“Absolutely.” He lifted his eyes heavenward. “Anytime.”
“There’s a strange car parked in your drive, but no lights on inside. I thought I saw the beam from a flashlight. I can’t tell with all this rain. But something seems suspicious.”
A flicker of apprehension sharpened his focus. “What kind of car?”
“You know, a car. Four doors...”
That narrowed it down. If his house was being searched, the intruder hadn’t tripped his alarm. He’d have been notified by now.
“Are there any other cars parked on the street?” he asked.
He’d fielded more than one late-night encounter with a drunken college kid looking for a party who hadn’t gotten word the frat boys had moved.
“Let me check,” Ruth said.
A lengthy pause followed. The waitress appeared at their table. Following Beth’s order of a chicken salad croissant, Corbin angled his phone away and requested a club sandwich.
“I’m back.” Ruth declared. “Just the car in your drive.”
“I’ll take care of it, Ruth.”
“Would you like me to call the police?” she asked, a trill of hope in her request. “I can hang up with you and call them right now.”
“It’s, uh, probably my girlfriend,” Corbin assured her. He didn’t need an unsuspecting officer stumbling into this mess. “She’s watering the plants while I’m out of town. I appreciate the call. If you see anything else out of the ordinary, let me know. Talk soon.” He disconnected the call before she could continue the conversation.
Beth glanced up from her glass of water. “Everything all right?”
“Not exactly.”
He rested the phone on the table and stared out the window. There was no way the men from the parking garage had discovered his identity. The address listed on his car registration and his Quetech Industries employee paperwork didn’t match where he currently lived. They hadn’t followed him, or he’d have seen their car.
Beth tilted her head. “What is it?”
If they hadn’t traced him, then they must be tracking Beth. But how? Or had she deliberately given someone his address?
His determination hardened. Beth Greenwood had worked with Timothy Swan on the Cayman Holdings case. She had information she wasn’t sharing. She was running. She’d get them both killed if he didn’t stay on his guard.
He had to assume the worst—that she was a knowing accomplice to a money-laundering scheme that was funding a sleeper terrorist cell. At the very least, she must be profiting. Why else would she be involved?
His lips twisted in a cynical smile. “Give me your phone.”
THREE
Beth instinctively covered her pocket. “Why do you want my phone?”
“That was my neighbor,” Corbin said. “There’s a chance the men from the garage are at my house.”
“Oh.” Wading into his personal life muddled her thoughts. “You said your girlfriend was there.”
She didn’t want to think of him as a regular person with a family and mundane responsibilities. He was standing in the way of her successful escape. Not the sort of relationship she needed in her life right now. Despite the fact she was drawn to him. Had a crush on him. No, she was just attracted to him. Who wouldn’t be? She was only human, after all. He was cute and funny when he wasn’t questioning her like a suspect.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said.
She tamped down her flare of relief. It didn’t matter that Corbin didn’t have a girlfriend. His personal life was of absolutely no interest to her. She was merely relieved he was working with the government and not Cayman Holdings. She’d live longer that way. Maybe not much longer, but at least she had a few more days. Or hours.
“Why don’t you call the police?” she grumbled.
“I’d rather not involve local law enforcement.”
“You government types are all the same.” She snorted. “The police might be able to help.”
“Or they might get hurt. There’s nothing at my house worth stealing. They won’t find anything revealing, and I’m not risking the life of an officer over my toothbrush.”
Her stomach dipped. “I didn’t think of that.”
She’d seen Corbin pretending to be a staid and steady financial consultant, and she’d seen him handle himself with chilling ease when the bullets were flying. She’d yet to see this side of him. The lazy cordiality he’d shown before had disappeared, and his focus was razor sharp. Though his demand to see her phone annoyed her, she didn’t see the harm in letting him look. She had nothing to hide. At least not in this regard.
“Did you call anyone?” he asked.
“An Uber. That was all. This is a new phone and a new number.”
“Did you really think no one would notice if Beth Greenwood disappeared?”
“Arranging the disappearance of Beth Greenwood was the easiest part of the plan,” she mumbled. “No one pays much attention to temporary employees.”
“I did.”
“Only because you suspected me of laundering money for a crime syndicate.”
Something flickered in his gaze. “Crime syndicate?”
“Yeah. Isn’t that what this is all about?”
Working freelance around the country twenty days a month didn’t leave much time for socializing. She didn’t even have a cat. She had a few friends, but given her work, they often went weeks without speaking. She’d turned down so many invitations to lunch, people had ceased asking.
“You didn’t call anyone else?” he prodded. “No family? No friends?”
“No one,” she said, a defensive edge in her answer.
There was no one to call.
A twinge of regret speared through her. When had everything tethering her to mundane social interactions disappeared? She’d made excuses for not keeping in touch. Nobody talked on the phone anymore, and she’d given up on social media. Her Facebook account had languished for months. Cute kittens had morphed into endless baby photos which had subsequently transitioned into political rants. There was no reason to scroll through the boundless pages of happy family photos and competing politics.
