LITMIR.BIZ

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he entered the number Anthony had provided and clicked on it. It went directly to voice mail. “This is Trey Riker. I stopped in at Lavender and you weren’t there. Call me, please.”

      He called the number again. To voice mail again. He did not leave a second message. He pulled out of the lot. The drive that had taken fourteen minutes last night took almost twice that now. By the time he arrived at the two-story brick apartment building, he had imagined several different horrible scenarios.

      He parked on the street and verified that her old gray Toyota was still in its parking place. Then he went in the front door and took the elevator to the second floor. He knocked on her door. No answer. He turned the knob. Locked. No problem—nothing that couldn’t be handled with a credit card. He was prepared for the bolt lock to also be engaged but it wasn’t.

      He opened the door and caught his breath.

      The apartment was trashed. Furniture upended, books and other items dumped from the five-shelf bookcase. The drawers of the entertainment center had been ripped out, the contents emptied onto the floor, and holes punched through the cheap bottoms.

      Terribly afraid of what he was going to find, he moved through the apartment. It was a one bedroom, one bath. The bedroom was in a similar state, with the mattress and box spring tossed around and slashed and everything pulled from the closet. But there was no Kellie. Not on the bed, under the bed or in the closet.

      She was gone. What the hell did that mean?

      He was going to have to call Anthony. The man deserved to know what had happened. Then the police.

      His cell rang, a number he didn’t recognize. “Riker,” he answered.

      “This is Hagney, from Lavender. I’ve thought about what you said and I might know a little something.”

      He was going to take a chance. “Did you know that her apartment was trashed?”

      The man sighed, loudly. “No, but she suspected that someone was there.”

      Suspected? Her door had not been damaged or tampered with. No way to imagine the chaos inside. Yet she’d suspected? That didn’t make sense. But he needed to focus on what was most important. Hagney had lied when he’d said she’d been a no-call, no-show. He had definitely talked to her. “Where is she?” Trey demanded.

      “I don’t know for sure. But she came to my house last night. Said that she had to get out of town for a couple days and needed some cash. I had a couple hundred bucks and gave it all to her. Then I dropped her off at the bus station.”

      She had a car. Why the hell wasn’t she driving it? “Where was she going?”

      “She didn’t say.”

      There couldn’t be that many buses leaving Vegas at that time. He could figure this out. “Why did she need to leave town?”

      “I really don’t know. She wouldn’t say, said it would be better if I didn’t know. Told me not to tell anyone, but I’m worried because I think she was really scared. After ten-plus years as a bartender, I’m a pretty good judge of people and I don’t think you want to harm her. I hope to hell I’m not wrong.”

      “You’re not,” Trey said. “I tried her cell phone. It went right to voice mail.”

      “She left her phone with me, with the battery out.”

      The only reason she would have done that was because she was afraid that somebody would use the phone to track her. Who? The people who had ransacked her apartment?

      He needed a better timeline. She’d walked out of Lavender at 2:30. She’d been back to her car by shortly after 3:00 which meant that she’d likely arrived home by 3:15 or so. He knew her car had been parked in the carport at 3:28 when he’d cruised by. “Did she walk to your house?”

      “Yes,” Hagney said. “She was cold. I gave her one of my wife’s sweaters.”

      “What color?” Trey asked automatically.

      “Pink. A cardigan.”

      “Okay. What’s your address?”

      Hagney gave it to him and Trey quickly plugged it in and mapped the distance between Kellie’s apartment and Hagney’s place. His phone said it would take forty-six minutes to walk there. Of course, she could have taken a cab, but if she was cold when she arrived, the likelihood was that she’d hoofed it. His gut tightened at the thought of her being outside in the middle of the night, easy prey for any of the many crazies out and about at that time. “Hagney, what time was it when she arrived? The more exact, the better.”

      Hagney sighed. “I didn’t look at a clock but I think I’d only been in bed for maybe fifteen minutes. I wasn’t sleeping yet. I left Lavender at 3:30.”

      “You know that for sure.”

      “Yeah. I have an alarm on my phone. It rings and I’m out the door. That’s the agreement I have with my wife. A few times I got home when the sun was coming up and she wasn’t too happy about that.”

      “What’s your drive time?”

      “That time of the morning, it’s twenty minutes.”

      “How long were you home before you went to bed?”

      Hagney laughed. “Like a minute. I’m beat at the end of a shift.”

      Trey did the math. Hagney had arrived home around three fifty, gone straight to bed and believed Kellie had knocked about fifteen minutes later. That would have been 4:05. That made sense. If she’d run from her apartment around three twenty and it was a forty-five-minute walk, the timing worked, give or take a couple minutes. Close enough that he was satisfied she hadn’t gone anywhere else besides straight to Hagney’s house.

      “How long were you at your house before you took her to the bus depot?”

      “Not long. Maybe five minutes.”

      Trey pulled up the address of the bus depot and mapped it to Hagney’s house. Eighteen minutes. Probably less at that time of the morning. Now, he just needed to figure out where she’d gone from there. “Thank you for calling,” Trey said. “I mean that. And if you do happen to hear from her, tell her to call me right away.”

      “What are you going to do?” Hagney asked.

      “Go after her,” he said. He hung up but didn’t put his phone away. Instead, he dialed Anthony’s cell phone. It rang four times and went to voice mail. He did not leave a message. He found his office number and dialed.

      “Dr. McGarry’s office. How may I help you?”

      “Dr. McGarry, please.”

      “This is Dr. McGarry’s answering service. May I take a message?”

      Of course. It was a Saturday night. His office receptionist wouldn’t be working. “I need to reach Dr. McGarry,” he said.

      “One moment, please.”

      He waited, thinking of the best way to tell his friend that his sister was in trouble.

      “I’m sorry,” the woman said, coming back on the line. “Dr. McGarry’s status is that he’s unavailable for the next six hours.”

      “But—” Trey said. He wasn’t answering his cell and wasn’t taking calls through the answering service. Based on past experience, Trey knew that he was likely in surgery.

      “I’m sorry. One of his partners is taking calls if you need to speak to a physician immediately.”

      “No. Thank you. I’ll call back.” He hung up.

      In six hours, he better have found her.

      The next call he made was to Rico. They weren’t high-priced physicians but each week, one of the partners was also on call, in the event that there was an after-hours emergency. They had a gentlemen’s agreement that if anybody

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