, we will work with the assumption that more than one person is involved. Hold on, I’m sending a digital image now.” It only took a few seconds for Graeme to snap a photo with his iPhone and send the picture.

  “Where was Annie when you last saw her, Grant? Come show me.”

  They moved to the kitchen and he pointed out the playhouse. “She usually plays there while I fix dinner. I don’t have much room, so I do the food prep at the table. She was only out of my sight—” He clamped down hard on the guilt. There would be plenty of time for that later. Right now, they needed facts. He swallowed hard. “I was making a salad, so several trips back and forth the fridge. I want to say only a few seconds but, Jesus—it was probably more like minutes. I just thought she was playing.”

  “Easy, Grant.” RJ’s tone was calming, as was the heavy hand he pressed against Grant’s shoulder. “This is her house, her backyard. It’s supposed to be safe for her to play without you watching her every second.”

  Graeme nodded. “Agreed. Where did you find the note?”

  “It was on the front door. When I couldn’t find Annie, I went a little crazy. Of course I thought the pool first, but she wasn’t anywhere in the backyard. I checked the alley, then came back inside. I kept calling her name—looking in the same places over and over. Finally, I ran out the front door. I just couldn’t fathom she was gone, you know? The
note was stuck on the front door.” He raked his fingers through his hair and fought the urge to vomit. “What if—” God, he couldn’t say it—couldn’t even think it…

  “Okay, everyone back in the living room.” Graeme said, spreading his arms wide and herding them into the other room. “I think that solidifies our supposition that there are at least two people involved. They clearly had an idea of your house layout and your habits around dinnertime. So that rules out a spur of the moment crime. That means there’s a motive behind this, Grant—not likely some neighborhood pervert, okay? Just take that part out of your mind.”

  Despite Graeme’s reassurance, Grant’s knees buckled at the thought of what his daughter might be facing. He collapsed onto the couch and Patti scooted next to him, the reassuring presence of RJ at his back.

  “Who is the first person that comes to mind as likely to have done this? What about the baby sitter?”

  Grant’s jaw dropped open. “Who? No one! I’m a high school government teacher, for Christ sake. I don’t have any money, I don’t belong to any weird groups, I don’t know anyone important. Annie goes to day care during the day and the babysitter is a high school girl who lives next door.” He started to stand but two pairs of hands held him down.

  “Just think, Grant, honey.” Patti’s voice was calm, but he heard the slight waver, and knew her emotions were close to the surface, too. Somehow that made it easier to rein in his own feelings.

  “Tell me about her mother,” Graeme asked. “Could this have anything to do with her?”