“I’ll see you then.” I hung up and looked toward Will’s office.
“Who was that?” he asked, popping into the doorway.
“Aubrey. She wants to have dinner with me tonight. You don’t mind, do you?”
He shook his head. “Not in the least. You’ll come home after, right?”
“I’ll come home.”
He grinned. “Promise?”
I held up one hand. “I promise.”
He came over and kissed me. “I’d miss you if you didn’t.”
I’d miss him too, and that was the part that scared me.
Chapter 37
Clark
My phone rang at nine o’clock, almost on the dot. I had been looking over files on my computer, files which Shelly had patiently organized, all cold cases the PD wanted me to consult on. Shelly had already figured out four of them and she’d left little notes in the margins explaining her theories. Her brain never ceased to amaze me. I smiled and reached for the ringing phone in my pocket.
“Clark here.”
“Clark, it’s Mal,” a man’s voice said. His breath heaved and his voice quivered.
Mal was Lynn and Mason’s best friend, and Aubrey’s husband, but I had to admit that I didn’t know him very well. I had no idea why he would be calling me, particularly now. “Is everything all right?”
“No,” he bit out. I could hear crying in the background. “It’s Shelly.”
“What about her?” I was already walking out of my office door and toward the elevator.
“Someone took her,” Mal said.
My heart leaped into my throat. “Who took her?”
“I have no idea. Can you come to the pub around the corner?”
“Five minutes,” I replied, and then I hung up on him.
Someone had taken Shelly. Shelly was in danger. In the back of my mind, I had the sudden and concise thought that the person who had taken Shelly was the one in trouble, but I pushed that thought back. I’d know more when I got there.
I opened the door to the pub and found Aubrey sitting on a stool, shaking and crying.
“He just took her,” she wailed, and then she buried her face in Mal’s shirt.
I walked over toward her and pulled a stool up close to where she sat. “I need for you to tell me everything that happened.” My words were crisp and succinct, and a little short, I knew. I watched Mal bristle. I held up a hand to fend off the protest I
knew was going to come from him. He settled only a little, still bristly and offended.
“We were sitting over there.” Aubrey pointed toward a booth that was now in disarray. Plates were scattered across the table, with food lying where it had flown off the plates. There was an open box on the table, and bright, colorful strings littered the surface. “We were making friendship bracelets.”
I knew the significance of that, but I couldn’t stop and think about it right now.
“Then what happened?”
She pointed toward the door. “This guy walked in. And he came and scooted into the booth beside Shelly.”