Corbin slid the backs of his knuckles across the table and flexed his fingers. “Who else has this number?”
“Nobody.”
Since her dad’s death, she wasn’t listed as the emergency contact on any forms. By the time anyone became suspicious of her disappearance, she’d counted on the FBI clearing the case, and that’s when she’d quietly resurrected Beth Greenwood. She’d planned on a few weeks, possibly a month. No one would be suspicious until maybe the holidays when folks started looking for excuses to get together.
“I still need to check,” he said. “This is important. If they’re tracking us, I need to know how. Like it or not, judging by the attack in the parking garage, Beth Greenwood left a trail before she disappeared.”
The censure in his voice raised her hackles. “You’re awful judgmental for a man who fakes his identity for a living.”
“What I do is legally sanctioned by the government. Can you make the same claim?”
“This was a matter of life and death. Doesn’t that count for immunity?”
“You should have asked for help.”
“And the serpent said unto the woman,” Beth quoted the Bible beneath her breath, “Ye shall not surely die.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
The only guilt she felt was for not caring more about her deception. Letting go of Beth Greenwood had filled her with a curious sense of relief. She had a fresh start and a clean slate. She wasn’t the person who’d gotten Timothy killed. She hadn’t fallen for the first embezzler in a suit who’d shown her a scrap of attention after emerging from the haze of caring for her dad. She didn’t have to endure another audit as a hostil
e presence among her temporary coworkers.
While she loved her job, she hadn’t anticipated the isolation that accompanied fraud investigations. Even innocent people were chilled by her presence.
“Fine,” she said. “You can check my phone. But you won’t find anything.”
After she typed in the security code, she handed it over. He didn’t trust her. She wasn’t a complete idiot—he was investigating her more than looking for a tracking device. Not that she blamed him. Neither of them had much reason to trust the other.
“What about your phone?” she demanded. “Who did you contact?”
Corbin flipped through her call history, turned the case over and removed the back cover. “My phone is encrypted and untraceable.”
“Are you certain? Maybe someone did a background check on you,” she scoffed. “The office rumor is that you were Special Forces in the military.”
His head snapped up. “Who started that rumor?”
“Someone who saw the tattoo on your arm.”
She’d like to get a look at that ink. No. She didn’t want to see his tattoos or hear about his family or listen to him talk with his neighbor. He wasn’t the enemy, but he wasn’t an ally, either. They were at cross purposes. He wanted evidence against Cayman Holdings, and she wanted to live. Near as she could tell, those two goals were mutually exclusive.
“Huh.” He continued his search of her phone. “I can’t believe anyone at Quetech Industries was that observant. Half the people couldn’t even get my name right. They kept calling me Clark. Even you.”
A flush spread across her cheeks. “That’s because your nickname is Clark. You know, like the mild-mannered reporter from film and television fame.”
“The one who turns into a superhero?”
“Yeah. Because of, you know, the glasses.”
He sat back in his seat. “You’re right. Must be the specs.”
The glasses, the piercing blue eyes, the way he’d jog up eight flights of stairs without getting winded. That time he’d carried two five-gallon jugs for the water cooler on his broad shoulders. His chiseled jaw.
But let him believe it was the eyewear. “Mmm-hmm.”
“There’s nothing here,” he said, glancing at her backpack. “What else did you take with you from home?”
“Nothing. I dumped my clothes and my purse at the train station. Everything here is new.”
She’d even bought new makeup that afternoon. Being pampered at the department store makeup counter was one of her few indulgences. Some people drank. Some people ate chocolate. She purchased expensive cosmetics. Not the best method of coping, but not the worst, either.
“Discernably new,” he said. “Let me see your hat.”
Too confused to argue, she handed it over.
He bent the brim and scooted it back across the table. “That’s better.”
The waitress delivered their food, and they both fell silent. They went through the familiar, comforting rituals of arranging silverware, glasses and napkins. Famished, she dug into her meal. She’d been too nervous to eat much the past few days.
Corbin sliced through his sandwich. “If they had a tracer in your bag, and you switched in Chicago, they’d only get as far as Union Station. There are plenty of routes leaving from there, which should slow them down. That might buy us some time.”
“You’re still assuming it’s me. You worked for Quetech Industries. You were a new hire. Maybe they suspected you were spying. I certainly did.”
“You did?” His knife and fork stalled over his plate. “Why?”
“Because you asked me out on a date, that’s why.” Humiliation burned through her chest. “People worried about getting caught for laundering money approach the forensic accountant first. It’s like a game. They always think they’re smart enough to fool us, and they’re always wrong.”
“Is it so strange that I’d ask you on a date?”
“Karaoke? Really?”
“Maybe I was curious about Janice’s singing voice.” He had the decency to appear abashed. “You want to talk about Timothy Swan?”
Her stomach knotted, and she set down her sandwich. “He’s the reason I’m trying to disappear.”
