Limbo Read online

  Where the hell had the dog gone? And worse, they were losing time. Tim checked his watch. Ten minutes blown getting through the row. Who knew where Otis could be by now?

  But all the damned doors were closed. He had to be here. Had to be.

  Tim’s phone alerted a text. Lucie’s ringtone. Still moving, he snatched the phone from his pocket and checked her message. No Otis on her end either.

  That left the middle. Mrs. Lutz’s search area.

  He doubled back and found Lucie waiting by Otis’s still-empty crate with Mrs. Lutz.

  Mrs. Lutz’s dark eyes were wild with a mix of panic and desperation. He couldn’t blame her. Her husband had just been carted off to prison and now her beloved dog was gone.

  Of all the nonsense he faced in a day, missing dogs got to him. Dogs, in a lot of ways, couldn’t help themselves. They faced a world filled with cruelty and wacked out abusers. A dog like Otis—pampered and loved—loose on the streets of Chicago?

  He’d get eaten alive.

  And for the owners? Total devastation. Hell, the day he’d met Lucie, he’d seen it on her after one of her charges had gotten dogjacked.

  Mrs. Lutz brought a shaky hand to her mouth. “My baby.”

  Tim touched her arm. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. He’s here somewhere. We’ll find him.”

  A woman broke through the crowd dragging with her a kid of about eight wearing baggy jeans and a Captain America T-shirt. The boy’s shaggy dark hair had a major static problem and his scowl could melt steel.

  “Excuse me,” the woman said. “Are you the folks looking for Otis?”

  “Yes!” Mrs. Lutz said. “Do you have him?”

  “No. I’m sorry. But my son thinks he saw him.”

  Finally. A witness. Tim stepped forward. “Where?”

  She pointed to the back exit. “He went through that door.”

  Lucie gaped at the woman. “As in, he left the room? By himself?”

  A vision of Otis bounding into the main gym, all eighty-five pounds of him charging into the ring where well-mannered, highly poised purebreds showed off their perfect appearance, flooded Lucie’s mind.

  Panic in full attack, she gripped Tim’s arm. “Oh, my God. He could be crashing the show.”

  The kid shook his head. “No. He went with someone. Some lady.”

  The room did a loop-the-loop, throwing her off balance, and she tipped backward. Tim grabbed her before she went over, pulling her to his side and supporting her weight.

  “I’ve got you.”

  Poor Otis. That lovable, pain in the butt that drove her to near madness when he refused to go outside in the rain, who’d made a game of sitting in front of the door, blocking it so she had to shove it open with his dead weight against it, was gone. Stolen from a room filled with people.

  The room looped again and Lucie squeezed her eyes closed. Fought for balance and calm. Anything that would settle her raging mind.

  Because falling apart wouldn’t help Otis.

  Mrs. Lutz held her hands out. “What lady?” she asked, her voice a stretched like wire struggling to remain intact.

  The kid shrugged. “Don’t know. I was sitting on the floor playing my game.”

  Tim badged the woman, probably to let her know he wasn’t some crazed dog show stalker, and squatted to eye level with her son. “What did the lady look like?”

  Again the kid shrugged and Lucie nearly screamed. But Tim, bless his hunky self, stayed calm. Still squatting, he linked his hands together and nodded.

  “Was her hair dark like your mom’s? Or reddish like mine?”

  The kid pointed at Mrs. Lutz. “Like hers.”

  A blonde. Not exactly a slam-dunk identification, but a start.

  “And what was she wearing? Jeans?”

  The kid shrugged again and Tim patted his shoulder. “Okay, buddy. Thanks.”

  Tim stood, asked the kid’s mother for her contact info in case he had more questions and tapped the number into his phone.

  As the kid and his mom walked off, Tim faced Lucie and Mrs. Lutz. “We know he’s out of the room. You two go out there and start looking. I’m gonna hit security.”

  “Okay,” Lucie said. “Good idea. Maybe they can help us search.”

  Tim pointed to the camera above the emergency exit. “Or maybe there’s video that’ll show us who we’re looking for.

