Page 86 of Keeping Zita

It didn’t take long for him to stop at his apartment. Jennifer came upstairs with him, leaving Fred in her vehicle, and, after donning gloves, carefully put the pillowcase into a plastic bag. She didn’t say much, which Obi-Wan was grateful for. He felt like he couldn’t speak; all the words he might’ve said were stuck in his throat.

Edge followed Jennifer’s police vehicle as she drove like a bat of hell out of the city toward the scrapyard. It was by the water, not too far from the naval base. There was a fence around the property and a simple guard shack at the gate. There was an armed police officer manning the gate, and he let them through without hesitation.

Obi-Wan felt a shiver go through him as they navigated the dirt roads on the property. He was a practical man. Didn’t believe much in otherworldly stuff. Wasn’t a fan of the occult or paranormal. But being here was…spooky. The air seemed different. Heavier.

Everywhere he looked, there were the skeletons of huge, empty ships. Some small, some enormous. There were also airplanes, a helicopter or two, and other military vehicles. Tanks, Jeeps, and sedans. It was a junkyard on crack.

But what really caught his eye was the huge aircraft carrier. It was the biggest relic in the yard by far. Now that he was here and seeing it, he remembered reading a news article online about how the ship had finally been fully cleaned out and stripped, all hazardous materials removed, and would be towed out to sea soon, sunk to the bottom and turned into an artificial reef.

It towered over everything else. Even the other big ships in drydock looked tiny next to the mammoth carrier.

“That would be the perfect place to hide something you didn’t want to be found,” Edge said, almost under his breath.

He wasn’t wrong. And that made every hair on Obi-Wan’s arms stand up.

“She’s there. She has to be,” he said after a moment.

“We don’t know that.”

“Look around, Edge. If you were Silas, and you brought her here, where would you put her?”

His friend frowned. “On that carrier.”

“Exactly. Especially since it’s slated to be towed out to sea. No one would find her, alive or dead, if she was in there when that happened.” The words made Obi-Wan’s nausea even worse, but they had to be said. He was a realist. Had faced death more times than he could count. But not the death of someone he cared about. Loved.

Suddenly impatient, he wanted to get onto that carrier now. He’d tear the place apart looking for Zita. She was there. He knew that as well as he knew his damn name.

Edge parked and they were out of the car in a heartbeat. Jennifer was just opening the back door to her vehicle to let the Lab out as the rest of their Night Stalker team arrived. Edge had called Casper while Obi-Wan was in his apartment with the deputy, which was more than all right with him. The more eyes, the better. And there was no one he trusted more than his teammates.

They weren’t in the air, weren’t being shot at or dodging mountaintops, but this situation felt no less dire. That damn clock was still ticking in his head.

There were also several police and sheriff’s deputy cars. There had to be at least two dozen men, which made Obi-Wan feel a little more optimistic. It shouldn’t take too long to find Zita with that much help…he hoped.

“Give Fred five minutes,” Jennifer said, as she opened the plastic bag that held the pillowcase Zita had used two nights before. “He’ll find her scent and show us where she was taken. I guarantee it.”

Obi-Wan swallowed hard and nodded. He was nearly positive Zita was on that aircraft carrier but…what if she wasn’t? They’d waste hours looking when they could know within minutes by giving the search dog an opportunity to do what he did best.

It didn’t take five minutes. The second Fred got Zita’s scent, he was off like a shot. Zigzagging with his nose to the ground and in the air as he excitedly followed Zita’s trail.

As Obi-Wan suspected, the dog headed straight for the huge carrier.

It didn’t take them long to arrive at a rickety-looking dock, fashioned together from random lengths of wood. Fred pulled on his harness and leash, obviously wanting to go inside the ship so he could continue the search.

“I’m going with the dog,” Obi-Wan said.

No one disagreed.

“We’re all going with Fred,” Casper said firmly.

“I’ll coordinate the search out here,” one of the detectives said. “We need to be methodical, not running around inside that ship like chickens with our heads cut off. Six of you,” he said, pointing at half a dozen police officers, “go with them. The rest of you fan out. Even if they find the vic, we still need to search the property, build a case against the assailant.”

“Zita. Her name is Zita,” Obi-Wan ground out.

“What?”

“Not vic. Her name is Zita Darlington.”

“Right. Sorry. If you find anything, any kind of evidence at all, don’t touch it, don’t disturb it. Call it in. Tire tracks, bodily fluids, clothing, cigarette butts…if it looks suspicious, call me. The crime scene guys are on their way. They’ll photograph and collect anything we find. Let’s do this!”