Page 70 of Near Miss

“Peter Greco and Carly Riggs. Greco is turning state’s evidence against Gromyko, so I doubt the Greek is happy the FBI is looking for him. That bit is confidential.”

“I heard nothing. You want an APB on both?”

“Yes, please.”

“I’ll call you back.” He hung up.

Joan was standing in the door. “I haven’t been able to locate Carly anywhere.”

“Go through her apartment and see if you can find any sort of communication with us—notes, lipstick on the mirrors, anything.”

Joan walked in fifteen minutes later. “Nothing,” she said. “But Carly has four very nice handbags; I saw them when she moved in. They’re all in the apartment, and she wouldn’t have left the building without one of them.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s a woman, and women don’t go anywhere without a handbag. Oh, and one of them had her wallet in it, and some money. That’s likely the one she intended to take with her.”

“Dino is on it,” Stone said. “He’s the best we can do.”

“I’ll wait for his call,” Joan said.

An hour later, Joan buzzed. “Carly on one.”

Stone yanked the receiver off the hook. “Carly, where are you?”

“On the corner of Fifty-Seventh and Third Avenue,” she said. “I had to borrow someone’s phone.”

“How did you get there?”

“A man came into my apartment last night and sprayed something in my face. I woke up about five minutes ago behind a dumpster and went to the street.”

“Do you see any cabs from where you are?”

“Yes! Be there soon.” She hung up.

Stone buzzed Joan. “Carly is on the way here in a cab. Keep watch for her, and go armed, just in case.”

“Gotcha!”

Stone grabbed a weapon from his desk drawer and ran to the front door of the house. He watched through the peephole, in case she got out there. Nothing.

Stone called Joan’s cell.

“No sign of her.”

“Here I am,” Carly said.

Stone turned to find her standing in the door of his office.

“I’m so relieved to see you,” Stone said.

“I’m relieved, too,” she replied.

He buzzed Joan. “Go pay for that cab out front and call everybody off the search for Carly,” he said.

Joan appeared in the doorway, and Stone held up a hand to stop her. “What happened?”

“I was kidnapped,” Carly said. “They hit me with some sort of spray and put me out. I woke up in an alley near Bloomingdale’s.”

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