“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her. The FBI are here. They’re in the dining area. An Agent McAllister?” She described him.
Pine hustled to the dining area and spotted a man who had to be Drew McAllister, and a tall, younger man with him. They were sitting near the back of the room. She ran over and they both gaped when they spotted her.
“Agent Pine?” exclaimed McAllister as he jerkily rose from his seat.
“That’s me.”
“I just got a call from Tate Callum and heard you got away.”
Pine gave them a thirty-second down-and-dirty on what had happened to her and how she’d escaped. “I’m hoping the guys I trussed up can lead us to what’s going on.”
McAllister, surprisingly, shook his head. “That won’t be happening. Callum told me that when they arrived at the address you gave them the men were gone.”
Pine groaned. “Shit. Someone must have come and gotten them loose, because they weren’t getting away on their own. And they were both unconscious.”
He jerked a thumb at his partner. “This is Neil Bertrand.”
Pine nodded at him. Bertrand said, “They roughed you up?”
Pine rubbed her swollen face. “I wasn’t as cooperative as they would have liked.”
McAllister said, “Look, we came down here to talk to you about Tim Pine, but since all hell has broken loose, maybe we need to pitch in on this thing first, whatever it is.”
“Thanks, right now I could use all the help I can get.”
“The locals will process the house where you were kept. They might turn up something.”
“I need to call my friend, Carol. I left my phone in my room. I’ll be right back.”
“No, we got it right here. Ms. Blum turned it over to me. She’s been trying to contact you.” He handed it to her.
Pine snatched up her phone and unlocked it. There were several earlier calls and messages from Blum. She was obviously frantic about Pine’s disappearance. She called Blum’s phone, but it went right to voice mail. Cursing, she texted Blum, but got no reply.
“I’ll be right back,” she told McAllister.
She ran up to her room and grabbed her ID and guns from the room safe, then ran back down to the lobby and reentered the dining area.
“When did you see Carol last?”
“This morning right when we got to the hotel. She was the one who told us about your disappearance. But I don’t know where she went after that.” He glanced at his partner. “Neil, check into that.”
Bertrand rose and left.
Pine sat down in his seat and looked at McAllister.
He said, “Blum thought it might be Desiree Atkins’s drug ring associates who took you. What do you think?”
“That’s not it. The man who’s leading this up spoke to me. I can’t ID him because I was blindfolded. But he told me that if Desiree Atkins got bailed out they were going to get to her and make her talk. That doesn’t sound like her drug ring partners, if there even are any.”
“Did he say what sort of information he wanted from her?”
“He wanted to find somebody.”
“Find who?”
“Eloise Cain.” Pine drew in a long breath. “Who is the same woman I’m looking for.”
“Did he say why he wanted to find her?”
“He said that she had killed his brother. He wanted revenge, I suppose.”