Settling The Score (BBW Romantic Suspense Contemporary Romance)

by Diane Blake

  Marty put a detective directly in touch with Craig. The football player stood in Jasinda's apartment while he spoke on the phone. He kept the blinds wedged open with his fingers, hoping against hope that Jasinda would come strolling up the walkway any moment.

  Detective Vega informed Craig in a professionally detached manner, "Our search of the library turned up a body."

  "Oh, God." Craig crossed to the couch and sat.

  The detective continued, "The deceased is a male, approximately thirty-five years of age, 6'2, dark hair."

  "That's the bodyguard who was supposed to be protecting her. How was he killed?" Craig asked.

  "Throat slit, presumably with a knife."

  "That's how Jasinda's co-worker got killed too. It can't be a coincidence."

  "That is one possibility, Mr. Wilder. We also learned that the last person who saw her was a library employee. He said she left with a man she referred to as Gus. She didn't appear to be under any duress."

  "That's her friend from one of her classes."

  "I'm not sure how to put this delicately, Mr. Wilder. She may simply have chosen to leave with him. I know it's hard to accept a woman leaving you, but I've seen it more than once in missing persons cases."

  Craig couldn't believe his ears. "You've got two dead bodies connected to Jasinda and this is the best you can come up with? She ran away with her classmate?"

  "As you stated, we've got two dead bodies connected with Jasinda Reed. That actually makes her a suspect."

  "That's absurd!" Craig wanted to throw the phone across the room. He was thankful Detective Vega wasn't in front of him at that moment since he might do something he'd regret.

  Detective Vega didn't sound bothered by the outburst. "We also have a missing Tigers cheerleader who was seen talking to Jasinda in public. Considering Miss Reed's past criminal record, we have to consider all possibilities."

  Craig's jaw dropped open. Did the detective just say that Jasinda had a criminal record? "What kind of criminal record?" Craig demanded.

  "I'm not at liberty to say." Detective Vega heard the sound through the phone as Craig opened his mouth to protest. The detective cut him off. "I don't care who calls our office, even if it's the National Football Commissioner himself. Neither I, nor anyone else in the department will give you information about a citizen's criminal record without a valid court order. That would be career suicide."

  "Fine!" Craig shouted even more loudly than he meant to. "Let's stick to Jasinda's abduction."

  "Disappearance," the detective corrected.

  Craig had never wanted to punch anyone so badly in his entire life. "Jasinda didn't run off with Gus in some romantic fantasy because Gus is gay."

  "Perhaps she just told you that so you wouldn't be jealous."

  Craig pulled the phone away from his ear. He actually considered crushing the phone in his hand for a moment. He had the strength and determination to do it if he so chose. He blew a deep breath out of his mouth. Through gritted teeth, Craig continued, "Are you even looking for Gus too?"

  "Yes, but it's worth noting that nobody has reported him missing."

  Craig issued the most sincere (as in, not very) thank you he could muster and disconnected the call. If he wanted Jasinda back alive and well, he knew instinctively he'd have to take matters into his own hands.

  Chapter 32

  Craig swiped through his contact list and touched an icon. After a couple rings, Craig's brother Stephen answered the phone. Craig wasted no time with greetings. "Are you near a computer?"

  "When am I not near a computer?"

  "True. Good. I need your help. Jasinda's missing. I think something really bad has happened. Two people connected to her have been murdered recently."

  "Oh, my God. That's awful. You want me to track her cell phone again?"

  "No need. The police found it next to her abandoned car."

  "What can I do to help, bro?"

  "That's the tricky part. It's probably really hard and kind of a little illegal."

  "Is that like being a little pregnant?"

  "Pretty much."

  "Just tell me what you want me to do."

  "Jasinda was last seen with a friend from one of her classes. They were exiting the library together. I need to track him down to see if he has any information that could lead us to her. All I know is his first name. I'm hoping you can hack into the college's records and get me his full name and contact information."

  Stephen's fingers tapped the keyboard as he spoke. "Of course I can. Hell, that's not even a challenge."

  Craig was never so happy to have a computer genius for a brother.

  "Jasinda goes to Jefferson University, right?" Stephen asked.

  "Yes."

  Multiple windows containing ever-changing numbers and letters flashed on Stephen's flat screen monitor. His eyes darted around taking in and processing information almost as fast as the computer. "OK, I'm in the student records office database. Spell her last name."

  Craig let out an audible sigh of relief. "It's Reed. R-E-E-D."

  The keyboard obeyed Stephen's commands. "OK, I've got her. She gets awesome grades. Might be too smart for you, bro," he teased. He scrolled the mouse and clicked. "I see her current schedule this semester. She's got three classes. English 202, Western Civilization 304, and Economics 318. Which one?"

