Chapter 18
A booming headache stirred Dina out of a sleep. She opened her eyes. A light in the corner shined off wooden walls and illuminated the mattress in the center of the room. No window, nothing except the twin mattress she laid on.
In the back, a door stretched across the width of the room.
She’d been moved.
With her hands tied behind her back, she shifted across the mattress until her feet touched the floor and rose to a sitting position. She closed her eyes against the increased throbbing pain in the center of her forehead, breathed in deeply through her nose, received a strong whiff of muggy air, and released it through her mouth. At least the drug the Caffeine Junkie gave her wasn’t as strong as the last one.
She focused on the room again. Her heart thudded against her ribcage. Bending her neck not to hit her head on the ceiling, she rose, steadied on wobbly legs, and advanced toward the wall, praying the plywood walls didn’t represent the inside of a trailer on wheels.
The Caffeine Junkie could take her to another location without anyone knowing. Her shoulders slumped. Hell, she’d been transferred to two different locations without anyone stopping the abductor. This new information shouldn’t make a difference with her outlook on fighting to get away, but it did. It made a huge difference.
A shiver ran through her body, producing goosebumps over her skin and a stabbing pain in her stomach. Panicky fear washed over her, ripped her breath from her lungs, and left her gasping for air.
A bang sounded out from the door.
She flinched and her muscles went rigid. Amazingly, her body adapted, allowing air into her lungs.
Scuffling noises, and a gasp trailed by a moan sounded from the other side of the door. Dina stiffened. Something or someone collided with the door, making the hinges strain. She backed into the corner. Another thud, a thwack, and the large door opened.
“Get the fuck in there,” the person with the same accent who ordered her around demanded.
A figure fell to the floor. A masculine groan filled the space. The kidnapper shut the door behind him, imprisoning the new arrival with her.
For several minutes, she stared at his hands tied behind his back and listened to his erratic breathing. “Are you okay?”
A man’s physique stirred to a sitting position. The idea of being trapped with an unknown male added another wave of terror to her growing list.
“I am,” his voice rasped between coughs. Time passed before he scooted to the wall and shimmied until he stood. His head stayed low, preventing her from seeing his face. “No windows.”
She looked at his bound feet and slid her gaze up his jean-cladded legs to the jacket covering his flannel shirt, to his brown hair. Definitely not a New Yorker, but he looked somewhat familiar. “No.”
“Amber?” His voice had a questioning yet shocked tone to it.
“Luke?” The southern drawl and cowboy hat had disappeared.
“Yes.”
Crazy thoughts raced through her mind. He forced her against the window at the coffee shop, pointed a gun at her. Sweat beaded her forehead. “You tried to shoot me?”
“No, I didn’t.” His presence was deadly calm as if he controlled the situation.
Like a scandalous headliner, an image of a man falling at her feet on the sidewalk appalled her. “Did you get shot?”
“Yes, but I wore a bulletproof vest. The bullet didn’t penetrate the skin.”
Vest, bullet, penetrate, the words raced through her muddled thoughts. During the chaotic minutes, the terror hadn’t let her fully register what had happened. “Who are you?”
“FBI.” He enunciated the letters clear and concise. She could only imagine he did it to make sure she understood the full weight of what it meant that an agent had been taken along with her.
Still, she didn’t understand the scene inside Café Coffees. “You had a gun.”
“I didn’t want anyone else to see the badge,” he said into the void, “so I slipped my jacket aside, not thinking you’d see my service weapon.”
She remembered the gold bling, near his belt buckle. If she hadn’t acted hastily, he would have had time to identify himself and she wouldn’t have been kidnapped. She paused, thinking about that scenario. If he could have saved her from this fate, then he wouldn’t be trapped, too. “Don’t you go through a battery of special training for cases like this?”
“Getting hit in the nuts can throw the best of men off their game.”
His words hit her square between the eyes. Suddenly, her rubbery legs from the after effects of the injection turned weak and the coldness in the room made her body ache. She shuffled to the mattress and flopped down. “I shouldn’t have.”
