Damien scowled. “I’m not backtracking. I’m just saying we shouldn’t jump the gun on this. We can’t go around warning people that their lives are in danger based on our suspicions and a set of circumstances that may or may not be coincidental. We need more proof; otherwise we’re just creating a panic.”
Althea blew out a breath and rubbed her hands over her face, her nerves stretched taut. “Maybe you’re right,” she conceded after a moment. “The last thing I want to do is compromise this investigation in any way.”
“I know,” Damien murmured.
“At the very least, I need to talk to Courtney Reese to find out what she may know about Claire and James Odem. If Claire didn’t confide in her friends from school, maybe she confided in Courtney—someone she believed she could trust, someone whose opinion she really valued.”
“It’s worth a shot.” Damien paused. “And maybe while you’re at it, you could casually suggest to Courtney that she get a watchdog and invest in a security alarm if she doesn’t already have one.”
Althea snorted. “Suggest? Hell, I’ll even buy them for her—the alarm and the dog.” She gathered their empty beer bottles, rose from the sofa, and made her way to the kitchen. “Want another cold one?”
“No, thanks. I’m good. What did Thorndike say about Odem? I assume Mayhew had already spoken to him by the time you got there.”
“Yeah. As you can imagine, Thorndike wasn’t too happy about his teenage daughter cozying up to some stranger online. He blamed himself for not being more vigilant. He said he never made good on his threat to monitor her MyDomain page; he thought it was enough that she knew he had the password and could log in any time he wanted. But what good is a threat if you never follow up on it, right? Anyway, he was so upset he told me he was going to delete her page, but I asked him not to because I’ve been monitoring the comments that people have been leaving. You never know when the kidnapper might reach out again. Anyway, Mayhew didn’t tell him everything about the evidence against Odem. So Thorndike doesn’t know, for example, that Claire paid a P.I. to run a background check. Mayhew thinks we need to keep some details close to the vest.”
Damien nodded. “I agree. Did you tell Thorndike about the note?”
“Yes,” Althea answered grimly, placing their empty bottles in a plastic recycling bin and washing her hands at the sink. “I thought I’d have to call 911. He turned chalk white and started trembling so bad I was afraid he’d go into convulsions, poor guy. After he drank some water and regained his composure, he told me he didn’t know what the note could mean. He didn’t understand the significance of the proverb. But it shook him up pretty badly. I made him promise not to tell anyone but his wife about it.”
“Good. I called Mayhew on my way to Solomon’s Island and told him about the note as well.”
“Is he going to keep it under wraps?” Althea asked, drying her hands on a red-and-white checkered dish cloth that matched the kitchen’s color scheme.
“He will if he knows what’s good for him,” Damien said tersely.
“Let’s hope so. He didn’t mention it when I went back to the police station after leaving Thorndike’s house. But then again, we didn’t really have a chance to talk. His phone was ringing off the hook, and he was dealing with a million other things at once. When the secretary brought him the fax from the phone company, I pretty much took it and ran.”
Damien chuckled. “He probably wouldn’t have had a chance to go through the messages anytime soon anyway.”
“That’s what I figured. Are you sure you don’t want anything else to drink? I’ve got a ton of bottled water in the fridge. Want one?”
“Yeah, that’d be good. Thanks.”
Althea grabbed two bottled waters and left the kitchen. “Before I forget, I also stopped by Heather Warner’s house. But I didn’t get a chance to talk to her.”
“Why not?” Damien asked, accepting one of the drinks.
“Her mother answered the door and told me Heather was sleeping. She’d stayed home from school today because she wasn’t feeling well. Her mother said she’s taking Claire’s kidnapping pretty hard, not eating, barely sleeping. Perfectly understandable, considering that they’re best friends.”
Damien’s eyes narrowed shrewdly on her face. “There’s a but in there somewhere.”
