A Girl Betrayed (A Leah Mason suspense thriller Book 2)

by Russell Blake

  “I do, Heather. That’s why I suggested you hang out here for a bit. Let’s go in and I’ll give you the guided tour. That should occupy about thirty seconds,” Leah said with a sad smile. “The good news is the bed’s pretty comfortable, and the neighbors are quiet.” She hesitated. “Does Brutus bark?”

  “Sometimes. But he’s pretty good.”

  “Try to keep him quiet while he’s inside, that’s all I ask. And don’t let him destroy anything. I just bought the furniture, and I’m paying for it over the next two years.”

  “Don’t worry. He’s a lamb.”

  Leah rubbed one of the dog’s ears affectionately. “He’s very sweet.”

  They trooped into the apartment and Leah closed the door. Heather unclipped the leash from Brutus’s collar and he immediately began exploring the small rooms, sniffing every corner with focused concentration. Leah set down the suitcase and gestured with one hand. “This is the parlor. And that’s the chef’s kitchen and butler pantry,” she said, motioning to the small kitchen.

  Heather laughed. “It’s perfect. Just what the doctor ordered. Very cozy.”

  “If that’s code for small, it is indeed. But since I’m hardly ever here…” Leah walked to the bedroom. “And this is the honeymoon suite. The martini glass Jacuzzi is out for repairs, but the shower works okay and you’ll get at least five minutes of hot water, assuming the guy downstairs doesn’t flush the toilet or the lady next door isn’t trying to rinse off at the same time.”

  “I love it,” Heather said. “Home sweet home.”

  “I even stocked it with a half bottle of cheap pinot grigio and some staples. Sorry. Didn’t have a lot of time, but there’s a grocery a couple of blocks down the main street.”

  “I’ll go out tomorrow morning.”

  Leah handed Heather her spare key. “Then it’s all yours. I already packed my tablet and some other stuff. I can stop by tomorrow to get more clothes or whatever. Other than that, I’ll stay out of your and Brutus’s hair.”

  Brutus, hearing his name, came charging at Leah and head butted her thighs delightedly, his tail stub working furiously.

  Heather swatted him good-naturedly. “Brutus, stop that. Behave.”

  “It’s okay. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s done for me all day.”

  Heather studied her. “Been a tough one, huh?”

  “I’m just tired. Haven’t been sleeping all that well.”

  Heather gave her a rueful smile. “Join the club.”

  Leah hoisted her bag and said goodbye, and headed down the stairs to her SUV. She drove to the motel and checked in, and was unpacking her bag when her cell rang. She rushed to catch it before the caller went to voice mail.

  “Hello?”

  A long pause. She could hear a faint hum of static and the sound of traffic in the background, and eyed the caller ID. It was a 408 area code number she didn’t recognize.

  “Leah Mason?” a lightly accented male voice asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “Ms. Mason, I understand you’re doing a piece on Ravstar?”

  It was Leah’s turn to pause. “That’s right. Who’s this?”

  “My name is Rayansh Dasai. I’m the technical director.”

  “Oh, sure,” Leah said. “But…I thought you were out of town?”

  “I’m…I’m back,” Rayansh said, his tone unsure. “I heard that you had questions?”

  “Yes. I didn’t get very meaningful answers, unfortunately.”

  “Hmm. Do you mind if I ask the nature of the article you’re writing?”

  Leah’s forehead creased at the question. “It’s…it’s an investigative piece,” she said, unwilling to divulge anything more to a voice on the phone.

  “I looked you up online. Your exposé on the cartel was quite provocative.”

  “Thanks,” Leah said, waiting for the engineer to tell her why he was calling.

  “If you would like to meet, I can do so,” Rayansh blurted after a long pause.

  Surprised, Leah looked around for a pen. “That would be great. When?”

  “Tonight?”

  That took Leah aback. She looked at the time, but something about the man’s tone told her that she should make the meeting, even if it happened at midnight. “Sure. Where?”

