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I felt a ball of ice in my stomach. The two barstools where Martin and Allie had been sitting were now empty. Frantically, I scanned the rest of the bar. I didn’t see them.
I heard Terri on her radio saying in a loud voice, “We’ve lost visual. Heads up. Our suspect and our witness may be outside. Stop them immediately.”
I pushed my way through the crowd and saw they were not at the front of the bar. I rushed toward the rear. The back door was ajar.
Terri yelled into the radio, “Suspect is out the back door! Suspect is out the back door!”
I didn’t waste a second as I burst through the door into an empty alley.
Chapter98
I TURNED MYhead to look up and down the alley. I didn’t see anyone, let alone a giant man and a beautiful girl.
I don’t think the wordpaniccan adequately explain what I was feeling at that moment. I stood in the middle of the narrow alley. My stomach felt like a small fire burned inside it. Where could they have gone so quickly?
Terri turned toward one end of the alley and I turned toward the other. I’d only taken a few steps when two of the tac team members jogged around the corner. They skidded to a stop when they saw me.
The taller of the two cops said to me, “He didn’t come this way.”
I could hear in my earbud Terri saying, “I don’t see them this way.”
I listened and focused on my right earpiece. I thought I picked up a snippet of conversation. “I heard them for a second. They gotta be in this area. Quick—start checking doors.”
The two tac cops, dressed in bulky clothes to hide their ballistic vests and guns, both started grabbing doorknobs and jerking hard. Some of the doors looked like they went to maintenance rooms. They all appeared to be secure as we worked our way to the main street.
I checked the app on my phone to see if Allie had pushed the panic button on the GPS pager I’d given her. Nothing. How could they have just disappeared in the middle of a crowded bar?
Harry Grissom jogged around the corner of the building and stopped next to me. “Did we find them?”
I shook my head quickly as I tried to think where they could’ve gone.
Harry got on the radio and said, “We’ve lost sight of the suspect. Let’s get some help in here and start a grid search. We start from this block and work north and south first.”
I heard acknowledgments on the radio as well as someone calling dispatch to get more cops in the area to help us search.
My heart was racing and my throat felt like a python was wrapped around my neck. But I wasn’t going to let anything stop me from finding Allie. This had been my idea, even if she had agreed to it.
I realized our best chance might be if I was able to use the range of the transmitter on Allie to locate them. All I could do was jog through the area, hoping to catch a voice over the transmitter again.
Terri caught up to me and I explained what I was trying to do. She held her radio in her hand now and no longer needed the earpiece to monitor surveillance. She pulled the backup earpiece to the transmitter on Allie from her pocket and crammed it in her ear. We split up and started to jog in different directions.
I saw a patrol car whiz by a few blocks north of us. We were starting to get help into the area. It didn’t make me feel any better. Until I had Allie safe and handcuffs on Perry Martin, I felt like I was burning days out of my life from the anxiety.
Chapter99
I STARTED RUNNING.Not jogging. Sprinting. I wanted to cover as much ground as possible. I needed to find Allie no matter where Martin had taken her. I’d like to say it wasn’t related to the panic I felt. But it was clearly inspired by the panic. I didn’t know what else to do. I was just hoping to catch a glimpse of them or perhaps hear something on the transmitter. The transmitter that had been ominously silent for the last two minutes.
I pulled out the earbud that monitored the radios. I needed to concentrate. I’d pulled a badge on a chain from my shirt and let it hang outside so it was visible. I didn’t want some young cop doing some crazy takedown on me just because they saw another tall guy, even if I was sixty pounds lighter than Perry Martin.
Once a situation turned bad, it always seemed to cascade into more and more disasters. I still felt like I might be able to salvage this. All I had to do was find Allie.
I slid to a stop two blocks north, right on the edge of Fordham Heights. That’s where I ran into Terri with another detective. She shook her head as we approached each other.
I could hear her radio in her hand. Harry Grissom’s voice was clear and commanding. He was organizing all the new arrivals coming into the area to help. Harry’s voice blazed as he said, “I want a perimeter set up starting at six blocks in every direction. No male over six feet tall gets through the perimeter without someone who knows this mope laying eyes on him.”
I heard someone whose voice I didn’t recognize ask where his partner was.
Harry jumped back on the radio and snapped at him. “This isn’t a frat party where we’re looking for friends. It doesn’t matter where partners are. Find this mope and the young woman he has with him. Her safety is all that matters now.” That definitely shut down any erroneous chatter on the radio.
