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“I can’t find Cindy.”
I said, “Can’t find her since when?”
“I left her in bed at seven this morning. I called her after we all had coffee. She didn’t answer.”
“That was eight or so?”
Richie nodded.
“She went for a run,” I said.
“Right. So I didn’t call her again for a few hours. I thought she might have gone back to sleep.”
“You called her office?”
“I called Tyler, also Barnett, also Peretti.”
“Her photographer?”
“Right,” said Richie. “Nobody has seen or heard from her. It’s what now, six thirty-eight p.m.? She ought to have called me by now to check about dinner. Even if she left her phone in a cab, she would have called me.”
I said, “Or she would have called me.”
Now I was alarmed, too. Rich hadn’t heard from Cindy since leaving home nearly twelve hours ago. Cindy lived on her phone. Where was she? Rich was trying her number again right now. He looked at me and held out the phone so I could hear her outgoing message. I was already weighing whether or not to put out a BOLO for Cindy with a photo we’d taken yesterday in Phoenix, when I was stopped by an email that just popped up on my screen.
The subject heading read, “Sgt. I’ve got Breaking News.”
It was from Blackout. There was a video attached.
CHAPTER 62
CONKLIN ROLLED HIS desk chair up to mine, crowding me on my right side while Cappy squeezed me in on my left. Alvarez’s fierce look warded off any attempt to take her seat and the rest of Team Blackout packed into the narrow space between the back of my desk and the wall behind it.
Brenda’s voice came over the intercom.
“Lieutenant Brady is on a call. He’ll be there in a minute.”
Rich couldn’t wait a minute. He shouted, “Damn it, Lindsay. Run it. We can play it again for Brady.”
Cappy put a hand on my shoulder, a touch that felt like a hug. I was beyond terrified. When I rolled the video, Blackout would show us how he’d murdered Cindy.
The sour smell of fear radiated off Conklin—or maybe that stink was me. My hand shook as I reached out to press the key that would launch the video. By force of will, I did it.
As had happened before, my fellow travelers and I were transported to an unknown place through the eyes of a highly intelligent and sadistic killer. This time, Blackout’s video glassesshowed us a vast, dimly lit interior that might be a warehouse. As he glanced around, I saw two banged-up metal desks, a desk chair, stacks of cardboard cartons, iron girders overhead.
What was this place, and where was it? Ten seconds into the video, I heard the muffled sound of a woman crying. Conklin gripped the sides of the monitor and angled it toward him. Blackout’s view, our view, shifted from straight ahead to around behind him and down to the floor.
There was Cindy, lying on her back wearing jeans and a baby blue sweatshirt. Her wrists were tightly cinched together with flex ties and so were her ankles. She was barefooted. Her mouth was duct taped and she struggled as Blackout gripped her wrists and pulled her behind him across the floor.
That bastard, that killer, had Cindy. I said, “Richie.” But he didn’t hear me. Rich was watching the room on the screen, watching Cindy. He had last seen her at their apartment this morning. This video had been made sometime in the last twelve hours. How had Blackout gotten his hands on her?
“Where is this?” Rich asked the screen and the cops clustered around the computer. No one knew.
“She’s fighting back,” said Cappy. “She’s alive.”
“We don’t know that,” said Conklin. He didn’t look anywhere but at the screen.
Chi said, “Pause the video.”
