by Dale Mayer
“In some cases,” Keane said, with a narrowing look, “that’d be called stalking.”
She glared at him.
“Continuing now,” Keane said. “Apparently, according to the kid’s adoptive family, the birth parents had contacted him when he turned eighteen. They didn’t have the benefit of anonymity because of how the adoption process had come about, so they knew who he was and essentially where he was.” Shooting a look over at Charlotte, he said, “And likely had kept an eye on him from a distance.”
“So the birth parents are stalkers. Got it,” she said. She watched as her brother tried to hide his grin. And then she glanced back at Keane. “So, will you continue to be melodramatic about this, or will you finally get to the point?”
He sighed. “You don’t have to be difficult all the time.”
“How would you know?” she asked. “You don’t even know me most of the time. Maybe I’m like this normally.”
“No, you’re not,” Nico said. “We’ve talked to lots of people about you, and apparently you’re one of the most giving and respected people in the group.”
“How much did you pay them to say that?” she asked. But inside, she was pleased. She really was somebody who stepped out of her way to try to help. And that, in a way, made her fearful, and she came back to feeling guilty too.
“The birth family was rebuffed by the boy.”
“Why would he do that?” Charlotte asked.
Keane shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s not something that we can really judge at this point because we don’t have any more information about that relationship.”
“Or what the adoptive family may have said to the boy,” she said quietly. “A lot of poison can be spread, and it may not have any meaning in reality.”
“Exactly. The adoptive parents are still grieving and angry and have had no contact with the birth parents. They presume that they know about their son’s death but haven’t seen or heard from them since.”
“So the contact must have been fairly recent if he died at eighteen and if the birth parents contacted him at eighteen.”
“January. They contacted him sometime just after his birthday. You had the rally in March.”
“So they didn’t even have a chance to establish a relationship or to try again.”
“Exactly.”
“But still, you’d think they’d be more upset at the adoptive parents than at the organizers of the rally.”
“Possibly,” Keane said. “But another interesting fact came up. That rally had two main organizers.”
“John and Sue,” she said with a nod. “We had lots of emails and phone calls back and forth.”
“Well, both of them died in a car accident after the rally. Did you know that?”
She frowned. “I remember hearing that they were in an accident. I didn’t think that had killed them though.”
“They both died in the hospital after succumbing to their injuries.”
“Was it a long time afterward?” she asked, puzzled. “Because I don’t remember hearing anything about it.”
“It didn’t garner much prominence in the newspapers,” Keane said. “And that was the last rally you went to over there until you attended this one.”
“Yeah,” she said. “After that death, it was not something I really wanted to promote anymore.”
“Understandable,” her brother murmured. He looked over at Keane. “Are you expecting that to be connected?”
“I think that quite possibly it is, yes.”
At that, she stared, comprehension slowly settling. “You think the organizers were killed because of the boy’s death? And by his real parents?”
Keane nodded. “That’s what I think.”
“Cause of accident?” Nico asked.
“No idea. Apparently there wasn’t a whole lot left of the vehicle. It went off the road, and, if it was run off the road, they don’t know. Both passenger and driver were thrown out of the vehicle, hence their severe injuries. But, even though they had technically survived the crash, they would have died from the burns anyway.”
“So, no way to open that investigation up or to access those files and take another look?” Charlotte asked.
“Our team’s already sending those records to us,” Keane said.
“And who are these birth parents?” she asked.
“We have Dave Mortimer and Ellen Flagstaff.”
“Neither name means anything to me,” she said.
“We’re getting images too. And of the adopting family,” Nico said. “Let’s see who everybody involved in this is.” He nodded and typed something back into the Mavericks chat box. “They’re getting it.”
Charlotte sat here, slumped in her chair, thinking about how devastating it must be to lose a child. But now that he had finally turned eighteen, and the birth parents had a hope of having a relationship, then he dies? “I wonder what the conversation was between the birth parents and Andy.”
“According to the adoptive family, he said he wasn’t ready for a relationship with his birth parents.”
“Ah,” she said with understanding. “If so, then basically his death caused by this rally lost them something they’ve been waiting a long time for, and what he had said could potentially happen down the road had been taken away from them.”
“That would be a motive, yes.”
She looked over at Nico. “So why did it have to happen in Australia though?”
“As a reenactment of Andy’s death?” Keane offered. “Everything certainly seems to be centered around Australia and what happened there.”
“Or,” Nico suggested, “if the Australian birth family wanted revenge, it would make sense because they would have connections there.”
“As in helicopters? Isn’t that a bit over-the-top?”
“It depends if they have money, and it depends on how badly they wanted you to pay for their son’s death.”
“And why am I to blame? A lot of our group was there.”
Nico reached out a hand and clasped her fingers. “That unfortunately I can answer. According to his adoptive family, he was all gung-ho about seeing you.”
Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Seriously?”
Nico nodded. “According to the family, he was very impressed with you.”
She groaned and sagged back. “So here we have adolescent worship, and, for all the wrong reasons, he shows up to a local rally where I’m a spokesperson. I speak with him briefly, for maybe less than a minute, and he gets killed at the rally, and now I’m blamed for his death?” She shook her head. “And have you found a way to disconnect my assistant from all this?”
“No, not at all. Considering she’s the one who insisted you go, we have to consider that she is likely connected.”
“I don’t want to think of that,” she said quietly. “I really enjoyed having her around, but it wasn’t always easy.”
“If it was a friendship,” her brother said quietly. “It’s what I do too. For years I made friends, but they were all for a purpose—to get me the information I needed.”
She stared at him, her insides sinking. “And, of course, once she had her job done, she was done.”
“Yes, now we don’t have that name exiting through customs. She hasn’t left Australia yet, so she should be still there. She was confirmed on a plane to Sydney, and there’s no reason that she shouldn’t have disembarked there.”
“If she had a second ID, would she have been able to use that to get off elsewhere? So that nobody knows where the actual passenger is?”
“They’d be looking for her, in theory, if that was the case,” he said. “Because you’re pretty well tagged when you travel internationally.”
“So, we can assume that she’s probably still there.”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t that make it a little too obvious?”
“Possibly, but you also have to consider that maybe she was planning to come over to help you, in her work capa
city as your assistant.”
“That’s plausible,” she said. “I did travel a little bit with my other assistant.” She froze. “Does that mean that Maggie had something to do with that poor woman’s death too?”
“We don’t know, but we have to keep that avenue open,” Nico said quietly.
“The world sucks,” she said, hopping to her feet and walking over to the window above the kitchen sink. It was dark outside, but it was a half-lit darkness with a full moon above. “The night outside is like the world around us,” she said. “You can only see that which is lit up and available to see, whereas three-fourths of what’s going on around you is hidden in the shadows.”
“Unfortunately that’s quite true,” her brother responded.
She looked back at him. “Are you allowed to be here?”
“I am right now,” he said. “I was hoping that maybe I could stay for a couple days. I don’t really have any other place to go. But, if it’s not convenient, that’s fine too. I’ll grab a hotel.”
She stared at him in shock. “How could it not be convenient? I haven’t seen you since how many years ago, and you show up on my doorstep and then think you’re not welcome?”
“In many cases like ours, I wouldn’t be welcome. People would be too angry to see past the fact that I could have contacted you many years ago.”
“Yeah, you could have,” she said quietly. “But I’m willing to trust that you felt you were doing what you needed to do.”
He gave her a ghost of a smile. “I’m glad you feel that way. I’m not sure I can excuse it. But, as I look back, I wasn’t in any great frame of mind.”
“No. I went through some of the harshest years of my life after my marriage,” she said. “And, if you had contacted me then, I might have been so angry that I would have closed the door in your face.”
“That bad? Were you abused?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. It was just a very difficult time.” She gave him a brief synopsis of what happened. “But, as I’ve explained to the others, I’ve carried this massive load of guilt ever since.”
“Well, hopefully you’ll get rid of it now and do the things that you need to do for you and not that you feel you have to make up for something that you didn’t do.”
It was a bit convoluted, but she got the gist. She smiled at him. “Wouldn’t that be nice? As I look at it, I see my guilt and so many things that I do were trying to make up for not being the perfect wife and for feeling like I was angry at the circumstances.”
“Time to let it go then,” he said quietly.
She glanced at the other two men, their heads buried in their laptops again. “Do I have to go back to Australia?”
Both looked up at her in astonishment. “Why would you do that?”
“To flush out the killer,” she said. “Or are we expecting them to find us here?” The two men exchanged glances, and she sagged back down into the same chair she had just vacated. “You’re expecting an attack here, right?”
“Not necessarily,” Nico said quietly. “A part of me would much prefer that it’s on home soil, where we know your space, whereas, if we’re in Australia, we’re in their space.”
She nodded. “Still sucks.”
“It does. I suspect that, with everybody looking for the birth parents so we can at least question them, we should have more answers soon though.”
“And is anybody searching for my assistant?”
“The minute she crossed through the airport gates in Australia, she was tagged.”
“In what way? I don’t like just being a sitting duck.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But at least now you’re aware you’re one.”
Charlotte could barely stay awake but was fighting going to bed.
Nico understood it, but, at the same time, it would be better if she would go to sleep. He glanced over at Keane and said, “Are you okay to take first watch?”
He nodded. “It’s eleven o’clock now.”
While the two men wrangled over dates and times, the brother looked on. He spoke up once and said, “I know you guys don’t know me, but I’m willing to take a shift too.”
