Mysterious Montana

by B. J Daniels

  She reached out, getting a handful of his raincoat sleeve. She tugged.

  He came around in surprise, stopping abruptly. She crashed into him, thrown off balance by her forward momentum.

  “Excuse me?” he said, looking both annoyed and concerned.

  She stumbled back. The man wasn’t Lucas. Not even close. But he was wearing the same type of coat, the collar up. She’d followed the wrong man! She glanced around frantically, certain the man she’d seen on the boat had been Lucas.

  The man pulled his coat sleeve free of her grasp.

  “Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” she stammered, stepping back as the man stalked off.

  She searched among the departing passengers. There weren’t many. None of them resembled Lucas.

  “Samantha?”

  She turned at the sound of Will’s voice and the throb of the Bronco’s engine. He looked concerned as he pulled up next to her and reached across to open her door.

  She climbed in, suddenly weak and tired and scared. Was she losing her mind? Had she only imagined she saw Lucas? Yet, wasn’t that better than the alternative—that he was alive and didn’t want to be found? Or that he was being held for ransom?

  “Are you all right?” Will asked, frowning over at her.

  She nodded and closed her eyes, haunted by the image of Lucas standing at the ferry railing.

  * * *

  CHARLEY MURPHY LIVED on Point Beals in a large beach house with his wife and three children.

  “Sam!” Charley said when he opened the door.

  Behind him, she could hear the kids and Katie in the kitchen. The smell of pancakes, bacon and coffee wafted through the house.

  “Sorry to stop by so early,” she managed to get out before Charley pulled her into his arms in a bear hug. He was a big handsome man with dark hair, big brown eyes and more than his share of Murphy charm.

  “Get in here,” he growled. “Charley,” he said, extending a hand to Will.

  “This is Will Sheridan and Zack O’Brien.”

  Charley lifted a brow at the last name as he ushered them all into the kitchen.

  Katie looked up from the stove, pancake turner in hand. She was dark-haired, pretty and petite. A perfect match for Charley. They’d met at college, had fallen in love literally at first sight and had been together ever since.

  “Looks like we have a few more for breakfast,” Charley announced good-naturedly.

  Sam gave Katie a hug and said hello to the kids: Reese, four; and Alex and Suzanna, the twins, three. Katie was pregnant again and looked as if she might be due any day.

  “I need to talk to you,” Sam whispered to Charley.

  He nodded. “After breakfast.” He drew up more chairs and grabbed place settings for all of them.

  They talked about everything but what she was really doing in Seattle. Sam could tell that Will liked Charley and his boisterous family. When they’d finished, Charley led her and Will down the hall to his den. Katie and the kids took Zack to the rec room to check out their toys.

  Zack looked back at Sam, his CD player in his small hands, the earphones around his neck. He wore his backpack, but the computer games were now in Sam’s purse. Zack had relinquished them with his usual reluctance just before they reached Charley’s. She caught a glimpse of the boy’s worried expression before he turned into tough-guy again and disappeared with the other kids.

  “You realize you should turn the boy over to the authorities,” Charley said, sounding like the cop he was the moment they were in the study with the door closed. He was obviously familiar with the case, and knew her history with Lucas and a whole lot more.

  “I just need some time to figure it all out,” she said. “The kid’s in trouble. Maybe Lucas, too.”

  Charley shook his head at her. “I hate to see you going back down this road again, you know?”

  She knew. She glanced over at Will, wondering what he was thinking of all this, wondering how much he’d figured out about her and Lucas. A lot. But not everything. Only she and Charley knew everything.

  “I have to try, for Zack’s sake,” she said determinedly.

  Charley nodded and gave her a look that said he knew her well enough to have guessed she wouldn’t want to give up.

  “I desperately need some answers. What can you tell me about Lucas? Cassie said he was in financial trouble.” She told him what had happened in Wolf Point and in Butte, and about thinking she’d seen Lucas on the ferry. Then she detailed what Cassie had told her.

