The driver hit a button on his dash, put the car in Drive, and pulled out. Not exactly quick, but it was enough to get her away from the hospital.
He said, “Anywhere in particular?”
“Just drive.” She used the phone to search the web for Lydia Rosenberg, but it wasn’t as if her name was listed on any local county property deeds. Her life was likely hidden behind company assets.
But Eliana found the number people were instructed to call to get compensation after what happened with the canisters and all the chaos. She dialed the number and waited.
When the call connected, she said to the person who answered, “Tell Lydia Rosenberg that Eliana Jaxton wants to talk.”
She hung up.
The cab driver turned a corner and merged into traffic, slowing to the steady crawl of cars around them.
Eliana sat back in her seat for only a moment before her phone buzzed. She half expected it to be Tony, or someone else, telling her she should quit being crazy. But it wasn’t—and they knew exactly where she was. The Shrine could track her phone, surely.
The buzzing didn’t quit.
Eliana gave the driver her home address, then answered her phone. “Hello?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Perhaps I should have left my card when I visited you in the hospital.”
The voice on the other end of the phone had an odd, almost cold tone to it. Certainly nothing like the warmth Eliana heard when she spoke to her family. But then, she and Lydia Rosenberg didn’t know each other.
Did they?
“Yeah,perhapsyou should have,” Eliana replied by reflex. “It would’ve made it easier to contact you.” Then, reaching down deep inside her, she discovered an innate bravado she didn’t realize she possessed.
One that didn’t back down when Lydia chuckled, the sound containing no humor. Just the grating noise like metal moving. “You seem to have done just fine. And now you can save my number.”
“Only so I can hand it over to the police when I tell them that you’re the one responsible for Carlos being kidnapped by those two detectives.” Eliana made a fist with her free hand.
In her periphery, she was aware that the taxi driver looked in his rearview mirror at her, probably listening to the entireconversation. Nevertheless, he threaded through city traffic, taking her closer and closer to her apartment.
What she expected to find there, she wasn’t sure. That building was no longer a place of solace, even if she had her own little pocket of peace behind her front door. She’d much rather pack a bag and go to Carlos’s house. But with him not even there?
She gripped the phone. “Are you still there?”
Lydia came back on the line. “I’m having some of my people look into this matter.”
“Is that the same as you denying you had anything to do with it?”
“Your friend was never in any danger from me,” Lydia said. “It seems to me as if he may have been targeted because of his job. Or his sister. Oryou.”
“You think this is my fault?”
“You’re right, it’s far more likely that Carlos was taken because he ID’d Detective Raquel Maloney as being part of the Reverence Sisters.”
Eliana gaped. “You know about that?”
The car beside them honked, and the taxi driver responded in kind.
Eliana continued, not bothering to wait for Lydia, “First they try to kill me. Now they have Carlos. Who’s next?”
“You need not concern yourself with the two men from that apartment. They have been dealt with.”
Eliana shook her head. “What on earth does that mean?”
