The man grunted. “Good work.”
“Thanks. Can I go now? I have to pick up Caesar from doggy daycare. He pouts if I’m late.”
“What about us?” one of the men who’d captured her asked. “I don’t think we need to stick around.”
“I agree,” the woman said with a chuckle.
Casey stifled a feeble retort as humiliation competed with indignation. Jesus, was she that pathetic? Maybe she could take the new guy.
“Go, go,” the man, who was apparently in charge, said. “Wait!” he barked. “The key.”
“Oh, right.” Shuffling. “Here’s her stuff, too.”
Casey listened as those leaving clomped up the stairs. She slid one of her feet along the ground and suspected that the floor was concrete. An unfinished basement? A door swung shut. Silence. Panic stabbed through her. Had everyone left? She heard a scuffle. No. The leader—Steve Rose?—was still here. A creak from overhead told her that someone was upstairs, too. Now the sounds of ruffling paper. Was he going through her wallet, or her notebook?
“I’m going to remove the hood, Casey. You can scream as loudly as you like, but it won’t do you any good. Nobody will hear you.”
Suddenly light assaulted her eyes. She squinted at her surroundings and, despite her predicament, felt pleased with herself. She was in a bright but unfinished basement. A man stood in front of her, the hood dangling from one hand. Forget about leaping to her feet and rushing him. He was at least six feet tall and two hundred pounds, and his biceps strained against his business suit’s fabric. She’d hardly make a dent.
Not wanting to appear too interested in him, she shifted her attention to the only piece of furniture she could see: a table, on which her wallet, notebook, and phone sat next to a crowbar. Her stomach sank.
Steve—she’d call him that because he fit Steve Rose’s description—dropped the hood next to the crowbar and stared down at her. “Who are you working for, Casey?”
She mustered her courage and stared back at him. After a long moment, he picked up the crowbar and gently slapped it against his other hand as he spoke. “Who are you working for?” he said quietly
Okay, this was getting serious. How far should she go to protect Ellen? A broken leg? Two? This wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she’d enrolled for her training. Dear Universe, if I get out of this in one piece, I promise I’ll have a look at a university calendar. I’m not saying I’ll go to university, but I’ll consider it. I’ll seriously consider it, I promise. Thank you. She flinched when Steve raised the crowbar. He lowered it and touched its end to her cheek. “Next time, it’ll come down a lot harder. Who are you working for?”
The floor overhead creaked again, this time louder. Casey had the feeling someone was hovering near the top of the stairs.
“I’m going to count down from five,” Steve said. “Five…four…”
Shit, what should she do? She wasn’t James freaking Bond. You know in the movies when the hero has been captured, stabbed, burned, electrocuted, water boarded, and is now chained to a pole and coming in and out of consciousness, but he still manages to figure out a brilliant plan to take down the four guards packing machine guns? When the hero manages to somehow get one of the guards to shoot another one, then strangles the third guard with his feet while simultaneously shooting the remaining two guards in the forehead with a machine gun he’s holding with his broken hand? Well, that wasn’t her.
“Three…”
Respiration rate, increasing. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you.”
“Two…”
Hyperventilation, imminent. “I’ll tell you! Ellen Myers. I work for Ellen Myers.”
“Ellen?” someone cried. Then, “I’m coming down.”
Casey resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder as the woman descended the stairs. The newcomer strode to Steve’s side. Casey’s mouth dropped open as she locked eyes with the woman standing in front of her: Jackie Rose.
Chapter Eleven
“Jackie Rose!” Casey blurted.
“No, I am Petrova Romanovich, Russian spy,” Jackie said, with a thick accent.
Casey gaped. “Are you serious?”
Jackie laughed. “No, I’m not. But I’ve always wanted to say that.” She turned to Steve. “What did you think of the accent?”
He hesitated. “It sounded German to me.”
Funny, Casey had thought it was French. She shook herself. “Would somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Take the cuffs off,” Jackie said. “She’s working for Ellen. She’s not a threat.”
