“Right.” Beckham rubbed his face and followed Dion.
The room was not very large to begin with, but when the door shut behind them, it felt miniscule. Screens ran the length of the walls, showing different sections of the hospital. Hernandez was standing by a guy who faced the screens, and he motioned them to come closer.
“Ty is looking at all the traffic in and out of the exits for the past hour plus. So far, there’s been no one who looks like Roxie, but we’ll be watching it over and over,” Hernandez said.
Ty nodded at them and they all turned to the screens.
Dion spoke up. “Ty, while Howie is watching your footage, can you set it up for me and Beckham to watch from the beginning? They know her looks and mannerisms far better than any of us do.” He put his hand on Beckham’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll find her, son,” he said to Beckham. His eyes softened briefly when he looked at Beckham, but hardened as soon as he turned to the rest of the men in the room. “Let’s get to it.”
They sat in front of the screens and watched every frame closely. After fifteen minutes, Beckham shifted in his seat, frustrated that nothing suspicious was showing up. The thought of her out there, at risk in every way, made him crazy.
“Beck, come take a look at this,” Howie said. He was watching with Ty, about a half hour ahead of the footage Beckham watched.
Beckham looked over Howie’s shoulder at the screen. For a millisecond, he saw Roxie roll by in a wheelchair. Her head tilted back briefly and her eyes were closed.
“That’s her!” he yelled. His heart raced out of control as he watched her being pushed out of the hospital door.
Ty rewound and they watched the whole sequence again and again. The person pushing the wheelchair had slicked back hair and was wearing blue scrubs and a face mask that covered nearly everything.
“It’s a woman,” Dion said. “I’ll be damned.”
Ty slowed everything down and focused on the woman. It was hard to make out any features with the distance and most of her face covered. They watched it a dozen times before Beckham let out a startled groan.
“Can you focus on her feet?” he asked.
It took Ty seconds to fill the screen with the assailant’s shoes. They matched the scrubs so well that at first it was unnoticeable. Nothing close to nurses’ shoes, these were shoes that he recognized. Blue boots.
Before she left the hospital, she took her second dose of meds for the day and felt the calm wash over her. She’d gone too long without them yesterday and by the time she realized it, she’d almost been completely hypnotized by Ian Sterling’s charm.
No more.
She couldn’t think about his ever-changing eyes and pretty boy looks. His sweetness to her. He’d been interested in what she had to say. It didn’t matter. He knew too much and distracted her.
Half of her life had been spent working toward this—she was closer to Beckham than she’d ever been. She could finally feel him within her grasp. She couldn’t forget her priorities. Not when she’d just stolen the patient right out from under their noses.
She breathed in: Invincible.
Breathed out: Determined.
Roxie was a fighter. It just made this all the more enjoyable. Neither Ian nor Roxie should still be alive, but instead of feeling daunted, the thought excited her. She was up for a little challenge and wanted to prolong the play a little longer. What good did it do to put out the bait and then not enjoy the hunt?
It was all worth it. She put her camera strap around her neck.
Time for some live action.
Roxie came to for a moment—long enough to hear the end of an advertisement and then music. The radio. Justin Bieber. She groaned. Her eyelids were too heavy to open. She wanted to lift a hand to her eyes and pry them open, but her hands weighed a thousand pounds. Her last thought before going out again was that she must be in a car and her head felt like a log.
The next time she woke up, she was able to open her eyes. It was dark, but she could see that she was in a small garage. Arms were wrapped around her ribs, and she was being dragged backwards across the concrete, away from a car. Her lungs and chest ached, feeling as if they were caving in. Fear swallowed her whole, sudden and complete.
What’s happening? Her mind screamed, but no sound came out. Where am I?
They came to a stop and Roxie heard keys jingling. And then more dragging inside the door. Once inside, she was dropped, her eyes squeezing shut as her head hit the floor. They jarred open again as she was yanked up by her hair across carpet that burned through her thin clothes. Her mind raced as she tried to wake up enough to figure out what was happening. She’d been in the hospital. She was still wearing a hospital gown. Whoever dragged her was silent. Roxie’s side slammed into the wall as they turned a corner. Clump, clump, clump, her body was dragged down a flight of stairs like a life-sized rag doll. Down the hall and into a room that was bare of furniture, they finally stopped.
Her eyes were still watering, but she narrowed them into tiny slits to make her vision clearer. The walls had pictures covering every inch of space as far as she could see. Pictures of Beckham and Leo took over a whole wall. She gasped and turned as much as she could—her hair was still tight in someone’s grip. The wall to the right had about a dozen pictures of her with large red X’s crossed over them. Another dozen were pictures that she knew had been her with Beckham, but now she was cut out of them.
She had to get out of there.
Leo. Leo. Leo.
His name ran through her mind on repeat.
She lifted her heavy arms and swung behind her, hitting a leg. That earned her a swift kick in the gut. Her stomach clenched and she began swallowing too fast. She tried to turn her head as much as she could and threw up on the floor. She heard a high yelp and her head was released, but before she could look up she was bashed with a heavy boot that wouldn’t stop.