“Not your fault.” He growled around his words and lifted off the wall. “I need you to untie me.”
She wanted to trust him, have faith he would help, but intuition told her not to untie his hands until he explained more. “I don’t know what to believe. You contact me online. Out of nowhere, I see you at a Café Coffees on the same day I’m kidnapped by the Caffeine Junkie. News reports told everyone to stay on the lookout for him, but did I listen?” She shook her head. “Nooo. I didn’t think it could ever happen to me.” The more she thought about her actions, the more her mouth ran amok. “Isn’t that what most people believe? It won’t ever happen to them. They’re too good, too nice, too whatever, that nothing bad would happen to them?”
He stared at her like she blustered about bunions or some such monotonous topic.
“I didn’t mean to go into a rant, but damn it!” She stood, didn’t find anywhere to move, and flopped back down, lowering her head. “This is so fucking wrong.” She choked. “I don’t usually swear, but lately, I want to in shitloads.”
The mattress dipped next to her. “I can’t help you with your swearing, but I can help you understand my side.”
Tears blurred her vision as she gazed at him and sniffled. His face was gentle, eyes kind. How could she not listen? Sniffling again, she bent to wipe her nose on her shoulder.
“Want to use my sleeve?”
As awful as the situation she and Luke were in she couldn’t help but smile at his suggestion.
“That’s better.” His lighthearted tone eased a little more of the tension. “Here’s the deal. If there is any hope of us getting out alive, you’ll have to trust me.”
She opened her mouth to repute that she couldn’t have faith in someone at the drop of a hat when he pinned her with a glare, not one that threatened but one that demanded to let him finish before she spoke.
“My name is Wyatt.”
She didn’t give a damn about his glare. “I’m supposed to trust a man who’s lied to me?”
“I did it for good reasons. I went undercover to stop the Caffeine Junkie.”
Her brain tuned into Cole’s image and how they met, him as Sir Palladium and her as Amber Rose. Both of them lied to protect themselves. In essence Wyatt had done the same, but for official reasons. Having fibbed herself, she couldn’t hold his actions against him when he did it for the betterment of the community. “I’m Dina Wright.”
“I know.”
Of course, he did. He was FBI.
“While it remains to be seen if my ploy worked, at least I found the man who’s abducted five women.”
“You mean six.”
“Counting you, yes. Six,” Wyatt said, puffing an agitated sigh.
She looked the guy over. Dark circles. Worn features. She flicked her gaze to his eyes and searched for sincerity. “But you’re in no position to apprehend him unless you have backup.” Her voice rose on the last few words as excitement and hope struck.
“Not exactly.” He cleared his throat. “I wish I could say I planned this and backup was on the way, but I can’t.”
An agent without backup? Despite spotting genuineness in his gaze, his recklessness gave her pause, making her doubt his ability to help their current situation. “Are you a rookie?”
“Ouch.”
If she hadn’t seen his deadpan face, she would have believed her offhanded comment actually offended him. “What am I supposed to think?”
“Let me give you the short version of what I’ve been dealing with, then you can decide.” On her nod, he continued, “I believed the Caffeine Junkie chose his victims from the Internet, specifically the chat room you frequented. I gathered information and presented it to the task force working on the Caffeine Junkie case.”
“What?” she interrupted. “You sought me out on the chat room?” Irritated, she sprung off the mattress, a hard thing to do with her hands tied behind her back and a low ceiling. She nailed him with a glare. “You asked me out for a case? Used me as bait! Who does that?” When he remained silent, staring at her as if he knew he had made a big mistake, her anger increased. “Isn’t that against the law?”
“No.” His voice was tight, concern lines etching his face.
She thought about the night in the limo, the night he made contact with her. The details were skewed from the Scotch fog. Still, she remembered Cool Hand Luke messaging her and his bold comment about the whip. “As I see it, you tried to use me to set a trap for the Caffeine Junkie.”
“Not true.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “What is the truth?”
