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  If the cops would’ve contacted me for a statement already, I would know who to see.

  A pretty blonde police officer in full uniform sat at the front desk, her hair done up in a bun. She looked all business.

  “Excuse me,” he said as he came closer.

  She moved papers aside without looking at him. Then she picked up her coffee mug, took a sip and set it back down before addressing him. She didn’t say a word, only took in his tank top and open collar shirt, no doubt assessing him as someone who broke the law. Who else would come in this early in the morning?

  I guess you looking at me means I have the floor?

  “My sister is missing. It was reported a couple days ago. I have information for the detective handling the case.”

  “Name.”

  It didn’t sound like a question.

  “My name is Aaron Stevens.”

  She looked up at him. “No. The name of the missing person.”

  You could have said that, bitch.

  “Joanne Stevens.”

  The officer lifted her coffee mug again and sipped louder this time, her right hand dancing on her keyboard.

  “Detective Folley has the case.”

  “Could you let him know I’m here?” Pulling a toenail off with pliers might be easier than getting you to help me out here, Cruella.

  “He’s not seeing anyone at the moment.”

  “Just ring him up and tell him that Aaron Stevens, Joanne’s brother, needs to talk to him. He hasn’t even taken a formal statement from me yet.”

  The expression on her face made it clear, she heard his exasperation.

  “When I said that he’s not seeing anyone at the moment, that’s what I meant, as in he’s free. No one else is in his office.”

  Egg and yoke on my face.

  “Sorry, I thought you meant that he wouldn’t see me,” Aaron said, his soft explanation not removing the scowl from the cop’s face.

  She lifted a phone, dialed three numbers and waited. Two uniformed officers exited a side door and walked out the front with Tim Horton’s coffee cups in their hands. Numerous jokes about cops and donut shops raced through his mind. He stared at the woman behind the desk to take the smirk off his face.

  She set the phone down.

  “You don’t have an appointment,” she said. Then she grabbed a pen and paper and began jotting down Folley’s name and a number. “Call this number and book something with him for next week. He’s pretty busy this week.” She handed him the paper and lifted her coffee cup to her mouth.

  “You’ve got to be joking?”

  She stopped mid-sip. Only her eyes lifted to meet his.

  “I mean, this is a joke?” He schooled himself to exercise caution, but school was out. “I’ve got information that might help in finding my sister. Why doesn’t anybody want to hear what I have to say?”

  “Sir, you’re going to have to calm down.” She stood up. “Call the number I gave you, after you leave the building.”

  “What’s your name and badge number? I know that is something, by law, that you have to surrender upon being asked. When this is all over, I will report this. I will tell them that I knew pertinent information about a missing person and that I just witnessed a kidnapping not thirty minutes ago, and you refused me. The guy had a gun and threatened to kill me. You told me to exit the building and book an appointment.” He said the last bit in a snarl. He knew he shouldn’t have, but he did.

  Her face softened. After being arrested himself, held in jail overnight until the arraignment, standing before the judge and being let out on bail, regular cops didn’t intimidate him anymore. They were just doing their jobs, and as long as he wasn’t breaking the law, he had nothing to worry about.

  A male voice behind him said, “Did you say you just witnessed another kidnapping?”

  Aaron spun around, lowered into a half crouch. A moment before, no one had been there. Whenever someone crept up on him, his training took over. Years of training with a blindfold had fine tuned his reflexes to lightning quick.

  The man wore a plaid suit and an expression that went from morose to serious when Aaron spun toward him. His hand twitched toward his holster.

  Aaron stood to his full height, resting his hands down to his side. “Yes, I did.”

  “You’re going to need to calm down,” the man said. “Can you do that?”

  “Of course I can do that.”

  “Why are you so on edge?” the man asked, setting his jacket right now that the tension had eased out of the air.

  Aaron couldn’t explain his training. It would take too long, and even then, not many people would understand. For years, he had sat in the center of a circle of martial artists, wearing a blindfold, waiting for his sensei to tap the shoulder of one of his sparring partners, who would then quietly step closer and grab an arm or wrestle a leg out from under him. Aaron would have to fend off the attacker by feel and by hearing, fighting in the dark. His sensei had called it alley training. He always said he had to prepare his students for being jumped in a dark alley where there would be limited movement. Aaron remembered him shouting, “You have to learn to fight with your hands and your feet, not your eyes.”

  “I’m on edge because I just had a gun pointed at me. The man said he would shoot me in the iris if I didn’t move away from him and his partner.”

  The man leaned over to the cop behind the desk, who gave a crooked smile.

  “It’s not a joke,” Aaron said.

  “Shoot you in the iris?” the man repeated.

