Free Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) by M. D. Grayson

a couple of weeks off just after New Year’s and go to Hawaii,” she said. “By then, we’ll be sick and tired of the gray Seattle winter. I want to share a Hawaiian sunset with you. We’ll have them bring us boat drinks—the kind with the coconut and the pineapple slices and the umbrellas. We’ll get a little drunk, but not too much. We’ll watch the sunset. Then we’ll run back to our room and get naked.” I reminded her of the fact that I was due to report to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, for Advanced Training. “No problem,” she’d said. Just reschedule it. Truly nothing sounded better to me than spending two weeks—or two years for that matter—in Hawaii with Gina. But she didn’t know about the realities of the military—my world.
    I never got to take that trip with her. I reported for training in Virginia and what started as nightly phone calls quickly turned into weekly phone calls and then, within a month, no phone calls at all. I got a one-week leave for Christmas, but when we talked over the phone about it, it seemed like the enthusiasm had waned—maybe for both of us. I ended up going to St. Thomas with a couple of guys from the school.
    I think that the idea of having absolutely no control over things was most likely too hard for Gina to deal with. She wasn’t used to things she couldn’t control, and even Gina couldn’t control the U.S. Army. It didn’t matter if she got pissed and jumped up and down; if the military said go, I had to go. Period. In the end, I don’t think she was prepared for that. That little conflict ended us before we ever even really got started. My last happy memories of us together were sitting on the park bench together, my arm around her, watching the sailboats on Thanksgiving Day on Lake Union.
    Now, of course, she was beyond reach. All I could do was take everything I’d learned, including some of the stuff from the very class that split us up, and try to find her and keep her safe. That is, if she wasn’t already gone.
    ~~~~
    “Let me begin by saying, sir, that we’re starting with a completely blank slate. Not even a hint of a clue. This isn’t necessarily bad. In fact, in the schools I’ve attended, I’ve been trained not to jump to any conclusions early in any case. We’ve been taught to let the facts speak for themselves. What that means is that if we come to an agreement here this afternoon, then my team will begin to methodically collect evidence until the evidence itself speaks to us and tells us where to find Gina. We’ll do that as quickly as we can.”
    The Fiores both nodded, so I continued.
    “Now if I may, I need to be honest—brutally honest—for a minute.”
    “Go ahead,” Angelo said.
    I continued. “In all of my training and in all of my experience with missing person cases, I’ve found that there are basically three possible scenarios. As of right now, I don’t have any reason to believe that Gina’s disappearance is unique to this, so I’m going to give them to you in no particular order. Again, I don’t know what’s happened and I don’t have any clues or evidence yet.”
    “Scenario one is that Gina’s been kidnapped. Somebody who wants something—it’s usually money—has grabbed her. Typically, some sort of ransom demand is made within forty-eight hours or so—most often sooner. Usually this demand comes by phone, sometimes by mail or even by courier. The initial problem I have with this scenario is that apparently, there’s been no ransom demand. Have either of you heard from anyone in any manner that might suggest a kidnapping? A ransom demand? A note? A phone call? Even an e-mail or a text message?”
    “Nothing,” Angelo said. Carina shook her head to signal no.
    “Robbie?” I asked.
    “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
    “Exactly,” I said. “The question I have is why go to the trouble of kidnapping somebody to get something, and then not go ahead and make a demand? Because