by Laura Scott
There. His fingers found a miniscule ridge along the bottom left-hand corner of the envelope.
“I need a knife,” he muttered to himself, reaching into his slacks and retrieving an old Boy Scout knife his father had given him as a kid.
Using the utmost care, he carefully separated the layers of the padded envelope. Then stared in shocked surprise at the small black SIM card that had been concealed in the Bubble Wrap.
He’d found Jason’s missing link.
THIRTEEN
“What in the world?” Paige asked in a hushed tone, glancing up at Miles incredulously. “How did you find it?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But obviously this is what Jason intended for me to keep safe. The way he’d used a code for his message makes sense. Even if the envelope had fallen into the wrong hands, it’s unlikely that the SIM card would have been discovered. It was only by chance that I felt the ridge when I picked it up off the floor.”
Apparently Abby’s temper tantrum had worked to their advantage, this time.
“How does it work?” She leaned over to get a closer look at it. “Are these specific to a certain computer or phone?”
“I’m not sure.” Miles grimaced and shrugged. “I don’t want to try placing it in the computer, and risk damaging the information Jason must have put on it. I’d feel better if we had someone from the technical support team in our district to assist in reading what’s on the card.”
An inexplicable sense of dread gripped her by the throat. She swallowed hard. “Are you going to turn the SIM card over to your boss?”
Miles blew out a breath and shook his head. “Not yet, but I’ll need to do something soon.” He lifted his head and looked at her, and she wondered if her fear was reflected in her eyes. “We can’t keep running forever, Paige. At some point, we’ll need to trust the authorities.”
No! Paige wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, but somehow managed to hold it together. “I understand what you’re saying, but what do we really know?” she asked in what she hoped was a reasonable tone. “Jason’s message stated that he wasn’t sure who he could trust, and quite frankly we’re in the exact same boat. I think it’s best if we hold off calling your boss until we have a solid lead to act upon.”
“You may be right, although it could be that the information on this SIM card is enough to blow the case wide open.”
But what if it wasn’t? Paige gripped the edge of the table, fighting the battering waves of irrational fear. She didn’t want him to call his boss. For the first time since this entire nightmare began, she truly believed they were safe. Being in a private residence, where no one would think to look for them, made sense.
She couldn’t bear the thought of once again accidentally revealing their location to the gunmen.
“Please, not yet,” she begged. “Let’s make sure that we don’t tip anyone off as to where we are.”
Miles didn’t say anything for a long moment, but then he finally nodded. “All right, we’ll hold off. For now.”
She didn’t appreciate the qualifier at the end of his statement, but she forced herself to turn away. She crossed over to turn the television back on, flipping through the channels until she found the cartoons.
Abby climbed onto the sofa and curled into the corner, pulling her stuffed elephant close. Paige stared at her baby, wishing once again, that they could just go home.
Miles came up to stand beside her and her heart betrayed her by skipping a beat. She didn’t want to respond to him, not when she was beyond annoyed with him.
“I’ll keep you safe,” he murmured softly enough for her to hear, but not loud enough to reach Abby.
It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that he’d said that before, but then she felt a sense of shame.
None of this was his fault, any more than it was her fault or Abby’s. Look at how Miles had protected them, over and over again. And she firmly believed that God was watching over them, too.
“I know.”
He slid his arm around her waist and she leaned against him for a moment, drawing strength from his nearness.
Maybe he was right about calling the authorities. They couldn’t stay here indefinitely. Obviously the information on the SIM card was important.
Important enough to kill for.
* * *
It wasn’t easy for Miles to step away from Paige. All he wanted was to continue holding her, breathing in her heady scent, but he needed to figure out his next steps. He’d agreed to hold off calling his boss for now, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to contact his family.
He knew both Mike and Mitch would help, yet at the same time, he didn’t like pulling them off guard duty. He needed to know that his mother and grandmother were safe.
After tucking the SIM card back in the envelope, he stared at it for a long moment. He thought back to what Aaron Eastham had said about Karl stealing company secrets. That initial theft had happened years ago, but things had heated up now because his buddy Jason had found and fixed the error. Whoever ended up with the information stored on the SIM card would be in a position to bring the new robotic technology to market.
In all his years working homicide, he knew that the basis for almost every single crime was money.
Pulling out a piece of paper, he began jotting notes, the way he normally did while working a case.
Jason died on Monday night. The coroner’s office claimed Travis Olson was killed on Monday, too, but he didn’t believe that. He thought it was more likely that Travis died on Tuesday night, not too long after he’d connected with his daughter through ChatTime.
Miles tugged the envelope closer, peering at the time stamp from the post office. Jason had sent the envelope to him on Monday, obviously because his buddy knew he was in danger. And Jason hadn’t wanted the SIM card to fall into the wrong hands.
He tapped his pencil on the tabletop, trying to figure out the timeline of events. Jason worked for Sci-Tech on the highly confidential project, which meant that the information belonged to owner Karl Rogers.
Why would Karl want to kill Jason and Travis?
