Page 121 of Almost Dead (The Cahills 2)

And Sara had brought over a pan of lasagna. “It’s from Dino’s,” she’d admitted, fighting tears. “It was all I could think of to do.” Jack’s family had been in and out, and they’d received calls from the people she’d worked with at City Wise and also most of Gran’s employees. Deborah had been devastated, wailing into the phone. Elsa and Lars had stopped by in person, Elsa delivering pies and a casserole while fighting tears. She said Rosa and Paloma were devastated as well, and Rosa was lighting candles at her church. Everyone was offering support, and yet most of the time Cissy wanted to be alone. She’d spent hours sitting in B.J.’s room, holding either his favorite stuffed animal or Coco and rocking in the chair they’d bought when he was born.

Now she was angry. Tired of waiting. Exhausted from the lack of sleep and frustrated by the lack of information. Where the hell was her little boy?

While Jack was in the shower, she called Paterno again and left a voice message. Damn it, where was the man? Where was her child? The house was getting to her; the doing nothing was driving her mad. She felt the need to pound her fist through a wall or scream or do any bloody thing to find B.J.

The phone rang, and she jumped.

She knew the drill. If it was a friend, get them off the phone quickly; if it was the kidnappers with a ransom call, keep them on the line. The FBI would be recording.

She picked up before the second ring.

“Hello?” Cissy said, her heart pounding.

“I’ve got him,” an unrecognizable voice whispered in a tone that was absolutely chilling. Cissy gasped, her worst fears crystalized.

“But he’s alive. Tell me he’s alive.”

“I did something you never did, you selfish bitch. I took him to visit his grandmother.”

“What?” Cissy was stunned. “Who is this? Where’s my child? I swear if you hurt him, I’ll hunt you down and—”

Click.

“Wait!” she cried desperately, her heart in a thousand pieces. “Hello? Hello? Who are you? Oh God, please…Bring him back!” she screamed into the phone, but it was dead, the silence deafening, the rush of fear in her brain sounding like the hollow roar of the sea in a cavern. Thoughts of B.J. crowded through her mind, his laughing face, his impish grin and tiny teeth, his bright eyes. Tears streamed down her face, and she melted against the wall, the horrible words ringing through her brain.

I’ve got him.

“B.J.,” she whispered brokenly, burying her face in her hands.

Chapter 21

Paterno examined the picture on the Oregon driver’s license.

It wasn’t anyone he recognized. But it was the picture of the woman who went by the name of Elyse Hammersly, the woman who’d rented the bungalow in Berkeley. The driver’s license listed an address in Gresham, Oregon, as her last place of residence. With a little nudging, he’d had the information faxed to the office in San Francisco and called Quinn to start working on it. Sybil had also handed Paterno a second copy of the documents.

Now she asked, “How soon will…will the body be removed and I can have the place…ah…cleaned and aired out?” She was calmer and was apparently already calculating the weeks and months of lost rent.

“Not for a while. It’s still a crime scene. But I’ll let you know.”

“The sooner the better.”

“I assure you, Ms. Tomini, we want to solve this as soon as possible.” He pointed to a blank line on the rental applications. “You didn’t get any employment history.”

“Oh. Sometimes it’s not required. Elyse put down first and last month’s rent, plus a security and cleaning deposit. We checked her credit history, and it was stellar. She was looking for work in San Francisco.”

“She lived alone?”

Sybil shuddered delicately. “Apparently not.”

“I mean, she wasn’t married? No live-in boyfriend? Someone who came with her?”

“Not to our knowledge.”

“How does she pay her rent?”

“We send all correspondence to the rental, though we haven’t billed her yet because she paid in advance.” Sybil walked around the desk to the spot where Paterno was standing and flipped over one of the pages he was holding. “See…Here’s the receipt for cash. She hadn’t opened a checking account yet, and since her credit history was so good, no red flags went up.”

Paterno nodded. Hopefully Quinn was getting some information from Oregon. “She came into your office to rent the place. Did she drive?”

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