by Dale Mayer
“I know what you mean,” Joy said. She walked over and held out her hand to Tyson.
But Tyson smiled quietly—then wrapped her up in a big hug. She appreciated it and squeezed him right back. She really liked Tyson, though she hadn’t had a ton of time to get to know him. But he was one of those quiet indomitable presences behind the very small, very outgoing dynamo that was Kai, but a man completely self-contained and knowledgeable in his own right. As she stepped free, she snagged Kai into a second hug. “And why are we meeting here?” she exclaimed. “Why not a restaurant or at least my place?”
“Because we haven’t swept your place yet,” Tyson said, “and a restaurant has a lot of people.”
“So we’re out in the middle of a park? Doesn’t that mean people are out here too?”
“There’s the potential for a lot of people,” Johan said, “but it doesn’t mean they will be within earshot of us here.”
She shot him a look and stepped a few feet away from him and caught Kai’s knowing glance. She winced at that.
One of Kai’s eyebrows shot up as she glanced between Joy and Johan, and a half smile formed.
Joy glared at her friend. “No,” she stated.
Kai’s grin widened, but she nodded. “If you say so,” she murmured.
Joy turned to look and saw the three men standing together, talking.
Kai immediately stepped closer. “So what’s going on between the two of you?”
“Nothing,” Joy snapped.
“Well, obviously not nothing,” Kai said with a big grin.
Knowing there was no way she could explain away or dissuade her friend from her current train of thought, Joy tried to change the conversation. “So what is really going on here? Why are we meeting in a park?”
“After hearing that your predecessor at work was killed in a hit-and-run,” Kai said worriedly, “I want to convince you to leave the company.”
Immediately Joy frowned. “Leaving is one thing, but leaving right now is another.”
“Leaving right now would be best,” Kai argued. “It would keep you safe.”
Joy turned her gaze to the sky. How could she explain how she felt to Kai? Up above was a bright blue sky dotted with white clouds that moved swiftly across, as if propelled by the winds. Maybe that’s how she felt too. “I feel like I need to stay and to figure out what happened.”
“It’s obviously dangerous,” Kai said. “We don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Neither do I,” Joy said. “But, once that investigation opened up, all it did was make things more dangerous for me.”
“Exactly,” Kai said. “And we don’t want that. Yet we do need to figure out what’s going on.”
“But it’s too late now to shield me,” Joy said gently, “short of me leaving the city, which I really don’t want to do. Even if I leave the company and stay here in Houston, they would know where I live, and they could still run me down. Even if I do move, that could happen regardless.”
“We can protect you,” Kai said instantly.
Joy stared down at her friend and smiled. “I get that you believe you can,” she said, “but honestly it won’t be that easy. I’m not letting you chain me to my apartment, and I don’t want to have a chaperone every time I go out. So, in truth, you can’t protect me all the time, and, if somebody really wanted to come after me, you know they’d find a way. The same as you would, if that were your job.”
“Possibly,” Kai said with a slight nod. “But you could stay safer. At work, you’re a sitting duck.”
“At work,” she said, “I’m under Galen’s and Johan’s watchful eyes and hardly in any danger there.”
Kai just stared at her in growing frustration.
Joy reached out to her worried friend, stole a quick hug, and said, “I’m fine. But I’m not one to walk away from trouble.”
“I wish you would,” Kai said. “You don’t even have any self-defense knowledge.”
“I have a little,” she said, “but, no, nothing like you.” She turned, looked around at the picnic table, then walked over, hopped up, so she sat on the tabletop with her feet on the bench. “Are we planning on eating? I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m really hungry,” she complained.
“We ate lunch,” Johan said. “Did you not get enough?”
“I had enough lunch to get me to dinner,” she said. “But now it’s dinnertime, and I’m really hungry.”
At that, Kai laughed. “We have food in the vehicle,” she said. “Come on. Let’s go get it.”
“So it’s a picnic then?” Joy asked.
“To a certain extent, yes,” Kai said. “It’s a nice sunny day out, but did you want to go somewhere else instead?”
Immediately feeling guilty, Joy knew it was rude to be so churlish, especially since they had obviously made these plans. “Oh, no, it’s fine,” she said. “If I want something afterward, I can always go get a coffee.”
“We all can,” Tyson said, and he nodded toward Kai. “Stay here and visit. I’ll get the baskets.”
She nodded brightly, watching him as he strode away.
“You look like you’re still really happy with him,” Joy said.
“I am,” she whispered, and she held up her hand, proudly displaying an engagement ring.
Joy stared at it in shock and then squealed as she wrapped her arms around her friend. “Oh, Kai, I’m so happy for you,” she said.
“I am too,” Kai said. “It seems like now that Levi and Ice are married, the engagements are popping up all over the place.”
“I’m not surprised,” Joy said. “I’ve learned enough about them from you to see how everybody was waiting for them to get there first.”
“We’re not having a big wedding,” she said. “In fact, we might even slip off in the dark of night and get married, then come back and have it all over with,” Kai said.