It wasn’t likely that either one of them threatened to take the information back to ACE Intel. Why would they? Sci-Tech paid their salaries. When the robotic technology went to market, both Jason and Travis would be known as the inventors of the product.
Was it possible Karl Rogers didn’t want to share the limelight with his research team? He grimaced, supposing it was possible, but it was not logical. Rogers would be more interested in having his company, Sci-Tech, bringing in money from the sale.
All of which brought him back to ACE Intel. If Aaron Eastham knew that Karl’s team had finalized the robotic technology, he’d have no chance of gaining back the market share he’d lost.
He drew a circle around Aaron Connor Eastham’s name. The owner of ACE Intel had to be the missing piece of the puzzle, but the black sedan with tinted windows had been owned by Sci-Tech, not ACE Intel.
Miles straightened in his seat as a wave of adrenaline hit hard. Unless there was someone else in Sci-Tech on Eastham’s payroll. What had Eastham said? He’d haul Rogers back to court the minute he could prove that the termination agreement had been faked?
The cogs in the legal system churned slowly, too slowly to prevent Karl Rogers from making a boatload of cash off the new technology. Maybe Eastham decided to go with a more direct route.
Like stealing the technology back from Sci-Tech.
He grimaced, because his theory didn’t explain why Eastham would kill Karl’s research team. He’d almost expect Eastham to go after the owner himself, rather than Karl Rogers’s employed researchers.
Opening the computer he typed Aaron Connor Eastham into the search engine. It took some digging to get some of his personal infor
mation, but it didn’t take long for Miles to discover that Eastham had an ex-wife, Sarah Bentley, and no kids. According to the court document he’d uncovered, Eastham had been divorced for five years.
Wait a minute. Miles scowled at the date. The divorce had taken place within a month of Karl Rogers opening Sci-Tech.
The timing was interesting, but even though Miles stared at the date for several long minutes, he couldn’t figure out how the two could possibly be related.
For all he knew, Sarah might not have any say-so in Eastham’s business. The two had only been married for six years, and Eastham had owned the company prior to their marriage, so she likely didn’t have an access to the income as a result of the divorce. And since they had no children there wasn’t any child support, either.
He turned his attention to Karl Rogers. Rogers was also divorced with no children. Only Rogers’s divorce was more recent, within the past three years.
The name of his ex-wife jumped out at Miles. Sasha Jorgensen.
According to Paige, one of Travis’s more recent girlfriends was Sasha. What were the chances of that?
Not very likely.
Was it really possible that Travis Olson had been so bold as to date the owner’s ex-wife?
Unbelievable.
For the first time since this ordeal started, it occurred to Miles that Travis Olson’s death might not be connected to the SIM card Jason had sent him, after all. In fact, it was far more likely that Travis had died because of his affair with Sasha.
Would Rogers hire a masked man to kill Travis?
But if that was the case, then he still couldn’t say for sure why Jason had been murdered. To get the SIM card, sure, but at whose hand?
The only logical explanation was that Aaron Connor Eastham had somehow learned of the work Jason had done in fixing the technology and had become determined to steal it back.
Now, Miles just needed to find a way to prove it.
* * *
The rest of the afternoon seemed to pass in slow motion. Paige wondered if it was because she was dreading the moment Miles told her they’d need to contact the authorities.
Abby had dozed for a bit, and when she awoke she actually looked as if she might say something, but then had simply pointed to the colored pencils, indicating she wanted to draw some more.
Paige pulled out fresh paper for Abby, wondering if the little girl was going to draw more images from the night Travis had contacted her through the ChatTime link. As much as Paige wanted her daughter to heal from the trauma, she was second-guessing her thought process of encouraging Abby to draw out her memories.
Maybe the past was better left alone.
When she looked at Abby’s drawing, she realized her daughter was practicing her letters. Paige knew that Abby was learning to write her name and other simple words in her pre-kindergarten school program. Since Abby had only just turned five last month, she wasn’t in an all-day kindergarten class yet. Normally Abby attended pre-K three days a week.
Except for this week.
Across the top of the page, Abby was writing several letters in a row creating the word DOT.
Hmm. Was there a child named Dot in preschool? The girls Abby talked about the most were Kate and Lucy. No one named Dot or Dorothy.
Then Abby put the letter N after DOT, which didn’t make sense. Then she wrote the letters TAL. Again, Paige had no idea what those letters meant.
“Are these names of your friends from school?” Paige asked, pointing at the two clusters of letters.
Abby shook her head. She pointed at the letters, then ran over to the kitchen table and picked up her drawing of the stick man with a large X over his mouth. Abby pointed to the image of her father, then back at the letters.
DOTN TAL
Paige repeated them several times before they hit her like a brick.
Don’t tell.
Goose bumps raised up on her arms as she finally understood the message Abby was trying to get across. Paige looked at her daughter. “Did your daddy say, Don’t tell?”
Abby nodded, her tiny shoulders slumping as if a huge weight had been lifted off them. Paige reached out and gathered her daughter close.
