The Trapped Girl (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 4)

by Robert Dugoni

  “Two Lemon Drops,” Devin said to the waitress, raising her voice over the din of the crowd.

  “I’m good,” I said, shaking my head. “Just water.”

  “Come on, we’re celebrating.” Devin snatched the drink menu and handed it to the waitress, who departed.

  “What exactly are we celebrating?”

  “Your return to work.”

  “I’m back because we had to file bankruptcy.”

  “I know, but I’m still glad to have you back. It wasn’t the same without you. I don’t know how I survived the boredom.”

  “Listen,” I said. “Thanks for being there for me, for letting me unload all my problems on you.”

  Devin waved it off. “It’s no big deal.”

  “It is. It meant a lot to me. I’m sorry I lost touch when I left. You’re my only real friend here.”

  “That’s not true,” she said.

  “It is. You’re the only person I’ve ever been able to count on.”

  “Well, I missed not having you around,” she said.

  I smiled at that. “You mean the girl who goes home every night and sticks her nose in a book.”

  She laughed. “Okay, so tell me. Have you heard from the attorneys about your trust? Are the creditors going to be able to get at it?”

  I don’t know what compelled me. Maybe it was just the need to tell someone because keeping it a secret had consumed me. “I’m not waiting for the attorneys,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I can’t risk losing my trust, Devin.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve hidden it.”

  “How?”

  “I opened bank accounts in a different name.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I can’t say how. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

  “That’s okay. Wow. So you think it’s safe?”

  “It should be. I’m still in the process of doing a couple of things.”

  “Where did you learn how to do it?”

  I gave a small laugh. “Where else? A book.”

  “So you just made up a name?”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  “So you, like, have an alias?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Do you have a driver’s license?” Devin asked, animated.

  “I needed one to open the account.”

  Devin leaned forward, wide-eyed. “Did you use a famous person’s name?”

  “No. I used a pretty lame name, actually.”

  Two young men in business suits, ties lowered and top shirt buttons undone, approached our table and Devin sat back. They were cute. One had sandy blond hair and a shy grin. The other sported one of those trendy two-day-growth beards and a lot of attitude—like Graham when I first met him. With summer nearing, a lot of the businesses hired college interns. These two didn’t look much older.

  “My friend and I were hoping you could settle a bet,” Mr. Two-Day Growth said, which caused Devin to give me a sidelong glance and a roll of her eyes.

  “What’s that?” she said, playing along.

  “I’m betting you’re in town for the Nike CrossFit games.” He jabbed a thumb at the Brad Pitt look-alike. “He says you’re locals out for a drink.”

  “What happens if you’re both right?” Devin said.

  “We both buy you a drink,” he said, smiling.

  The blond looked at me with a sheepish grin. “Are you the CrossFit competitor?”

  “Me?” I said, hoping I wasn’t blushing. “God, no.”

  “Well, you look like you could be.” He flashed a boyish grin that ran straight through me.

  The waitress returned with our two Lemon Drops. Devin said, “Seems we already have drinks, and we haven’t seen each other in a while. We’re trying to catch up. But thanks.”

  I was surprised Devin blew them off, which wasn’t like her. Unlike me, she relished attention, and she wasn’t married. I almost sensed Devin was peeved that I’d been the one mistaken for the CrossFit athlete. I was in great shape, the best shape of my life. I’d need to be.

  “You ladies have a nice night,” Mr. Two-Day Growth said. They turned to leave, but not before the blond glanced back and gave me another grin.

  Devin laughed but it sounded stilted. “Look at you, getting all the attention.”

  “I think they were more interested in you,” I said, trying to be diplomatic.

  “Bullshit,” Devin said. “He liked what he saw. And you do look great, Andrea.” She sort of threw the last compliment away.

  “Well, working out five days a week and being under constant stress will do that.”

  “So the Rainier trip is still on?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and felt a pang of guilt.

  She raised her glass. “To having younger men hit on us in a bar.”

  I raised my glass and met hers, then pretended to take a drink but only tasted the sugar around the rim.

  She set down her drink. “So, you and Graham are staying together?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Can I speak frankly?”

  “Sure,” I said. I’d never known Devin not to speak frankly.

  She turned and glanced at the two men who’d tried to hit on us. “That’s pretty much what’s out there. Guys too young, looking to get laid, or divorced guys too old, looking to get laid. I know you and Graham have had your problems, but if he’s willing to give your marriage a go, you might want to consider it. At the very least go on the trip and see what comes of it. If it doesn’t go well, then you can decide what to do.”

  I didn’t get much of a chance to consider her advice. The waitress returned with our appetizers and another round of Lemon Drops. “We didn’t order a second round,” Devin said.

  The waitress nodded at the table shared by our two admirers. “They sent them over.”

  The blond and his friend raised their beer glasses and smiled.

  Devin said, “What do you think? Should we invite them over?”

  “Sure, why not?” I said, sensing she wanted to flirt with them.

