No. That wasn’t going to happen. She hadn’t struggled up from poverty and obscurity to become the world’s leading entertainer without being a fighter.
She wasn’t going to let this guy rape her. She’d die first.
Or maybe he was one of those behind the death threats. All right, she’d die, but she’d die fighting.
What with?
There was nothing in the box except the leather strap with the rubber ball gag attached to it. The strap had a metal buckle, but it was too small and smooth. It wouldn’t do much damage.
She felt at the strap where it attached to the ball and saw that the ball gag could move back and forth along the strap. Working at the ball gag, she managed to pull it along the strap. It was a tight fit though, and she had to pull hard at it to get it to move even an inch.
With a final effort the ball gag came off the strap, her hand whipping to the side and thumping against the side of the box.
Another thump sounded on the top of the box.
Isabel froze. That had been her abductor, warning her to keep silent.
The van slowed, and Isabel tensed, thinking that he was pulling off onto the side of the highway to deal with her. Then she felt the van turn. The regular waning and waxing of lights through her air holes stopped, and she guessed they had pulled onto an unlit access road.
She didn’t have much time. Gently she raised her hands and pressed against the top of the box. It was locked, as she had suspected. Next she tried to cut her bonds with the clasp on the leather strap, but it was too small and seamless to do anything. Desperate, she tried gnawing at them again, but a sharp pain in her tooth made her stop.
Suddenly she lurched back and forth as the van went off the pavement and onto a rough surface. A dirt road? She heard the rasp of tires hitting gravel, and the occasional thump of a stone getting kicked up against the undercarriage. She bounced inside the box, hitting the sides as the van went over potholes and bumps. Her stomach rolled again and Isabel broke out in a cold sweat. The driver took it slowly, but the road got worse and worse. No light came through her air holes.
The van slowed and stopped. Isabel gripped the ball and leather strap in her closely bound hands and prayed. Abuelo had taken her to church every Sunday, telling her how important it was to have a good relationship with God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and all the saints.
The little church in town dated back two hundred years. It had seen better days, but the town was small and poor and no one had the money to replaster the walls or clean off the black smudges of candle smoke that had accumulated on the ceiling over the decades.
It didn’t matter. To Isabel it was beautiful, with a soaring arched roof and gilded altar, and dark icons of saints on every wall. Abuelo always lit a candle in front of the icon of Raphael the Archangel.
“He is one of the greatest of the angels, Isabelita, and the patron of shepherds. Some of the other shepherds only come and pray to him when their flocks get sick. I come and light a candle every Sunday, and my flocks never get sick. He also watches over young people and travelers. I think he is the best patron for you. Someday you’re going to leave this little town and go off to become very successful.”
“But I don’t want to leave you, Abuelo.”
Her grandfather smiled and patted her head. “It’s normal for children to grow up and move away. You have the face of an angel and a voice to match. I wouldn’t want you to stay in this town and end up the wife of a poor man. When you are older, you will go out into the world and make your old grandfather very proud. Just always remember to pray to the Archangel Raphael. He will protect you and guide you home.”
Now Isabel prayed.
She heard the van door open. Silence except for the low hum of the idling engine. Then faintly she heard the rattle of a chain and a squeaky gate being opened.
The van door closed and the vehicle moved forward a short way before stopping. Once again the driver got out, and she heard the gate squeak closed.
Her abductor got back in the van and drove forward. Again Isabel was bumped and jerked inside the box as the vehicle trundled over rough road.
After a few minutes, the van came to another stop. Faint light poked through her air holes. Isabel gripped her meager little weapons, ready to fight as hard as she could.
She heard a faint electric hum. An automatic garage door? The van pulled ahead, and the light through her air holes grew brighter.
The van stopped, and her abductor switched off the engine. Isabel licked her lips and got ready, shifting her position so that she could push up with her legs and try to get out of the box as soon as he opened it.
Again the electric hum of what definitely sounded like a garage door. The instant after it ended, her heart quelled as she heard the unmistakable sound of the back doors of the van open. A thump and a slight lurch as her abductor climbed into the back.
The rattle of a lock on her box, then almost blinding light as the lid opened.
Isabel screamed as loud as she could. She caught a glimpse of a wooden roof, and a face in a gas mask looming over her.
She threw the ball at it, hitting the mask in one of the lenses. The figure jerked back in surprise.
Isabel pushed up, popping half out of the box, and flailed at the sicko with the leather strap. It smacked against the side of his head with a loud smack.
Calmly the masked abductor raised a spray can and shot a cloud of gas into Isabel’s face.
Isabel coughed and sputtered, then lashed out again with the strap, missing this time.
The gas was all around her. Her vision blurred as her head swam.
She felt herself growing faint, falling…
… and for the second time that evening her abductor caught her fall.
Chapter 4
Sergio Cruz was obviously lusting after her, obviously drunk, and obviously a hairsbreadth away from a nervous breakdown.
