Chapter 2: Where are You?

"What the hell did you do?" Madeline laughed as she opened the door to her large vineyard house.

"Maddy, I'm in trouble." He said before brushing his lips lightly over her cheek.

"You are always in trouble." Madeline moved through the front hallway and into the kitchen. "Come we can sit on the patio."

They sat side by side on a hand carved wooden porch swing. "So what brings you to me?"

"It's about Elizabeth." Red whispered unsure of her reaction.

"Don't tell me you did something to hurt the girl? She seemed nice enough and she is definitely smart. Pretty, I believe she was pretty too." Madeline took a sip of her scotch.

"I kissed her and then left her sitting on my bed." He gulped down the rest of the strong amber liquid in his tumbler.

"And...?"

"And now I am here."

Madeline almost choked on the liquid inside of her mouth as she swiftly turned her body to face him. Eyebrows shot up in shock and a small grin playing at the corners of her lips. "You left her waiting for you to return to I assume have intercourse, and didn't tell her that you weren't coming back?"

He frowned in shame. "Yes."

Madeline was trying to hold in a laugh, "call her. Call her now."

"Wait why?"

"Because when you call I can hear you light up when you mention her, and she clearly makes you nervous. You are in love and you need to call her."

"Maddy she is going to be pissed."

"Let her. And don't argue, it will only make her more mad and you further away from her. Now dammit listen to me and call the girl!"

Liz woke up in a dark space. It wasn't the right shape to be the trunk of a car, and it wasn't a box of a sort. Once her eyes adjusted fully to the dark she found a door, however it was locked. The walls were cold and slightly moist suggesting she was in a basement somewhere. There was a bag on the floor where she was laying.

The last thing Liz could remember was a young man coming up behind her with a knife and she almost fought him off until she was shoved into the coffee table. When she blacked out.

She mustered up the strength through her pounding headache and the debilitating nausea to walk over the metal door. She collapsed in front of it and started banging her fists against the door, screaming at the top of her lungs.

Before she finally passed out again and slumped against the door, using up all her strength from before.

"Her phone is off. In the year and a half that I have worked with Elizabeth she has never had her phone turned off.. Ever." His expression dropped and his anxiety began to increase. "I'll call Dembe, he should be able to put her on."

"Dembe! I was wondering if you could put Elizabeth on the phone."

"Excuse me? Isn't she with you?"

"No? I asked you to stay with her while I went to Florence."

"Yes but there is a note from Liz saying that she called you and was going with you, and not to worry."

"No! She isn't here with me! When I left she was waiting for me on the bed. Her phone isn't on."

"I will go look around the house and check the cameras I will make sure she comes back with me."

"Yes! Please! God dammit Lizzie where are you?" He shouted.

He hung up and threw his phone across the patio in anger.

Madeline has never seen him in such distress, "Raymond, we will find her. I will help you."

A single tear slipped out of his left eye, as he moved closer to Madeline. She walked over and wrapped her arms around him rather awkwardly but knowing it would help him. "I need her, Maddy. I made a stupid mistake leaving her without protection."

"We don't know she isn't just visiting family or something."

"I know Maddy. I know my Lizzie, she isn't just out and about. She is in danger. I put my Lizzie in danger."

Red broke down in Maddy's arms.

The metal door was pulled open exposing her limp body in the doorway.

"Oh look at her. I hope she isn't dead yet. That would make my job a lot less fun." A dark shadowy figure laughed evilly.