Operation Blind Date

by Justine Davis

  Laney watched as Quinn greeted Hayley, felt the warmth between them as if it were so big and encompassing it spilled over onto others. She felt a twinge of longing she quashed firmly; this was not the time to moon over what she didn’t have.

  “Go over what you found, Ty,” Quinn said when Hayley had pulled up another chair and joined them.

  “Oh. Yeah. Okay.” The young man reached for a tablet computer that sat in front of him. “I did some digging after we found out who the guy was.” His gaze flicked to Laney. “The Edward guy, I mean. That is his real name.”

  She kept her wince inward. It hadn’t occurred to her he might have lied about that, and she didn’t like feeling so naive.

  “And he works at North Country Enterprises, just like he said.”

  “Well, that’s something, after that elaborate story he gave me about his office being so beautifully remodeled.” She was feeling a bit of relief that she hadn’t been completely conned.

  “In fact, that’s what got me started. Quinn pointed out that with that big government grant they got last year, he should be making decent money, but there wasn’t much sign of it. He lives in an apartment in back of his aunt’s house, and drives a car that’s in her name, judging by the parking tickets I found.”

  “Maybe she asked him to live there, to help her out,” Laney suggested. “And the car’s a sort of payback.”

  “We can’t say that’s not part of it, it may well be,” Quinn agreed. “But tell her the rest.”

  Tyler went on then. “I found a string of ATM withdrawals of cash. Lots of cash, sometimes thousands at a time. And if there wasn’t enough cash to cover it, he went for a cash advance on the credit card linked to the account.”

  Laney frowned. “From whose account? His own?”

  Quinn gave her an approving nod, as if he were pleased she’d asked. “His aunt’s. Household account, mostly used to buy groceries, pay for repairs, that kind of thing.”

  “You think he’s ripping her off? His own aunt?”

  The idea left a nasty taste in her mouth. From Teague’s grimace, she gathered it did him, too. He leaned over to look at the display on the tablet.

  “Can’t prove she doesn’t know,” Quinn answered. “He has full access, so it could be with her knowledge.”

  “We need to talk to her,” Hayley said.

  “Yes,” Teague said. Quinn nodded, but told Ty to finish first.

  “It’s where the withdrawals were made that turned out to be interesting,” Tyler said. “I didn’t get it, because I’m not from here, so the names didn’t mean anything to me. Except that I couldn’t pronounce half of them right.”

  Teague had been reading the list, and just as Tyler finished speaking he let out a low whistle.

  “Casinos,” he said.

  “Exactly,” Quinn agreed.

  “So he’s gambling with this money?” Laney asked. She wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse.

  “And he’s in deep,” Tyler said. “Those cash advances, the interest alone would pay my car payment.”

  “And yet he keeps doing it,” Teague said with a shake of his head. “He’s headed for big trouble. He can’t not see that.”

  “Willful ignorance?” Quinn said. “Or addiction.”

  Laney leaned back in her seat. “He’s obviously got a problem. But how does this tie in to Amber’s disappearance? Money? It’s not like she’s rich. She has a small trust fund from her grandfather, but she doesn’t get all that much from it. And she can’t access the principal for another five years yet, when she’s thirty-five.”

  “That’s tough,” Tyler said.

  “Amber didn’t think so. He made his money the hard way, he didn’t want her to have everything just handed to her,” Laney said. “She used to complain, but as she got older, got the satisfaction of making it on her own, she realized it was for the best. But the trust is rock-solid, there’s no way anybody could get at it.”

  “Let’s make that call to his aunt,” Quinn said. “We’ll keep it low-key and anonymous for now, don’t want her warning him if she’s in contact.”

  They decided to have Hayley make the initial call to Edward’s aunt—or great-aunt, whichever she was—to keep Laney out of it for now, on the chance Edward might have complained to the woman about her turning away his interest. She would make the call as a prospective client of Laney’s mentor.

  “I’m a big-dog girl,” Hayley said with a laugh, “you’ll have to quickly educate me on the appeal of the little ones.”

  Laney answered several questions from Hayley, things that would let her sound as if she knew what she was talking about. And then she sat and listened as Hayley made contact, and slowly but cleverly worked the call around from her own nonexistent Yorkshire terrier to Mrs. Reed’s nephew.

  “She’s pretty protective of him,” Hayley said a few minutes later as she disconnected the call. “She wanted off the phone in a hurry.”

  Quinn looked thoughtful. “Too protective?”

  “You mean like she knows there’s something to protect him from?” Laney asked, trying not to read too much into it.

  “More like she doesn’t want to hear anything bad about him, I think,” Hayley said.

  “Which makes you wonder if she suspects she might, if she listened,” Teague put in.

  “Sometimes people know things, in their gut, that they won’t consciously acknowledge,” Quinn said.

  “Because the price of knowing is too high,” Hayley said. “Sad. But the only worthwhile thing I got was that she’s a little peeved with him just now. He hasn’t been calling as he should, and apparently hasn’t been home in days. I think she’s worried.”