Steve fished a key from his pocket and removed the cuffs. Casey rubbed her stiff arms and wrists.
“So Ellen hired you?” When Casey nodded, Jackie smiled and shook her head. “Damn that girl. I knew she’d be worried, but I didn’t expect her to hire an investigator.”
“Maybe we should have told her,” Steve said.
Jackie’s eyes bulged. “No! Telling her would have been the same as broadcasting it on the news.
“Broadcasting what on the news?” Casey asked.
They looked at each other. “What are we going to do? She can blow everything.” Jackie frowned. “What am I saying? The fact that she’s here means we’re already screwed. Why couldn’t Ellen have found someone incompetent?”
“Ms. Cook found us, so she’s certainly no slouch,” Steve agreed.
Casey sat up straighter. Did you hear that, Mom and Dad? No slouch. She’d solved her case—sort of.
Steve scratched his head. “We can’t hold her here. Well, I suppose I could have her arrested for interfering with a government investigation.”
“What?” Casey stood. “Look, I was hired to find Jackie. I don’t know anything about a government investigation. It’s not my fault you left a trail.”
“You should have stayed upstairs,” Steve said to Jackie. “I would have warned her off and let her go.”
“You don’t think I would have called the cops and told them about this place?” Casey said.
“What address would you have given them, considering I’d have had you driven out of here with a hood over your head?”
“Well…” Good point.
“I didn’t think,” Jackie admitted. “I miss Ellen. I miss my life. I want this to be over. And now it turns out that it could all be for nothing, because she’s going to leave and blow everything.”
“Maybe not.” Steve turned to Casey. “What does she know? That you’re here? Where? Even if she figures it out, by the time they come looking, we’ll be gone.”
“She’ll know I’m not in a damn coma.”
“But she’ll have no proof. Hey, Ellen, I found your mother. She’s alive and well, but I can’t tell you where she is. Can I have my big fat cheque, please?”
“Hey, that’s not fair.” Casey folded her arms. “I don’t want to scuttle any government investigation, okay? If you give me a good reason to keep my mouth shut, I’ll keep my mouth shut. But when you’re ready to come out of hiding or whatever it is you’re doing, I want Ellen to know I found you.” She wanted to tell the world that she’d done it!
Jackie pursed her lips. “If I promise to tell Ellen you found me—in fact, if I promise to double whatever Ellen’s paying you, will you keep this whole incident to yourself? I won’t be missing forever. I’ll eventually resurface.” She gave Steve a sidelong glance. “Hopefully sooner, rather than later,” she muttered.
Casey considered Jackie’s offer. It would mean bold-faced lying to Ellen for an indeterminate period of time. If the case was about a missing ring, it wouldn’t be so difficult. But she’d seen the tears in Ellen’s eyes… At the same time, if this was a government matter… “Tell me why you’re here, and then I’ll decide. Was your coma faked? Why are you hiding?”
“Don’t say anything,” Steve growled. “We can’t trust someone your daughter picked out of a phone book.”
Casey’s hands went to her hips. “You could be lying! You gra
bbed me off the street and brought me here. You’re the one who can’t be trusted. How do I know you work for the government?”
He pulled a leather folder from his inside jacket pocket, opened it, and held it up.
Okay, it looked official, but she had no idea what a corporate espionage investigations department ID looked like. It could be forged, but she doubted it, mainly because her instincts told her to trust Jackie. The name on the ID was Steve Crayburn. The first name, the matching description…he must be the guy who’d snatched Jackie from the hospital. “If you’re government, why did you use a low-life like Street to book the spa?”
“My boss wouldn’t approve the spa booking,” Steve said. “He thought it was perfectly okay to leave Jackie lying in a coma until we had what we needed. I didn’t agree, so I went ahead with my idea, anyway. I didn’t want to use my credit card.” He glanced at Jackie. “I paid Street with my own money.”
Jackie frowned. “And I’ll repay you…as soon as I have my life back.”
“Okay, okay.” Casey waved the ID away.