  Charley swore, something he rarely did. “I don’t believe it. What kind of woman is Cassie? Never mind, don’t answer that. I already know.” He looked from Sam to Will and back to her.

  “Will can hear anything you have to say,” she said, reading his concern. “He’s…with me.”

  Both Will and Charley lifted a brow but said nothing about that.

  “Lucas was into online trading,” Charley said in his cop tone. “In over his head. Word on the street was that he owed the wrong people a lot of money and that he’d made some promises he couldn’t keep.”

  “This computer game he was working on?” she asked.

  Charley nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. That he’d promised them the game, if it really is worth anything, and he tried to renege.”

  “Would Lucas jeopardize his own son like that?” Will asked.

  Charley shot a look at Sam, his expression making it clear that he wouldn’t put anything past Lucas.

  Sam shrugged. She’d thought she’d known Lucas five years ago—and obviously hadn’t. She didn’t pretend to know him now.

  She glanced over at Will. He seemed to be studying the floor.

  “I have to be honest with you, Sam,” Charley said. “I think Lucas has skipped town with some woman and left you with his mess. Isn’t that what he did the last time?”

  Will’s head came up.

  She avoided his questioning gaze. “What if the game is just what Lucas said it was, and someone really is threatening to kill him for it?”

  Charley gave her his you’re-a-chump look. “Then Lucas is in danger and anyone else who gets involved. Drop the case. One person has already been murdered. And you know what extremes Cassie will go to to get what she wants.”

  She didn’t want to talk about Cassie or the past. Nor could she drop the case. “What is Lucas’s partner saying was stolen from Whiz Kidz?”

  “Bradley Guess? Just the one game—the new one Lucas was working on,” Charley said. “It’s called Catastrophe. That’s about all I know. Interesting name under the circumstances, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Catastrophe?” she echoed. Could that really have been what Al was trying to write in blood before he died?

  “I’d love to see that game,” Charley was saying. He must have caught her look. His gaze narrowed. “Don’t tell me you have a piece of it?”

  “Maybe.” She opened her purse and pulled out the games. She handed them to Charley.

  He studied the boxes, then the CDs inside. “Maybe he hid the game in another one.” He shrugged and swung around to insert one into the CD-ROM. A few seconds later, a game came up on the screen in a flash of color and sound.

  “This isn’t it,” he said, exiting after a few minutes. He put in the other one. “Nope. I’ve heard of both of these. They’ve been on the market for a while.”

  Charley shook his head as he handed her the games, and she placed them back in the boxes.

  “I don’t like anything about this, Samantha. These game people—” He waved a hand through the air. “Look, I think you’re making a mistake, cousin, if you don’t let us cops handle this one.” He shrugged. “Nor can you keep the kid—”

  She started to argue, but he held up his hand.

  “I can buy you twenty-four hours and that’s pushing it. Twenty-four hours and I turn the boy over to the authorities. In the meantime, he stays here. He’s safer here than with you right now.”

  She couldn’t argue that.
>
  “Deal?”

  “Deal,” she said, and gave her cousin a hug. “Thanks.”

  She looked over at Will. He nodded and smiled as if saying that between the two of them they could wrap this up in twenty-four hours. She felt a rush of tenderness for him. He really was part of a dying breed. Twenty-four hours, though, and he’d be gone.

  * * *

  THE MORE WILL FOUND OUT about Lucas and the computer game, the more troubled he felt for Sam. Dynamite couldn’t have lodged him from her side. Twenty-four hours and Zack would be turned over to the authorities and possibly to his birth mother—a woman the boy didn’t even know, a woman whom Will suspected might be anything but what the boy needed.

  Zack needed someone loving and caring and protective and—He needed someone like Samantha Murphy. The thought bothered Will as they said goodbye to Zack.

  The boy seemed fine with staying at the beach house with the other kids, as long as he had his backpack, CD and his computer games back.

  “We’ll see you in a few hours,” Samantha told him.

