The Feeder Read Free Page A

out?” I demanded. I really wasn’t expecting to learn anything from her, but I was desperate. I could at least ask her to connect me to the police.
    To my surprise, she nodded. “Yeah, but I’m not gettin’ involved in dat shit.”
    I whirled from where I had been looking out the office windows for some sign of something. “What do you mean?”
    “The cops. They say they gotta warrant, I give ‘em the key. I’m not gonna argue.”
    “What?” I roared. “The police came?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, did they say what they wanted?”
    The woman looked more scared than pissed off at my questioning. “I tole you, I don’ ask that shit. They wanna a key, I give ‘em one.”
    “Did you see a warrant?”
    “I don’ ask. I don’ wan’ no trouble.”
    “So you’re telling me that the cops came and arrested my sister, and you gave them a key to the room?”
    “Yeah. I don’ wan’ no trouble.”
    “Did they say where they were taking her?”
    El Bitcho shrugged. “Jail, I guess.”
    “Fuck!” I screamed, slamming both palms down on the countertop.
    As I stormed out of the office, I could hear El Bitcho muttering, “I don’ wan’ no trouble…”
    I scanned the wide expanse of beach, which was empty except for a few distant figures of people, scattered at random spots along the shoreline. I couldn’t believe Camille was gone.
    Arrested. For what?
    He is the police.
    Camille had told me that. She had said the police were dirty and compared them to mobsters. I thought she was just being paranoid.
    Maybe she was. She was a drug user. Maybe she’d gotten busted and was on the run because of a drug charge. But it had happened so quickly it seemed more like an abduction than an arrest.
    He is the police!
    I remembered the bruises on my sister’s face and body. A cop had done that? It didn’t feel right. The bruises looked like a mixture of fresh ones and old ones, maybe up to a week old. It did not match the typical injuries one sustained from resisting arrest. She looked like a victim of domestic violence. She had seemed genuinely afraid of this asshole. She’d even been afraid for me, even though she knew I could take care of myself.
    If you mess with them, they’ll fuckin’ kill you .
    What the hell kind of trouble had my sister gotten herself into?
    My cell phone vibrated in my pocket.
    A text message.
    I didn’t recognize the number but as soon as I saw it I knew it was from Camille.
    The message read:
    dont reply its only way ul b safe bye odie
    I returned to the room, heart pounding. Camille was alive, and she somehow had a cell phone. I hadn’t seen a cell phone anywhere in her room. She had called me from the hotel phone. She didn’t call often, but she had my cell phone number memorized.
    Her wet clothing had been left behind. The only thing missing was the pair of panties she had wrung out.
    I paced back and forth from the door to the bed as I tried to analyze it in my head.
    Camille had been arrested, or apparently abducted, by someone from the police department. Evidently she was naked except for a slightly damp pair of panties. I had to assume she was in a car, either an unmarked one or a police cruiser.
    Naked.
    Police didn’t typically arrest naked people and carry them away in a car in view of the public without offering them some sort of cover – a towel, a blanket…
    A jacket.
    I began to form a theory. I’d always had a knack for imagining likely scenarios and most of the time my analysis wasn’t far from the mark. I should have been a detective. A cop .
    Suppose, just suppose… the cell phone she was using belonged to her abductor? Who would abduct/arrest a woman and then allow her access to his cell phone?
    Someone who knew her .
    Someone who knew her well enough to allow her to grab her panties on the way out… to offer her his jacket to cover her nakedness and avoid attracting attention. Cell phones were often found in jacket pockets.
    I slumped to the bed with my head in my