Althea shrugged as she rejoined him on the sofa. “I don’t know. I just got this weird feeling that Heather’s mother didn’t want me to speak to her daughter. She kept saying that Heather had already been questioned twice by the police, and she’d told them everything she knew.”
“But you think Heather is withholding something.”
“I don’t know.” Althea bit her lip, tucking her legs beneath her on the sofa. “Maybe I’m letting my own experience cloud my perspective.”
Damien watched her quietly, waiting for her to continue.
She hesitated, then said, “When I was kidnapped, my best friend at the time, Elizabeth Torres, wasn’t entirely forthcoming with the police or your brother. She wasn’t involved in my abduction, but she had a few skeletons of her own that she wanted to hide.”
Damien said in a low murmur, “I remember hearing on the news that she had conspired with Julian Jerome, who was initially a suspect in the case. She admitted to Garrison that she’d once mentioned wanting you out of the way so she wouldn’t have to compete with you anymore.”
Althea nodded slowly. “She wanted to replace me as the student panelist for a big program being held at the university, and Professor Jerome wanted to discredit Imani by claiming she’d plagiarized his work. He and Elizabeth agreed to help each other achieve their warped little goals.” She shook her head, amazed, even after all these years, by the twisted conspiracy plot that had come unraveled while she was being held captive by a madman. All because of jealousy and greed.
“I guess you never really know a person,” she said sardonically. “If someone had told me back then that my best friend hated me so much she would sleep with my boyfriend and joke about wanting me to disappear, I wouldn’t have believed it. But I was naive then, a little too trusting.” Her lips curved in a brittle, mirthless smile. “I can tell you I don’t have that problem anymore.”
Damien gave her a soft, sympathetic smile. “I can see how you might find it hard to trust others. You were betrayed by your best friend and boyfriend, and kidnapped by someone you admired and respected, someone who was supposed to be an authority figure. They all let you down in the worst imaginable way, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world is out to get you.”
“I know that,” Althea said, a little too defensively. “Believe me, Dr. Parminter has helped me work through all those issues in therapy. All I was saying is that I’ve learned from that experience not to put anything past anyone, no matter how things may seem.”
Damien smiled ruefully. “I guess that mind-set comes in handy in our line of work.”
Althea grinned. “Are you kidding? It should be a prerequisite.”
He smiled again, briefly. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
But she already knew what he was going to ask. “Why did I join the Bureau instead of becoming a doctor?”
He nodded. “I guess you get that a lot,” he said ruefully.
She chuckled. “Not as much as I used to. But it’s a legitimate question, especially for those who have known me all my life, who knew all I ever wanted to be was a doctor. Growing up all I ever talked about was traveling to impoverished countries and curing the poor and sick.” She sighed heavily. “I had good intentions, and I probably would have stayed on that course if my life hadn’t changed so drastically. But it did. I changed. I still wanted to help people, but not in the way I’d always envisioned.
“After surviving the abduction, I swore I would never be a victim again. I joined the FBI because I wanted to dedicate my life to stopping criminals like Anthony Yusef. If I can save just one girl’s life, then I’ve already made a difference. And that is what gets me
up every morning.”
Damien was watching her quietly, his eyes soft with admiration and something else, something that made her breath catch.
“What about you?” she said, quickly turning the tables on him. “Why did you become an agent? And why didn’t Garrison want you to join the Bureau?”
Damien chuckled. “The answer to the first question is that I’ve always wanted to be in law enforcement. Like you, I’ve always wanted to help people, and I happen to enjoy hunting criminals and saving lives. As for Garrison, he’s always been the overprotective big brother. He loves being an agent, but let’s face it. Over time the job takes a toll on you. There are days when it seems like fighting crime is an uphill battle, and the more you climb, the farther you have to go. Consoling the families of murder victims never gets easier, especially when that victim is a child. I’ve worked cases that gave me nightmares about my own daughter being brutally murdered.” He grimaced, shaking his head. “Anyway, Garrison wanted to shelter me from all that. But once he realized how serious I was about joining the Bureau, he didn’t stand in my way.”