  “Who are you?” Aaron asked.

  “I’m Detective Folley. I’m handling your sister’s case, along with a few others.”

  “A few others?”

  “It seems two other people went missing that same night. I’m checking to see if they’re connected.”

  “What?” Aaron felt lightheaded. Had they made progress? How aggressive had they been? What’s been discovered so far?

  “Come with me. Let’s talk in my office.”

  Detective Folley led the way down a corridor, to the right and down another corridor. He opened a door that had a plaque on it with Folley’s name printed in gold.

  Inside the office were a simple desk and two chairs facing it. Aaron was surprised to see a MacBook Pro on Folley’s desk.

  “Department funding must’ve gone up in recent years.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Aaron pointed at the Mac. “Those aren’t cheap.”

  “That’s mine. I don’t use department computers. PCs break down too much. But you didn’t come here to talk computers, did you? Tell me what happened.”

  Framed certificates and achievements hung on the wall behind his desk. To the right of his large white desk calendar sat a Rubik’s Cube.

  “You ever solve that?” Aaron asked.

  “No, but I keep trying. I can get one color and sometimes two, but that’s it.”

  Aaron picked the chair that kept him out of the morning sun’s glare coming from the window. He crossed his legs, ankle to knee. He wanted this first meeting to be casual, even social, so he could get to know Folley, feel him out, see how invested he was in his job.

  “Start anytime you want,” Folley said.

  Aaron told him about the recording from his sister on his voice mail and how it led him to go to the island airport that morning. “I’m surprised this is the first you’re hearing of it.”

  “Doing a little investigative work yourself, are you?” Folley asked, completely ignoring the comment about prior knowledge of the recording. “I have to caution you away from doing that.”

  Aaron nodded in an I understand what you’re saying way and continued. He told him about seeing Gary Weeks being pushed into the white van and that as he got close, the two guys in suits pulled weapons and threatened him. He didn’t mention that he took one of the suits off his feet. If it came up later, he’d deal with it then.

  Folley was jotting notes. After a moment, he lea
ned back in his chair and tapped the pen against his lips.

  “Your sister has been missing three days as of today.”

  Aaron nodded and waited.

  “I have to caution you again. It’s important you listen.”

  Aaron nodded for him to go ahead.

  “Vigilantism. Doing it on your own.” Folley leaned forward in his chair and braced his forearms on the desk. “Do you know how stupid it was to address those men? You could’ve been shot. When I find your sister, what do I tell her then? Her renegade brother got shot searching for you?”

  Aaron looked away. Anger served itself up along with a twist of lemon-filled pain. The bitter kind.

  “What’s wrong?” Folley asked. “Why are you so pissed off?” When Aaron didn’t answer immediately, he continued. “Talk to me.”

  “All right. I’ll talk because maybe it’ll help you understand how I feel and why I will do whatever I can to locate my sister.” He uncrossed his legs and stood, pacing off the anger, willing his temper to cool. “My sister has been missing for three days. So far, no one has taken my statement or asked me any questions.” He looked at Folley and raised a hand. “I know, I know, you get missing person cases all the time and they turn out to be a weekend drunken binge or someone eloped. Well, that hasn’t happened in Joanne’s case. She called me. She was scared. No one was there for her and now she’s gone. I’m fucking concerned here.”

  “I know, and that’s what we’re here for.”

  “My other issue was her job.”

  “How so?” Folley asked.

  Aaron faced him, his body a temple, rigid in the face of adversity, every muscle tensing. “I felt that since she was a dancer, a stripper,” the word slipped off his tongue like one would spit a gob of saliva on the pavement, “her case wouldn’t get the same attention that another one would.”

  “That may be perceived in the public, but that isn’t how it is in here. Our job is to protect human life,” he tapped his desk with his pen, “as the highest priority, and that includes dancers, prostitutes and ballerinas. You clear on that?”

  Aaron nodded, walked over to the Rubik’s Cube and picked it up. “You mind?”

  Folley shook his head, set his pen down, laced his hands behind his head and leaned back.

  Aaron worked the puzzle, using deft fingers to slide and twist with the speed honed of years of managing and manipulating every muscle and tendon in his body. He got his first Rubik’s Cube in the second foster home he was shipped to and only lost it three years ago. It was the one item that allowed his mind a chance to settle when the world around him was chaos.

  It took him just over a minute to solve the cube. He slammed it down harder than he meant to.

  “If only life could be that easy,” he whispered.

  Folley said nothing, just stared.

