It was strange to be sitting on the grass, Monica holding his arm steady while Geoffrey plugged in something that looked like a power tool from his high school shop class.
“Isn’t that just a regular saw?” Shaun asked. “I’ve got one of those in the garage.”
Monica gave him a sour look and backhanded his shoulder.
Geoffrey, seeing Clay tense, gave him a small smile. “Don’t worry, this is a cast saw. It won’t cut through your skin.” He turned it on and began working, making cuts on both sides of the cast. Then he got a metal tool from his bag and spread the cast pieces open, revealing padding and a stockinette underneath, before lifting the pieces away.
As Geoffrey cut through the softer layers around Clay’s arm, Joslyn picked up one of the pieces and examined it in the light from the flashlight. Her jaw tightened and she pointed to a shadow in the cast. “There it is.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Hand me the cast saw.”
“No way,” Geoffrey said without looking up. “I’ll cut it out as soon as we recast his arm.”
Monica wrapped a new cast on Clay’s arm while Geoffrey used the saw to cut out a small electronic device, attached with a wire to another device like a flat button. “That’s the battery, I think,” Joslyn said.
“Cut the wire,” Liam said to Geoffrey, who did so. “That’ll keep it from transmitting.”
Clay let out a low breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding. “We need to leave.”
“You’re not going anywhere, son,” Patrick, said.
“But those men know we’re with you,” Clay said.
“The GPS is off, so they won’t know if you’re still with us or not,” Liam said.
“How’d they even get that in there?” Elisabeth demanded.
“It must have been Met,” Joslyn said. “Not him directly, but he was at the hospital. He must have bribed a nurse or something.”
“Well, they gave him this plaster cast, which means it was only temporary,” Geoffrey said. “He’s probably scheduled to get a fiberglass one in a week or so. That man could have convinced the nurse that it was only a joke. She’d know the cast was coming off in a week, anyway.”
Clay picked up the tiny device, with bits of plaster still stuck to it. He had to control himself to keep from crushing it in his fist. “I didn’t even notice the nurse putting this in there.”
“It was right over the padding,” Geoffrey said. “It would have been easy to slip it in place before wrapping it.”
“We should still get this to Detective Carter,” Liam said. “He can look into the nurse who did it. She might have noticed something about Met or whoever asked her to do this.”
They could use any information they could get, because really, what did they have? Bobby’s cabin had been a bust. They had a box of books and junk that didn’t give any clue about what caused Fiona to leave LA, much less why she was gone.
Clay got to his feet. He couldn’t sit anymore, feeling useless with only one good arm and a bruised body. What had he done in the past few days besides putting Joslyn in danger? Besides putting her friends in danger?
Liam crossed the back lawn toward the house, intent on giving the tracker to Detective Carter. The sun was rising, coloring the horizon gold and pink, interrupted only by evergreen trees breaking the smooth rolling foothills. The light shone warm on the wood of the O’Neill home. From this angle, Clay couldn’t see the gutted front room.
He shouldn’t have stuck with Joslyn. Those men might not have cloned her phone if he hadn’t been with her. They might only have gone after Clay, since he was Fiona’s brother. She wouldn’t have been shot at. Patrick O’Neill’s house wouldn’t have that massive fire damage. He was only lucky no one got hurt.
Lucky. He’d rarely been lucky in his life. His knee twinged, and he reached down to rub it.
“Mixed martial arts injury?” Patrick had come to stand beside him, both of them watching the house and the firemen and police officers swarming around it.
Clay shook his head. “Older. Not one I’m proud of.”
“Oh?”
Clay didn’t often share about his past, but he’d lain on Patrick’s deck and the man had shot a rifle at intruders Clay had brought to his house. He figured he at least owed the man an answer to his idle curiosity. “Back when I worked for a Chicago mob family, I was chasing a guy who owed my boss money. I slipped on some wet stairs and tore my ACL and a mess of other tendons. I don’t remember their names.”
Patrick grunted, then tapped his right thigh. “Not quite the same, but I got a bullet in my kneecap in Nam. Never quite healed right.”