  "Let me think...oh, I know, she said something once about discussing a term paper with him...about Greece! The Western Civ class. That has to be it!"

  "OK, let me look at the class roster. What's the guy's name we're looking for?"

  "Gus. That's all I know."

  "That's all we need. I'm scrolling through the class list right now. I see the class is held in a lecture hall so it's going to take me a minute because there a lot of names."

  "Hurry, please."

  The desperation in Craig's voice came through. Stephen wasn't used to hearing his brother sound like that. "This girl really means a lot to you, doesn't she?"

  "More than anyone ever has," Craig admitted. "She's not like any of the other women I've ever dated. I could just tell right from the beginning. She's real."

  Perhaps saying it out loud actually made Craig realize it for the first time too. "You know when you meet a woman and it feels like you've already known her forever? Yet, at the same time, everything feels exciting and new. You're completely comfortable and totally yourself. But then she also makes you feel like you want to be an even better version of yourself. That's how I feel when I'm with Jasinda."

  "I'll have to get back to you when that happens to me. Jasinda doesn't happen to have a sister, does she?"

  "No dice. Sorry, bro."

  The computer beeped. Stephen reported, "I went through all the names twice. Are you sure it's Gus?"

  "Positive. For one thing, the kid working at the circulation desk heard her call him that name. Beyond that... you know how sometimes it's hard to keep track of people you don't know in stories that your girlfriend tells you?"

  Stephen laughed. "I think I broke up with a girl once over that. She accused me of not listening to her. I was like, 'Who can follow your stories? There are more people in them than characters in Game of Thrones.' Yeah, we didn't last too long after that conversation."

  "I bet. So anyway, about this particular guy... when I couldn't place who he was in one of her stories, Jasinda said, 'It's easy. Gus likes guys.' I never forgot after that."

  "That certainly would do it," Stephen agreed. "And bonus, you're not jealous when she hangs around with him."

  "Exactly."

  "OK, let me check her other classes too...Nope, still nobody named Gus."

  "This doesn't make any sense."

  "Do you have a picture of him? I can access the database in which the college stores the students' pictures used to create the student ID cards. I can run an image matching query."

  "Why would I have any pictures of my date's gay friend?"

  "Hey, I don't judge," Stephen teased. "Ho
ld tight. I have an idea. I'll search all three classes again, this time for August, Augustine, Augustus, Angus, Gustavo, Fergus, Ferguson, and even Constantine."

  "Gus is a nickname for Constantine too?"

  "Yep," Stephen affirmed.

  "Thank you. You're brilliant."

  "I know."

  Craig could hear the brotherly smirk right through the phone when his brother said that last line.

  "This is going to take a few minutes with these widened search parameters," Stephen announced.

  Craig heard his brother's fingers clicking on the keys and the resulting periodic beeps from the computer. "While you do that, there's something else I have to ask you."

  "Shoot."

  "Can you also break into court system records or police department records?"

  "I can..."

  Craig picked up on his brother's hesitation. "But...?"

  Stephen sighed. "I know how to cover my electronic tracks, but nothing in this business is ever 100 percent secure. Kind of like that whole idea...can you ever really delete an email? It may be gone from your sent message folder and the recipient's inbox. You might even have wiped it off the corresponding servers. Still, that message passed through many networks on its way from point A to point B."

  "OK, I get that, mostly. So?"

  "So in the extremely unlikely event that someone found out I hacked the university's records, that would be bad enough, but hacking government criminal records is taking it to a whole different level."

  "So if you got caught, buying your way out of the criminal justice system breach would be a lot more difficult than buying your way out of the university system breach."

  "Exactly. You can imagine that law enforcement doesn't take too kindly to people poking around in their business. Also, a lot of government databases have recently upgraded their firewall tech and internal protections in response to high profile breaches. So, once I get in, it will take significant resources to decipher encryption protocols."

  "In English please," Craig joked.

  "Sorry," his brother laughed. "Basically, it will take a long time to get in and then another long time to figure out the passwords to actually be able to read the information."

  "Got it."

  "But you know I'll do it if you need me to," Stephen offered. "Why did you ask about it in the first place?"

  "Something the detective told me...that Jasinda has a criminal record."

  "Whoah!"

  "Yeah, and because of that, he was equally considering her as a victim as well as a possible suspect," Craig explained.

  "From the tone of your voice, you don't believe him?"

  "Of course not. Still, maybe if we knew the criminal background, it would help us find her now."

  "OK. As soon as we finish finding this Gus person, I'll start working on finding her criminal records. I'll go as fast as I can, but it still may take a lot longer than you'd like."

  "Thanks. Did I ever tell you that you're the best brother anyone could hope for?"