  “There’s a Denny’s off the freeway in Mountain View,” he said, and named the exit.

  Leah thought quickly. “It’ll take me about an hour to get there.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  “How will I recognize you?” Leah asked.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll find you. I pulled your photo from the web.”

  “Oh. Okay. So in an hour?”

  “I’ll see you when you get there.”

  Leah sat down at her tablet and did a reverse lookup on the phone number, but it was listed only as a private number. She was tempted to call it back, but didn’t see what would be achieved by doing so. She used the bathroom and looked herself over in the mirror. It had already been a very long day, and she looked it. Leah changed out of her blouse and pulled on tomorrow’s top, and then was out the door, recorder in her purse, unsure of what she was getting into. But her gut told her that meeting Rayansh was the right thing to do.

  She replayed her discussion with his second in command in her mind all the way to Mountain View, and when she rolled into the Denny’s lot, had decided to let Rayansh set the tone of the discussion – mainly because she didn’t have the faintest idea what questions might warrant a ten o’clock meeting at a greasy spoon. She parked and entered the restaurant, and a fatigued-looking hostess directed her to a booth and dropped a menu in front of her.

  A waitress with dyed black hair and raccoon eyeliner wandered over after a minute. Leah ordered a cup of coffee and then occupied herself with studying the other patrons, trying to guess their stories. Most were older, all but three tables of lone males in their fifties and sixties with the workmanlike attire and road-ravaged faces of long-distance truckers. One young couple, obviously enamored with each other, sat side by side on the same side of their booth, and the other couples sat across from each other, forking food into their mouths in dogged silence, avoiding looking at each other, their expressions those of death-row prisoners.

  The waitress arrived with the coffee and raised an eyebrow as she asked if Leah wanted to order.

  “No, thanks. I’m waiting for someone,” she answered.

  “Aren’t we all. Just holler when you want me,” the waitress said, and sauntered off. Leah smiled at the woman’s tone, and felt an odd moment of kinship for no reason at all.

  Five minutes later, a familiar voice spoke from behind her.

  “Ms. Mason?”

  Leah turned and found herself facing a diminutive man with a dark complexion and jet-black hair, his mahogany eyes soft but intelligent.

  “Yes. Mr. Dasai, I presume,” Leah said, trying out her smile and hoping it didn’t look as weary as she felt. “Have a seat.”

  “Thank you for coming all the way out here,” Rayansh said, sitting across from her, his gaze darting around the restaurant before settling on her again.

  “No problem. You just get into town?” Leah asked.

  “Oh, um, sure. Is the coffee good?” he asked, clearly uncomfortable.

  She felt like telling him that he was a lousy liar, but thought better of it. Instead, she nodded and let silence work for her.

  Rayansh flagged the waitress and ordered tea instead of coffee, further confirming that he’d been trying to duck her asking about his travel schedule. Leah didn’t press the subject and hesitated to pull out her recorder with him so obviously jumpy.

  They sat wordlessly until his tea arrived, and then he leaned forward and fixed her with an intense stare. “Why are you writing about Ravstar?”

  Leah offered her stock answer. “The technology interested me, and I thought I’d take a closer look at the team that developed it.”

  “Do you have an engineering background?” he
asked.

  “No,” she admitted.

  “What specific aspect interests you the most?” he probed.

  Leah took a sip of her coffee to buy time to think. “All of it. The quantum leap forward it represents.”

  Rayansh’s eye roll surprised her. “You’ve been talking to Patrick, I see. That’s one of his lines.” He sat back. “You don’t really know much about the technology, do you, Ms. Mason?”

  “I know enough to want to dig deeper.”

  “Ah. The truth, finally. I read your piece on the cartel. Riveting. Explosive, even. You don’t seem the type of journalist who would write puff pieces about new scanners. No offense, Ms. Mason.”

  Leah offered a wan smile. “None taken.”

  “So can we be frank with each other?”

