Lynn Huggins Blackburn - Covert Justice

Then another, far greater fear threatened to choke him. “Maggie.”

“I’m sorry? What?”

“Maggie. I need to get her. She’s not safe. She’s—”

“Blake.” A hand closed over his arm and it took him a second to realize that her voice hadn’t come through the phone. How had she snuck up on him?

* * *

Heidi squeezed Blake’s arm. Poor guy. He was handling this far better than she’d anticipated, but he looked like he was about to drop.

“Maggie is fine.” She released his arm. “Two of the best agents I know are currently posing as repairmen. They are watching the front and back of your in-laws’ home. The windows and blinds are open enough for them to see Maggie and your in-laws. No one will get in there without going through my agents.”

No need to tell him that if anything happened to a child, none of them would ever forgive themselves.

“Why is this happening?”

She didn’t think he’d meant to say that aloud, but it was a valid question. “I don’t know, but I will find out. It would help me if you could tell me everything you know about Caroline’s allergy. It looked like she reacted to something in her purse. Could she have purchased something with peanuts in it by accident?”

“No. Caroline is supercautious. She special-orders those bars by the case. They are crazy expensive, made in a guaranteed nut-free production facility. She has one every day. She eats half in the morning and the other half in the afternoon.”

“No allergies other than peanuts, right?”

“No. She eats dairy, eggs, shellfish...no problem. She can even eat almonds or cashews. Wait a minute. How do you know that?”

Oops. “It’s in her file.”

Blake rubbed his eyes. “Awesome.”

He needed sleep, but she couldn’t do anything about that. A small arrangement of chairs sat in a quiet corner and she nodded in their direction. “Let’s sit.”

He didn’t argue. He collapsed into a chair and put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. “I can’t believe she didn’t have her EpiPen.”

“Is she good about keeping it with her?”

“Fanatical. She had a severe reaction when she was twelve. The pen was at the house and we were up at the waterfall behind the plant. Big company-wide fun day. She bit into a dessert and her throat closed up. We’ve always been thankful for the presence and quick thinking of one of our operators with a serious bee allergy. He had his pen in his pocket. I’ve never seen anyone move the way he did. Saved her life.”

He blew out a breath and looked at her, frustration and confusion evident on his face. “Since then, she doesn’t go anywhere without it. She keeps one in her purse at all times, we have two in the plant medical supplies, and she carries one around in her pocket when she’s at home. You saw how fast it happened. If she had a serious reaction when she was alone...”

Heidi could imagine. And the more Blake talked, the more certain she’d become that this had not been an accident.

“Do people at the plant know about the allergy?”

“Yeah. We don’t prohibit people from eating peanuts, but we do have a peanut-free break room and general allergy awareness as part of our new employee orientation. We have two people with peanut allergies, one with a bee allergy and another with an egg allergy.”

He fiddled with his watch band. “Do you think it was Mark?”

Oh, yeah. But she couldn’t prove it. “He’s at the top of my suspect list. Her allergy is well-known. Is it safe to assume her ‘half a bar at a time’ habit is common knowledge, as well?”

“The guys tease her about it. Tell her it wouldn’t hurt her to finish the whole bar in one sitting.”

“Who are these guys? Are you talking about people who work for you?”

“You have to understand. There are two guys who have worked for HPI since before we were born and about fifteen of our employees have been with us since I was in elementary school. They’ve watched us grow up and they don’t have a problem telling Caroline she needs to eat more, or get a boyfriend, or take a vacation.”

“Do they treat you the same way?”

He laughed. “They tell me I need to lay off the Mountain Dew. And get remarried.”

Remarried? Interesting.

“Neither of those things are going to happen.”

Even more interesting. Pro–Mountain Dew, antimarriage? Or just antimarriage for himself?

“You take your Mountain Dew that seriously?”

“Yep.”

He didn’t elaborate, and Heidi pulled the conversation back to Caroline. “I’m going to have the wrapper and the remainder of the bar analyzed, but the circumstantial evidence indicates someone contaminated it with peanuts. If we go with that theory, would it be safe to assume they would have expected her to finish it yesterday while she was still at the plant?”

“I guess—” His brow furrowed.

“What?”

“She always finishes it. Every day. And she seemed surprised to find a half in her purse.”

Heidi didn’t like where this was going. “Do people know what brand or what flavor she likes? And would it be possible for someone to get access to her purse?”

Blake groaned. “Two weeks ago.”

“What happened two weeks ago?”

“One of the guys has a granddaughter with a peanut allergy and he asked Caroline about her granola bars during a shift-change meeting. I only remember it because she borrowed my phone and pulled up the website she orders from to show him. They were talking about the brand, which flavors she likes, stuff like that.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Mark was there.”

Heidi closed her eyes and tried to pull the events of the past thirty-six hours together. “Pure speculation here, but let’s run with it. Markos buys one of Caroline’s favorite flavors, opens the package, breaks off half and then, what? Puts peanuts in it? Wouldn’t she have noticed?”

Heidi pictured the scene in the elevator. The conversation, Caroline looking through her purse, finding the granola bar. Heidi continued to reason, “No, not tonight. She didn’t even look. She pulled the wrapper back an inch and took a bite. But he couldn’t have known she wouldn’t look at it. If he wanted to be sure she wouldn’t notice, he would have used something fine—peanut dust, tiny flecks of peanut, maybe he even used peanut oil, and dipped the granola bar in it and then slid it back in the wrapper. Would she react to an amount that small?”

Blake nodded. “It would be enough. She’s so sensitive to peanuts that we can’t eat in a restaurant with peanuts on the table or shells on the floor. The oils in the air will make her face tingle.”

“So he contaminates a bar and puts it in her purse? How did it get in her purse? Does she leave it out at work?”

He grimaced and nodded again. “We’ve never had a problem with theft. She leaves her purse in her office most of the time. Sometimes she brings it with her to the shift-change meeting if she’s leaving for an appointment or something.”

“What kind of appointments?”

“Any kind.”

“Personal or professional?”

“Either. Caroline is our Chief Financial Officer. The way our organization is structured, the sales and accounting staff all report to her. So she could be meeting with anyone from the people who service our printers to the clients who buy our finished product. Or she could have a dentist appointment. She doesn’t have a standing appointment on any one day, if that’s what you’re asking. Every day is different.”

“So maybe she brought her purse to a shift-change meeting and he slipped the contaminated bar in there?”

Would Caroline have noticed? Heidi didn’t know. She had to remind herself that the average American didn’t walk around assuming people were trying to kill them. An extra half of a granola bar wouldn’t look like a weapon. It would look like a snack.