Erin Bond didn’t need to be an ace detective to figure any of this out. Firstly, after briefly making eye contact with her when they shook hands, Sergio’s gaze hadn’t left her breasts, and she wasn’t exactly large-chested. Secondly, she caught a whiff of Scotch every time he spoke—drinking was the very worst thing he could do at a time like this. Thirdly, the sweat pouring down his face and the tremble in his voice, his wide eyes brimming with tears, told anyone within a mile radius that this man was deeply disturbed by the disappearance of his boss.
Yes, but deeply disturbed about what? If Erin had learned anything during her rise in this business in the last few years, it was that when something bad happened to somebody rich, or even a nobody, the culprit was usually one of the people closest to them.
“Follow the money.” That was what the journalists all said. If you wanted to know who was pulling the strings, if you wanted to know why the inexplicable happened, follow the money and see who benefited.
It worked for journalists and it worked for private detectives too.
Sergio was talking, but Erin only listened with half an ear. She had just sat down in his huge penthouse office in New York City after taking the red-eye train into town. Isabel Morales’s manager was still in the panic phase of saying how terrible and unimaginable the superstar’s disappearance was. Erin had found it best to let her clients emote in this way. It gave them a chance to blow off steam before she got down to serious questioning. It also gave her time to observe them.
Besides him being a rotund drunken letch teetering on the edge of emotional collapse, Erin could tell several other important things about him.
Number one—this was a man with expensive habits. The Armani suit was just for starters. There was also the Rolex and the gold chain with the diamond crucifix. His walls were adorned with photos of himself and various female companions in yachts on crystal-blue waters, or visiting famous places such as the Great Wall of China and the Coliseum.
Number two—he had a taste for younger women. Most of his companions looked in their teens, some on the edge of legality.
Erin was amazed he’d advertise that fact on the walls of his office for all to see. Maybe this was normal in the entertainment industry. Erin had never worked for an entertainer before. That would make this job tougher than usual.
Number three—like all successful people, he liked to show off his connections. Besides his vacation shots, there were dozens of photos of him with movie stars and rock stars, even one with the president of Mexico. No big surprise there. Those photos acted as advertising. The interesting bit was that not a single picture showed him with Isabel. Sergio had been her manager since she had made the transition from Mexican teenybopper model to an international singing, acting, and fashion sensation. According to the entertainment press, Sergio had made Isabel into what she was today, molding her raw talent and good looks into one of the biggest financial empires of the entertainment industry outside of Hollywood. He had made her famous, and she had made him rich. But he didn’t seem to show much gratitude.
Sergio paused in his monologue, wiping his brow and visibly trying to collect himself. Twice he glanced at a side drawer in his desk. Once his hand strayed toward it before he pulled it back. Now Erin knew something else—where Sergio kept his emergency supply of booze.
“So who did it?” Erin asked him, speaking slightly louder than she had to. A sudden aggressive question often knocked people off kilter and made them reveal more than they intended.
Sergio’s eyes went wide and he threw his hands in the air.
“How the hell am I supposed to know? That’s what I hired you to find out!”
Erin nodded. Blindsiding someone with that question acted as a test. She didn’t detect any guilt in his features, so either he was telling the truth or he was a good liar. But being a manager in the entertainment industry probably meant that he told lies like other people told the time.
“Can you think of anyone who might have done this?” she asked in a quieter voice.
Sergio shrugged and glanced at the drawer again.
“I don’t know. Lots of people. You saw the protests on television, right? It could be some obsessed fan, or some zealot. Then there’s that hashtag, #rapeIsabel. What’s the matter with people?”
Sergio rubbed his eyes.
“Anyone close to her who might have done this?” she asked.
Sergio jerked his head up and stared at her.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s running a major business. She has dozens of employees. Anyone fired recently? Any contract disputes with musicians helping on her albums? Anything like that?”
Sergio considered it for a moment.
“There was a guitarist who sued her a few years back saying he didn’t get proper credit on the liner notes for Magical Eve. Rhys Hyatt. That got settled out of court in his favor. He never worked with her again, though. Said some pretty nasty things. Plus, a couple of people got downsized in the last fiscal quarter. We’ve had to do some belt-tightening like most companies. Isabel gave them two months’ severance pay, though, and great letters of recommendation.”
“What are their names?”
Sergio shrugged. “I can’t remember every little person in the company. I’ll get that information for you, along with Hyatt’s contact info. He’s a pretty big studio musician in the biz.”
“Please do,” Erin said. Her gut told her that none of these three sounded likely, but she wanted to check. The police had probably already checked on them anyway.
Which reminded her, she had a meeting with the lead investigator in an hour. She had wanted to feel out the ground beforehand, though.
“Any recent threats that stand out in your mind? Anyone close to her express anger?” Erin asked.
Sergio shrugged, suddenly looking very tired.
“That Wall Street stunt angered a lot of people in the company. A lot of the women think she crossed the line from advocacy to exploitation.”
There was a pause. Erin filled it.
“What do you think?”
Sergio sighed.