  “My parents took Joanne and me on a summer vacation when I was twelve years old and Joanne was ten.” He angled the guest chair and slumped down in it, defeated for the moment as memories assailed him. “We had it all planned. Northern Ontario, camping, fishing, lakes, sunshine, swimming and ice cream. Joanne had even bought suntan lotion out of her allowance—I remember because of how proud she was of it.” He paused to collect his emotions. He refused to weep in front of Detective Folley. “They stopped at the Petro-Canada on Highway 400, just north of Toronto and we all went to the bathroom.” Aaron glared at Folley. “Joanne and I never saw them again.”

  “What? What happened?”

  “Don’t know. We waited all day. We were young. We didn’t think to check the car for over ten minutes, but it was already gone. I told Joanne that they probably went to gas up and that they’d be right back. They never showed.”

  “Did you ever find out what happened?”

  Aaron shook his head in the negative. “A nice lady bought us an ice cream when she became concerned with Joanne’s crying. I’ll never forget her. She had long earrings and a wide smile. To this day I can close my eyes and still see that kind woman’s face.”

  Folley unlaced his hands and clasped them together on his lap.

  “They separated Joanne and me. Said there just wasn’t enough people taking a brother and a sister. We tried to stay in touch but they moved us so much it became impossible. When I was sixteen, I ran away. I left the system and started searching for Joanne. It took over two years. By the time I found her, she’d gone through seven homes and been abused by at least three different men. She was a wreck.”

  Aaron clenched his fist and covered it with his other hand.

  “I had been practicing martial arts for a few years by then and wanted to go and kill whoever had done that to her, but she said it was over. She begged me to do nothing about it. Do you get my point? Not only didn’t the system help us when we needed it the most, but no one was ever accountable. I pulled her out and gave her a place to stay. By the time she got clean of drugs and alcohol, she started dancing in the clubs around Toronto. She’s an adult, and I couldn’t talk her out of it. But understand something about me. I searched for her all those years ago and I found her on my terms. No one helped. In fact, I was pushed away by the system. Privacy and shit like that. Well, guess what? She’s the only family I’ve got left and I will search for her this time too. Nothing and no one will stop me. I’m a private citizen. I pay my taxes and will come and go as I please. And if I find whoever has hurt my baby sister, they had better fucking pray you get there first.”

  He slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand to release the pent-up anger. He needed to be in his gym. He needed the bag to punch and kick for an hour. It was the only way to release the violence.

  Folley nodded, concern in his eyes. “Your story isn’t uncommon. I understand where you’re coming from, and I don’t want to belittle you or your passion when I say that you have to let the professionals handle this. You have to try to step aside and let us walk in on men with guns. You do know where I’m going with this?”

  Why did I tell him in the first place? I should’ve expected that response because no one really cares, do they?

  Folley typed on his MacBook. His eyes widened and he looked from Aaron and then back to the screen.

  “I thought I recognized your name. I didn’t connect it to your sister when I got the file, but your name was nagging at me. Then I thought I’d check our system to see if there was anything on your parents and here’s what I found.”

  Aaron leaned forward as Folley turned the laptop toward him. His mug shot from six weeks ago filled the screen.

  “What’s all this?” Folley asked. “Attempted murder? And now you’re in my office telling me about guys pointing guns at you. Is trouble just finding you or are you searching for it?”

  Aaron got up and headed for the door.

  “Hold up,” Folley said.

  Aaron stopped without turning around. He waited.

  “You want to tell me about this so we can be on an even keel or do you want to walk away and make me think you’re just a bad dude looking to even a score?”

  Aaron leaned against the wall, facing Folley.

  “A seventeen-year-old girl showed up at my dojo two months ago. She had been in the hospital for three days. Her face was bruised up bad, one eye swollen shut. Her right arm was broken in two spots and four of her fingers had been split back and broken like pretzels. She limped into the dojo and asked if I was the owner of the gym. She told me that one of my students was her father, John Ashcroft, and that her mother was still in the hospital. Apparently he had started taking my classes two months before so he could learn new and exciting ways to beat his wife and daughter.” Aaron paused to step away from the wall. “The system wasn’t helping. No charges were laid. The mother refused. The daughter was too afraid. When John Ashcroft showed up on his regular Wednesday night class, I did two things wrong. I made an example of him and I went too far. I showed the rest of my students what it looks like to break up the human body and how easy it is to snap bones. When Ashcroft lay i
n a puddle of his own blood, I explained to the students that if any of them use this martial art for abuse, the same consequences would befall them. John Ashcroft is still in a coma, and if he dies, my charge goes up to first degree murder. I don’t know how my lawyer got me bail, but he did. My dojo went up for sale the next day and it sold to a bunch of Russians recently.”

  “You’re full of tales about the system not working in your favor. Well, maybe I can change that, but you’re going to have to do something for me.”