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and called Phelps, his driver.
    Less than a minute later, he climbed into the front seat of his reddest and shiniest stretch limo, shaking the rain out of his hair, loosening his tie, and undoing the top button of his shirt. “Follow that blue Hyundai. Discreet distance.” Not that the Bentley was “discreet,” but he had to work with what he had.
    Janni wasn’t exactly being careful, Alex noted. She drove way too fast for the wet conditions, weaving in and out of traffic without signaling, and they trailed her into a warehouse district in a dodgy part of town with broken streetlights and smashed windows and deserted buildings. She screeched to a stop next to a man lying on his stomach, sprawled half in the street and half on the sidewalk.
    In one motion, she leaped from her car and splashed to her knees into the gutter beside him. She tore away the bindings holding his wrists behind his back, flinging them into the darkness with more force than seemed strictly necessary.
    Phelps, a former Army drill sergeant who looked the part, had parked a half a block away and unbuttoned his jacket for easier access to his handgun, just in case. Alex started to get out, but Phelps put a hand on his arm and shook his head.
    “Phelps—” Alex started.
    “We don’t know what’s going on yet, sir. Try to rein in your impulse control problem and hold off for a few seconds , at least.” Sometimes, Alex thought he had a too free-and-easy relationship with his employees, but they frequently stopped him from doing things that were monumentally stupid, so it paid off in the long run.
    But even as he spoke, Phelps was already moving the car. When they pulled up beside Janni, Alex jumped out into the pouring rain, and Phelps popped the trunk so they could get a blanket. Alex stuck his head back in the car and hit a button on the dash that would call his stereotypically English butler. “Chambliss, do me a favor, have Doc Allen come over, tell him to be ready for just about anything.”
    Chambliss sounded resigned. “Are you injured again, Master Alex?”
    “Not me, this time.” Alex frowned; he couldn’t get a good look at the guy from here, so he stepped back out into the street.
    Janni had put herself protectively between them and the unconscious guy, but she took her hand out of her purse, empty, when she saw who they were. “You followed me?”
    “Well, yes, you looked like—” Alex stared at the still form on the sidewalk and stopped. “Holy shit,” he whispered.
    The man’s back was a mass of bleeding welts showing through a shredded T-shirt, the rain hadn’t managed to wash the blood from his face, and livid cuts ringed his wrists over old scars. Alex had a sinking feeling that this was his fault somehow.
    “Ben’s been missing since yesterday morning,” Janni said, hiccupping through tears. “He went to the store to get milk .”
    “Should we move him, boss?” Phelps asked worriedly.
    “We can’t leave him here,” Alex pointed out.
    “They said if I called an ambulance they’d kill him in front of me,” Janni said. Ben’s body had dammed the torrent of rain running through the gutter, and the water overflowing up onto the sidewalk threatened to drown him.
    “That settles it. Get in the limo, Janni. I’ve got medical facilities at my place as good as any hospital.” Alex gripped her arm. “We’ll take care of him, okay?”
    Janni nodded tightly, and Alex helped her roll Ben onto the blanket while Phelps kept watch. Alex noticed that Ben’s chest and abdomen were pretty welted up too, although not as badly as his back. Phelps met Alex’s eyes; he’d noticed as well, which was good because Alex paid him to be observant.
    O O O
    Unfortunately, Phelps’s eyes couldn’t be everywhere, especially in the middle of a thunderstorm in the dark. He hadn’t seen Deiter Ostheim on the roof across the street, looking through the scope of a rifle and talking to his uncle Hans via his Bluetooth. “You’re not