Hide and Seek
Page 13
She would have pushed it but Logan took her hand and gave it a light squeeze.
“Well, thanks, Gary. You’ve been very helpful. You have a good day.”
Gary eyed them with suspicion. “With all this shit going on here? As if.” He dropped back into his chair and picked up his newspaper. Obviously the interview was over.
Devon let Logan take her outside and close the door.
“I don’t know if he has no information or he’s being paid to ‘forget,’ but our friend Gary knows a lot more than he’s telling. We won’t get anything from him today. We’ll have to come at him from another angle.”
“I want to scream,” she told him.
“I know. Same here.”
They had just reached the truck when someone called out to her.
“Devon? That you?”
She turned to see Cash Breeland hurrying over to them. “Hey, Cash.”
He took her hands in his and gave her a sympathetic smile. “Honey, I’m glad I caught up with you in person. We’re all so sorry about this thing with your dad.”
“Yes, well, thank you.” What could she say? She only knew him slightly, just from the few times she’d seen him with her father and then running into him in town.
“And that terrible thing that happened to you on the road?” He shook his head. “Hell, we never have stuff like that happening around here. Glad to see you’re okay.”
“Thanks for checking, but I’m fine.”
“Uh, any word from the Coast Guard yet? Or did you maybe find some kind of note or something at the house?”
“No note, and no further word,” she told him. “Did he happen to say anything to you?”
For a moment she thought she saw anger flash in his eyes. Then it was gone.
“I wish he had.” He shifted his gaze to Logan. “Friend of yours?”
Logan held out his hand. “Logan Malik. I work for Vigilance. I’m Miss Cole’s security.”
“Security?” Cash’s eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline. “Well, I guess after that incident she probably needs one.” He looked at Devon again. “Honey, if you need anything, anything at all, you call me, you hear?”
“Well, there is one thing. I understand Daddy changed attorneys not too long ago. You wouldn’t happen to know who he went to, would you?”
Again Devon thought she saw something in Cash’s expression but as before, it was gone before she could figure it out.
“First I’ve heard of it. I can check around if you like.”
“No, that’s okay. I can do my own checking. I just thought you might know. Sorry to be rude, but we really need to get going here.”
“Okay, then.”
He looked as if he had something else to say but fortunately Logan hustled them both into the truck.
“Something’s off about him, too.” He turned the ignition. “I think we should stop by the office and run everything by Avery. And maybe she’ll have some information for us by this time.”
“Sounds good to me.” She leaned back in her seat, wondering if this nightmare was ever going to end.
Chapter 8
Logan had just picked up his phone to call Avery and let her know they were on their way when it rang. He looked at the readout.
“Speak of the devil. It’s Avery. Hold on. Yeah, boss. What’s up? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. We just left the marina. No, nothing doing on the boats but Gary’s still on my radar. And Angel’s keeping an eye out on the scene. How about running a check on him? Uh-huh. Okay. Timing is great. We were just on our way, anyway.”
Devon looked over at him. “Is it bad news?”
“Not necessarily. They’ve found a few things digging through your father’s history and she has some questions.”
“My father?” Her muscles tensed. “What did they find?”
“Don’t know yet, but let’s not borrow trouble until we have to. I told her I’d bring you right over.” He slid a glance at her. “Take a breath. Try to relax.”
“So Avery didn’t give you even a little hint of what she wanted?”
“You heard this end of the conversation. Short and to the point. But we’ll be there in just a few minutes and you can find out.”
Devon had never been to the Vigilance offices, but then she’d never had a reason to. Whenever she’d seen Avery it had always been with Sheri. They’d meet at Fresh Roasted, the coffee shop with the mouthwatering pastries, or the Orange Blossom, a great restaurant for lunches. Or sometimes drinks and dinner at the Driftwood. She realized with a shock that the only socializing she’d done was coffee or meals with these two women. Sometimes one or two of their friends would join them but it wasn’t as if she’d made an effort to create a social circle here. She considered herself damn lucky to have connected with these two women.
Logan reached over, took one of her hands, and squeezed it. “Just remember. Whatever Vigilance came up with is better than not knowing anything at all. Right?”
“I’m sure you’re right. I still can’t get my head around the fact my father could be involved in something dangerous.”
“Let’s just wait and hear what Avery has to say.”
Instead of continuing on to Seacliff Road, he turned right onto a long narrow road that looked carved into a forested area. Thickets of trees lined both sides, the same kind of trees that grew on the bay side of Seacliff Road. Just as she wondered where the hell they were going, they came into a clearing, and she just stared. In the center of the clearing was a house with distinctive Key West architecture, painted white with a gabled roof and a wide front porch. Land that she hadn’t even known existed stretched away behind it and to one side was a long two-story building that looked new. She wondered if they had cameras and sensors set up all the way in from the highway.
“Come on.” Logan took her elbow and guided her up to the porch, where he tapped some numbers into an electronic keypad. “We can’t tell other people how to be secure if we don’t do it to ourselves. Look up.” He pointed to the coach lights. “Cameras.”