  Leah nodded, unsure of where this was going. Rayansh was about to say something when the waitress appeared and asked if they wanted to order food.

  The moment was lost as Leah shook her head and Rayansh said no. The woman gathered their menus and carted them off, her hips bouncing as she retreated to the kitchen. Rayansh appeared to be gathering his thoughts, and pursed his lips before speaking.

  “The reason I’m not at Ravstar is because I’m tendering my resignation,” he blurted, fidgeting with his spoon.

  “So – you weren’t traveling?” Leah said.

  “No. I was…I had an incident that convinced me it wasn’t safe to return to work.”

  Leah frowned. “I don’t understand. Wasn’t safe? What was the incident?”

  “Two men tried to kidnap me.”

  Leah’s eyes widened. “They what?”

  “You heard me. I believe it was related to my work.”

  “Why would anyone want to kidnap you?”

  “I believe they wanted to do worse. To shut me up.”

  “To shut you up,” she echoed.

  “Correct.” He took a long sip of tea and set the cup down carefully. “Ravstar is not what it seems, Ms. Mason.”

  “And what is that, exactly?”

  “There are problems with the technology. Grave problems. But…my concerns about the issues have been overridden. So I’m leaving. Going back to India, where I don’t need to fear for my life or for my family. There are other places where we can be safe.”

  “Did you go to the police?” Leah asked.

  “No. The police couldn’t do anything. As far as they’re concerned, it was just an ordinary robbery attempt.”

  “So…there’s no report, no proof any of this ever happened?”

  “I know what happened. That’s all the proof I need.”

  Leah studied the engineer for a moment. “Why are we meeting, Mr. Dasai? What do you want to tell me?”

  “That all is not right at the company. The claims it’s made aren’t accurate. I would say that without serious revisions of the debut device, they’re fraudulent, if not downright dangerous. And management doesn’t care.”

  “Management. You mean Patrick,” Leah said.

  “He runs the show.”

  “But what’s wrong with it? You have to be specific or it’s of no help.”

  “There are thermal problems after eight hours of operation.”

  “Thermal problems. Like it overheats?”

  He looked away. “Something like that. I don’t want to say too much.”

  “I drove all the way from Concord, Mr. Dasai. I’d like to believe I didn’t waste my time,” Leah said. “You honestly believe that the company tried to have you kidnapped? That’s hard to swallow, for starters. And then you say there’s a problem with the unit, but you’ll only talk in generalities. It’s difficult to see where there’s an article in this, frankly. To write something, I need specifics. Data. Hard evidence.”

  “I produced a report that had everything, but it’s gone now. I gave the only copy to Richard Davenport.”

  “That’s convenient, isn’t it? Because he’s dead, so there’s no actual proof to support your account.”

  “I heard about his car blowing up. That was after I gave him the report. You can connect the dots for yourself.”

  “He committed suicide. Are you saying that he was murdered?”

  He grunted. “I don’t know anything about that. You’re the investigator. Perhaps you can get to the bottom of it.”

  “I need something solid, not hearsay and innuendo, Mr. Dasai.”

  Rayansh shook his head. “I’ve told you all I can without giving myself away. You’ll have to do the rest. If you dig deep enough, you’ll learn the truth. They plan to rig the test unit so it doesn’t display the problems. But the production units will, guaranteed. There’s no way around it. And people are going to die if they’re deployed.” Rayansh rose. “I’m tendering my resignation tomorrow via email. I have an NDA with the company, so I can’t give you anything more. But what I’ve told you should be enough in the right hands – it will put the test unit into question, and the lab will do the rest.” He appraised Leah frankly. “You should watch your back, is that not the expression? There are very powerful interests that will be harmed if the truth leaks out, and my experience tells me they will stop at nothing to keep it secret.”

  He turned on his heel and hurried to the door. By the time Leah paid, he’d disappeared in the night. She spotted a bank of pay phones, walked to them, and looked at her call log before checking the numbers. Sure enough, the call to her phone had originated on the last pay phone.

