Линвуд Баркли - Find You First

And soon after that, they began to disappear.

“Let’s go through them one by one,” Lana said.

Miles did. Most of the information he and Dorian had on Katie Gleave, Jason Hamlin, and Dixon Hawley came from media reports. Miles had learned firsthand that Todd Cox was missing. So far, the remaining individuals had not met with misadventure.

“But I’m worried,” he said.

“Okay,” Lana said. “Let’s see what we have here, starting with this Todd Cox. For all you know, that hand under the bed belonged to him.”

“No,” Miles said quickly. “Because of the finger.” He explained.

Lana nodded. “Okay. But the woman in the van? There’s no proof she had anything to do with this.”

“What about the two cups of coffee?” Miles asked. “That deer?”

Lana flashed him a patronizing smile. “Deer run pretty fast and it would have been easy for your driver to miss it. And she could have had an old cup of coffee that had gone cold and bought a new one that was hot.”

Miles was undeterred. “What about how clean Todd’s place was?”

Lana shrugged. “Some people are tidy. And if they’re moving on, they want to leave the place in good shape. Look, I’m not saying this doesn’t all seem a bit strange, but if you want to get the authorities involved, you need something a little harder. You don’t have any bodies. No concrete evidence of foul play. It could all be coincidence.”

“No,” Miles said. “What about the doctor?”

“He’s worth talking to, sure,” Lana said. “Sounds like he’s covering up something.”

“Miles has a theory,” Dorian said, “that the doctor is impregnating all these women himself.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened,” Lana said. “Say that’s the case. How does it explain the disappearances? How do those things connect?”

“I don’t know,” Miles said. “But Dr. Gold as much as threatened me if I didn’t drop this.”

“You bribed his employee for private information,” Lana said. “If I were him I might have threatened you, too.”

“I don’t think he knows how I got the names.”

“He knows you got it from somewhere.”

Dorian looked at Lana. “Isn’t there anything you can do? At least the Bureau could find the remaining kids — okay, they’re not really kids anymore — and warn them?”

“What would you have the FBI tell them?”

“That they’re in danger,” Miles said.

“From whom?”

“Granted, that’s not clear yet.”

“And why are they in danger?”

“Chloe had a theory. If you reduce the number of people I was intending to give the money to, whoever’s left gets a larger share.”

“That suggests that one or more of these people who you had believed were your biological children could be behind this. Doesn’t that seem a little out there? How would they even know? You’d not yet communicated your intentions to them, and there’s nothing to suggest any of them, except for Todd Cox and Chloe, availed themselves of the services of WhatsMyStory.”

Miles sighed.

Lana wasn’t done. “Let’s suppose the FBI were to impart this sketchy information to these people. How are they supposed to act on it? What would you have them do?”

“Be on guard,” Miles said.

“Be on guard,” Lana said. “Suppose someone came to you, out of the blue, and said you might be about to disappear but they didn’t know why and they didn’t know who might make it happen. How would you handle that?”

Miles was searching for the words but could not come up with any.

“I haven’t got enough to go back to the Bureau and open a file on this. Certainly not officially.”

Miles said, “Couldn’t you at least go to the various local law enforcement agencies involved, including the police in Paris, and ask them to provide whatever information they had? Then you could look for commonalities? I’ll bet none of the departments working these cases are even aware of the possible connections with other departments.”

“If there are any,” Lana said.

“I give up,” Miles said.

Lana gave him a sympathetic look. “Mr. Cookson, I want to ask you something and I mean no disrespect at all. But I need to pose the question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Is paranoia one of the symptoms of your disease?”

Miles eyed her icily. “No.”

“Okay,” she said. She gave Miles and Dorian a concluding nod and rose from her chair. “If something develops, get in touch. Dorian, Mr. Cookson.”

And with that, Agent Murkowski departed.

Miles looked dejected and defeated.

“Miles,” Dorian said, “maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s time to step back, let this go. You’ve done what you could. But everything has changed.”

“What if it happens again?” he asked. “What if the others start to disappear? What if there was something we could have done? How will we feel then?”

“But maybe nothing will,” Dorian said.

Miles closed his eyes, as though suffering a migraine. He lowered his head for several seconds, then suddenly raised it and opened his eyes.

“I didn’t know about Heather’s mother.”

“It just happened.”

“You’ll send flowers to her hospital room?”

“Of course.”

“We can’t impose on her for the next few days. And our friendly, neighborhood FBI agent doesn’t give a shit. So the next step is up to me.”

“Next step?” Dorian asked.

“Did you charter a plane? Because I’m going to Fort Wayne to find Travis Roben. And then I’m heading to the west coast.”

“Alone?”

“If you’re asking whether Chloe’ll come along for the ride, I’d say fat chance.” He paused. “But I’ll give her a try.”

Dorian nodded and got up. “I’m on it.”

Miles, too weary to get up and follow her out, sat there for a moment, gathering his thoughts.

His cell started to ring. He took it out of his pocket and saw that Heather was calling.

“Heather,” he said. “I heard about your mother. How is she?”

“We thought it was a heart attack but now it’s looking like it may be some kind of severe muscle spasm. They’re going to release her later today. Thanks for asking.”

“Take all the time you need,” Miles said.

“I appreciate that, but listen, that’s not what I was calling about.”

Miles felt his body tense. He didn’t know how many more surprises he could handle. “Go ahead.”

“Gilbert came to me,” she said.

“What?” The idea that Gilbert would approach the firm’s investigator was right out of left field.

“He said he’d been to see Dorian about this, but then came to me with it, too.”

“What?” Miles asked.

“He told me about what Caroline had done before, the game she ran on the Google exec. I got the idea that this was something you’d brought to his attention, so now he was on guard, watching for that kind of thing. He was worried she was at it again. That she might have set up some fake corporation, Excel Point, and was billing Cookson for thousands.”

Miles thought back to something his brother had said, before they went for the ride in the Porsche, before he’d handed over the keys.

“He’d mentioned the name,” Miles said.

“So I did a little digging.”

Miles held his breath, waiting. The last thing he needed was more dissension between himself and his brother over things Caroline might have done.

“Gilbert was right. There was a dummy corporation, and you’ve been paying it some substantial sums.”

“God,” Miles said wearily. “Caroline is something else. She gets caught, and she tries something else.”

“But it wasn’t Caroline,” Heather said.