She shook her head as they stepped into a short, enclosed foyer. Logan pressed his thumb against a metal plate on the inner door and it swung open.
“Wow.” She looked up at Logan. “You weren’t kidding about taking your own security seriously.”
“We have to.” Avery came from an office to her left. “We have very high-profile clients.”
Devon looked around, hoping her jaw hadn’t dropped.
“I can’t believe a place like this exists in a sleepy little town like Arrowhead Bay.”
Avery laughed. “This town isn’t as sleepy as you think it is. Our offices used to be in upstate New York, not far from the city, on property about as big as this. But the winters kept getting colder and I discovered being close to the Big Apple didn’t give me any advantage. When my sister took the job as police chief here, she talked me into coming to visit and here we are.”
“Not nearly as cold,” Devon joked.
Avery nodded. “But security is still our number one priority. Almost everything we’re involved in requires the utmost secrecy. For example, we don’t want a stranger wandering in here while we’re doing a complex electronic search on your father and his activities for the past ten years.”
Devon stared at the other woman. “The past ten years?”
Avery nodded. “We may have to go back further, but we’ll start with this chunk of time and see what we find. Logan told you I had some questions?”
She nodded. “But what, exactly, are you looking for? What is it you want to know?”
Logan wrapped his fingers around her elbow and urged her to follow Avery. “We hope to find out when and where he went off the rails, so we have to examine everything. It could have been some event that happened even twenty-five years ago that just came back to haunt him. But trust me, there’s something
that happened that led to this whole mess.”
“Happens all the time,” Avery told her. “Come on. Before we head to my office I’ll show you the flight deck. People always get a kick out of it.”
She frowned. “Flight deck?”
Logan laughed. “It certainly looks like one.”
They were right. The room they took her into was probably forty by forty and filled with enough computers and monitors and screens to run the Starship Enterprise. A large semicircular desk, its surface dotted with keyboards, faced all the screens. Two people sat at the double console, their fingers moving over multiple keyboards, their eyes darting from screen to screen so fast Devon wondered how they remembered what they were doing.
Outlines of maps filled two of the largest screens, each one populated with a series of winking dots.
“Our active assignments,” Avery explained. “We keep constant track of them. We have a daily report of activities and locations. If any of that changes without notice, we get ready to move a team into action.”
Devon gave a nervous little laugh. “Sounds like you’re planning for a war.”
Avery nodded without smiling. “Sometimes that’s just what it is, depending on who the client is.” She pointed to a floor-to-ceiling row of smaller screens, each of them with photos of what looked like houses and yards. “These are the locations where we monitor security systems. We don’t have eyes on them all the time, although we do regular checks. But if an alarm sounds, we can go right to the monitor and see what’s happening.”
Devon tried not to let her jaw drop or her astonishment show. She’d certainly seen enough movies and television shows with high-tech private security firms. But seeing it in the so-called flesh astounded her.
“If you look at that setup over there”—she pointed to a station in the corner where a man in a T-shirt and jeans was monitoring four screens at the same time—“that’s Del. He’s working on cracking the code on your father’s phone. Like a lot of people, your father probably wasn’t aware that even if a phone is wiped, the information can still be retrieved with the right software. But you still have to break the code and this is more complex than usual. He must have done a lot of research to set it up.”
“Still can’t get into it?” Logan asked.
Avery shook her head. “But we will. The code hasn’t been written that Del can’t break sooner or later. We’re just hoping for sooner. But we’re not waiting, of course. We’re already into Cole International records, looking for anything in the past five years that jiggles the radar.”
She took Devon’s elbow and nudged her toward one side of the room where a woman sat at a desk with—count ’em—four computer screens and a stack of external hard drives.
“This is Ginger Brody. If it’s out there in the Ethernet, Ginger can find it.”
The woman looked like an elf. Devon was sure she wasn’t more than five feet tall, if that. She had curly red hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and the greenest eyes Devon had ever seen. She was dressed in faded jeans and a T-shirt with the legend “Don’t give me a Command, I byte.” She looked about twelve.
Ginger hit the Save button on her keyboard and pushed out of her chair.
“Hi.” She held out her hand to Devon. “Nice to put a face with my research.” She grinned, then hopped into her chair again. In seconds her fingers were again flying over the keyboard.
“What’s upstairs?” Devon asked. “Or is that classified?”
Avery chuckled. “To the right of the staircase are suites for the agents when they have to stay here. They don’t all live in Arrowhead Bay but they come here for training and to be briefed on assignments.” She glanced at Logan and grinned. “Mr. Marine here is the only one with no permanent residence. He lives here.”
Devon’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding, right?”
He shook his head, his face expressionless. “Haven’t found a place I like yet well enough to buy.”
“The entire floor to the left,” Avery went on, “is my living quarters.”
“You never get away from these guys,” Devon said.
