Линвуд Баркли - Find You First

Dorian did not immediately look concerned. “We pay a lot of people a lot of money around here.”

“I know,” Gilbert said. “That’s why I think it would be so easy for someone to bill us for something they never did. I looked up Excel Point and I can’t find a thing about them online.”

“Maybe they don’t have a website.”

It was Gilbert’s turn to be impatient. “A tech firm with no online presence?”

“Okay, point taken,” Dorian said. “What would you like me to do?”

“Can you check into it? And if it leads back to Caroline, can you give me a heads-up? I want to try and get ahead of this. If she’s done this, I’ll make her pay it all back.”

“I’m on it,” Dorian said.

“And you won’t tell Miles?”

She paused before answering. “Don’t make me promise that, Gil. But I’ll see what I can do. And you know what? Maybe it’s legit. Maybe it’s something you missed.”

Gilbert sighed with relief and stood. “Thank you. I owe you one.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

“At first, I was going to ask Heather, but that felt like making it too official,” Gilbert said.

Dorian shook her head. “No need. Leave it with me. If I find out anything, I’ll let you know ASAP.”

Boston, MA

They were sitting in a bar at Logan International, waiting for their flight to Phoenix, going over the events earlier in the day.

It had been, Rhys Mills conceded, a close one.

Hiding under the bed while the girl and the older guy were in the front end of the trailer, Rhys, his gun in one hand, had managed to extract his phone from his pocket with his other one and text a message to Kendra.

PEOPLE HERE, he had tapped. HIDING IN TRAILER. CREATE DISTRACTION.

He could, of course, have simply shot and killed his visitors. But there’d been little sense in making this any more difficult than it already was. He’d had no idea who the man and the girl were, but as they’d approached the tail end of the trailer and he was able to more clearly hear their conversation, it had sounded like the girl knew Todd.

Well, duh. She was in his trailer.

The girl had gone through the closet, the drawers, found them all empty. She and the man had speculated about why Todd might have taken off. That had encouraged Rhys. They weren’t even tossing around the idea that he’d been killed. And then the girl said something about this Todd character being involved in some shady shit. Rhys remembered Todd being very nervous when he and Kendra had shown up, posing as police. That was encouraging, too. When and if the real police became involved, they’d be looking in that direction.

Moments after sending the text, he heard the screeching of brakes.

Once the girl and the man had split, Rhys had crawled out from under the bed and seen the phone sitting on top of it. The very one he’d come here to find. He’d left the trailer, unseen, run through the woods, and rendezvoused with Kendra half a mile up the road after she’d put on her little show about nearly hitting a deer.

Got in the van, had the nerve to ask, “Where’s my coffee?”

She’d pointed to her damp lap. “If you want to suck on that...”

And now, here they were at the airport, heading to their next assignment.

Kendra was on her second glass of chardonnay when she received a text. PARIS DONE, it said. She told Rhys, who was on his third Heineken.

“Wouldn’t have minded doing that one,” he said. “Been to Paris?”

“Couple of times,” she said.

The Katie Gleave job had been outsourced. Better to assign that one to a local, someone who knew the territory.

“Wouldn’t have made any sense, having us do it,” Kendra added.

“Eight-hour flights there and back.”

“Yeah, still, would have been nice.”

She rolled her eyes. “Your life that tough?”

“You think this isn’t work?”

“Sure, but think of the interesting people you get to meet.”

He looked at his watch, glanced up at the arrivals/departures board. “Still half an hour to board.”

“Can’t believe we’re in a cattle car. Where’s the respect?” She looked down into her glass, as if the answer to one of life’s mysteries were there. “Anyway, Phoenix is nice. I like a dry heat. Too bad there’s not time to drive up to Sonoma.”

Rhys shook his head. “Then we could lay back for a bit.”

“What’s this ‘we’ stuff? When we’re done, I’m gone.”

“I wasn’t implying anything.”

“Running back and forth across the country, it’s not very efficient. What about that one in Indiana? Wouldn’t it make sense to hit that one on the way? All this flying. Think of the carbon.”

“Never took you for an environmentalist.”

They would have to do their prep all over again once they got there. Buy the cleaning supplies they needed, rent a vehicle, connect with someone local — a funeral home, a wrecking yard — who was used to assisting folks in their line of work.

“Was never my goal to be a cleaning lady,” Kendra said.

“Right back atya,” he said. “Torching a place is easier.”

She caught the waitress’s eye, ordered another glass of chardonnay, then said to her partner, “What do we know about the next one?”

Mills got out his phone, opened a file.

“Dixon Hawley. Works in an art gallery.”

“Dixon. That a man or a woman?”

Mills flashed a thumbnail headshot on his phone. “Guy.”

She nodded approvingly. “I’m okay with guys. I don’t like doing women. There’s too much violence against women in today’s society. And after Phoenix?”

“That’s Indiana . Fort Wayne. Got us booked on a flight there out of Phoenix morning after next. Hoping we can do Phoenix in a day.”

“Huh.”

Rhys was back to looking at his phone. His eyes widened.

“Hmm,” he said.

“What?”

“Just remembered something he said.”

“Who?”

“The man who came into the trailer, with the girl. There was a lot going on. You’d started the distraction. They were sitting on the bed. Lots of noise, bed creaking, them heading for the door.”

“What are you talking about? What did he say?”

“He called her Chloe. I’m sure of it.” He looked back to his phone again. “There’s a Chloe on the list.”

New Rochelle, NY

Sitting at his desk at the ReproGold Clinic, Dr. Martin Gold considered his options.

He could do nothing, of course. He could keep quiet and hope none of this ever came back on him. Ride it out.

But what if it did come out? What if there was blowback, and it came his way? How could it not? Was there anything to be gained by getting out ahead of this? Going to the authorities? Telling them what he’d done, what he knew? That was a high-risk choice. A major toss of the dice.

And of course, there was always... as a doctor, he had access to any number of pharmacological solutions. Take the right thing, feel no pain, never wake up again.

Tempting.

He’d been online, read about Jason Hamlin. There was a Facebook post from Katie Gleave’s family in Lackawanna asking for help in finding her in Paris. Gold’s searches on other names had so far turned up nothing of note, but that had not put him at ease.

Gold picked up his cell, started to make a call, changed his mind. His mouth was dry. He moved his tongue around, trying to create some saliva. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, pulled out a bottle of scotch and a shot glass, poured himself a drink, knocked it back, then put the bottle and glass away.

He picked up the cell phone again. This time, he found the inner resolve to make the call. After the sixth ring, someone picked up.