Keane jumped in and said, “We appreciate the thought, but …”
Joshua nodded. “It’s what I expected.” He looked at his sister. “Do you have enough room?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a three-bedroom house. Come on. I’ll show you to your room.” She led the way, and her brother followed.
Keane and Nico looked at each other.
“I’ll take that first watch,” Nico said suddenly.
Keane looked at him. “Why is that?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “This place doesn’t feel right yet.”
“Good enough,” Keane said. “I’ll crash on the couch. I’m pretty tired.”
“There’s a bed upstairs. Maybe you’d sleep better.”
Keane frowned and shook his head. Then he kicked off his shoes and walked over to the couch where Charlotte had been, and he crashed. Nico watched, and, within a few minutes, his friend’s chest rose and fell in a deep and sturdy pattern, and Nico knew Keane was just a hair away from being out. Nico got back to his notepad. He would relish this time to take the thoughts in his mind and put them down on paper. He was pretty damn sure the assistant Maggie was behind all this, but, if she was in Australia, then she was out of the picture, as far as an attack on this house.
Maggie would have to hire somebody or have somebody already in place here as a contingency plan. Nico liked that idea. He worked away as the evening passed. And, surprisingly enough, when he checked his watch, only an hour remained before switching shifts with Keane. To keep himself awake, Nico got up and walked around a little bit, stretching his arms.
Then he checked all the windows and stepped onto the back patio and looked out at the small garden. It was a nice-enough place, if you weren’t raising a family, but he would want more room and space from his neighbors if he had a choice. He stepped back inside, not sensing anything wrong out there, and headed upstairs.
One door was closed, and he presumed that was Joshua’s room. Nico was still uneasy about Joshua, and it had been a little too convenient to have him show up as Charlotte’s brother. But the Mavericks chat window had sent photos and confirmation that Joshua was who he said he was, so Nico was willing to put that to rest.
At least for the moment, as long as Joshua was on the right side of the law and wasn’t a hired gun for the adopted family. That would be a stretch, wouldn’t it? But it was also very convenient placing.
Nico shifted, looking into the empty spare room, and walked over to a window to check the world outside. But it was dark, and, outside of the city lights up and down the street, there wasn’t a whole lot to see. Charlotte’s door was also closed. But he opened it and poked his head in to make sure that she was sleeping here. She had pulled back the covers with just a sheet over her. She laid stretched out with one long and shapely thigh gleaming in the moonlight. He swallowed and quickly shut the door.
As he made his way back downstairs, he put on the teakettle and grabbed some lemon from the fridge and made himself a bracing hot lemon drink. He preferred some alcohol in it, but tonight wasn’t the night for that.
For the next hour, time seemed to pass slowly. But he didn’t really notice as he leaned against the countertop and mulled over the options here. Waiting for people to be picked up was more than irritating. It was daytime in Australia. Surely the cops had some news. He went back to his laptop and quickly asked again if they had heard anything from their Australian counterpart about locating the birth parents, and the chat window came back with a no. He swore, then typed into the chat box, asking, What’s taking so long?
Hang on, the chat box texted suddenly. And just then his phone rang. It was Miles.
“What’s up?”
“They just found the birth father. He hasn’t had anything to do with his son since he lost the battle to keep him. He’
s now a businessman and had figured that maybe his son would contact him when he was an adult. But, more or less, he just remarried and has a new family and hadn’t so much ignored the fact that he had a son but had realized there wasn’t anything he could do about that situation, so it was put to rest.”
“But did he know his son was dead?”
“Yes, and he was sad about that, but he didn’t seem to be too upset.”
“What kind of business is he involved in?”
“Import and export.” Miles’s tone was dry.
Because, of course, that covered so much and not necessarily good or bad. “Does he own a helicopter?”
“No, he doesn’t own one, but he does lease several for business purposes.”
“And has he ever leased from Sky-High, like the helicopter on the top of the hotel building?”
“Yes. But then he also said that he uses several other companies as well. The report we got says that that was checked, and he does lease or use the services of other pilots as well.”
“So it could have been his chopper rental up there, but Charlotte’s kidnapping could have had nothing to do with him.”
“Exactly.”
“The birth mother?”
“He has no idea. He hasn’t seen anything of her in a long time.”
“Define a long time.”
“He says since their son’s death. They both attended the funeral from a distance.”
“Ah, that’s why the adoptive family didn’t see them.”
“Yes.”
“And he says there’s been no real contact since then?”
“Yes.”
“Does he have any idea where she is?”
“He didn’t say so. He said he had an old phone number for her. He did give it to us, and, when we called it, a message says it’s been disconnected.”
“Of course it has. So he doesn’t know if she’s alive or dead?”
“No.”
“Interesting. So the father is not likely, but we can’t rule him out because of the helicopter connection and because of his business.”
“Exactly.”
With that, Nico hung up and wrote down notes, and, just when he was done, Keane sat up.
“Did I hear that correctly?”