  They turned out to be interns at an investment firm. Both were in graduate school, one at Tulane and the other at Dartmouth. Devin called them smarty-pants. The blond had definitely chosen me, and I talked with him long enough to keep his friend interested, for Devin’s sake. At some point Devin noticed that I hadn’t drunk my first drink, and she finished it. She also drank my second drink. Four Lemon Drops.

  Around 11:00 p.m., the guy hitting on Devin suggested they leave and she agreed. I told his friend I was going to be heading home, and he didn’t push it. He’d noticed the wedding ring. He said it was nice talking to me and went back to the table with his other friends.

  Devin told her date she’d find him and he too went back to his table. She looked at me and smiled. “You’ll be okay getting home?” I could tell from her slurred speech that she was pretty wasted.

  “Of course,” I said. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine. The buzz will make the sex better.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Careful? I’m getting laid. But, first I have to pee.” She grabbed her purse, which she’d hung by the strap over the back of her chair, and set it on the table along with her cell phone. “Watch my stuff?”

  “Sure.”

  “Right back.” She slid from her chair, stumbled when she hit the floor, but managed to remain upright. “Whoa. Maybe I shouldn’t have had that third Lemon Drop.”

  Four, I thought, but didn’t say. “You sure you’re okay?” I asked again.

  She winked and weaved her way through the tables and the crowd, leaving me alone. I almost pulled out the paperback I carried in my purse, but knew how lame that would look. I surveyed the crowd, my gaze passing over the tables of couples to the group of men standing at the upright table drinking their beers and laughing. Mr. Two-Day Growth watched Devin cross the bar, looking anxious or excited. I couldn’t tell. My eyes pau
sed on Brad Pitt. In my fantasy, he looked over at me and I didn’t look away. In my fantasy, I stuck my finger in my glass, swirling the drink, then brought my finger seductively to my lips and nibbled on the tip.

  Devin’s cell phone buzzed.

  When I looked down, the phone on the table was neither lit up nor vibrating. It took a second before I realized the noise was coming from inside her purse, which was unzipped. Confused, I looked inside and saw a second phone, the face lit up a pale blue-green. Caller ID did not provide a name, but I didn’t need a name.

  I recognized the number.

  A rush of anxiety hit me so violently the legs of my chair rattled. Nauseated, like I’d been punched in the gut, I fought the urge to throw up.

  I looked again.

  Graham.

  What the hell?

  What possible reason could there be for Graham to be calling Devin? To my knowledge, they hardly knew each another. And why would she have a second phone? I fought to control my breathing, to regain some semblance of composure, and to think through what I was witnessing, the gravity and believability of it all. I thought of the credit card charges to the hotels and restaurants in Seattle when Graham said he’d been away on business. Could that have been Devin? Was she the woman he was having an affair with? The credit card bills included the dates Graham had been gone. His cell phone bill would show his calls and the dates he made them, but I didn’t know the number of the phone in Devin’s purse.

  Still, it wouldn’t be too difficult to figure it out.

  I looked over my shoulder, saw no sign of Devin, reached inside her purse, and grabbed the phone. The screen indicated she’d received multiple text messages from the same number. Graham’s cell phone. Only partial messages appeared on the screen.

  Hey, hoping to get . . .

  Just got to . . .

  Did you talk to . . .

  I couldn’t unlock Devin’s phone without the password to read the full messages. I also couldn’t determine the phone number, but I didn’t need to.

  I looked over my shoulder to the hallway on the other side of the bar and watched Devin emerge, walking toward the table. I dropped the phone back inside the purse, slid from my bar stool, and put on my jacket.

  “You all set?” Devin asked, grabbing her purse and her jacket.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m tired.”

  She paused when she went to zip closed her purse, no doubt seeing the last registered call on the phone. Maintaining a poker face, she calmly dropped her regular phone inside her purse and zipped it closed. She reached out and gave me a warm hug. My entire body tensed. “So, let me guess, you’re heading home to stick your nose in a book.”

  “You know me,” I said.

  “Like a book,” Devin said, laughing. Then she turned and walked toward the table where the guy awaited her.

  “Except you’re reading the wrong book,” I said to her back. I was no longer going home. I was going to the office, to stick my nose in Devin Chambers’s computer.

  CHAPTER 21

  At first, Vic Fazio thought he was having one of those anxiety dreams in which everything feels stilted and magnified. An annoying insect circled his head, buzzing loudly. He couldn’t swat it or otherwise make it stop. Then his subconscious gave way to instincts he had honed over decades, a cop conditioned to being awakened at odd hours. He realized the insect was his cell phone. He turned the ringer off at night so as not to disturb Vera, who was a light sleeper, but that didn’t keep the phone from buzzing and shaking on his bedside nightstand.

  Faz didn’t need to open his eyes to know it was still the middle of the night. His inner clock, honed as a parent of two boys, told him. He felt Vera roll away from him, onto her side, well acclimated to life as the spouse of a homicide detective. Except, just then, something else became clear. Faz and Del were not the homicide team on call. They had been working the Andrea Strickland murder, but that case got pulled last Thursday.

  Faz reached blindly, missing the phone the first time before finding it. He brought it up in front of his face, the numbers blurry without his glasses, but he could make out only the local 206 Seattle area code. He hit the green button.

