Ground Zero

“What?”

“I just remembered: Weezy didn’t carry ID.”

What?

“You’re kidding, right?”

He shook his head. “Wish I was. She was afraid someone would steal her pocketbook and learn who she was and where she lived, so she never traveled with credit cards or anything.”

“Then we just wasted our time. Call emergency services and see if they delivered a Jane Doe to a hospital yesterday.”

Ed got right to it. Didn’t take him long—he had the number in his call history. He did some talking, then looked at Jack.

“A Jane Doe was hit by a car yesterday afternoon half a dozen blocks from here. She was unconscious and they took her to Mount Sinai.”

Jack rose as he gulped the rest of his beer.

“Let’s go.”

8

Dawn Pickering stared down at the Jackie Onassis Reservoir in Central Park and felt one of her berserk moods coming on.

She didn’t know if being three months pregnant had anything to do with it, or just the fact that she was totally a prisoner in this apartment. Not just an apartment—a beautiful apartment with every imaginable amenity. Beyond beautiful. A Fifth Avenue penthouse duplex overlooking Central Park. But a gilded cage. She wanted to smash its walls.

She rubbed her swelling belly. She’d popped a few weeks ago and was showing. She realized it was a relatively small bump but it made her feel like an elephant.

Back in May she’d sneaked out and landed herself in terrible trouble. She lived with daily reminders of those days. But she’d gone for a good reason—to abort the baby. She’d never wanted this baby, especially after learning the father’s—Jerry’s—true identity. And now, as the weeks passed, she was getting closer and closer to the point of no return, where she wouldn’t be able to get an abortion.

And it was making her totally crazy.

All Mr. Osala’s fault. He said he’d been hired by her mother to protect her and so he kept her locked up here. For her own good, he insisted. Because Jerry was out there, looking for her, looking for his child, and as long as she carried that child he would never hurt her. But if he ever learned that she had aborted his baby . . .

No argument that Jerry was a totally dangerous guy, but she couldn’t have this baby!

Didn’t anyone understand that? She was only eighteen. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life in hiding. That would be like seventy or eighty years.

She wanted to throw a knife at somebody.

She turned away from the window and walked past the hot tub, the pool, the gym equipment, and went downstairs toward the living quarters. She was just stepping out of the stairwell when she saw Gilda the housekeeper leaving Mr. Osala’s suite. She knew from chitchat with the older woman that Mr. Osala had a bedroom, an office, and his own bath in there—the reason she hardly ever saw him on the rare times he was home.

She noticed that the latch didn’t catch as Gilda pulled the door closed behind her. Dawn had long wanted a peek inside, but the door was always locked and Gilda would never let her in—the “Master” totally valued his privacy.

Fine. But he’d taken charge of her life and she deserved to know a little more about him. She had only his word that Mom had hired him, and Mom wasn’t around to confirm or deny the story.

Dawn felt her throat tighten. God, how she missed her. If she could have just one more day with her . . . even ten minutes . . .

She shook it off and waited for Gilda’s solid form to bustle around a corner. Then she tiptoed to Mr. Osala’s door and slipped through. She checked the knob to make sure it would turn, then closed the door behind her. The windows were shaded, so she felt along the wall till she found a light switch.

Shockingly bright overhead fluorescents flared to life, intensified by the stark white of the bare walls. Totally bare. Not a photo, not a painting, not even a scratch or nail hole to suggest that anything had ever decorated them. A big, plain mahogany desk dominated the room, sporting a computer monitor and nothing else. A black leather office chair and a filing cabinet completed the furnishings.

This was it? This was his office? She’d expected dark paneling, lush carpeting, and all sorts of memorabilia.

She moved to the next room and found more bare white walls surrounding a neatly made double bed with a light beige blanket but no spread. Two large armoires dominated the room. She opened one, then the other. Both were racked with expensive suits.

Strange.

But then, Mr. Osala was a strange man.

Clothing appeared to be his only extravagance—that and the rest of the house. But as for his personal quarters, he lived like a monk. And he’d chosen rooms with no view of the park. Not that it would matter with the heavy shades on the windows.

She smiled. Might be evidence that he was a vampire, except she’d seen him standing in full sunlight. So it had to be a privacy thing.

Dawn wandered back to the office area and pulled open one of the desk drawers for a peek. She spotted a driver’s license and what looked like a college ID. She reached—

“The Master is a man who values his privacy.”

Dawn gasped and looked up to see a thick-bodied woman with gray, bu

Gilda.

“The door was open.” She felt her face redden as she slammed the drawer shut. “I was just curious.”

“You are trouble,” the older woman said in accented English—Eastern Europe somewhere. “You have been trouble since the day he brought you here.”

She had been warm to Dawn in the begi

“I totally don’t mean to be. I’m just so bored. Can you understand that?”

She nodded. “Of course I can.”

Good. Maybe Gilda was mellowing a little toward her. Dawn needed an ally here. Mr. Osala’s new driver was totally unreachable. That left only Gilda.

She didn’t know why she was afraid of Mr. Osala. He’d never threatened her, hadn’t punished her for disobeying him. He saw to her every comfort, gave her everything she asked for except freedom and communication with the outside world—no phone, no Internet, which meant no MySpace or Face-book. She was totally cut off from everyone she’d ever known. He said that was to protect her from giving away her location. Maybe so, but it seemed totally extreme.

And there were times . . . the way he looked at her . . . no lust or anything like that, just sort of . . . calculating. She would have totally preferred lust. She could handle lust.

She had this feeling sometimes that he wasn’t saving her from something so much as saving her for something.

She stepped closer to Gilda and looked her in the eyes.

“Then you won’t tell Mr. Osala about this?”

The woman’s dark eyes flashed and she smiled, revealing her gapped teeth.

“Of course I will.”