Page 86 of Devoted in Death

But her gut told her Reed hadn’t run afoul of a mugger, or a junkie, or some random street deal. So she looked for potential stretches where someone could get a vehicle close enough to the curb to—

“Shit.” She stopped by a loading zone, checked the time. “Right about six minutes in. Broken streetlight, right there. And glass on the sidewalk from it.”

“They broke one of the lights for cover, pulled right into the loading zone.”

“Used the woman to lure him. ‘Hey, honey, can you help me out a second?’” She studied the buildings, the storefronts as she spoke. “No bars right here, and that’s a damn shame. Retail, café, residential, accounting firm. Nothing that would be bustling at midnight on a ball-freezing night. But some traffic had to come by. So they had to be quick with him.”

She tipped her face up. “Yeah, they had to be quick. And that’s a mistake. Loading zones have cams. Crap cams, and a lot of them don’t work at all, but we’ve got a shot here.”

She pulled out her communicator. “We’ve got a shot,” she repeated.

It would take some time, but she arranged to have the feed from the loading zone cam sent to her office unit, her home unit, even her PPC just to cover every base.

And while she waited for Traffic to pull that one off, they walked the rest of the way to Benj Fribbet’s basement unit, roused him and his roommates.

She watched their attitude go from pissy, to smirky, then to genuine concern.

“Come on. Nothing happened to him.” Benj, muscular, mixed-race, handsome, scratched his chest through a T-shirt where Mavis Freestone’s face sent out a flirtatious, come-along-boy smile.

It wigged Eve a little to see her friend over some guy’s torso.

“He’s okay. You sure he’s not home?”

“I wouldn’t be here if he was home. When did you last see or speak to him?”

“I saw him yesterday, went by his work, just to chew a minute, and we made the plans to work here tonight—last night, I mean. I talked to him—I don’t know, about midnight—few after—I guess. He was on his way here. Said he was almost here, and...”

“You got your ’link?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve been pissed at him.” He glanced at his roommates—one short and burly with a lot of purple hair, the other wiry with the shaved-on-one-side look and sleeve tats.

The living area boasted a sagging couch, a table covered with takeout boxes and brew bottles, and a lot of music equipment.

Benj found the ’link in the takeout rubble. Punched in, played back.

You coming or what? Roxie’s here, we’re all here.

Yeah, yeah, I’m on my way. Jeez, it’s like the South Pole out here tonight. Nearly there. I’m nearly there. Fire it up!

Eve heard another voice, barely register.

“Hold it. Play that back, boost it.”

“Sure, but I can’t get it to boost much. It’s a crap ’link.”

Eve grabbed the ’link, held it against her ear.

“‘Hey, cutie,’” she murmured.

Then Reed’s voice blasted. Back to you.

“That’s it,” Benj said. “You can hear how I tried to tag his ’link a couple times, I left v-mail there, and on his home ’link. And Roxie did the same.”

Ignoring him, she replayed again, listened, noted the time. Five minutes, forty-eight seconds from exiting his building to ending the transmission.

“I need this ’link.”

“It’s the only one I got,” he began, then shook his head. “Yeah, take it. Jesus, sure, take it. You really think... Maybe he detoured to Maddy’s. They’re not really sizzling, but maybe.”