Lover At Last(220)

Indeed, he feared he was going to crack before she did.

Taking his leave, he went up the stairs and into the kitchen. The first thing he did was go over to his phone, in case she had called or in the event that Audi of hers had finally moved after seven nights of going nowhere fast: The damn thing had been parked in front of that house since he’d paid his visit, as if she mayhap knew he’d put a tracer on it.

Checking the screen, he saw that someone had called him, but it was a number that was not in his contact list.

And there was a voice mail.

He was not interested in fielding some human’s mis-dials, but as there was a chance it was a lesser breaking protocol, he knew he had to listen to the message.

As he accessed it, he walked in the direction of his humidor. He’d been smoking a lot lately, and probably doing too much coke. Which was painfully counter-intuitive—if one was already twitchy and frustrated, adding stimulants to that internal chemistry was gasoline to a fire—

“Hola. This is Sola’s grandmother. I am trying to reach…an Assail…please?” Assail stopped dead in the middle of his living room. “Please call me back now? Thank you—”

With a feeling of dread, he cut the message off and hit Call Back.

One ring. Two rings—

“¿Hola?”

Indeed, he didn’t know her name. “This is Assail, madam. Are you all right?”

“No, no—I am not. I found your number on her bedside table so I call. There is something wrong.”

He gripped his iPhone hard. “Tell me.”

“She is gone. She came home, but then she leave out the door right after she arrived—I hear her go? Except all of her things, her backpack, her car, it is all here. I was sleeping and I hear downstairs, someone is moving. I call out her name and no one answered—then I hear this hard noise—loud sound—and so I come down. The front door is open, and I fear she has been taken—I do no know what to do. She always told me, we do not call the police. I do not know—”

“Shh, it is all right. You did the correct thing. I’m coming directly.”

Assail ran to the front door without bothering to communicate with the twins; nothing was on his mind except getting over to that little house as fast as he could.

A second was all it took to dematerialize, and as he resumed form in the front yard, he thought that of all the scenarios he’d run through in his mind for coming back, this was not it.

As the grandmother reported, the Audi was parked on the street at the end of the walkway. Just where it had been. But what was of note? There was a scramble of messy footfalls disturbing the snow, the trail crossing the lawn to the street in a diagonal pattern.

She’s been kidnapped, Assail thought.

Goddamn it.

Jogging up the squat steps, he hit the doorbell and stamped his feet. The idea that someone had taken his female—

The door opened and the woman on the other side was visibly shaken. And then she seemed further taken aback as she took him in with her eyes. “You are…Assail?”

“Yes. Please let me in, madam, and I shall be of aid to you.”

“You are not the man who came before.”

“Not that you saw, madam. Now, please, let me in.”

As Marisol’s grandmother stepped aside, she lamented, “Oh, I do not know where she is. Mãe de Deus, she is gone, gone….”

He glanced around the tidy little living room, and then stalked out into the kitchen to look at the back door. Intact. Opening it wide, he leaned out. No footprints other than those he’d left a week ago. Closing things back up and locking the dead bolt, he returned to her grandmother.

“You were upstairs?”

“Sí. In the bed. As I said, I was asleep. I hear her come in, but I was half-awake. Then I hear…that sound, of someone falling. I say I come down, then the front door opens.”

“Did you see a car drive off?”

“Sí. But it was very far away, and the license plate—nothing.”

“How long ago?”

“I called you fifteen, maybe twenty minutes after. I went to her room and looked around—that is where I found the napkin with your number on it.”

“Has anyone called?”

“No one.”

He checked his watch, and then grew concerned about how pale the elderly woman was. “Here, madam, sit down.”

As he settled her onto the floral couch in the living room, she took out a dainty handkerchief and pressed it to her eyes. “She is my life.”

Assail tried to remember how humans addressed their superiors. “Mrs.—ah, Mrs….”

“Carvalho. My husband was Brazilian. I am Yesenia Carvalho.”