Chapter 2
Maybe it was the fact that, since Midland Circle, Matt hadn’t ever been late again. Maybe it was his gut telling him that there was something wrong.
Whatever it was that made Foggy go to Matt’s apartment that morning, Foggy was glad that it did. Because when Matt didn’t answer, Foggy used his key to open the door. Only to find the apartment completely ransacked.
It wasn’t like the time he’d found Matt in his Daredevil costume. No, this time the couch was torn apart, the drawers were thrown open with their contents strewn about. The floor was littered with broken beer bottles of the ridiculously expensive beer that Matt preferred. Matt’s braille machine was in piece on the floor by the wall.
His bedroom wasn’t much better. The satin sheets were torn, crumpled on the floor next to the bed. Matt’s suits were scattered throughout the room in a way that would most likely end in a hissy fit if their owner found out.
The mess itself was enough to confirm Foggy’s suspicions because Matt was a neat freak. But the email that came into his inbox thirty minutes later almost gave him a heart attack.
The email contained a link, and the link showed a live feed of a dingy old basement that looked like a prison cell except this room had a steel door. On the left was Matt, his feet were shackled to the floor by an iron chain. His face was covered in grime and Foggy suspected that he had a cut on his forehead judging by the dried up blood. The good thing was that he was awake.
On the right was another man. Foggy didn’t recognise him. This man had his hands bound to the wall above his head and his feet were shackled in the same way as Matt’s.
They seemed to be talking to each other, which Foggy took as a good sign. He knew Matt could most likely get out of this room without too much of a problem but he also knew that he would conceal his abilities.
Foggy didn’t know who the other man was but knowing that Matt wasn’t alone was somewhat reassuring.
Keeping the feed open on his laptop, he called Brett and Karen.
The two showed up soon after each other and Brett took one glance at the screen before he cursed.
“The hell has Murdock gotten himself into?” he asked Foggy, taking out his phone.
“Do you know who that other man is?” Karen asked, biting her fingernail as she eyed Matt on the screen.
“Yeah,” Brett muttered. “I need to make a call.”
The detective disappeared to the hall, leaving Foggy and Karen in silence.
“Who took him?” Karen asked, concern obvious in her voice.
Foggy shook his head, placing his head in his hands. “I don’t know.”
*
Peter Burke was having a bad day.
First, he overslept. Then his car wouldn’t start so he had to take a cab into work. And then it turned out his CI wasn’t in yet, which made his bad mood worse because Neal usually wasn’t up to anything good if he was late.
And then his phone rang and his irritation felt like it would explode.
It was detective Brett Mahony from the 15th precinct, a detective Peter had once worked with for a case.
“Agent Burke, I hate to say this but you need to come down to Hell’s Kitchen,” the detective said over the phone.
“What’s this about, Mahony? I have meetings,” Peter grumbled, shrugging off his jacket and sitting down in his chair.
“It’s Caffrey, Agent Burke,” Mahony answered and Peter groaned, because of course Neal would decide to make his day even worse.
“What’s he done this time?”
Mahony stayed quiet for a second. “This morning I got a call from an old friend. He told me that his partner had gone missing, his apartment was completely wrecked. He’d received an email with a live video feed. It showed his partner and your CI tied up in a basement. Now, I remembered Caffrey from that case we worked on a while back because he charmed my ma. I have no problem in leading this investigation but I figured you’d want to do it.”
Peter’s blood ran cold at the detective’s words.
“Where are you?”
He was out of the office by the time the other man had rattled off the address. In the cab, on his way to Hell’s Kitchen, Peter called Jones and told him to send a team to the address and to Neal’s apartment and to set up the conference room for when he came back.
His day really couldn’t get any worse.