“Yes, I was online scouting out potential suspects that had any connection to the victims that disappeared. Nowadays, the virtual world is an invitation for anyone to make contact under a factitious name. What I discovered was all the victims used the same chat room you did. Blonde hair is one of the similarities between the victims. That’s how I came across your profile. I have a list of other women who I’ve been watching also, but I didn’t ask any of them out, only you.”
Dina wasn’t sure if bad luck or Wyatt brought the Junkie to her.
“I also made a list of suspects that have had contact with each of the victims. Now, that the victim list has grown, the suspect list dwindled, leaving two on the list. When I brought my findings to the task force, they more or less told me I was full of crap.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why would they dismiss your investigation?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Said I didn’t have enough evidence for them to remove manpower from another lead, so I decided to hang out at one of the coffeehouses and happened to pick Café Coffees on Lexington Avenue.”
The whole setup was still off. She thought back to her earlier off-colored comment when she called him a rookie and wondered if there was more truth to that than she realized.
“It still doesn’t explain how the chat room connects to the Caffeine Junkie finding me at the Café Coffees. From what you’re saying, he watched my chat room messages. I didn’t know until I went to the coffeehouse today. How’d he know?”
“Did you tell anyone where you were going?”
She thought back to her phone call to Cole. “Yes, I called home.”
“Did you tell anyone else?”
She shook her head back and forth then remembered telling Ronald when he tried to get her a taxi. “I told the doorman at my father’s apartment building.”
“Who did you talk to at home?”
Dina felt like her actions were in question, but she guessed in order for Wyatt to help her, she’d have to divulge each name. “Cole Dunbar. Who’s on your suspects list?”
After a brief pause, he said, “Dreads.”
A few weeks ago, a man with that handle contacted her, saying what sexual positions he’d preferred. Since she joined the chat room, she’d received a few creepy messages from different men. “He sent me a message, but I didn’t respond. Can’t you get an IP address?”
“This guy is buried so deep, you’d have to go to Egypt to find the address, out of my expertise. Couple that with the task force shutting me down, I hit a brick wall.
Dina turned the new information round and round in her mind, working through the pieces, and realized the bone-crushing threat a person like this could cause anyone on the internet. “Do you think the Bureau of Investigations will check out your lead?”
“In time, they will,” Wyatt said.
She recalled him referencing another person on his list. “Who’s the other suspect?”
“Sir Palladium.”
Every bit of moisture left her mouth. The walls warped and dots clouded her vision as panic instilled itself in her chest, stealing her air. She dropped beside him, her thigh brushing his.
“But I don’t—”
A growling rumble from an engine roared, interrupting Wyatt. He glanced her way. His face was hard angles and stern eyes.
The room jolted.
A downpour of anxiety rushed down her spine. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” he grumbled.
A bumping sound and the room jerked.
She gasped and fell into him.
His muscles tightened like a wall of support and his chin rested on top of her head. “Hang on.”
Nerves in her belly grew more active and a whole new wave of fright struck. “We’re moving,” she said, stating the obvious in a harsh whisper, hardly able to distinguish her own voice, as a wad of dread wedged into her throat.
Another jolt and the trailer they were imprisoned in moved, not just a few inches this time. Either they were hitched to the back of a truck or…she didn’t have a clue.
“Are we in a trailer?” She spoke the words as if she said them any louder, the trailer would get mad at her for talking about it.
“Yes.”
The trailer turned wide. Dina’s body fell away from resting against Wyatt’s chest, the only reassurance she had. How she wished she’d untied him and vice versa. She dug her rubber-booted feet into the floor, staying upright, but the trailer’s jerky movements tossed her about on the floor mattress as if a sack of potatoes.
Another sharp turn, the jerking stopped and the speed picked up.
Lines etched in Wyatt’s forehead, and the pulse in his neck ticked.
She put words to the unspoken fear she’d shoved to the back of her mind since she was taken from Café Coffees. “Will they sell us?”
His gaze shot to hers and he studied her for several seconds before he gave a slight nod. “I believe so.”