Pressure Point (The Extractor Series Book 3) Page 4

  “Everyone can get a lucky guess now and then. I mean, I was leading you in that direction. Anyone would have guessed where I was heading with that.”

  “Liar. You just don’t wanna admit it.”

  “OK, OK, so maybe you do know me better than I’d care to admit.”

  “I’ll take that as an apology.”

  Bridge smiled. “So where are you heading now?”

  “Well, I’m checking on New Jersey. Will also check PA, Delaware, Maryland…”

  “Are you just planning on checking off every box on the east coast?”

  “Not every one. I was planning on leaving Florida off.”

  “Well, sounds like you got a lot of work to do,” Bridge said. “I’ll let you get to it.”

  Nicole cleared her throat. “Sure you’re doing OK down there? I know it must be difficult talking to models and visiting agencies and all that.”

  “Oh, yes. Really difficult. I mean, when I talked to Renard, there were three topless models nearby, and I’m pretty sure two of them were giving me the eye. I somehow was able to tear myself away from them before they started putting their hands all over me.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “And this Alexis girl… Renard told me she likes to walk around nude in her apartment all day. I’m just hoping she puts some clothes on at some point.”

  “Maybe I should come over and give you a hand. Sometimes it’s good to have a second person there, you know, in case you’re distracted for some reason and forget something. Like your brain.”

  Bridge laughed. “Are you really playing the jealousy card right now?”

  “Who’s jealous? Not me. I just want to make sure you’re doing all right. That you’re not…”

  “Nic, listen, let me just stop you right there before you say anything else. Am I an idiot?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, I would be an idiot if I strayed into somebody else’s yard, wouldn’t I?”

  “I know that. I just wanted to make sure you knew that.”

  “Good. Because I would never mow someone else’s lawn when I’ve got a lush, full green grass of my own.”

  “Did you just insult me?”

  “I would never,” Bridge said.

  “You just compared me to a lawn.”

  “I was trying to illustrate…”

  “And did you just compare me to a lawnmower?”

  “Of course not…”

  “What are you saying, I’m like a big green truck?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying…”

  “Then what, that my personality is like sharp, steely blades that cut you to pieces? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Um… how did we get here exactly?”

  Nicole laughed hysterically. “I’m just kidding. I love it when I get you all tongue-twisted.”

  “Ha ha, I hope you’re happy now that I’ve made an ass of myself.”

  “I just wanted you to recognize it.”

  “Get that out of your system now?”

  “Uh, yeah, I think so. I mean, really, did you really think I’d believe all the crap about naked models and women putting their hands on you?”

  “Why, what are you saying?” Bridge said. “That a model wouldn’t be interested in me?”

  “Well…”

  “I’ll have you know I did just fine before you came along.”

  “Oh, yes, I know. I saw quite a few of them firsthand. Yeah, I guess you did do OK. That is, if you like them ragged and worn-out, then, yeah, you did great.”

  “There’s no way I can win this conversation, is there?”

  “Nope.”

  “How ’bout I just chalk this up as a loss for me and we move on?”

  “I guess we can do that,” Nicole replied. “It always feels good getting a victory over you.”

  “I’m sure it does. Well, if I find anything else out while I’m with Miss Hottie, I’ll let you know, all right?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You know, how did we morph into this? I started out trying to compliment you and let you know I would never stray and we got into… I don’t even know what.”

  “I don’t really know either. But anyway, I believe and trust you. And just because I gave you a hard time, if you hurry up and get home, there’ll be another topless woman here who can’t take her hands off you.”

  “I’ll be there as quick as I can!”

  After getting off the phone, Bridge finally walked into the building. It was an upscale apartment building with plenty of amenities. There was a gym, a small I, a theater room, a help desk, even a doorman. It almost seemed like a hotel. Bridge was impressed. So much so that he went up to the woman behind the desk and started asking about the rent. It turned out to be a little bit more than he was paying at the hotel. All visitors had to be checked out, then buzzed through another set of doors. Alexis was contacted to make sure she wanted Bridge to come up. Once she gave the go-ahead, the glass doors were unlocked and Bridge went through. When Bridge got to the fifth-floor apartment, the door was already open. He found a tall, thin, attractive woman in her mid-twenties walking toward it as he got there.

  “You must be Alexis?”

  She gave him a smile. “I take it you’re the FBI agent?” Bridge looked confused that she would know about him already. “Janet Renard called me, told me you were coming over and to expect you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Can I get you something?”

  “Um, no, thank you.”

  They went over to the couch and sat down, Bridge across from his host.

  “So you’re here to talk about Evelyn?”

  “Yes, I understand you two were close.”

  “Yeah, pretty close. What was your name again?”

  “Uh, Luke.”

  Alexis squinted her eyes, looking at Bridge more closely. “You’re not an FBI agent, are you?”