Althea smiled. “Smart man. I get the feeling that nothing stands in your way when you’ve made up your mind about something, Damien Wade.”
He held her gaze. “You’re right about that,” he said softly.
Inexplicably, Althea’s heart thumped.
She jumped up from the sofa. “Let me, uh, get those message transcripts.”
She hurried down the hall to her study to retrieve the text message transcripts from Claire’s cell phone, which covered the last thirty days of activity. Returning to the living room, she divided the pile in half and passed Damien a stack of printouts.
“As you can see,” she said, settling back down on the sofa, “Claire, like most teenagers, did a whole lot of text messaging. If there’s any chance she confided in one of her friends or even hinted at her relationship with Odem, it’s possible she did it via her cell phone. I know it’s a long shot since it appears that she knew better than to make any calls to him with her phone, but it’s worth investigating.”
“I agree.” Damien scanned the first page of the printout and frowned, muttering under his breath, “It’s like trying to decipher a foreign language.”
Grinning, Althea handed him another sheet of paper. “I took the liberty of downloading this handy little guide to understanding online chat acronyms, which I think you will find quite useful.” She paused, then couldn’t resist adding, “Dinosaur.”
Damien laughed.
Chapter 18
Over the next hour, while the voice of Jill Scott crooned softly in the background, Damien and Althea pored through the private text messages of Claire Thorndike, messages that were never intended for adults—strangers—to view and dissect. As Damien went through the pages, he reminded himself that he was just doing his job, that finding the missing teenager took precedence over everything else. But he couldn’t help feeling like he was eavesdropping on someone’s private conversation or, worse, reading his daughter’s diary behind her back. And the more he read, the more ancient he felt.
Claire spent an average of three hours a day sending text messages to her friends, starting first thing in the morning and continuing into the night, long after she should have gone to bed. She had a mild crush on her music appreciation teacher, who she thought was a major hottie. She gossiped about girls she hated and took stabs at her ex-boyfriend Josh Reed, citing his “puny dick” as one of the reasons she’d gotten over him so easily. She complained about PMS and monster cramps that made her want to “go effin postal” on everyone who crossed her path. She complained about boring teachers and bragged about acing hard tests that her friends had struggled with. She bemoaned the stupidity of Hollywood starlets who couldn’t stay out of trouble with the law. And, most telling, she griped about her stepmother—aka THE GLDDGR. Claire believed Suzette Thorndike had only married her father for his money, and she resented Suzette’s “lame” attempts to befriend her. Her contempt for her stepmother was so fierce that Damien could only wonder whether Spencer Thorndike had deliberately lied when he told them that his wife and daughter had mended their relationship. Either he’d lied or he was in serious denial.
When Damien shared this observation with Althea, she chuckled dryly and said, “I told you. And my guess is that Suzette wouldn’t have too many flattering things to say about her stepdaughter if we went through her text messages.”
“Probably not. Anything about Odem yet?”
“Not yet. Is it just me or does it seem like Claire and Heather had a very shallow friendship?”
Damien chuckled. “You’re getting old, Althea,” he teased, although he agreed with her assessment.
“Maybe I am,” she muttered. “I mean, I realize that this may not be the medium for sharing deep, personal thoughts and feelings, but there doesn’t seem to be any real substance here at all. Why spend so many hours text messaging each other just to essentially shoot the breeze?”
“Isn’t that the point?”
“I guess.” Althea grimaced. “God, I’ve never felt so old in my life.”
Damien grinned. “Join the club. It’s the job. It ages you more than you think. Anyway, maybe Claire and Heather had more, ah, substantive conversations in person.”
“I hope so.”
Silence lapsed between them again as they returned to reading. Just when Damien began to wonder if they were searching for a nonexistent needle in a haystack, he came across a conversation between Claire and Courtney Reese. It was dated September 26, starting at 12:34 P.M.
CLAIRE: wu? (What’s up?)