  Zack shrugged as if he didn’t care, but Will could tell that he was pretty infatuated with Samantha. Understandably so.

  Samantha was getting attached to Zack, too. Will could tell she had a hard time letting the boy out of her arms. The moment she released him, he scampered down the hall after the other kids, looking a little embarrassed.

  Will hated to leave Charley’s. He knew Sam and Zack were safe there. He also liked the feel of the large Murphy family and the warmth they seemed to share. How many more cousins were there who would have a vehicle waiting for Samantha should she need one? Or a safe place to stay?

  He liked Charley, too, and agreed with him that Samantha was in over her head on this case. But Will had come to know her well enough to realize she wasn’t backing down. Not now. Not with Zack in danger.

  That was why he was sticking by her side. “What now?” he asked, as they drove away in yet another borrowed pickup.

  “I don’t know,” she said, sounding down.

  She had to be exhausted from lack of sleep. He knew he was, and probably wasn’t thinking clearly.

  “If Lucas was lying about the game,” she said thoughtfully, “he might have been just stalling for time so he and Zack could skip the country. But what about the break-in at Whiz Kidz if the game wasn’t worth anything?”

  “The burglar might not have known that,” Will suggested. “Or Lucas could have burglarized his own office to make it look like someone was after the game and him.”

  She nodded, but he could tell she didn’t like thinking of Lucas in this new light.

  As they drove back up island the short distance to the ferry, he felt anxious, and knew it was from leaving Zack and worrying about Samantha. Not that he didn’t think the kid would be safe with the cop and his family. He just didn’t like Zack out of his sight right now, and hurriedly warned himself about getting too attached to either Zack or Samantha. But part of him knew it was already too late. When it came time to leave them—He hated to think about that. Twenty-four hours. A lot could happen in that amount of time.

  “Are you all right?” he asked Samantha as he drove the pickup onto the ferry. He watched her look around as if she expected to see someone.

  “I just keep thinking about seeing Lucas earlier on the boat,” she said, her voice soft, almost scared. “I could swear—” She looked up at him. “Or maybe I just wanted to see him.”

  “Maybe,” he offered, wanting to reassure her but not sure what she needed. Lucas could be alive and hiding out from his creditors. He could have staged all of this to make his escape, setting up Samantha to take care of Zack. Would Lucas do that to Zack? Hadn’t Zack said something about waiting to get a bike? Maybe this was part of some plan Lucas and Zack had together, and that was why Zack seemed pretty calm about everything that was happening to him.

  He watched her hug herself as if chilled by a cold he couldn’t feel.

  “Maybe I did just imagine him.”

  Will felt a sharp pain. It took him a moment to recognize it as jealousy. Plain and simple. Damn Lucas, wherever he was.

  It was still early in the morning, the day gray and wet, a weak sun trying to battle its way through the clouds. But the traffic on the ferry and in the city had increased.

  “I thought we’d start with Whiz Kidz and Lucas’s partner, Bradley Guess,” Samantha said as the ferry docked again in Seattle.

  Will could tell it was hard on her, too, having left Zack. Worse believing Lucas might have been the man she saw this morning, a man more concerned for his own safety than that of his son.

  “What can I do to help?”

  She smiled over at him. “I was hoping you’d search Lucas’s office while I keep Guess busy.” She handed him the keys from Zack’s backpack. “Unless I’m mistaken, one of these should fit.”

  * * *

  THE OFFICE OF Whiz Kidz was located in downtown Seattle, just a few blocks from Pike’s Market and the ferry. As Will parked the pickup, Sam stared at the crowd in the market, expecting to see Lucas’s face among the passersby. Half afraid she wouldn’t. Half afraid she would.

  A group was crossing at the light, but she didn’t see anyone she recognized.

  “You sure you’re all right?” Will asked, studying her.

  “Sure.” She shot him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

  He reached across the seat before she could open her door and squeezed her hand. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but changed his mind.

  The sign inside the doorway of the older brick building indicated Whiz Kidz was on the fifth floor. She and Will stepped into the small, antiquated elevator.