  She stood at the entrance, scanning the parking lot, but didn’t see Rayansh. Either he’d walked and had vanished up the road, or he’d torn out of the lot at warp speed in order to avoid her following him. Either way, one thing she was sure of was that he was scared. You couldn’t fake that kind of fear. She believed his story, but had a difficult time buying that a publicly traded company would try to off its technical director to keep a defect quiet. She supposed those sorts of things happened in other countries, but she couldn’t fit Patrick, the glad-handing salesman, with someone ordering a hit.

  Then again, if Rayansh was telling the truth, Patrick stood to lose everything if the truth leaked.

  And money did strange things to people.

  Leah made her way back to the car, thinking through what she knew and matching it up with what Rayansh had told her. If she could write it correctly, it was a good story – FBI raids, a crooked VC who kills himself rather than taking the fall, a company about to hit the lottery, willing to do anything to make it into the big time, including commit fraud…

  It was definitely lurid enough. But she needed more. There was still a missing piece, and that was who had ordered the car to be rigged, assuming it had been a bomb. Adam had told her that he’d checked with his contact at the FBI, and they planned to release a report shortly, but he couldn’t tell Adam what it said.

  But if it had been deliberate, that meant someone had been willing to murder Richard in cold blood and had killed one of his associates by mistake. That, combined with the FBI raids, could add up to a nice circumstantial case of malfeasance by parties unknown. If the why turned out to be a fraudulent company, it would tie the story up with a bow.

  Unfortunately, she only had the word of a man who thought he was running for his life, and who’d refused to talk in anything but generalities.

  She started the car, switched on her recorder, and repeated as much of what Rayansh had told her as she could remember while it was still fresh in her mind. Three minutes later she’d finished, and she put the car in gear, prepared for another long drive back to Concord, any hope for a peaceful night’s sleep banished by the engineer’s unusual story.

  Chapter 39

  Leah awoke to the sound of a poorly tuned car engine sputtering to life outside her hotel room. She yawned and glanced at the clock on the nightstand next to her bed, and saw that it was only a few minutes before she’d set it to wake her up. She stretched and switched the clock off, and then swung her legs off the bed to begin her day.

  Once showered and rea
sonably presentable, she debated dropping by her apartment before heading to the office, but decided against it. She stopped at her favorite smoothie shop for a liquid breakfast, and then at the drive-through window of the coffee shop she frequented every morning before beginning her commute.

  Adam’s car was already in the lot when she drove up, as was Monte’s. She parked next to the Audi and trudged into the building, the air chilly from a frigid wind off the bay. Once at her desk she reviewed her handwritten notes from the prior night’s meeting with Rayansh, and typed them into her computer as she finished her coffee. The encounter with the engineer felt somewhat surreal in the cold light of morning, especially his insistence that he’d been targeted for silencing by parties unknown.

  Leah finished her summary and walked into the coffee room to brew a fresh pot, still groggy from a restless night’s sleep. Another journalist popped her head in and smiled at Leah and, when she saw that the pot was only half full, retreated to her cubicle to multitask while waiting. Leah poured her cup the second the machine had stopped hissing and popping, and returned to her station, her thoughts on Ravstar.

  The investigation into Richard’s misbehavior had taken a strange turn, but now she felt there was an actual story developing – not the one of a crooked VC, but rather of a high-profile company that looked to be engaging in fraud. It had been years since the market shocks of Global Crossing and Enron had revealed that supposedly sterling megacorporations could be as larcenous as a criminal syndicate, and if she could run the Ravstar story to ground, it would be similarly disconcerting, although the company was a fraction of their size.

  Adam’s head appeared from around her cubicle and he grinned at her. She looked up from her screen and returned the smile.

  “Hey. Morning,” she said.

  “Morning to you as well. How’d your evening go?”

  “I want to talk to you about that. It was an odd one.”

  He entered her cubicle and sat in her spare chair. “What happened?”