  “Collateral damage,” Teague muttered.

  “We may have to go back at her again later,” Quinn said. “We’ll keep Laney in reserve for that.”

  Laney nodded.

  “What’s this?” Teague asked suddenly, pointing at the tablet, where he’d swiped through a couple of pages of Tyler’s research.

  “Just an automatic notification. I sent him an anonymous generic type email from an ISP stripped address, just to see what happened. That’s what I got back, just before you guys got here.”

  “Teague?” Quinn asked. “What? I haven’t seen what he got back.”

  “It says Page will be out of the office until further notice.”

  Laney’s breath caught. She was trying very hard not to jump to conclusions, but her mind was screaming this was proof they were together. What it didn’t resolve was the question of whether Amber was there voluntarily.

  Teague read the displayed automated response again as he pulled out his cell phone. He glanced at the time, then dialed a number he was apparently reading from the bottom of the email.

  “Hi,” he said when someone picked up, “Edward Page, please.”

  There was a pause while he listened.

  “He didn’t say anything to me about this. He’s supposed to be handling a transaction for me.”

  Again a pause.

  “This is really irritating.” He sounded exactly like a demanding customer who was not pleased. “When do you expect him back?”

  He listened for a moment longer, muttered a thank-you that sounded less than sincere, and disconnected. Laney was impressed. Whoever had answered, confronted with an apparent unhappy customer, would focus on calming them first. Which meant they were much more likely to answer questions than if he had simply called looking for the man.

  But her feelings shifted quickly to dismay when he spoke, his voice grim.

  “He’s on an unscheduled, unexpected leave as of two weeks ago, something about taking care of a sick relative. They’re not sure exactly when he’ll be back.”

  Laney’s breath stopped in her throat. Two weeks
ago. A week after she’d introduced him to Amber.

  And almost exactly when the odd texts had begun.

  Chapter 11

  “It can’t be coincidence that he takes off on an unplanned ‘vacation’ right when Amber goes missing,” Teague said.

  “Seems unlikely,” Quinn agreed. He thought for a moment, then seemed to reach several decisions at once.

  “Tyler, do a run-through of our records, see if we have anyone in the database with a connection to North Country, up through third degree. I’m going to go talk to them about Page, and I’d like to have a reason for them to cooperate.”

  “Third degree?” Laney asked, the first words she’d spoken since the discovery that Edward, too, had, in a way, vanished without warning. She was trying desperately to focus on something else, anything else.

  “Someone in house first, a direct connection second, third is somebody with a connection to somebody with a direct connection,” Teague explained.

  “You keep that kind of information on all your clients?”

  “And their families,” Teague said.

  “They only go into the database with their permission,” Hayley added.

  “After you’ve helped them when no one else would, has anybody ever said no?”

  Teague glanced at Quinn for that one, Laney guessed because he hadn’t been with Foxworth long enough to be sure of the answer. “A couple of times,” Quinn answered. “But with very good reason.”

  “If Quinn called them himself, they’d help out, they just can’t risk being in a database. Our security’s the best, but nothing’s unhackable,” Tyler put in.

  Laney guessed that Quinn had an interesting catalog of people in his head to reach out to if need be. Probably more interesting than the average sorts Foxworth seemed to help most often.

  “You two,” Quinn said, indicating her and Teague, “go talk to Amber’s family. I know you’ve spoken to them several times on the phone, Laney, but sometimes a face-to-face has a different effect. You can read reactions that might lead to the right question. Maybe they know something they don’t know they know.”

  “They’re in Spokane,” Laney said, “or I would have done that already.”

  Quinn nodded. “I remember. Teague, take the plane.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s late, but you’d better go today. Weather on the way in by tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nothing seemed odd to her, but something passed between the two men, a split second of something, lifted brow by Quinn, half-sheepish quirk of the mouth from Teague.

  “Plane?” she asked as they headed back out to the parking lot.

  Teague nodded. “And a sweet one. Cruises at better than two hundred knots. We’ll be there in a couple of hours instead of five driving.” He gave her a sideways glance. “You okay with small planes?”

  “I don’t know,” she said frankly. “I see them all the time, it’s impossible not to around here, but I’ve never been on one.”

  “Almost as many seaplanes as seabirds around here,” he agreed with a smile. When they were back in his car he added, “It’ll be fun, Laney. And a heck of a distraction, which I’m guessing you could use right about now.”

  She couldn’t deny that, she thought. What she wasn’t so sure of was if she wanted to be alone with him for as long as this might take. She was all too aware that her reaction to him was uncharacteristic, to say the least.

  But it wasn’t his fault if the first thing she thought at the idea of flying off with him somewhere had little to do with why they were really going, and everything to do with her suddenly too vivid imagination. When had she started having heated, daytime fantasies about a man she’d just met?

  “So Foxworth has a plane and pilot on hand?”

  “Don’t forget the helicopter.”

  Laney shook her head. “Amazing.”

  And it did amaze her. All this equipment, all these people, knowledgeable and well trained, and all for one goal. An honest, honorable goal, in a world that too often looked upon such words as cheesy or out of touch.