  “Not exactly cutting edge,” Will commented.

  Her thought exactly. She was glad when the door opened on the fifth floor and she could get out of the musty-smelling confined space.

  She realized immediately that this top floor space was smaller than the floors below. There were only a few offices and there was no reception area, which surprised her.

  A short hallway with threadbare carpet ended in an office door with gold lettering on opaque glass that read, Whiz Kidz.

  This was where Lucas had designed a computer game worth millions of dollars?

  She could see several other offices. Small and simply furnished, they each had a computer, desk and chair. One of the offices had an outer office and a window. The walls were faded as if large poster-size objects had recently been taken down.

  There didn’t seem to be anyone around. Either computer game whizzes didn’t come in early, or there weren’t many employees at Whiz Kidz.

  A phone rang in the office at the end of the short hall behind another door with gold lettering: Bradley Guess. She headed for the door, eavesdropping on what she could hear of Mr. Guess’s one-sided conversation.

  There was no door with Lucas’s name on it that she could see.

  “I’m handling it,” the voice snapped irritably. “Look, if I knew something, you’d be the first—Whatever. I don’t have time for this now, Bebe.” He hung up and swore.

  Sam tapped lightly on the glass.

  “Come in!” the brusque voice snapped.

  She glanced at Will, then pushed open the door. This office was a little nicer than the others, but not much. A large computer dominated the space; next to it stood a stack of computer games. On the walls were several dozen large colorful framed posters of computer game covers. None she’d ever heard of. Which meant nothing.

  “Mr. Gu—” She never got the name out. Sitting behind the desk was a man she recognized, but not as Bradley Guess. “Buzz?” she stammered in surprise.

  It took him a little longer. He blinked several times and frowned.

  “Samantha Murphy,” she provided. “We went to college—”

  “Samantha, sure. You and Lucas—Yeah, I remember you.”

  He didn’t offer her a seat. In fact, he didn’t seem all that excited to see her. Not that they’
d been close in college, even though he’d been Lucas’s closest friend.

  “I didn’t know the two of you were partners in Whiz Kidz,” she said. Who was she kidding? She didn’t know much of anything about Lucas’s life.

  Buzz nodded, and she tried to remember the name he’d used at college. Not that it mattered. Obviously, he’d changed his name—and his appearance. He looked more “hip” in his button-down shirt, khakis. But he was still short with wiry brown hair and intense dark eyes that always made him look as if he were thinking hard about something.

  “So, what are you doing here?” he asked, and shot a look at Will.

  Socially he was the same, Sam realized. Inept.

  He was staring at them as if they were lost and he didn’t like giving directions.

  “I’m a private investigator,” she said. “I’ve been hired to investigate the disappearance of Lucas O’Brien.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. “This is an associate of mine, Will Sheridan.”

  He glanced at Will again. “I’m afraid I won’t be much help. I have no idea where Lucas is.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” she asked. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “I’ll wait for you down the hall,” Will said, excusing himself as per their plan. He closed the door behind him.

  She drew up one of the chairs across the desk from Buzz—Arnold Zingler. That had been his name. But everyone called him Buzz because of his buzz cut.

  As she sat down, she pulled a notebook and a pen from her purse. “The last time you saw him?” she asked again, flipping open the notebook.

  He glanced toward his door as if worried about where Will had gone.

  “Well, I’ve already told the police everything I know,” he said. “Why don’t you talk to them?”

  “I will, but there are a few things I’m not clear on. When did you say you last saw Lucas?”

  Buzz sighed, picked up a No. 2 pencil from his desk and leaned back in the chair. He began to twirl the pencil between his fingers like a baton. “I saw him Friday morning when he came in. He seemed agitated, acting weirder than usual.” He continued in a singsong voice as if he’d told this story numerous times. “Later that night someone broke into his office. Tore it up, stole his most recent game and destroyed the computers. That’s all I know. I haven’t seen Lucas since.”