Taken by Tuesday

The clearly defined police line left anyone there to watch on the opposite side of the street. Several trucks sprayed water on the flames billowing through one of the top floors. The media was setting up cameras and reporters were applying lipstick before they stepped on their stage.

She had to have gotten out.

Dan pulled her hand, pointed toward a mass of people and several camera crews. “Isn’t that Michael?”

Her relief was temporary as they moved closer and didn’t see Judy at her brother’s side. One look in his eyes and her head swiveled toward the building. “No.”

Michael’s arm wrapped around her shoulders and the cameras around them snapped pictures. He leaned close to her ear. “Rick is inside searching. Neil is casing the surrounding buildings.”

“Is there anyone trapped in there? Do we know?”

Michael shook his head. “We don’t know. From what I can tell, there was plenty of time for everyone from her floor to escape.”

“Then where is she?”

Michael’s hand squeezed her shoulder. “The first explosion was on a lower floor. The second was close to the roof.”

“Do we know what caused the explosion?”

“No one knows.”

A reporter pushed closer, shoved a microphone in their faces. “Michael, have you heard from your sister since the fire started?”

“Go away,” he told the reporter.

Dan and Lucas moved around the two of them.

“Was your sister in the building today?” another reporter asked.

“No comment,” Dan said as he placed his body between Michael and the reporter.

“Friends of yours?” Michael asked Meg.

She nodded and stared beyond the reporters to the activity outside the building. Seemed the fire on the lower floor was contained and the efforts were focused on the top levels.

Even though the reporters still asked questions, Michael ignored them, his eyes constantly searching over the heads of the crowd.

Waiting for minutes felt like hours. Each one that passed felt more dire than the last.

Neil found them, and pulled them away from the crowd.

They huddled next to a building, Lucas and Dan pushed the reporters back.

“Rumors are already flying. The police think the explosions were deliberately set.”

“What? Why?”

“We don’t know. The only rumor I confirmed was two smoke canisters found in a ventilation shaft and one outside a parking lot.”

Meg started to feel her lungs restricting as panic for her friend set in. “Someone did this on purpose?”

“Looks that way.” A heavy amount of uncertainty sat behind Neil’s eyes. Meg hadn’t known the man long, but he always seemed to guard his emotions.

“Oh, no. You don’t think . . . that Judy . . .”

“Don’t jump to conclusions.”

Meg shook her head. “Why? You have. We have to find her.” She sucked in a breath to find it lacking of oxygen, struggled with the next one.

Michael took hold of her shoulders and helped her sit while she fumbled with the inhaler in her pocket. Two puffs later and the stars in her head stopped spinning. “I’m OK,” she insisted.

“I’m going back over to see if there’s any more information,” Neil told them. He directed his eyes to Michael. “Call Zach and Karen.”

Worry punched her gut harder when with a face full of soot, Rick found them and dropped beside her on the curb. “I made it as far as the second floor.” He coughed. “Too much smoke.”

They all stared at the building, praying that Judy would walk out of it, or up to them and ask what they were all worried about.

Only she never came.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Every high is followed by a hangover. The only hangovers Judy had ever experienced were the alcohol-induced stunners nearly every college student experiences somewhere in their four years at school.

So when she woke, and her head split in two the moment her eyes opened, she identified the roll of her stomach and the cotton lodged in her throat with a groan. She attempted to ball into a fetal position and remember the night before, but found her hands bound by a rope on each side of her body.

She blinked a few times, tried to focus. Stone floor, rusted old machines she couldn’t immediately identify. The sound of a blower forcing air into a shaft filled the otherwise silent room. No windows . . . no doors that she could see, and only a few bare lights that looked like they’d wink out at the first opportunity.

She shook her cloudy head, tried to focus on the bare bulb above.

He’d waved a needle at her, laughed, and for a brief moment, she thought she was dreaming, then there was nothing.

“Oh, God.” Moving her head took serious effort, bringing pain from cramped muscles. She pulled against the rope holding her, felt her own fatigue. She was still clothed, though the cold depth of the floor was seeping into her bones and making her shake.

Or maybe that was pure fear.

The doubled lines of everything around her started to focus. Judy didn’t see him at first, thought maybe he’d left her there.

The hope of that quickly faded as he stepped from the shadows wearing a full set of military fatigues, complete with boots, face painted to blend in with the dank quarters.

Through the black and gray makeup, his sneer met a gleam in his eye.

She pushed her body back from him, noticed her feet weren’t bound, giving her some mobility.

Slow, steady steps brought him to her. He knelt just out of reach of her legs. “Nice of you to wake, General.”

“Let me go.”

He laughed. “After all the effort I’ve taken to get you here? I don’t think so.”

He looked nothing like the awkward twentysomething that brought special deliveries to their office. There wasn’t an ounce of uncertainty on his face, or in the way he held himself on the balls of his feet.

“Why? Why are you doing this?”

He blinked a couple of times, as if the question confused him. “Capture the enemy. Much better than just destroying them.” Without words, he stood again, retreated to the corner of the room, back in the shadows, and just watched her.

Whatever his plan was, he wasn’t rushing it. He acted as if he had all the time in the world.

She looked around the room again, didn’t recognize any of it. She thought of her father’s hardware store, the plumbing aisle filled with valves and pipes. Only the pipes she saw weren’t from anything in the last twenty years. A boiler, maybe . . . which would mean they were in a basement of something. From the size of the room, the height of the ceiling, she thought it might be a large apartment complex.