She was too weak to crawl very far, and moving just made the blows come harder. She curled up into a ball and covered her face with her hands. The sharp tang of blood filled her nose as everything faded to red.
When she woke up, a thick cloth filled her mouth and was secured in a knot at the back of her head. Her hands were tied behind her back, and a rope around her neck held her in place. It looped onto the knobs of the bedroom door and what she assumed was either a bathroom or closet door. It was tight enough that if she stood up or leaned forward for very long, it would cut off her circulation. She didn’t want to move anyway; every inch of her felt bruised, but she shifted her head slowly back and forth to see if the ends budged at all. It only added to the chaffing on her neck. Her heart galloped through her chest and she felt her pulse nudge the rope around her wrists. She stilled and glanced down. Burned photographs were piled next to her on the floor. Some of them had portions of the picture showing through the torched marks. In a few of them, she recognized her clothes.
She told herself to stay calm, but it was too late. Fear clung to her, as much a part of her as the now drenched hospital gown she wore. She smelled like vomit, sweat, and terror.
Another pile of pictures lay next to the burned ones—everyone from the tour, even Chloe and the guards, and a few girls she didn’t recognize. She looked at the walls. The only wall that didn’t have pictures was the one to her left—a huge map covered that wall, but she wasn’t able to see the places marked by tacks. Directly across from her was one she hadn’t seen yet. From floor to ceiling, Beckham at every age looked back at her. She studied it for a long time, seeing some photographs she’d seen through the years in magazines, but a lot were snapshots … some of Beckham looking really young, and others that she knew were taken recently on the tour. And then the wall with Beckham and Leo … Leo.
God, please keep him safe.
Tears ran down her face and she struggled to swallow. Whoever had her was clearly meticulous. Not to mention, deranged. And by the looks of it, had gotten away with following Beckham for years.
Roxie heard f
ootsteps and felt the rope around her neck shift as the door opened. She blinked, unable to believe who she was seeing.
“Coco?” she murmured.
All the images of Coco doing her hair and makeup flashed before Roxie in triple time and nowhere in the memories did she see a single hint of Coco doing anything like this—to anyone or anything. Introverted and maybe a little odd, but so … fearful.
“Clearly I’m a horrible … judge of character.” The cloth in Roxie’s mouth made her voice sound like garbled gibberish. Nothing in the sentence came through.
Coco didn’t speak, but the hatred in her eyes screamed at the highest decibel. Roxie braced herself for whatever was coming. She was surprised when Coco undid the rope from the door, never turning her back on Roxie for even a second. She went to the next door and undid that side too. It seemed as if she was trying to decide her next form of torture because once she had both ends of the rope in her hands, she just stood and focused her laser beam eyes on Roxie.
That’s what was different—Roxie realized that Coco had never made eye contact with her until now.
“Why the rope? I don’t have the strength to fight you,” Roxie tried to say, but only nonsense came out. She gave up trying to talk—she didn’t have the strength. It hurt too much and Coco couldn’t understand what she was saying anyway.
Coco still didn’t speak, but she stood for a moment longer and then jerked the rope so hard that Roxie lurched forward. She had to follow the pull or choke, a fucking marionette under this psycho’s control.
Roxie didn’t quite make it upright on both feet, crawling not possible either, with her hands tied behind her back, but one of her legs inched forward while the other tried to catch up. They reached the other door in the room, and Coco tightened her hold on the rope, gagging Roxie as she brought her up to both feet. Roxie’s eyes shut and she forced herself to wait to breathe until the rope had loosened a bit. It took every ounce of effort she had to stay standing. Her throat constantly reminded her that a tube had been lodged there, the fact that she should still be in the hospital adding to the fear already camped out in her brain. Being beaten by Coco on top of everything else made her wonder if she’d already died and this was just hell warming up.
She heard a faucet being turned on and opened her eyes in time to see water coming out of the ceiling. It looked like she was standing in a large bathroom that had also been used as a darkroom. Cold water shot straight down onto her head; her bare feet blocked the drain. Cold, yes, her hell would be cold. Her nerves flinched against the pelts of water. Coco secured the rope and picked up a pair of scissors, walking toward Roxie with them. She was a little shorter than Roxie, and Roxie blinked back water, but kept her eyes trained on Coco. If she moved an inch, the rope gripped her neck tighter.
I will find a way to make you pay, even if I’m dead. Roxie’s eyes promised.
Coco blinked and lifted the scissors to Roxie’s chest, pausing for a moment before she cut the hospital gown off of her. She looked Roxie’s body over then poured soap onto a hard loofah and scrubbed. The wounds she’d inflicted oozed and still she scrubbed. Roxie didn’t make a sound. She wouldn’t give the bitch that satisfaction.
Coco turned the water off and rubbed Roxie’s hair with a towel, but dried nothing else, apparently a hair stylist to the very end. She didn’t bother dressing Roxie, leaving her to shiver in the brisk air as she led Roxie back into the room with the photographs. Instead of tying her up, she kept a firm grip on the rope, clutching it at Roxie’s neck and forcing her into the hall. It was like trying to find your way out of the middle of a corn field at midnight, but Coco never faltered, continuing to push Roxie.