She laughed. “More like they can’t get away from me. The other building out there is a combination gym and weight room, with a climbing wall, rappelling ropes, and plenty of space to practice hand-to-hand combat. Beyond that is the shooting range.”
“That’s why you have it so far from town.”
Avery nodded. “I didn’t think people would like guns going off in their backyards.”
“I guess I never thought about what goes into being a bodyguard.”
“Protective agent,” Avery corrected her. “Floats better with our clients. Let’s head to my office. We’ll have coffee and see what’s what.”
As they walked out of what Devon wanted to call Space Station Central, she nearly bumped into a tall woman carrying a coffee mug.
“Oh. Sorry.” The woman flashed a grin and held the mug up in the air to avoid spills. “Guess I was concentrating too hard. Did I spill?”
Avery chuckled. “Sam’s always concentrating. That’s what makes her such a good agent. Devon, meet Samantha Quenel. Sam.”
So Vigilance had female agents, too. Devon studied the woman. She was tall, maybe five ten, and lean without being skinny. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a low ponytail and she wore jeans and a black T-shirt with a V on the sleeve. She wore no makeup and didn’t look like she needed it. Devon almost hated her on sight.
“I do have a tendency to plow into people.” Sam gave her an apologetic grin. Then she shifted her gaze back to Avery. “Anything you need me for? We wrapped that last one a week early so I’m at loose ends.”
Avery laughed. “Did you ever hear the word vacation?”
“I’m waiting for the man of my dreams to take me on one.” She grinned but Devon had the feeling she wasn’t joking.
“Maybe. Just hang loose and we’ll see.”
Sam nodded and headed into the room, and Avery led them down the hall to her office.
Devon had expected a utilitarian office space, with basic furniture, tiled floor, and nothing on the walls. Everything else in the place seemed to be stripped down. She was shocked to find hardwood flooring, a woven area rug, and furniture with a Spanish flavor. Colorful prints brightened the walls, and in one corner a tall schefflera plant ruled over the room.
Avery saw the look on Devon’s face and grinned. “It’s my hideaway. Of necessity, everything else is bare essentials. I need warmth and color when I work.”
She fixed them coffee, using mugs with the Vigilance logo. Devon took a sip of hers, hoping the hot liquid would soothe her nerves.
“Okay, you said you were on the way here.” Avery looked from one to the other. “What’s up?”
Logan told her about the incident on Lady Hannah, including a bare-bones description of the kid.
“Well, damn.” Avery idly played with a pen on her desk. “That opens a lot more possibilities without giving us any answers.”
“Someone’s pulling the strings,” Logan said, “and I don’t think it’s the two idiots that ran Devon off the road.”
“You’re right,” Avery agreed. “Someone with brains is pulling strings and we need to know who and why.”
“If it’s dirty, please tell me it’s Alford and Bodine. There’s something off there. They were there to hassle Devon, which is weird. If they’re attorneys in her father’s corporation, I’d think they’d be there to offer her their help. Instead they all but accused her father of doing something illegal and suggested she was covering it up.”
“I checked into them as you asked.” Avery smiled at him, picked up her tablet, and tapped the screen. “I was getting ready to send this to you. Listen up. Guess where they cut their teeth as attorneys, learning the ropes?”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Devon asked.
Devon frowned. “Who’s that?”
“No one good,” Logan muttered.
Avery set her tablet down. “Cruz Moreno is the head of one of the biggest drug cartels in Mexico. They operate internationally.”
“And how in hell,” Logan asked, “did they get hired at Cole International with that on their record?”
“Please.” She made a face. “Anybody can create a resume. I’m sure whoever answered any inquiries gave them a glowing recommendation. I wouldn’t be surprised if Pellegrino was the one who brought them in. The report I have for you, unfortunately, is going to explain that.”
“How?” Devon demanded. “What do you mean?”
Logan touched her cheek, the contact somehow soothing. “Let’s hear the report.” He looked at Avery. “Alford and Bodine are still in town,” Logan told her.
Avery nodded. “They are, and staying at the B and B.”
“And checking out the scene around the boats,” Logan said. “You keeping Angel on the docks?”
“Yes. He’s good at picking up gossip.”
“I have a feeling Devon’s in real danger until we get at the truth,” Logan said. “If Cole’s alive and not dead, and he’s somehow mixed up with Moreno, someone could take it in their head to use her as leverage.”
“Which is why you’ll protect her as if she were the Queen of England.”
He grinned. “Better than.”
Oh, yes, Devon thought. Definitely better than.
“Also,” he went on, “Gary at Bayside Marina is hiding something for sure. But for whatever reason, he didn’t like me so I’ll get diddly squat. Send someone else to shake him up.”
Avery made a note on her tablet. “Duly noted.” She looked at Devon. “First let me say how sorry I am that this has happened to you. We want to do everything we can to help find out what happened to your father.”
“I appreciate that.” Devon rubbed her temples, trying to stave off the headache blooming again. “So what have you found on the search you did on him and Cole International? Anything that will help me with this?”