“What do you know?” Steve asked as he slipped the ID back into his pocket. “Let’s start with that.”
Casey jutted her chin toward the notebook on the table. “It’s all in there.”
“That would be helpful, if I could read it. Have you considered using a smartphone to take notes?”
What was wrong with her handwriting? “I like using a notebook. Let me get it, so I don’t miss anything.” When Steve didn’t protest, she retrieved her notebook—and her wallet and phone. Phone! Emily would call the cops at six. Casey glanced at her watch. It wasn’t even five yet. She’d wait until she was out of here or until 5:50, whichever came first. “Okay,” she said, opening her notebook. “It started when Ellen called me…”
Apart from the occasional grunt, Steve and Jackie remained silent as they listened to Casey’s account of her investigation. The moment Casey closed her notebook, Jackie said, “Maybe she can help us. She can get to Mike.”
“And trap him?” Steve said.
Jackie nodded.
“You still haven’t told me what’s going on,” Casey pointed out. “Your turn.”
“About six months ago, I started to suspect that someone in the company was spying for our main competitor,” Jackie said, without waiting for Steve’s permission. “But I had no proof. Noticing that someone’s accessing files they shouldn’t need to access for their job isn’t proof, especially when they have permission to access those files. Noticing that someone who’s never worked late before is now working overtime isn’t proof. It was a gut feeling. I figured there was nothing I could do but keep my eyes and ears open. Things would have stayed like that if it hadn’t progressed to sabotage.”
Casey’s interest spiked. “Sabotage?”
“I usually have a lot of freedom when it comes to developing formulas and testing them. All of a sudden, Mike was super interested in the nitty-gritty details. Now, if Mike had left and the new boss was more hands-on, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.” Jackie shifted her weight. “But Mike had never shown any interest in the details before. In fact, he’d get irritated when you gave him too many. Then, all of a sudden, he didn’t only want to know the formulas, but he was making suggestions. Weird suggestions. Nothing that would harm a pet, but substituting ingredients that would not only lower the nutritional value, but adversely affect the smell or taste? No. Something was fishy—no pun intended. I started to take notes. I raised my concern with his boss. I didn’t accuse Mike of spying. I said he was interfering with my work.”
“What did Donna say?”
Jackie’s brows shot up. “That’s right, you met Donna.”
“And her cat.”
Jackie grimaced. “Poor thing needs a fur coat. Anyway, Donna didn’t take me seriously. She said I should be pleased—pleased!—that Mike was taking more of an interest in my work. Excuse me, but he was ruining my work. Ruining it!”
Casey and Steve made sympathetic noises.
“To add insult to injury, Donna said I should give Mike a break, that he was under a lot of pressure. God, I wanted to slap her. I hate management.”
“Since management didn’t seem concerned, she contacted my department,” Steve said.
“My first thought was to go to security, and I did,” Jackie said. “But they were useless. They kept telling me that it wasn’t their job to deal with office politics. I wanted to tell them I suspected Mike was spying, but I didn’t want to throw serious accusations around when I had no proof. And you start to get paranoid, you know? I didn’t know who to trust, who was working for the enemy. Anyway, Steve was assigned to my case. He agreed that something fishy was going on. I started to record my meetings with Mike—on the sly, of course.”
“In the meantime, we were trying to find a tangible connection between Mike and the rival company. Money, meetings, that sort of thing. We couldn’t find anything.” Steve’s lips pressed into a thin line.
“But I was putting pressure on him by pushing back on his suggestions and dragging my feet,” Jackie said. “I could see it was stressing him out.” Her mouth twisted. “I guess his other employer didn’t like the lack of results. So he decided to take matters into his own hands. And I caught him. Unfortunately, he also caught me.”
“What do you mean?” Casey asked.
