Lisa Unger - Smoke

Somehow the box she’d left in Jeffrey’s office had made it into their living room and it stood there taunting her for her cowardice as she stepped off the elevator into her apartment. The pile of letters sat on top and snickered their agreement. She stared at it a second and then made her way through the room, up the stairs of their duplex and into the bedroom. It was empty. She dropped her bag and stripped off her coat, throwing both on the bed. She marched back down the stairs, through the living room to the other end of the foyer and down the few small steps into her office where Jeffrey sat at the computer. Hiding, from the look of him.

“Jeffrey,” she said.

He swiveled in the chair to look at her. “Don’t be mad,” he said with a grimace. He held up his arms as if to ward off blows. She sighed and threw herself on the couch. He came and sat across from her.

“I just thought you’d be more comfortable opening it here,” he said quietly. “If you decide that’s what you want to do.”

She nodded. He was right as usual and she wouldn’t bother arguing. Anyway she wasn’t really thinking about the box. She was thinking about Lily.

“I’ve got a bad feeling,” she said.

“About the box.”

“No, about Tim Samuels.”

“Did you talk to Dax?” Jeffrey asked, sitting up.

“I just called and there was no answer. I left a message,” she said.

“Okay,” said Jeffrey, ever mellow. “He’ll call.”

“I just feel like we screwed everything up,” she said, looking at him. “I feel like when we went to The New Day we lost every chance we had at finding Lily. I feel like she’s gone, Jeffrey.”

She had pain in her neck and shoulder and she lifted a hand to rub the muscle there. Jeffrey came and stood beside her. She lifted her feet, he sat, and she dropped her legs on top of his.

“No,” he said. “We did our best, what we thought was right. We’ll find her.”

He sounded so certain, she could almost believe he wasn’t just saying it to make her feel better.

“I don’t think Detective Stenopolis feels the same way.”

She pulled her tiny phone from the pocket of her jeans and called in for the message she’d saved. She handed it to Jeffrey so he could listen.

He’d left her a scathing message about how The New Day had cleared out of the building, wiped their computers, and lawyered up by the time he’d arrived. He didn’t say it outright but his tone implied that he blamed them. Which she thought was a little unfair considering that without them, he’d never have even known about The New Day in the first place. It wasn’t like his brilliant detective work had led him there and they’d screwed it up for him.

“She was here, Lydia,” the detective said in his message, sounding angry and desperate. “I can feel her. But she’s gone now. I think gone for good.”

Her heart had clenched at his words. Naturally, they hadn’t intended to shoot their way out of there. They’d expected the whole thing to go a little more quietly but it just hadn’t worked out that way.

“I hope you can use some of those resources you were talking about to find out where Rhames might have gone,” he went on angrily. “Because, I’ll tell you what. When my CO finds out how badly this went, I’m going to be doing traffic duty for the rest of my goddamn career.”

“He was just frustrated,” said Jeffrey, ending the call. “We all are.”

“Besides,” he went on when she said nothing. “When you talk to him again you’ll be able to tell him that we have a good idea where to find Rhames.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said, sitting up. “Where’s that?”

He smiled, patted her on the thigh. “Detective Stenopolis told you that The New Day owned a good deal of real estate in Florida, that they’ve been buying up a lot of property in a town by the Gulf.”

“Right.”

“Well, I made some calls.”

A contact of Jeffrey’s at the Westchester Airport confirmed that a private jet belonging to The New Day had left the airport after midnight en route to Tampa with five passengers on board. But there was no passenger manifest.

“That’s illegal, isn’t it?” asked Jeffrey.

“It is,” confirmed Jack Anderson, one of the Transportation Security Administration security directors of the Westchester Airport. Jeffrey had done a number of favors for him in the past, including running an in-depth background check on his daughter’s fiancé about six months earlier, who it turned out was a pretty stand-up guy.

“But with the private jets, sometimes we seem to have this problem. People make a lot of ‘mistakes’ when money is involved, if you know what I mean.”

“Seems like a pretty big security hole,” said Jeffrey uneasily. He hated airplanes and this was just one more thing he could add to his list of reasons to stay on the ground.

“It is. And it has been. People flying privately are looking for the ultimate in security and secrecy. Passenger manifests are available only to customs and immigration. As long as other security precautions are met, that manifest is very rarely requested. So pilots are often, shall we say, ‘lax’ about obtaining the identities of all the passengers on board, particularly if that pilot works for the owner of the jet and not a charter company or one of those ‘jet share’ companies.”

“Can we talk to that pilot?”

“I’ll get in touch with him, see what I can find out. But he works for The New Day. Those guys are pretty slippery.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I had some questions for one of their pilots a while back and the guy just disappeared. They basically said that he left the organization and we were never able to find him.”

“What kind of questions?”

“The same kind you’re asking.”

Some unformed thoughts were tumbling around in Jeffrey’s head… Tim Samuels’ private security agency, The New Day’s private jet fleet, the dead jeweler and his missing cache of pink diamonds.

“When was this?”

“A couple of weeks ago actually.”

“Did it have something to do with a murdered jewel dealer from South Africa?”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “I can’t answer that, Jeff. Sorry.”

An answer like that and he didn’t really have to.

“So I guess we’re going to Florida,” said Lydia with a roll of her eyes.

“I guess.”

Jeffrey whipped up some egg-white omelets with scallions and smoked salmon while Lydia brooded at the counter with a cup of coffee. She didn’t cook, never had really. But she was a master with the “one-button” machines, as Jeffrey called them. Coffeemaker, mini-food processor, toaster… she could make espresso, chop garlic, and toast up a piece of sourdough bread like nobody’s business.

She sat on one of the stools by the counter and turned her back to the box that sat on the floor between the love seat and the fireplace hearth. As long as she had Lily Samuels to think about, she didn’t have to think about Arthur Tavernier and his legacy or his letters. In fact, it would be selfish to worry about her issues when Lily Samuels could be somewhere fighting for her life.

“We should go tonight,” she said, starting to feel the buzz of anxiety. She stood and turned toward the staircase.

“First we eat, then we rest a bit,” he said sensibly. “Then we’ll go.”

He was always the one that made sure they took care of themselves, even when there was chaos all around them, even when the buzz could keep her running on empty for days.

“The worst mistakes are made when you’re hungry or when you’re tired,” was his famous philosophy. “When we can, we need to avoid making decisions during those times.”