“And yet maybe those you work with wouldn’t appreciate that. What about those who work with Tyson?”
“I think they all would understand,” she said with a laugh. “My company is doing really well, but my employees’ focus is definitely not on the same stage of life as mine.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear your company is doing well,” she said. “There’s got to be some good things in life.”
“There are lots of good things,” she said firmly. “Just bad circumstances resulted in you ending up in a difficult place.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But, now that I’m here, it’s pretty hard to get out of it.”
“I hear you,” Kai said, “but we’re here to help.”
“Is it a habit that you automatically launch a full-blown investigation when a friend calls for help?”
Laughing, the two women discussed Kai’s wedding plans, as Johan and Galen walked over to the table to join them. Soon Tyson was in sight, carrying two large picnic baskets. The guys grinned.
“Alfred and Bailey by any chance?” Johan asked.
“Absolutely, and we picked up coffee on the way,” Tyson said. “If you guys will grab these, I’ll go get the coffee.”
Johan snatched one out of his hand and Galen reached for the other. They returned, placing the baskets on the picnic table.
*
Johan looked down at the heavy baskets. “How many people were you planning on feeding?” he joked with Kai.
“Well, I know for a fact that Joy can eat a lot,” she said in a teasing manner. “And, with you guys around, there’s never enough food.”
Johan took things out of the baskets, and Kai walked around the wooden picnic table and helped. Plates, cutlery, and cups were included. Then Johan brought out a dish wrapped in a heatproof bag. He pulled the dish free, and the fresh aroma of a warm bacon and spinach quiche filled the air. Also homemade buns had been wrapped up in towels, with sliced roast beef and cheese to go with them.
Joy sat down with a huge smile. “I can’t believe how lucky you are to get fed like this all the time,” she said.<
By that time they had everything unloaded, including not only a fruit salad but a big Caesar salad to go with it all as well. After they had it all served up on plates before them, still some was left for seconds. Johan nodded in appreciation.
Joy immediately got to work on her quiche. “Gosh,” she murmured around a mouthful, “it’s perfect.”
“It is good, isn’t it?” Johan said and picked up his piece and ate it like pizza. He noted two quiches were here, which was great because Joy was already through her first serving.
He watched as she ate, loving the appetite she had and the enjoyment so evident as she devoured her food. She had no qualms about eating carbs or fat—or too much or too little of this or that. She was just comfortably enjoying her meal. Which was good too because most people would be freaking out over being a real target, as in dead from a hit-and-run at worst or just canned from their job for something they didn’t even do at the very least. He admired her for her gumption.
He looked over to see Galen studying them. Johan frowned, and Galen just grinned.
Kai turned and looked around the table at her friends. “Well, obvious undercurrents are going on here,” she said. “So, what’s going on?”
“He kissed me,” Joy snapped. There was silence at the table.
“Who kissed you?” Kai asked cautiously.
“Johan,” Joy said. Then she picked up another bite of her quiche and bit hard. She chewed furiously, her gaze locked on Kai.
Johan’s grin was hard to keep back. The other men just looked at him with raised eyebrows. He shrugged and said, “Hey, it seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say because immediately Joy turned on him and said, “What?” Her voice was low and ominous.
He gave her a flat stare back, yet his voice faltered at the end. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time?”
She gasped and opened her mouth, just as Kai reached across the table and popped more quiche into it. “We won’t fight about it now,” she said. “We have to focus on the business at hand.”
“You asked,” Johan said.
Kai nodded. “I did. I should have known better.” She shook her head but turned toward Joy. “All of Levi’s men, they’re very honorable,” she said, “but they are deadly too.”
Joy narrowed her gaze, still chewing hard as she glared from Kai to Johan. Finally she seemed to have calmed down enough that she served herself some salad and attacked the green lettuce as if it were an alien enemy.
Johan watched with interest to see her plow through a big serving of greens. Finally he looked at the others and said, “So, what news do you have?”
“It’s not even so much news,” Tyson said, “but we’ll be in town to give you guys a hand. The other job was put on hold. The museum will handle their problem themselves.”
At that, Joy stopped chewing, stared at Kai, and said, “I don’t want this to interfere in your life too.”
“It’s not interfering in my life,” Kai said. “We’re friends. Remember? I don’t want to see you get into trouble.”
“I’m already into trouble,” she said. “What difference does a little more make?”
“You know what I mean,” Kai said. “Let’s not be flippant about something like your safety.”
Joy seemed to calm down, her shoulders slumping, and she nodded. “There’s really nothing to be done though. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it.”
“I know,” Kai said.
Just then Tyson’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out, looked at it, then at Joy. “When did you last have a repairman in your apartment?”
She looked at him in surprise, then frowned and shrugged. “Not sure I’ve had any. I’ve hardly lived there long enough.”
“Does anybody have a spare key?”
“No,” she said. “Well, the guy I sublet it from. But he’s overseas. And of course the property manager. Why?”