“The idiot actually went into the lab to fiddle with my work! I walked in on him.” Jackie pressed her hand against her chest. “We stared at each other. He started to babble. I tried to pretend I thought it was all innocent and he was merely trying to help. I guess I didn’t quite pull that off, because a couple of days later, I was summoned to see Jerry—Donna’s boss. Guess what? They’ve noticed suspicious activity on the network, and it’s me. Access to the network restricted while they do their investigation. Access to the lab restricted—working hours only. I could see what was coming from a mile away. Mike was setting me up to take the fall for him.”
“Wouldn’t that mean the spying would stop, though?” Casey asked. “In doing so, he tipped off the company.”
“What does Mike care? He’s already got whatever they’re paying him.” Jackie scowled. “Money, maybe stock, who knows? Bastard.”
“It might not have stopped the spying,” Steve added. “We also suspect that Jerry might be involved. He’s not only Donna’s boss, he’s the owner’s brother.” His eyes narrowed. “We’re not sure who got involved first, Mike or Jerry. Apparently Jerry has always resented his older brother.”
“Apparently?” Jackie cried. “You can see Jerry’s hate burning in his eyes whenever the two of them are in the same room. He thinks daddy should have left him the company. Idiot.”
“He can’t have the company, so he wants to ruin it.” Casey would never understand the “cut off your nose to spite your face” crowd. “So who tampered with the food at the company party?” she asked.
They both stared at her. “Nobody,” they said in unison.
Okay, she was totally confused. “But—”
“Someone did something to my lunch,” Jackie said. “It would have been next to impossible to tamper with the reception food and guarantee that only I’d eat it. Whatever he used, he knew it would kick in during the party.”
“What did you have for lunch?”
“The party wasn’t the only celebration that day. The company catered lunch for our department, because we were celebrating someone’s work anniversary. I guess my beef came with an extra seasoning that nobody else got,” Jackie said wryly.
“And it put you into a coma?”
“No. The doctor did.”
Okay, she was totally confused. “But—”
“The coma was induced,” Steve said. “Mike wasn’t the only one getting a fat bonus.”
“A doctor deliberately put you into a coma?” Casey’s voice conveyed her incredulity. “Over cat food?”
“This is a serious business,” Jackie snapped. “Pet food is a billion dollar indu
stry. We’re talking high stakes, here.”
“Why not kill you?” Casey asked.
Jackie snorted. “Someone’s missing a pair of balls, that’s why.”
“We figure they intended to keep Jackie out of action until their plan was too far along for her to throw a wrench into it,” Steve explained. “Too many Fluffys would already have turned their noses up at the new, improved formula, and she’d be the scapegoat.”
“Yes, not only do they put me into a damn coma, but then they spend their sweet time setting me up. Bastards,” Jackie muttered. “Fortunately Steve arranged to move me. It only took him a month.”
“These things take time,” Steve murmured. “There was the power of attorney to forge, the doctor to investigate…unfortunately he slipped through our fingers before we had enough evidence to arrest him,” he added, for Casey’s benefit. “I guess he took the money and ran. He’s probably relaxing on some beach, in a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with us.”
“I was hoping to keep Ellen out of it until it was safe for me to reappear,” Jackie said. “I can’t believe she hired an investigator.”
“She loves you,” Casey said. “You didn’t think she’d stop looking for you, did you?”
“No, but I thought she’d leave it to the police, not hire a crack PI.”
Crack PI? Casey was really warming up to Jackie. “When I spoke to Donna, she said that Mike was going crazy because you’re away. His job depends on the success of the next new formula to hit the shelves.”
“Trust Donna to misinterpret the situation. Mike’s job might depend on the formula being a success, but he’s depending on it being a failure. He’ll falsify the test results and turn in reports that say the formula is a hit with our test subjects. When the food is released and the shit hits the fan, he’ll retire on his big fat hidden bank account. As for me, I’d miraculously come out of my coma in time to take the rap.”
“But then you disappeared.” Casey pondered the angles. “On the one hand, I guess that would benefit Mike and any accomplices. On the other, they have no idea what’s happened to you. You could be dead, you could still be in a coma, you could have escaped to a tropical island, or you could be doing what you’re doing now—cooperating with a government investigation.”
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