  2

  Fifteen minutes later, after wandering the halls surrounding the auxiliary gym, Lucie received a text from Tim telling her to get her butt to the security office.

  That couldn’t be good news.

  She entered the venue’s makeshift security office, a barely ten-by-ten room off the main gym that was more than likely a coach’s office during the week.

  A guy in a beige golf shirt and black pants sat at the desk in front of a laptop. He couldn’t have been much older than Lucie, maybe late twenties with wavy dark hair. Thin, wiry build.

  The polar opposite of Tim who stood behind him, arms crossed, peering over his head.

  Without taking his eyes from the screen, Tim waved her to his side. “This is Kurt. He’s handling security for the event. He found the blonde on video and we have guards at all exits. If they see Otis or the woman they’ll grab ‘em. Kurt this is Lucie. She’s a friend of the owner’s.”

  “Hi,” Kurt said. “Where is the owner?”

  “I left her downstairs. She’s upset, so I told her to keep looking for Otis while I ran up here. Just trying to keep her busy.”

  Tim pointed at the laptop. “Take a look.”

  Four black and white images of the auxiliary gym and all those doggie stalls split the screen. Kurt zoomed in on the image in the upper quadrant.

  “It starts here,” he said.

  On the video, Mrs. Lutz stood behind Otis’s crate while reading something on her phone. A few seconds passed and she stowed her phone in her purse, looking down at the crate then left and right.

  “Based on the time stamp,” Tim said, “I think this was when you texted her.”

  On the upper quadrant, Mrs. Lutz bent to check the crate’s door before walking off.

  “Now watch the upper right quadrant.”

  Five seconds after Mrs. Lutz wandered away, a woman, a blonde wearing boots and a dark sweater marched right up to Otis’s crate, opened it and hooked a leash on him.

  Of course, Otis, being Mr. Social, didn’t even put up a fight. No biting, no barking—no help! Someone is trying to dogjack me!—no alert of any kind.

  And with the activity in that room, all those people distracted with their phones or getting their own dogs ready for the show, no one flinched.

  The woman though, she was a pro. A real calm cookie. Nothing about what she’d done looked off. She simply looked like someone taking her dog from his crate.

  Done.

  That fast, Otis was under her control.

  Lucie’s stomach didn’t just seize, it wrenched into a tight ball.

  “Luce?”

  She rolled her lips in, set her hand across her chest and fought the immense pressure trapping her air.

  “Luce,” Tim repeated.

  She looked up. Rock solid Tim O’Brien. The man who in the months since she’d met him had proven he could handle all sorts of things without losing his cool.

  “Tim, I will die if anything happens to that dog.”

  “That’s why nothing will happen to him.” He faced her, set his hands on her shoulders. “The place is locked down. She’s not getting out of here with him unless she goes through a window.”

  “The windows don’t open,” Kurt said.

  Lucie went back to the laptop and the video of the woman leading Otis to a door. Just to the right, the little kid who’d been playing his game glanced up.

  Thank God for that boy or they wouldn’t even know where to begin looking.

  “I’m totally buying that kid a donut.”

  “He might deserve two. Kurt, are there cameras outside that room? Can we tra
ck her movements?”

  Kurt went to work on the keyboard then started clicking links. On the third try, a shot of a crowd-cramped hallway popped up. “Dang it.”

  “What?”

  “This is the hallway, but look.” He clicked another link and tiled two screens on his monitor. “This is her leaving the room. This is the hallway outside the room.”

  Tim leaned in. “I don’t see her.”

  “There’s a blind spot when you come out the door on that side. If she kept to the wall…”

  “Crap,” Tim said. “She could be anywhere in the building.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tim waggled a finger at the screen. “Let’s saddle up here. Can you print me a couple of stills of that woman? And what about flashing Otis’s picture and the one of the kidnapper on the jumbo screen in the main gym? Get everyone looking for them. Someone’ll notice him in that Hawaiian print shirt. While we’re doing that, you keep looking through these videos. Try different cameras. Maybe another one picked her up.”

  He turned back to Lucie. “Don’t freak. We’ve got this. In ten minutes, we’ll have him back.”

  “Okay,” Tim said, “listen up.”