Here was a veteran. Clay was just a low-level mob thug. Why was he here with them all? He didn’t belong.
Patrick continued, “When a man can’t walk, it changes your perspective on things.”
Clay was about to give a noncommittal answer when he realized that for him, it was true. “It made me realize how little I meant to my bosses. I thought I had friends there, but I didn’t, really. I had decided to try to leave the mob when they got busted by the FBI.”
“Did you cut a deal?”
“I didn’t have much the FBI wanted, so there wasn’t much of a deal I could cut. I got two years. But when I got out, the mob family was defunct. I could move on.”
“It’s hard to walk away from your past,” Patrick said. “You try to fit in with the real world again, and you just don’t belong.”
Clay had never compared his time in prison with a war zone, but he supposed that coming out of both could be similar. And he didn’t belong. Not with these people.
Then Patrick touched his head again, like he had before, as if Clay were his son. “I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad. I’m telling you this because I know that look at the back of your eyes. I felt it when I came home from the war. I saw it in Shaun’s eyes when he quit the border patrol. It’s still in Liam’s eyes when he thinks about the explosion that got him sent home from the army. I’m telling you that with prayer, and the people around you who love you, it’ll go away eventually.”
Love. Who did he have who loved him? His mother was dead. He’d chased away the only person left, his sister. And he’d been trying to keep himself distant from Joslyn, because he somehow knew she was his Kryptonite.
“I know what you’re thinking, son,” Patrick said. “And you’ll just have to forgive an old man for giving advice to a man he doesn’t know very well. One of my favorite Bible verses is First Peter four, verse eight. ‘Love covers over a multitude of sins.’ You think on that.”
Patrick left him to go back to where his son and daughter-in-law were sitting on the grass. Geoffrey had leaned back and seemed to be asleep. Joslyn was talking to Elisabeth.
These people had love. They knew how to receive it and how to give it. Of course they’d feel content, self-assured.
No, Clay realized, Patrick wasn’t talking about their love for each other. He’d quoted a Bible verse. Joslyn mentioned God every so often as if she really knew God, like they had a friendship and a bond.
Love covers over a multitude of sins. God’s love?
But there was no way God could love someone like Clay.
He stood apart from them all, but he felt no desire to join them. And yet a part of him wanted to belong to them. A part of him was afraid to consider that maybe he’d been alone for most of his life, even when he was in the midst of his friends, his posse, his crowd. Maybe he was just meant to be that way.
He was getting morose. It was lack of sleep. When he found Fiona, everything would be better. He could apologize to her. He could make amends for not listening to her. He could reforge that relationship.
He could finally find redemption.
*
Joslyn felt a bit like Godzilla, leaving destruction in her wake. Fiona’s house was bombed, so was her own apartment, and now Patrick no longer had a front living room.
Which was why she, Clay, Liam and Elisabeth
were at Elisabeth’s apartment, also known as the O’Neill Agency headquarters. Liam was saving up for a custom-built house which they would eventually use as their official office, complete with a top security system in place, but until then, Elisabeth’s computers and servers were ranged all over her dining room, living room and one of the two bedrooms.
Joslyn checked one of the computers, nicknamed Leviathan, a particularly powerful custom-made desktop with the ability to run her facial-recognition program. She’d written the code with the help of Monica’s cousin Jane Lawton, another computer programmer.
“Any matches?” Elisabeth asked.
“Not yet.”
Liam frowned. “It’s been running for over a day, now.”
“It’s crawling through the entire web, looking for a photo that might match the pictures of Met and G that we got,” Joslyn said. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
Liam threw up his hands in surrender, although he gave her a smile and a wink.
What was she doing, causing all these problems for her friends? She’d already gotten Liam and Elisabeth involved with her ex-boyfriend and a dangerous drug gang last year. Now she was battling some seriously financed thugs with high tech she would drool over if she weren’t running for her life.