“I can see what she was trying to say, but come on, it’s not like the average member of the public is going to get it. Everything’s so PC these days. One side complains that she’s holding up an unrealistic body image and that she’s just a tool of the patriarchy. Another side wails about how she’s corrupting children. She’s an entertainer, for God’s sake! If people don’t like her they can switch her off.”
Erin wondered how easily it would be to switch off Isabel. She was everywhere you looked—billboards, magazines, TV, radio, the Internet, everywhere. A hater would find that oppressive. Maybe it was her incessant fame that had led someone to lash out at her. Sergio went on.
“Everyone in the company gets it, more or less. We all know what she intended to say with the Wall Street thing, but most of us disagreed with it. A lot of people weren’t even told. Isabel said it was because she didn’t want any leaks to the press, but I think she knew she’d get a lot of flak from the staff.”
“What did you think of the protest?”
Sergio shook his head. “I told her it was a bad idea right from the start. She went ahead anyway. To be honest, I think she’s worried she’s slipping. Oh, she’s still a major superstar, but all these young singers are coming up and taking some of the limelight. Isabel is very driven, not just about her career but about women’s rights. You’ve probably read about all the work she does in Mexico for battered women and getting girls equal education. I bet you hadn’t heard about that until you started researching her for this job though, right? That stuff never gets in the papers. She speaks out on women’s issues all the time in her interviews, but usually the editors cut that stuff out and focus on her new dress. I remember her complaining to me just last month, ‘What’s the point of being famous if no one listens to you?’”
“So this nude protest was a cry for attention?”
Sergio made a face. “Now you sound like a reporter. But yeah, I guess you could call it that. She said another thing to me a while back—she said, ‘Sergio, sometimes I feel like the limelight is so bright it’s washing out my face.’”
Sergio put his face in his hands and started to cry.
“I’ll do the best I can, Mr. Cruz. I promise.”
Erin hoped she wasn’t making a hollow promise. There had been no note, no body, nothing. Isabel had simply vanished.
Erin got up. There was nothing more to find out here, and it was almost time for her appointment with the lead investigator from the New York Police Department. She had never worked with Captain Robert Wilson and knew him only by reputation. Ex-military. Served in the invasion of Panama where he earned a Bronze Star for saving an injured member of his platoon under heavy enemy fire. Now in his fifties, he had more than twenty years on the force. Earned his stripes in a major case a few years back tracking down a kidnapped child taken by a convicted sex offender on his first day out of prison. Sounded like a good man, but if he was anything like most cops he’d resent having a private investigator looking over his shoulder throughout the entire case.
Too bad. The more people working on this case, the quicker it would get cracked, and Captain Wilson had the entire country looking over his shoulder right now.
Her suspicions were confirmed half an hour later when she was led into his spare office on the tenth floor of the NYPD building in Manhattan. Captain Robert Wilson had retained the military bearing the United States Armed Forces drilled into their recruits—a ramrod-straight spine, buzz cut, none of the gut so typical among older police officers, and a hardened look about the eyes.
Those eyes did not look kindly on some young British lass coming in to second-guess him on his case.
Whatever hostility he felt toward her was quickly hidden, masked behind a stiff professionalism. Captain Wilson extended a calloused hand and gave her a firm handshake.
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Bond. Glad to have you on board.”
Erin nodded in appreciation. That had almost sounded genuine. She couldn’t ignore his a
nnoying assumption that she was married, though. Her eyes flicked to his desk.
“I don’t want to get in the way, Captain, but Isabel Enterprises has hired me to help out on this case. I’m sure you understand. I’ll be following my own lines of inquiry and will share any information I get with you the moment I get it.”
“That’s fine. Let me run through what we have,” the captain said, moving over to his desk and turning the screen so she could see it. Wilson went up another notch in Erin’s estimation. All business. Good. Time was critical in an abduction case.
“As you know, we’re treating it as an abduction scenario. No communication from Morales or the abductor so far, but we have some leads,” the captain said, bringing up a surveillance video onscreen. “Trident Tower has video monitoring at the entrance and exits to its parking garage. It’s the service garage, so it’s used less often and unfortunately there are no cameras showing the interior.”
Captain Wilson pointed to a freeze-frame of the parking garage entrance. It showed a white van with the words “H&L Catering” printed on the side. The windows were tinted, just a blank black rectangle behind which hid the abductor.
“We think this is the abduction vehicle. We’ve checked the catering company and the employee ID the driver used doesn’t exist.”
“It was forged?”
Wilson nodded.
“Have you checked the employees?”
“We’re doing that right now, but the forger didn’t need to know an employee to get a real ID to use as a model for the fake one. This company has a scan of one of their IDs on their online training program. Unsecured site, wide open to the public.”
Erin shook her head. Nobody understood the ramifications of putting stuff up on the Internet for all the world to see. Over and over again in her short career, she’d seen people tripped up because of sharing things on the Internet that should have been kept secret.
And now one of the world’s greatest stars had gone missing because of it.
The captain went on.
“The license plates were reported stolen a week ago from a New York state delivery van parked in Patterson, New Jersey. The owners have a tight alibi.”