COURTNEY: hey u. working on speech. need mental break. wrud? (What are you doing?)
CLAIRE: at lunch. ?4u. (I have a question for you.)
COURTNEY: k
CLAIRE: have u ever been with a black guy?
COURTNEY: umm . . .
CLAIRE: tmi? (Too much information?)
COURTNEY: lol
CLAIRE: sry (Sorry)
COURTNEY: np (No problem) u really wanna know?
CLAIRE: vm (Very much)
COURTNEY: yes
CLAIRE: yarly? (Ya, really?)
COURTNEY: really
CLAIRE: wh5! (Who, what, when, where, why)
COURTNEY: lol. can’t say. he’s really important . . . and married.
CLAIRE: gtfo! (Get the fuck out) is he a senator?
COURTNEY: really can’t say. back 2 u. why did u ask?
CLAIRE: i met someone online.
COURTNEY: a black guy?
CLAIRE: yeah. a surgeon. i really like him.
COURTNEY: is he married?
CLAIRE: nw (No way)
COURTNEY: how do u know?
CLAIRE: hired pi
COURTNEY: omg! r u serious?
CLAIRE: had to make sure he wasn’t schizo or anything
COURTNEY: r u gonna meet him?
CLAIRE: yeah. next friday. my dad and the glddgr will be in colorado
COURTNEY: idk . . . (I don’t know)
CLAIRE: don’t worry. it’s cool. he’s amazing. he even offered to meet in public, but i said no. my house is more private.
COURTNEY: are u gonna . . . ?
CLAIRE: hell yeah!
COURTNEY: lmao. cb! (Laughing my ass off. Crazy bitch.)
CLAIRE: is it true what they say about black guys?
COURTNEY: guess u’ll find out soon enough
CLAIRE: lol. bgwm (Be gentle with me.)
COURTNEY: lmao. ig2r. bib. cm later. (I got to run. Boss is back. Call me later.)
CLAIRE: l8r (Later)
“More evidence that the son of a bitch is lying to us,” Damien muttered darkly.
Althea glanced up quickly from her printout, her expression hopeful. “What? Did you find something?”
Nodding, he passed the page to her, then watched as she read the conversation between Claire and Courtney Reese with an air of mounting excitement.
“Got him,” she declared triumphantl
y.
Damien shook his head grimly. “Not quite.”
Althea frowned. “What do you mean? We’ve got proof that Odem was planning to meet her!”
“No, what we’ve got is her word against his.” Damien sat forward intently. “Look, you and I both know that Odem is lying through his damn teeth, but unless we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, he can pretty much stick to his story about Claire being delusional and obsessed with him. If we show him that text message, he’ll just say she was lying, that he never agreed to meet her in person. And his lawyer will back him up. Like I said, it’s her word against his.”
Althea scowled, glaring at the page she held. “Damn it. That’s why we really need those MyDomain message transcripts, to see if he misrepresented anything.”
“What we need,” Damien countered, “are the messages they sent to each other via the secret e-mail account. We need the smoking gun, the irrefutable proof that he agreed to meet her at her house on the night she disappeared. And even with those messages, Odem can always backtrack and claim that, yeah, he was going to meet her, but at the last minute he changed his mind. Short of placing him at the scene on the night in question, we’re going to have a helluva time making the charges stick against a respected neurosurgeon with no priors.”
“So does that mean we shouldn’t arrest him at all?” Althea demanded, her dark eyes flashing with outrage.
“Of course not. If we ever get our hands on those secret messages, we’re hauling him in and charging him, no questions asked.”
Impatiently Althea shoved a hunk of hair out of her eyes and heaved a sigh of frustration. “This guy is the closest thing we’ve got to a suspect,” she said bitterly, “and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Not yet,” Damien murmured, understanding her frustration, the sense of urgency that fueled her anger. He felt the same way, but he knew they couldn’t let it get the best of them, or they’d lose focus. “We have to be patient.”
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