  Bridge cleared his throat. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because I talked to Evelyn’s sister, Sharon. And she mentioned she was trying to hire somebody named Luke. Said he’s someone called The Extractor. That he finds people who are missing or something. Gets people out of tight spots.”

  Bridge uncomfortably smiled. “Really?”

  Alexis let out a small laugh. “Listen, if you are, that’s cool, I don’t even care. If you are, though, I put money in to hire you.”

  “You’re one of the friends she tapped.”

  “Yeah. I don’t even care about the money. I just want Evelyn back if she’s not… if she’s not…” Alexis couldn’t even bring herself to say the words.

  “Well, that’s what I’m going to figure out. With your help.”

  “I’ll help with what I can, but I’m not sure what else I can tell you that I didn’t tell the police when I talked to them. I don’t know anything.”

  “Sometimes people can suddenly remember things months later. They see or hear something that triggers a memory or something they thought was insignificant before. I’m not gonna rehash everything with you. I’m sure everyone who talked with you before was thorough. But do you know what she was planning on doing that night or weekend that she disappeared?”

  “No. Sorry. She never said.”

  “Did you know she was going somewhere?”

  “She called me that night, probably around seven, said she was meeting some guy later. Asked if I wanted to come along.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “No, I wasn’t really feeling well. I had a pretty good headache.”

  “And you never heard from her again?”

  “No. I wound up falling asleep at like, ten that night.”

  “When you talked to her on the phone, did you hear anything in the background? Voices, noises, planes in the background, anything like that?”

  “No, she was home,” Alexis said. “I know that because she said she was getting ready to leave at eight, I think.”

  “And you don’t know the guy she was meeting?”


  “No, sorry. She never mentioned a name.”

  “What exactly did she say? Word for word.”

  “She said, ‘I was planning on going out tonight to meet that guy again. Did you wanna come?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t think I can, I have a headache.’”

  “What’d she say to that?”

  “She just said, ‘OK, I’ll let you know what happens.’”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You must have known who that guy was then,” Bridge said.

  “But I don’t.”

  “When someone mentions something about meeting a guy again, that inherently implies you must know about him. Either you met him, or she mentioned him to you before.”

  “But I don’t…” Alexis threw her hands up. “I don’t… know. I’ve tried to figure this out before. I just don’t… know. I don’t know. She was my best friend, if I knew, I would tell you, but I don’t.”

  “OK, let’s just take a step back. Think back to every conversation you had with her in the few weeks before that. Whether in person or on the phone. Whether business related or personal. Think back to every time one of you mentioned meeting or talking with a guy, even casually, even if it was only brought up for two seconds.”

  Alexis leaned on the arm of the couch, trying to think of every conversation they’d had prior to that, which wasn’t so easy to remember six months later. After a few minutes, she relayed everything she could recall.

  “And that’s it?” Bridge asked.

  “Yeah. That’s everything I can remember.” As soon as she said the words, Alexis looked down at the floor, almost as if something suddenly occurred to her. The look wasn’t lost on Bridge. It was a look he’d seen many times over the years, someone remembering something they had long since forgotten about.

  “What?”

  Alexis rubbed the back of her head as she thought about it, like she was drying her hair with a towel after stepping out of the shower. “I don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t matter how insignificant you think it is. Everything’s important.”

  “There was this one time…” Alexis said, pausing to make sure she got the details right. “It was maybe a week before she went missing. We were doing some event at The Grand, down in Atlantic City. And after our shoot was over, we were walking into the hotel, and this guy started talking to us, asking us if we were interested in some low budget-movie he was doing. Said there wasn’t much pay in it, but it would be good for our portfolio, you know?”

  “You get a name?”

  Alexis shook her head as if it were a silly question. “Nah, I just brushed it off. Said I wasn’t interested and kept on going. I just figured it was some guy shooting off his mouth trying to impress a couple of attractive girls walking by. I mean, we hear stuff like that all the time.”

  “You didn’t think he was actually doing what he said he was?”

  “I dunno. Maybe he was. I just wasn’t really interested.”

  “No aspirations for movies?”

  “Yeah, I mean, who wouldn’t? But most legit movies I know of aren’t done in a hotel lobby by some dude coming up to you without knowing who you are.”

  Bridge nodded. “So you just walked away?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about Evelyn? What did she do?”

  “I think she stayed there talking to the guy for another minute or two, then she left too. We had rooms there to stay overnight, so a couple minutes later we were in one of our rooms, I think it was mine, and we just hung out for the rest of the night.”

  “Did you talk about the guy or the movie at all after that?”

  “No, not really. She said she got his business card or something like that and would think about it. Never heard her mention anything else about it.”

  “Didn’t say anything about the guy or the movie, when it was, anything like that?”

  “No. Like I said, I don’t even know if that’s relevant at all, or if that’s the guy she was talking about, but other than the other guys I already told you, that’s all I can remember.”

  “Well, thanks for the time. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Sure. I really hope you can find her. I miss her a lot.”