  Lucie, Joey, Ro and Mrs. Lutz huddled around him, the offensive line about to hear the play from their quarterback. Only the play calling was happening in a not-so-quiet corner of a corridor between the main and auxiliary gyms.

  Something bumped Lucie’s leg and she glanced down at a poodle sniffing the hem of her jeans.

  At least he wasn’t humping her like some of her clients tended to do.

  The dog moved on and Lucie brought her gaze back to Tim. Three minutes ago they’d left the security office and, with Operation Rescue Otis in full swing, she’d texted Joey and Ro, directing them to this hallway to receive their assignments.

  They had to find Otis. And the evil woman who’d swiped him.

  Had to.

  Tim held up a photo so Joey, Ro and Mrs. Lutz could see it. “Lucie has extras of this picture. This is the woman who has Otis.”

  Ro gasped, her face stretching tight as her mouth dropped into exaggerated horror. “Someone stole him?”

  “Yes.” Lucie handed them copies of the photo. “We grabbed this picture from a security video. She’s a blonde. The picture isn’t great, but she’s wearing boots and jeans.”

  Joey studied the picture. “Half the women in here are wearing boots and jeans. One leaf turns and all of a sudden everyone is in boots.”

  Her brother. Always with an argument. Lucie made a low growling sound, fought the urge to leap on him and start pounding.

  Tim clasped her arm, gave it a squeeze.

  “I know,” Tim said. “But you’ll have to weed them out. If they aren’t blonde, move on. According to this photo, she’s wearing a watch on her left wrist. No watch, move on.”

  “Thank you,” Lucie said to Tim. “For saving my brother’s life, because I was just about to kill him and my mother would never forgive me.”

  Joey snorted and Tim tugged on the end of her ponytail then got back to business. “Security has all the exits blocked. They have limited staff here, but the cops are on the way. We’re losing time. Let’s fan out.”

  He flipped one of the flyers over and set it against the wall. Using the pen he’d borrowed from the security office, he drew a map of the building. “There are four hallways surrounding the gym. Two exits to the parking lot on the north and west sides. Ro, you take the left flanking hallway. Joey you take the right. Mrs. Lutz, you handle inside the gym. Lucie will take the main hallway near the west entrance. The blonde left the gym via that exit. Any door you see, open it. Bathrooms? Check them all. We don’t have time to screw around.”

  Ro leaned into Lucie, got right up to her ear. “Swear to God, if you don’t do this guy soon, I will. So hot!”

  Seriously? Could her BFF not focus on the important things?

  Tim gave them a hard glare. “You two about done?”

  Whoopsie. “Sorry,” Lucie said. “Ro’s fault.”

  “You know you want to,” Ro muttered.

  The two of them straightened up and Tim turned his attention back to the group at large. “Security is blasting Otis’s and the blonde’s picture on the big screen in the gym.”

  “Good,” Ro said. “We’ll find him. And, when we do, I’ll kick that evil witch’s ass. Stealing a dog. What is wrong with people?”

  “Believe me,” Tim said, “I ask myself that every day. Everyone clear on their assignment?”

  Ro sucked in her cheeks and peeled her lips back. Mean face. “Oh, I’m clear.”

  Joey gave her a look. “Listen, Killer, take it easy. I don’t need you getting arrested. Usually, it’s my sister I’m bailing out.”

  Ohmygod. Once, it happened. Once! Let it go.

  She’d just take it out on the deceitful blonde when they captured her. That woman would be sorry she ever put her hands on Otis.

  Tim smacked his hands together. “Let’s roll. And if you find her, text me. And, Ro, please. No ass kicking. Let’s do this right.”

  “Dream on, O’Hottie. That bitch is toast. Stealing someone’s pet? That’s crossing the line.”

  Ro spun away, her long hair flying. Joey and Tim, being the men they were, watched her curvy, full hips swinging as she tottled down the hallway in her spiked heels. A total man killer.

  Lucie? Not so much. Lucie was more the semi-average, cute girl. But one who currently had the attention of a hunky Irish cop.

  Giving up on the distraction of Ro’s rear, Tim slapped Joey on the shoulder. “God bless you, brother.”