They passed a few doors, turned a corner, and stopped in front of what seemed to be the last door. Roxie saw a tiny sliver of light at the bottom of the door and felt her first palpitation toward hope. In the next second it was gone and she feared whoever was in the room might be the mastermind behind her kidnapping.
Beckham called Sparrow on his way to Dion’s office. She answered on the first ring.
“Hey, my friend. I wish we were having this conversation in person,” he said.
“I’m so glad to hear you. How is Roxie?” she asked.
“You haven’t heard?” He was shocked no one had told her.
“No, I’m so frustrated! No one’s telling me anything about Ian or Roxie.”
“I should have called you sooner. I’m so sorry. I thought someone was with you.”
“I’ve had a full house—the extra guards are here and the police came by to question me, but no one is saying anything.” Her voice broke on the last word. “It’s driving me crazy.”
“I’m really worried about Ian, Sparrow. Can you have Matt bring you to see me? I’m talking with one of my friends—he owns the company that provides all of our security. He has some information. We don’t know anything for sure yet, so I know no one has wanted to say until they know. I really want to talk to you in person. Can you come soon?”
“You’re scaring me, Beck.”
“I’m sorry, hon. I’m terrified right now. Someone has taken Roxie.”
“Oh my God,” she cried.
“I don’t want you to do a single thing without having one of the guards with you, understood?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“As soon as you can come,” he reiterated.
“On my way.”
For the past twenty-five years, Dion had run a successful private investigation agency, opening branches all over the world, the largest one being in L.A. He’d personally offered physical surveillance to presidents, celebrities, and musicians, including the Woods when they first began touring as a family. He’d trained hundreds to work with him and helped the LAPD with more cases than he could count. Once he’d worked on a case, he remembered everything with explicit detail, making him invaluable in his field.
In all the time Beckham had known him, he’d never been to Dion’s office. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. He sank into a brown overstuffed couch and looked at the walls. The room had murals on every wall, a continuous theme of Where the Wild Things Are. He felt like Max seeing all the creatures for the first time when his eyes landed on Dion. Come to think of it, Dion did kind of resemble a Wild Thing, with his big eyes and wide mouth.
Dion gave Beckham a kind smile and reared his head back to howl. Howie sat beside Beckham and snorted.
Beckham chuckled and leaned forward. He’d have to bring Leo here—the little guy would love it. His smile dropped and he felt his chest constrict. Leo. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought of him since she’d been missing, but he kept being blindsided by the thought all over again. Roxie was gone.
“Roxie has a little boy,” he said in a choked voice. “He can’t lose her … I can’t lose her. How do we find her?”
“I have people looking into Coco’s background and we’re questioning everyone on the tour. I’m recording this meeting—you’ve already met all the men who will be listening. I’ll be typing directives to them and they’ll jump on anything they hear that could be a possible lead to follow. Do you agree to this?”
“Yes.”
“It’s my understanding Coco replaced someone named Tracy. Do you know why?”
Beckham shook his head. “I’m not positive. Tracy’s been on several tours with us, but I think she got sick and then never met back up with us.” He paused. “Do you think Coco had something to do with that?”
“Remember how I said to not make any assumptions about Ian? Let’s do the opposite with Coco—let’s assume the worst until we can prove it wrong. Let’s assume she did have something to do with Tracy not coming back. What would her motive be?”
“She’d take her place,” Beckham answered.
“Yes. Was there any sign that Coco was unstable?”
“No.”
“Does Roxie have enemies?”
“I don’t know who, but yes,” Beckham groaned. “Som
eone kept messing with Roxie’s things on the tour. Twice that I know of. Once her blanket and books were cut up and then her outfits were burned.”
“When did that start?”
“I think … it was after news came out about Roxie and me. Pictures were all over the place of us kissing and then she spent the night with me on the bus. Roxie thought it was one of the other dancers, but we questioned her pretty thoroughly and I don’t think it was Brooke.” Beckham stood up and started walking. He was beginning to feel like a Wild Thing himself.
“So she tried to scare Roxie off and when that didn’t work, she tried to kill her. What would her motive be and how does Ian fit into that?” Dion’s fingers trailed over his computer keys.
Beckham couldn’t get past his first sentence. “Do you think she’s killed her?” He stopped breathing while he waited for an answer.
“I think we need to find her as soon as we can,” Dion said. His face looked like steel. “Had you ever met Coco before the tour?”
“Not that I know of. I don’t remember even hearing her last name. She did sorta look familiar to me when I first met her, though.”
Dion nodded. “Good. Phil, look into records of all his past employees and people he might have had encounters with over the years.” His mouth settled into a firm line and he looked down at his desk. “I apologize that it’s going into personal territory, but we’ve gotta go there, Beck. Is it possible that you’ve had a sexual relationship with this girl?”
Beckham stood still and looked at the floor. “It’s possible I wouldn’t remember if I did,” he admitted. “I didn’t know I was capable of that, but yeah, turns out I am.” He put his fingers on the bridge of his nose and squeezed. “That stretch where I was high more than not … I very well could have.”