  "Maybe once or twice." Stephen tapped the keys in the background. He reported, "Sorry, man. There's nobody with the name Gus or any of those variations in any of Jasinda's classes. I even hacked the Jefferson University gay social group database. Nothing there either. I don't think this guy actually exists – at least not under that name."

  Chapter 33

  Jasinda became vaguely aware that something wasn't right. She was tired even though she also felt like she'd just awoken from a long nap. Groggy! That was the best way to describe it.

  Jasinda opened her eyes. Nothing! I can't see! What have they done to me?

  She tried to move her hands in order to rub her eyes. Her arms wouldn't budge. That's when she became aware of the ropes digging into her wrists and ankles.

  She struggled against the restraints. She heard an unpleasant male voice say, "Looks like you're coming to."

  Jasinda moved her head towards that direction. "Who are you? Where am I?" she asked aloud. The man provided no response directly to her. She heard him whistling to himself.

  A loud banging noise startled her. Metal. I'm inside something, she deduced from the sounds. A door handle clicked and she felt a difference in air temperature.

  The memory of the kidnapping rushed through her mind. The van. I must still be inside the van. I don't hear any background noise. It's an awfully quiet street or parking lot. No, we must be inside a building like a garage or warehouse.

  Jasinda breathed in consciously. The air had a dirty, chemical smell. Oil. Gas. An auto-repair facility!

  She still couldn't see anything, but she perceived a change in the light level. Jasinda blinked her eyes. She realized there wasn't anything wrong with her eyesight. They'd put a blindfold over her face. Despite the circumstances, she felt a slight wave of relief over that.

  "I couldn't find anything that seemed like it would work," said another man's voice, this one farther away. He must be outside the van.

  "You didn't look very hard. How do you think they move stuff around in here? It doesn't matter. She's waking up now anyway. She can walk herself."

  "Good thing, cuz I sure as hell ain't about to try carrying her."

  "Might as well take the blindfold off too."

  "Ya think?"

  "It's not like she's going to live long enough to tell anyone what we look like."

  "Good point."

  The man inside the van with her yanked her head down to get access to the knot. His bony knuckles dented her skin as he pulled at the material He had all the subtlety and gentle touch of a hungry grizzly bear eating his first meal after hibernation.

  Jasinda's neck snapped back as he freed it from the blindfold. Her head hit the inside metal wall of the van. Neither man cared nor commented.

  The van's interior light illuminated the fact that a scar zig-zagged under one man's right eye.

  The other captor sported a not-so-neat beard. He said, "I'm going to untie your feet so you can walk." He looked her right in the eye. "If you kick me, I'll break your leg with this." He picked up a tire iron from the van floor and held it in front of her face.

  "Capiche?"

  Jasinda shook her head in agreement since she knew he wasn't bluffing and she had no other choice but to go along with whatever they said at this point. She also observed a gun stuck in each man's belt.

  The man untied her legs in as rough a manner as he'd undone the blindfold. Jasinda's legs felt stiff from the position they'd been in. She wondered how long she'd been out, but she figured it was pointless to ask her abductors.

  The two men led her silently by the repair bays. She noticed a car up on the hydraulic lift without any tires. She saw other cars in various states of assembly. She decided the facility was at least, if not wholly, an automobile chop shop – a place where criminals disassemble stolen vehicles to sell them as parts.

  They walked down a dingy hallway, stopping a couple steps away from an unmarked door. Jasinda got the urge to ask the two men a pertinent question. "Can you at least tell me where you're taking me?"

  The guy with the beard scoffed. "That's easy. Your final destination..." He unlocked the door and pushed it open. "I brought you some company," he called into the room.

  With no regard for the fact that Jasinda's hands were still bound, the guy with the scar gave her a good shove right through the doorway.

  She stumbled forward, trying desperately not to trip. Without being able to use her hands to break a potential fall, she knew she could be seriously hurt.

  Jasinda felt herself losing her balance. She stumbled towards a table and managed to fall against that instead of the floor. Scar guy grabbed the back of her blouse and lifted her away from the table. He plopped her into a wooden chair.

  It all happened so fast that Jasinda didn't notice the other chair and its occupant until she was seated.

  Beard guy bent down to secure Jasinda's legs to the chair with rope. Meanwhile, his accomplice pulled a sack off the other person's he
ad and shoulders.

  The confusion spread over Jasinda's face instantly. Jasinda's mind raced. She demanded, "What are you doing here? And what the hell is going on?"

  Chapter 34

  "I could ask you the same questions," snapped Kandi Chambers. Kandi's sullied uniform looked like she'd played a full game with the Tigers on a muddy field rather than the pristine look of a cheerleader on the sidelines.