  “Dude, you have no idea.”

  Lucie once again rolled her eyes. Men. “Hey! Let’s find our dog.”

  Joey and Mrs. Lutz marched off, leaving Lucie and Tim alone in the hallway.

  “I notice,” she said, “you didn’t give yourself an assignment. What are you up to, Detective?”

  He smiled down at her. “Remember the Dachshund?”

  “The one Joey worried would knock Otis’s limbo out of the winning spot?”

  “Yep. He found that woman’s scarf.”

  Tim whipped a plastic baggie containing a nasty, half-chewed dog bone from his jacket pocket. “This is Otis’s. I took it from his crate before I went to security. I’m gonna hunt down the show’s organizer and see if she can hook me up with that Dachshund’s owner. Maybe they’ll let us use him to track Otis.”

  Genius! This was why he was the detective and the rest of them were…well…whatever it was they were. She gripped the front of his jacket, yanked him down a foot so they were face to face, and hit him with a lip lock. Mashed her lips against his, throwing everything she had into it and running her tongue along his bottom lip. Something she’d figured out he liked. They’d spent the last six weeks exploring each other. Kisses and some wandering hands, but that was it. No home plate.

  Not yet.

  Soon.

  But whenever she ran her tongue along his bottom lip, he let out a moan that only made the going-slow more torturous.

  Tim backed away, blinking. “Wow.”

  “We find this dog and there’ll be more. A whole lot more.”

  With that, he smacked her on the rear and pointed. “Go. Before I haul you into a closet and have my way with you.”

  Lucie scooted off to her assigned search area. If she weren’t so darned worried about Otis, she’d take him up on that closet thing.

  Right now, she needed to put her arms around Otis, that lug of a dog with the mushy face and crazy jutting bottom teeth. He’d stolen her heart the first day she’d walked him. Was he a noodge sometimes? Yes. Did he refuse to poop in the rain? Absolutely. But the love he had to give? Amazeballs.

  She swung into her designated hallway to begin her search and found it relatively empty. Three groups of about half a dozen people each huddled around vendor booths. She’d start there. Just whip into the middle of the groups and check them out. After that she’d peek in the doorways
. One, two, three of them that she could see.

  They’d find him. They would. Whatever it took.

  She weaved through the crowd huddling in front of an organic dog food booth, her eyes sweeping side to side.

  Otis, with that mug, would be easy to spot. If the thieving witch of a blonde had half a brain cell, she’d have hightailed it to the parking lot.

  Or hidden him somewhere.

  So, barring Otis and his Hawaiian print shirt hopping up to shout “Here I am,” she needed to focus on the woman.

  And of the dozen or so females in Lucie’s sightline, only two were blondes. But not only were they not wearing boots, the hair wasn’t right. The woman in the photo had shoulder length hair while the two blondes Lucie spotted wore theirs short.

  Minor set back. She moved through the crowd, found a serious lack of blondes and forced herself to not dwell on it.

  Just past the first vendor booth was a door. She jiggled the handle.

  Locked.

  Hmm…. She knocked then stuck her ear against it just in case Otis was whimpering inside. Noise from one of the chattering groups drowned out anything she might hear, and she stuck her finger in her left ear to block the ambient noise.

  Right ear still pressed to the door, she used her free hand to knock again, a quick, triple-staccato that would send Otis into a mindmelt.

  Silence. Dammit.

  A few feet in front of her, a small crowd surrounded something—probably another vendor—Lucie was too short to see. She nudged in behind a woman—a brunette—and went up on tiptoe.

  “What’s going on?”

  “A reporter doing interviews. She has a cameraman and everything.”

  Ah. Lucie scooted around the crowd and spotted the cameraman standing near the back entrance to the auxiliary gym.

  Where the dogs were housed.

  Half the doorway was roped off and the cameraman stood inside the cordoned area. The reporter, a blonde—not wearing boots—finished with her interviewee.

  If someone leaving the gym via this door wanted to steal a dog, they’d probably choose the closest exit to the parking lot. Which would be the west exit. Barring that, the next closest would be the north exit.