  “We’ll go by your place,” Teague said, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Pick up whatever you might need in case this takes longer than expected.”

  “You mean like...overnight?”

  “Yeah. I never take weather in the northwest for granted, especially traveling over the Cascades.”

  Wise, she was sure. The weather Quinn had mentioned that was forecast for late tomorrow could just as easily pick up the pace and arrive tonight. But somehow all she could focus on was the idea of being stranded somewhere overnight. With Teague.

  She wasn’t sure if that excited her or terrified her. And finally decided it did both.

  * * *

  She’d been quick about it, Teague thought. She’d changed clothes, added a sweater over a T-shirt, thrown a jacket over her arm and put on sturdier shoes. Whatever else she thought she needed had gone into the canvas bag that was smaller than the purses he’d seen some women carry every day.

  He’d been waiting in her small but cozy living room, looking around with interest. The colors were the soothing greens of the outdoors brought inside, but with splashes of yellow that seemed to brighten things the way the occasional sun break did during the long gray days of February. The TV was in one corner, fairly small and unobtrusive; the music system, with a slot for her smartphone, was a bit more prominent. Most prominent of all was the large bookcase on one wall, full of actual books, which was telling, he guessed. No e-reader for her...or maybe she had one of those, too.

  He hadn’t realized she lived behind the shop, in a small, one-bedroom apartment attached to the main building. She was truly doing everything she could to make a go of it, sacrificing her own comfort to the building of her business. He appreciated that kind of dedication to a dream. He’d had it once.

  And thanks to Quinn and Foxworth, he had it again.

  “What about you?” she asked as she added a bottle of water from the fridge to the bag.

  “We’ll have more aboard,” he said, indicating the bottle. “And I’ve got my go bag in the car.”

  She looked up from zipping the bag closed again. “Go bag? As in always ready?”

  He shrugged. “You never know.”

  “A holdover from your time in the service?”

  “More a requirement for Foxworth. Quinn wants us ready to jump fast if we have to. In his way, he’s as good at logistics as Charlie. Well, almost,” he amended, looking up as if for a lightning strike.

  She laughed. “I begin to see why Hayley’s nervous about meeting the infamous other Foxworth.”

  “Better her than me,” Teague said with a feigned shudder. “Charlie scares the hell out of me.”

  He’d gotten her to laugh, and that made him feel good. So good it also made him a little nervous.

  You’d better hope that weather holds off, he thought. You get stranded with her overnight and you’ll be in big trouble.

  And that realization truly scared the hell out of him. Which scared him even more. Fear compounded fear. And he was acting like some idiot schoolkid who’d just discovered girls were different for a reason.

  He was grateful for her silence as they headed out toward the small airport. If they’d been really rushed they could have taken the chopper to the airport, but unless Quinn flew them himself, that would have put both it and the plane out of service, and they tried to avoid that if possible. And right now, although he would never tell Laney this, there wasn’t that much of a rush. If they were closer, if they had a better lead on where she was, then Foxworth would pull out all the stops. Right now they were still in the information gathering stage, and while the sense of urgency was there, it wasn’t overwhelming yet.

  He hoped it never got to that. For Laney’s sake, he hop
ed they found out Amber was simply off on a romantic jaunt, acting oddly because she was all wrapped up in her new guy. Some women got like that. Or so he’d been told; he’d never run into it firsthand.

  Would Laney be like that? So besotted that the way she acted with even her best friend would change? He couldn’t picture it. She seemed the kind who would be rock-solid loyal, unchanging, barring some unforgivable offense. The kind of woman you could count on and could trust on every level.

  And that was a hell of an assessment to reach in two days, he thought ruefully.

  They’d reached the interchange, turning to put the Naval Shipyard behind them and heading toward the airport just three miles farther on, when she spoke.

  “Should I call them? Let them know we’re coming? Or would it be better if they didn’t know?”

  Teague thought about that one for a moment. “What’s the likelihood they’d be gone?”

  “Not much. They play a lot of golf, that’s about it, otherwise they’re homebodies.”

  “Health? You said they moved there for the weather.”

  Laney frowned. “They’re fine. They just wanted the heat after years of living on the rainy side. Why?”

  He shrugged. “Just wanted to be sure nobody would keel over if you showed up out of the blue.”

  She clearly hadn’t thought of that. “They’re going to realize how worried I am.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that will worry them, in turn.”

  “Probably. But don’t call. If they know something they’re not telling you for some reason, the surprise might work to our advantage.”

  “They wouldn’t. Seriously.”

  “All right. You know them.”

  He made the turn onto the airport, kept to the fifteen-mile-per-hour limit as he headed toward the large hangar Foxworth leased. The slow speed allowed him to take a longer look at her. She was staring down at her hands, where she was rubbing at her fingers one at a time. Something about the angle of her head, the half-lowered lashes, the way her ponytail brushed her nape and the concern in her troubled expression made him want to reach out and touch her, comfort her somehow, even though he had no idea what to say.