The little girl pressed her face against Paige’s neck and her heart wrenched when she felt the dampness of her daughter’s tears.
“Shh. It’s okay, sweetie. You don’t have to keep secrets anymore. You can talk to us now, the danger is over.” Even as she said the words, she realized they weren’t exactly true.
The danger wasn’t over. Not yet. It wouldn’t be over until the gunmen who were hunting them down were arrested and tossed in jail.
“Something wrong?” Miles asked, rising to his feet and crossing over toward them.
“I’m trying to reassure Abby that she doesn’t have to keep silent anymore.” She gestured to the words Abby had written. “I’m pretty sure she heard Travis say don’t tell.”
Miles was silent for a moment before he shook his head. “There’s no reason for him to say that to a masked man. I wonder if he really said, I won’t tell.”
She grimaced and nodded. “You could be right. She’s only five years old. She may have misunderstood.”
Miles dropped onto the sofa beside her and lightly stroked Abby’s back. “This is a good sign, Paige. She’s opening up, going to great lengths to help us understand what happened that night. She’s a brave little girl.”
Tears pricked Paige’s eyes again, and she subtly swiped at them, wryly realizing that she hadn’t cried this much since her divorce. “Yes, she is. Brave and smart.”
“Listen, Paige, I found out that Karl Rogers, the owner of Sci-Tech, was once married to a woman named Sasha. Do you think Travis would be so bold as to date his boss’s ex-wife?”
She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Yes, I believe he would.”
Miles let out a low whistle. “He likes playing with fire, huh?”
She kissed Abby’s temple, her daughter’s eyes were closed as if she’d fallen asleep, and forced herself to meet Miles’s gaze. “You have to understand that Travis doesn’t have basic common sense when it comes to women,” she whispered. “He doesn’t see the boundaries others think of as normal. He can also be very charming, making the woman he’s with feel like she’s the only one that matters. When, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.” She paused, then shrugged. “He cheated on me, and I’m sure he cheated on all the other women he dated after our divorce. It would never occur to him to consider the ex-wife of his boss as off-limits.”
Miles nodded grimly. “Remember what I told you, Paige. His failures are not yours.”
“I’m trying.” She rocked back and forth with Abby, glad that her daughter’s silent crying had stopped and that she was getting a bit of rest. “Do you think the attack on Travis is related to his boss, rather than the SIM card?”
“I think we have to consider the possibility.” He watched her for what seemed like endless minutes. “I’ve considered a couple of theories, but what I don’t have is any proof. Except for the SIM card.”
The card that they couldn’t risk trying to read for fear of damaging it.
“You want to call your boss, don’t you?” It was a statement not a question.
“Not my boss, but a detective who is also working the case.” Miles leaned forward, his gaze imploring her to keep an open mind. “When we were at the other hotel, I called my boss, Captain O’Dell, directly. I’ve always trusted him, but I can’t ignore the fact that he could have found a way to trace my disposable phone from that call.”
Her mouth went dry. “What if your detective friend did the same thing?”
He shook his head. “That’s just it, when I contacted Detective Krantz, I went through dispatch. I never gave her the opportunity to trace t
he number.”
Her? Paige hadn’t realized that Detective Krantz was a woman, not that it should matter one way or the other. She couldn’t be jealous of a cop. Of anyone, for that matter.
Miles didn’t belong to her.
She pushed those ridiculous thoughts away. “There must be other ways to trace disposable phones,” she protested.
“Yes, but not as easily. There are ways to triangulate the signal, but that takes sophisticated equipment.”
She tried to come up with another reason not to make the call, but she couldn’t. Other than the fact she didn’t want to.
“If you think that’s what we need to do, then I’m okay with it.” She was proud of how matter-of-fact she sounded. Good thing Miles couldn’t tell how fast and erratically her heart was beating.
“Do you want me to meet her somewhere else? I can ask Mike or Mitch to stay here with you.”
She remembered how Miles had instructed his brothers to watch out for his family. Dragging either one of them away would potentially leave his mother and grandmother alone and vulnerable.
“No, it’s fine, I know they’re keeping a close eye on your mother and grandmother.” She glanced around the interior of the house. “We’re in the middle of a family-friendly neighborhood, with houses on either side of us. We’ll be safe here.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, searching her gaze.
She smiled, liking the way he took her feelings into consideration. Something Travis had rarely done. Miles didn’t belong to her, but staying with him over the past few days had shown her what the components of a good relationship should have.
Respect. Honesty. Caring. Partnership.
And love. Most of all, love.
She dropped her gaze, not wanting him to realize how close she was to falling in love with him.
“I’m sure.” Abby shifted and blinked sleepily, turning her head so she could look at Miles. Paige stroked her back again reassuringly. “Do you think you’ll meet with her tonight or tomorrow?” Secretly she was hoping for the latter.
“Depends on when I can connect with her.” Miles smiled at Abby, then stood up and returned to the kitchen. He took the envelope and the paperwork and tucked them into a drawer before he picked up the phone.