“Because we sent a team into your apartment and cased it for bugs. They found two.”
She stopped and stared at him in shock, slowly lowering her fork. “Bugs, as in listening devices?”
He nodded slowly.
“That’s not cool.” She gave Galen a blank look. “That makes no sense. Why care about me?”
“Do you leave a spare key anywhere?” Johan asked.
“No,” she said. “I just have the one on a key ring I keep in my purse.”
“And how often do you leave your office without your purse?” Johan stared at her intently, because, of course, she had come to talk to him several times, and she didn’t have her purse with her.
“You’re suggesting somebody might have gone into my purse while I was out of the office? So they could do what? So they could take an impression of my key and have another key made?”
“Something like that, yes,” he said. “It’s possible, isn’t it?”
“But that would mean it was either Phyllis or Doris,” she said slowly. “I can’t see either one of them doing that.”
“Johan told us about Phyllis and her interesting history,” Kai said.
“Interesting, yes. But surely not something that would necessitate her bugging my apartment,” Joy said.
“No, and what I’m trying to ascertain is,” she said, “who else would care?”
“Only somebody involved in the theft,” Johan said slowly.
Joy looked down at her food. “Suddenly I’m not so hungry. Now I feel quite sick.”
Chapter 7
“I didn’t mean to ruin your dinner,” Kai said.
“I’m the one who just got the news,” Tyson said apologetically. “I could have waited a little bit.”
Joy stared at him in surprise. “Waiting a little bit won’t help,” she murmured. “This means that strangers were in my apartment, and even now people are trying to hear what I have to say.” She looked back at Johan. “Did we say anything when we were in there?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said, “deliberately.”
She glared at him. “Did you expect there to be bugs?”
“Expect, no,” he said. “But I’m the one who requested the sweep.”
She stared around at all these people who were making decisions on her behalf without her. Yes, for her benefit, but, at the same time, it felt odd. She didn’t even know what to say. She stared off in the distance. “I can’t imagine,” she reiterated, “why anybody would care.”
“And, of course, that’s the problem,” Kai said. “Like you said, it could only be somebody involved in the theft.”
“But that could mean anybody in the whole company,” Joy said.
“Or from one of the related companies,” Galen added.
“Not to mention some thug hired off the street,” Johan said.
“Or maybe the bugs were left behind by the previous tenant,” Tyson guessed.
“Except for the opportunity to get a copy of my key.” Joy sighed, looking slowly at everyone.
“But you have to take into consideration that any one of us,” Galen said, apologetically looking at Joy, “could pick that lock in ten seconds flat.”
She wrinkled up her face at him. “Oh, please, not in ten seconds.”
“Only ten seconds if we were out of practice,” Johan said. “All of us would pride ourselves on doing it in much less time.”
She reached up to massage her forehead. “So, can I even go back to my apartment?”
“The team pulled the bugs,” Tyson said quietly. “So, for the moment, it’s safe in that regard. We could set an alarm so that it triggers a security response at the compound, if somebody opened that door. You may want to find some other place to live in the meantime.”
“But then they’ll know that I’m on to them,” Joy said, “and that can’t be very smart either.”
“Possibly not,” Tyson acknowledged.
“It all sucks,” she said.
“It absolutely does.”
“So what’s the best answer, you guys?” Joy asked. “Is there any way to track those bugs? Find out who placed them in my apartment?”
“No. However, the bugs are on their way to Levi’s compound,” Tyson said. “We’ll do the best we can to see, but they look fairly innocuous, as in anybody could have bought them over the internet.”
“And, of course, they don’t come with a signature or anything that says, ‘Hey, we did this,’ right?”
Johan shook his head and said, “Sorry. You also don’t have any video cameras in the apartment building, so there’s no way to track if anybody had entered that way.”
“I’m on the third floor,” she said. “I suppose it wouldn’t be all that hard for somebody who’s good at this to climb up and get in through the glass doors. But apparently it is pretty easy to get in through the front door, so why bother?”
The men just nodded and continued to eat their dinner.
Making a steeple with her fingers, Joy rested her chin on top of her hands. “It sounds like the best thing would be if I continue to do nothing and let you guys set up whatever it is you’re setting up to try to catch the people who did this.”
“But we also have to set up something at the company,” Tyson said. “This can’t be one single prong. Otherwise it won’t work.”
“We don’t even know who at the company is involved,” she said. Turning, she looked at Galen and Johan. “Unless you two found something.”
Both men shrugged, and Galen said, “Not yet. So far we have those four accounts that have been compromised, and we’re still trying to trace the materials sitting in those three locked rooms downstairs in the building—from either end, whether the seller or the buyer.”
“And I don’t understand that either,” she said. “I don’t have any record of surplus supplies designated in those three storerooms on Level B3 in my inventory.”
“I was checking that just before we left today,” Johan said. “None of the numbers that I randomly scanned in match up with any of the inventory online.”
“And there are three rooms full?” Kai asked.
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