  After Bridge left the building, he immediately called his girlfriend again.

  “Miss me already?” Nicole asked.

  “You know I do.”

  “How was Miss Topless?”

  “Not topless. And still missing her friend.”

  “She give you anything? Information, I mean?”

  Bridge laughed. He then retold the story to her about the man who came up to them in the hotel of the Grand.

  “The Grand,” Nicole said, her voice trailing off.

  “What? That mean something to you?” Bridge could hear her shuffling some papers around.

  “I just saw that mentioned somewhere. Let me find it.” About two minutes went by before Nicole finally found the file she was looking for. “Yeah, here it is. There was another model who went missing. This one was from Maryland.”

  “You’re getting around the states, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but guess where she was last seen before she went missing?”

  “Let me guess… the Grand?”

  “You got it.”

  “Hmm. Sounds fishy.”

  “Sounds like quite the coincidence, huh?”

  “Sounds like more than that,” Bridge answered. “Sounds like a pattern.”

  “Well, there’s more to this pattern than meets the eye.”

  “I agree.”

  “No, I mean more as in more girls missing.”

  “What do you mean, more girls? How many more are we talking about? The one from Maryland?”

  “No. Including Evelyn, there was three from New York, one from Maryland, two from New Jersey, two from Pennsylvania, one from Delaware, and one from Ohio.”

  “Ten girls?”

  “Well, not girls. All in their early to mid-twenties. And guess what else they have in common?”

  “Are they all models, perchance?”

  “They are. Good guess. You win the prize.”

  “There’s something fishy going on here.”

  “You think?”

  “I do. And the only prize I wanna get is finding out what happened to these girls.”

  As they were talking, Nicole looked up the Grand on her computer. She leaned back, staring at her screen when she saw it. Bridge knew something was up by how quiet she was.

  “Nic?”

  “Guess what else the Grand has?”

  “Mmm, don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “It also has a thousand rooms.”

  “A thousand rooms.” Bridge thought for a second. “That means…”

  “That means it’s got a room 614.”

  6

  As soon as Bridge got back to the hotel, he had a brief discussion with Nicole, then called his FBI contact.

  “Can you tell me how you guys could so blatantly overlook this connection with the Grand?”

  “What connection?” Happ answered.

  “How ’bout the fact that ten models disappeared on the same night that Evelyn Fester did?”

  “We don’t know for certain that they all disappeared the same night.”

  “You don’t? Looks pretty obvious to me.”

  “In half of those cases, it’s not clear when those girls went missing. Could’ve been the same night. Also could’ve been a few nights before or later. We don’t know.”

  “Maybe you guys weren’t looking hard enough.”

  “Let me remind you, Luke, that I didn’t investigate any of those. And some of those didn’t make it to the FBI’s doorstep. We don’t take the lead on every single crime that happens, you know. Or potential crime.”

  “I’m aware of that. I’m talking to you in the general you. Not you you.” Bridge scrunched his nose, not sure if what he’d said made any sense. He was just going to
go with it, though.

  “Regardless of which you you’re talking to or about, I’m sure the investigators in each of those cases did as thorough a job as they could.”

  “Whatever the case, you can’t deny the connection is there. And it should’ve been looked at further.”

  “What connection? Only one of them was seen there as the last place before she disappeared.”

  “Evelyn was there the week before. Nicole found out at least four of the other girls had been there in the previous couple of weeks as well.”

  “That doesn’t mean they were there on the night they disappeared.”

  “The hell it doesn’t. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, acts like a duck, you know what it probably is…”

  “A chicken.”

  “Ha ha, very funny.”

  “Luke, just because some of the girls were there a couple weeks before then, it doesn’t prove they were there that night.”

  “It sure does make it the most likely scenario though, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, maybe, but maybe not. If you can’t prove where the girls were, then what are you supposed to do?”

  “How ’bout keep digging and working, for one?”

  “If there’s nowhere to go, how are you supposed to get there?”

  “How ’bout just drive and see where you end up?”

  “All right, I hear you, but, I mean, it is what it is at this point. What else do you want me to say? You know how it works. If cases aren’t solved quickly, other cases start piling up, other stuff starts getting pushed into the background, pretty soon they’re cold cases. You know how it works. There’s not enough manpower, you know that.”

  Bridge loudly sighed. “Yeah, I know. Listen, I’m not mad at you, it’s just…”

  “I get it. You’re on the case now, and you wanna do right by your client and these girls. I do too. I can’t undo what’s been done, though, or explain how cases that weren’t mine to begin with fell through the cracks.”

  Bridge then relayed the information he got from Alexis, about the movie producer the models ran into at the Grand.

  “See? That’s information that’s not in the report,” Happ said. “If it were, it might have drawn a closer look there.”

  “Yeah, I know. She didn’t think it meant anything at the time and didn’t even think it was related. Probably had forgotten about it.”