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drill. I asked if you touched anything.”
    Oh yeah. He was still carrying a grudge and so were some of her former colleagues.
    “No. I didn’t touch anything.”
    Police officers were a tight-knit group. There was a bond between them and if you went against one you suffered the wrath of all. In her case, it was a select group that worshiped the Shift Commander, Jeffery Booker.
    The complaint she’d filed against him had never been forgotten. To make sure she never did, she was reminded with every speeding ticket as well as with having her vehicle towed without cause. Of course, the police officers were only doing their job.
    The tickets became fewer as the years went on and they’d stopped towing her car.
    She’d had her fight. It was over. Maybe not for them but it was for her. It was about Sydney and what had happened to her.
    “What time did you arrive at the apartment?”
    “Just before noon. I heard a noise coming from the bedroom and approached it. There was a man wearing a black ski mask. I’d say he was about five eight, one hundred and forty pounds. He could be of Asian descent.”
    “If you didn’t see his face, how do you know he’s Asian?”
    She suppressed the urge to talk down to him as he was doing to her.
    “I could see his eyes. He also had a tattoo on his left ankle. It was some kind of dragon symbol. I saw it when he jumped out the window. I chased after him but he escaped in a pickup.”
    Markie gave him a description of the pickup and what she saw of the driver. She watched as he reluctantly wrote the information down all the while giving her the
I’d rather be some place else look
.
    “Anything else?”
    “No.”
    Markie didn’t tell him about Mr. Navigator. Although she didn’t think he and Sydney were involved she couldn’t say for sure. Until she figured out what her sister was up to, Mr. Navigator was her problem.
    He was lying about something and she intended to find out what it was.

Chapter Two
     
    S ydney groaned as she opened her eyes. Her head throbbed and each time she tried to move a blinding pain shot through her skull. She tried to lift her hand and that was when she realized her hands were tied behind her back. Her feet were bound with rope and her mouth was covered with silver duct tape.
    With no window and no watch she was disoriented, unable to tell where she was or even the time of day. Someone had taken her watch and now she knew why.
    She worked the rope until her wrists felt raw. They were probably bleeding. Couldn’t they have at least put her in a chair? Then she would have had a better chance of freeing herself.
    She wiggled to the edge of the mattress that covered the cot and wrinkled her nose. What was that stench? Oh God. A cross between vomit and urine assaulted her senses and she scrambled to sit up.
    Using her shoulder, Sydney pushed herself into a sitting position then lost her balance and fell over at the other end of the cot. She needed to get her hands in front of her body. All those years Nan had forced her to do gymnastics training had to be worth something.
    Rolling on to her back and taking a deep breath, she widened her elbows then wiggled her buttocks between her bound hands, gritting her teeth when the pressure of the rope bit into her wrists. With her buttocks on the bed, and with careful precision so as not to dislocate any joints, she was able to put her legs through her bound hands to get them in front of her.
    Smiling at her small accomplishment, she ripped the duct tape from her mouth and almost screamed with the pain. She had to check the tape to see if her skin had parted company with her face.
    Now that she’d removed the duct tape from her mouth, she worked at the rope on her wrists. It loosened enough so her fingers could untie her feet then she made her way over to the steel door. It was bolted from the outside. There was no keyhole to see what was on the other side of the door. All she heard was something that sounded like a