Timothy had been a good man. A kind mentor who was worried about her safety when he should have been looking out for himself.
“You need my help,” Corbin said. “They’re obviously on to you.”
“Maybe.” She swiped at her mouth, as though she could erase the memory of the man’s hand clamped painfully over her lips. “I can’t figure out how. I was extremely careful.”
“Homeland Security and the FBI will protect you.”
“Like they protected Timothy Swan?”
Corbin made a sound of frustration. “Tell me more about your relationship with him.”
She studied his expression for signs of deception, but he appeared genuinely curious. “Timothy was a mentor. I worked with him my first year out of college. He helped me through a difficult time. We became friends. He’d lost his wife. I’d lost my dad. I was the daughter he never had, and he was like a surrogate dad. We understood each other. Two years ago, I was working with a small conglomerate in Houston, and something stirred my suspicions.”
Corbin tilted his head. “What?”
“Instinct, I guess. Why does a company that sells copiers need an offshore account? How were they doing millions of dollars of business out of a strip mall? I asked for Timothy’s help deciphering some usual transactions I’d tracked through Cayman Holdings. He insisted on taking the evidence to the FBI himself.”
She paused, her throat working.
Corbin drummed his fingers on the table. “Didn’t you think that was unusual? Why not advise you to contact the authorities yourself?”
“Because he was protective of me.” She pressed her thumb and forefinger against her eyelids and pictured Timothy’s reading glasses perched on the edge of his nose. She saw the ink on his jacket sleeves, smeared from his favorite fountain pen. He’d been a throwback to another generation. “This community is tight-knit. He’d heard rumors the bank was involved with the Russian mafia.” Pressure built behind her eyes. “You know what happened next.”
“He was poisoned.” Corbin’s expression didn’t flicker. “Poisoning is modus operandi for the Russians.”
“Then the rumors were true?”
“I don’t know. The case is still open under FBI jurisdiction, but there hasn’t been any progress.”
Beth choked back a sob. Poisonings happened in TV detective shows and movies. She never thought she’d be tangled in an international web of deceit.
She was an accountant, after all. “I didn’t know someone was still investigating his death. I thought they’d forgotten about him.” She’d followed the case, but there were no leads. No suspects. Only suspicions. While she was grateful someone was interested in discovering the truth of Timothy’s death, something didn’t quite fit. “What does Homeland Security want with a foreign mafia? Especially if the FBI has jurisdiction over the case.”
“Cybersecurity covers all sorts of interference.”
“Now you sound evasive.”
“I’m being as honest as I can be considering the situation.”
Which was simply another way of saying he didn’t trust her.
Her thoughts drifted back to her last conversation with Timothy. He’d been her mentor during her first internship, and they’d remained friends long after she’d graduated.
“I never should have gone to Timothy.” She pushed away her plate, her gaze growing blurry. “If I hadn’t confided in him, he’d still be alive. I never imagined... I was naive. I suppose I just never...”
“Don’t think like that.” Corbin reached across the table before quickly retracting his hand. His expression shifted, and he dropped his arm to his side. �
��It wasn’t your responsibility to protect Timothy Swan.”
“Then whose was it?”
He took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. “Mine.”
She narrowed her gaze. “I don’t understand.”
“Why do you think I’m here, Beth?” For the first time since she’d met him two weeks ago, there was a weary, almost defeated note in his voice. “The FBI brought Timothy’s information to the Cyber Division of Homeland Security. That was my case. My responsibility.”
“You?” The full implication of his words seeped through the fog of her shock, and the space closed in around her. She felt as though someone had dropped a weight on her chest. “Then you met him?”
“We had an initial meeting. There was nothing solid in the evidence, but there was enough to connect the dots. I requested protective custody, but the request was denied.”
She gripped her hands in her lap to stop the trembling. “Why?”
Clearly Timothy had been in danger.
“I was working on a hunch, and I was new to the division.” The set of Corbin’s jaw grew rigid. “His death was my mistake. I should have pressed harder. I’ve been waiting two years for another chance at Cayman Holdings.”
“I’ve been a gullible idiot, haven’t I?” She hung her head and rubbed her fingers against her forehead, pressing the tips over her deepening worry lines. “Have you been tracking me the entire time?”
“No. You weren’t considered a suspect. Timothy kept your name out of the initial inquiry. Following his death, we investigated his contacts. His friends. That made you notable, but not a suspect.”
She didn’t entirely believe his answers, and she’d learned to trust her instincts over the years. Sometimes the tip-off wasn’t the mistake, the tip-off was when the columns balanced the first time perfectly. Honest people made mistakes. Crooks went overboard to make everything look flawless. A lack of errors often meant that someone was trying too hard.
Considering Timothy’s fate, even with the protection of Homeland Security, the chances of her surviving this ordeal had dropped by at least fifty percent.
Her chicken salad sandwich sat like a rock in her stomach. “What happens now?”
No Safe Place Page 4