“Anything I can do?” Clay asked. He had his newly casted arm in a sling, but his entire body hummed with energy despite his lack of sleep the night before. They’d caught a couple hours, napping on the back lawn while the police finished up, then they’d come here to Elisabeth’s apartment to do research. Clay hadn’t wanted to leave Joslyn alone, even though he admitted he barely knew how to log in to his email.
“Can you cook?” Elisabeth asked.
He grinned. “I make a mean breakfast burrito.”
“Then you’re on food duty while we work.”
He saluted her and headed to her kitchen.
Joslyn felt guilty for dragging Clay into this, but strangely, she had the feeling he took all this danger and uncertainty in stride. She didn’t like not knowing, not being able to control anything. But for Clay, nothing seemed to faze him. He did what needed to be done. Period.
That was completely the opposite of how Tomas had been. He’d been emotional, easily upset, always stressed. At first it had made him seem very romantic and exuberant in his attention toward her, but then…
She managed to stop the memory before it found her. Her breath was even, her heartbeat slow and steady. She felt strong, in control. She felt like…Clay. He made her feel confident.
She hardly knew him, and yet she felt that he would be a good person to get to know. He would bring out a better side of her. He could help her heal.
She couldn’t remember what that was like, to be healed. To be whole.
“Joslyn?” Elisabeth’s soft voice invaded her thoughts. She realized she’d said her name a couple times.
“Sorry.”
Elisabeth touched her shoulder and asked in a low voice, “Are you okay?”
She knew about the baby. She’d seen the most dramatic effects of Tomas when Joslyn had first run away. She’d seen her at her worst, and had helped her and cared for her.
Joslyn took her hand and held it for a moment. “I’m getting better.” Her counselor had told her not to dissemble, to be honest but not a complainer. It had felt good to be able to say how she really felt with people who cared about her. It was like sharing a burden.
“Since Leviathan’s running the facial-recognition program,” Elisabeth said, nodding to the desktop she’d made herself, “go use the computer on the table.”
“What about Liam?”
“He’ll use the one in the bedroom. Just tell him what you want him to look for.”
“Martin Crowley. Fiona. Anything she might have done in Los Angeles besides her schoolwork.”
“Let’s split it up so we don’t overlap,” Elisabeth said. “I’ll dig into some of the government databases I have access to.” She did some contract work for the FBI in San Francisco, which was why her computer systems were so strongly encrypted and protected. Joslyn had gotten some of her best security tips from Elisabeth.
“I’ll take Martin, you take Fiona,” Liam said to her.
They had started working, each at various computer stations around Elisabeth’s apartment, when a sudden ping broke the sounds of clicking mouses and tapping keyboards. There was a surprised silence, then Joslyn launched herself at the Leviathan and looked at the screen.
Her web crawler program had found a match for both men, in the same photo. It was an article posted on the website for a small Los Angeles business magazine. At first, Joslyn thought the program had made a mistake, because the photo was a smiling shot of a businessman standing at an outdoor podium, addressing a crowd.
Then she looked behind the businessman. In the background, Met and G were standing there in an alert, yet relaxed stance. They looked like bodyguards.
“Who is this?” Joslyn scrolled through the article.
“Wait, stop.” Elisabeth was reading over her shoulder. She pointed to the screen. “Richard Roman.”
“What did you say?” Clay’s tight voice shot out from the doorway to the kitchen. The too-small, bright yellow apron he wore contrasted sharply with the thunderous look on his face.
“You know him?” Liam had come out from the bedroom, where he’d been working. “Who is he?”
Clay shook his head in frustration. “I should have guessed. Martin almost ruined him, or something like that. Fiona told me about it when she was still living in our apartment in Chicago.”
“About what year was that?” Elisabeth went to her computer, which was the most powerful out of all of them, and began typing.
Clay told her. It was the year before he’d gone to prison, so only a few years ago.
While Elisabeth searched, Joslyn looked up the basics on Richard Roman, and discovered something interesting. “Clay,” she said, pointing to her computer screen. “Look where Roman’s office building is.”
“It’s near Martin’s.”