  “Hello?” His voice sounded like he was speaking through a drainpipe clogged with pea gravel and water. He cleared his throat. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Faz. How’s it going?”

  “What?” he said, confused.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Who the hell is this?”

  “Who is it?” Vera asked, rolling toward him and sitting up. “Did something happen to one of the kids?”

  “It’s Nik,” the caller said. “Your favorite skip tracer.”

  Faz struggled to sit up. Vera turned on the light on her side of the bed. The two of them squinted at the brightness. “Nik?” Faz asked, looking at the nightstand clock radio.

  “Who’s Nik?” Vera asked.

  “What the hell time is it?” Faz said.

  “It’s three thirty-two.”

  “In the morning?”

  Nik laughed. “Hey, April Fool’s, Fazio!”

  “Son of a bitch,” Faz said under his breath. “What is wrong with you? My wife is worried sick something happened to one of the kids.”

  “Yeah, and my wife is still pissed at me for throwing her cell phones in the damn lake. So maybe now we have a truce?”

  Faz blew out a heavy breath, looked at Vera, and said, “I’m sorry, it’s a business call.”

  “At this hour?”

  Faz knew he deserved it. He spoke into the phone. “Is this the only reason you called, to even the score?”

  “Come on, Faz, I’m an asshole but I’m not that big an asshole. I got some information for you on that job you asked me to look into . . . for free.”

  “Strickland?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Faz said, reaching for his reading glasses and the pen and pad of paper he also kept on the nightstand. “Go ahead.”

  “Shit, Fazio, it’s three thirty in the morning. Call me later and we’ll set a time and place to talk.”

  “Wait, are you telling me you called just to wake me up?”

  “That would be vindictive, Faz.” He paused. Then he said, “I’m a night owl—in case you think of being funny again.” Nik hung up.

  “Who was that?” Vera asked, still looking worried.

  “You know how you’re always telling me I’m not as funny as I think I am?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re right.”

  When Faz called later that morning, Ian Nikolic told him to meet for lunch at Duke’s Chowder House. Duke’s was located at the end of a pier on Lake Union.

  “Does this guy do anything that doesn’t involve the water?” Del said as the waitress led them through the restaurant to the wood deck out back.

  Nik sat beneath the shade of white umbrellas shielding the tables, talking on his cell phone. The other tables were full, diners dressed in light shirts and summer dresses enjoying a breeze off the lake that made the temperature tolerable, though Faz could already feel trickles of sweat beneath his shirt.

  “I’m going to have to call you back,” Nikolic said, holding the phone to his ear, half standing and reaching out a hand to Faz. “My lunch guests just arrived. Yeah, yeah. Today. I told you, I’ll get to it today.” He disconnected and shook Faz’s hand. “Hey, Fazio, you’re looking a little tired. Didn’t you get a good night’s sleep?”

  Del laughed and removed his sport coat.

  “Yeah, all right, you got me. Now we’re even. Vera nearly kicked me out of bed she was so mad.”

  They settled into seats. Three chairs had a view of the dazzling blue water teeming with boats and yachts leaving and returning to the marina, but Del draped his jacket over the back of the chair facing away from the water.

  “You got something against natural beauty?” Nik said.

  “That’s what the doctor said to his mother when he was born,” Faz said.


  “I’m good right where I am,” Del said.

  The waiter appeared, handing them menus. Faz ordered an iced tea. “Make mine an Arnold Palmer,” Del said.

  “Get the chowder,” Nik said, not bothering to open his menu. “You can’t go wrong.”

  Faz and Nik ordered the chowder. “And a loaf of bread,” Faz said. “I’m a big dipper.”

  “Scallop ravioli,” Del said, considering the menu. “Look at that, Faz, they got seafood for Italians.” He looked up at the waiter. “Is it good?”

  The waiter assured him it was.

  After the waiter departed, Faz sipped his water. “So what do you got for me, Nik?”

  “Someone was looking for that name you came asking about.”

  “Andrea Strickland?”

  “No, Lynn Hoff.”

  “Yeah?” Faz glanced at Del. Only someone who knew Andrea Strickland had created an alias would have known to ask about Lynn Hoff. “Do we know who?”

  “No, and the guy I got the information from is jumpy as all hell, given what happened to her. He said he’d tell me everything so long as I leave his name out of it.”

  “That’s gonna depend on what he told you, Nik. You know I can’t make that promise,” Faz said.

  “I know, but he doesn’t. I told him the same thing, but I also said I’d do my best to keep him out of it, act as a go-between. This is one of those instances when the information is more valuable than the source. Am I right?”

  “So what did he have to say?” Del asked.

  “Someone used a guerilla e-mail account to make contact. Ordinarily, he won’t agree to work under those conditions.”

  “What’s a guerilla e-mail?” Del asked.

  “It’s a disposable e-mail address,” Faz said. “It’s like a burner phone for e-mail. People use it when they don’t want to use their real name or e-mail address. A random address is generated each time the person logs in, and the e-mail is automatically deleted an hour after it’s generated.” He turned to Nikolic. “What did they want your guy to do?”