“It’s near that candy shop.”
Clay blew out a breath. “We thought Met and G were connected to Martin because of that Chinese candy Met was eating in that video, but maybe it’s because they were connected to Roman, instead.”
Elisabeth said, “I found the connection between Roman and Martin.”
Joslyn read over Elisabeth’s shoulder. This was a newspaper article in the Los Angeles Times, but it was just a small blurb about how the bidding for the sale of Balthazar Corporation had unexpectedly gone to Martin Crowley of Crowley Industries, when Richard Roman of RRC had been the expected winner.
“I don’t understand,” Joslyn said. “How did that ruin Roman?”
“Fiona said something about how Martin’s bid was lower than Roman’s, but they sold the company to Martin anyway,” Clay said. “I’m afraid I didn’t really understand what she was saying.”
“How’d he get them to do that?” Elisabeth asked. “Bribery? Blackmail?”
“Whatever it was, the deal was stolen from Roman,” Liam said.
“And he sent those two men,” Clay said. “They rigged Fiona’s house. And Joslyn’s apartment.”
“They’ve been trying to kill us,” Joslyn said. “And maybe Fiona, too? But why?”
“Revenge,” Clay said, his voice low and somber.
Joslyn felt a tightening in her chest. “He wants Fiona to get back at Martin. You remember what Bobby said—”
“Martin cares about money and bloodline,” Clay said. “Fiona’s his only child, as far as I know.”
No wonder Fiona had disappeared. How had she known Roman was after her? “So would Roman hurt Fiona just to get back at Martin?” Joslyn thought about that. There was something that didn’t quite fit in place. “That seems kind of emotional for a cold businessman like Roman.”
“And Martin cares for her,” Clay said. “He’d have hidden her away somewhere safe. Why didn’t she go to him for h
elp?”
“Wait, wait.” Joslyn snapped her fingers. “Martin went to Bobby’s cabin by himself, looking for Fiona. Without his secretary, his bodyguards, his driver. He didn’t trust any of his people. He probably thought they’d sell Fiona out to Roman.”
“I think they must have already sold her out to Roman,” Clay said slowly.
“What do you mean?”
“When Martin saw Fiona in Phoenix at that museum, he had his guards with him. And then Fiona disappeared soon after that.”
“You’re right. Martin’s people must have told Roman she was in Phoenix,” Joslyn said. “So if Martin’s people can’t be trusted, Fiona wouldn’t have anything to do with help Martin could give her.”
“You’re forgetting about the postcard,” Liam said. “And the phone call.”
“Were those from Fiona, or someone Roman hired?” Joslyn said. The implications of that weighed on her.
Clay’s uncertain look told her he understood the same thing. “If we try to find Fiona, we might be leading Roman right to her.”
“But can we really take a chance that the postcard and the phone call weren’t from Fiona, and just do nothing?”
Clay scowled. “I can’t stand by and do nothing when she might be in danger.”
“With our help,” Liam said, “you can shake anyone trying to tail you.”
“Wait a minute,” Elisabeth said. “This isn’t just danger to us or to them. This is danger to Fiona, too. Remember last year? We didn’t go looking for you because we didn’t want to lead Tomas right to you.”
Clay’s eyes narrowed. “Who’s Tomas?”
Joslyn swallowed and looked away. “My ex. He’s in prison now.”
Elisabeth gave her a silent look of apology as she realized Joslyn hadn’t told Clay about Tomas. “If this is revenge, then there’s a good chance that these men not only want to hurt Fiona, they want to make her suffer in order to make Martin suffer.”
Joslyn pointed to Roman’s face on the computer screen. “But what if Fiona’s not safe and that’s why she sent the postcard and called Clay?” Joslyn met Clay’s determined eyes, which were gray flint. “I don’t feel right not doing anything, especially when it seems like Martin is frantically searching for her, too. We have to know she’s okay.” She had to know Fiona was alive.
Love Inspired Suspense May 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: Trail of EvidenceGone MissingLethal Exposure Page 31
