Love Inspired Suspense May 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: Trail of EvidenceGone MissingLethal Exposure

by Lynette Eason

  At that moment, there was a faint cry and a small fist pounding on a closed door in the apartment. “Mommy!”

  Amelia hurried to the hallway and opened a bedroom door, picking up a little girl with Amelia’s brown curly hair and button nose.

  Joslyn smiled at her. “She looks just like you in that Disneyland picture.”

  “What picture?” Amelia asked.

  Joslyn had tucked it, frame and all, into her bag and brought it out now. Amelia’s brown eyes lit up at the sight. “I had forgotten all about that day. I got sick from too much ice cream.”

  “It’s how we figured out where Fiona would go,” Clay said.

  “She came to my house,” Amelia said, sitting on the couch with her daughter in her lap. “She was…frantic.”

  “Mommy, down,” the little girl said, and Amelia let her play with some toys on the carpet.

  “What happened?” Joslyn asked.

  “She’d been kidnapped, but she escaped.”

  Joslyn couldn’t speak for a moment. Clay had turned white. “Who kidnapped her?” he said.

  Amelia shook her head. “Fiona said she didn’t know. Two men grabbed her outside some museum. At a truck stop, she managed to get loose and hide, then she hitched a ride in the back of a farmer’s truck to get away from them.”

  Clay gave a long breath. “She was okay?”

  “She was fine, but scared. I told her to go to the police and she said she couldn’t because of something with her father.”

  “When did she come to your house?” Joslyn asked.

  Amelia told them the date.

  “She came to you two days after Clay’s phone call and the postal date of the postcard she sent to me,” Joslyn said. “Why didn’t she try to contact us again?”

  “Did she mention anything to you about calling me?” Clay asked.

  “No. She said she didn’t want to put me and Jessica in danger, so she left after only a day or two. She told me to find somewhere safe, too, in case those men tracked her to my house.”

  Was that why Fiona hadn’t reached out to Joslyn and Clay again, so that they wouldn’t get involved? “She didn’t tell you where she was going?” Clay asked.

  “No, she purposefully didn’t tell me,” Amelia said.

  Clay shook his head, his neck bent, a picture of defeat, but Joslyn wasn’t done yet. She’d learned a few things from the way Elisabeth had managed to find out about Tomas and all the trouble Joslyn had been in last year in trying to escape him. They would find Fiona. They had to. “Amelia, what did you guys talk about while Fiona was here?”

  “Well, a lot about Jessica.” She smiled at her daughter, whose Disney princesses were having a heated discussion about who got to ride the stuffed unicorn. “She hadn’t seen her in so long, she was amazed at how big she’s gotten.”

  Joslyn sat up. Amelia’s daughter was at least four years old, maybe five, but Amelia’s comment meant Fiona had seen Jessica as a baby. “When was the last time you saw Fiona, before she showed up?”

  “Oh, it’s been a while…two years?”

  “Two years?” Clay asked, surprised. “You and Fiona have kept in touch all these years?”

  “You mean since we were kids? No, we lost touch when your mom moved to Chicago with you, because the only times Fiona and I ever really hung out was at Disneyland. But when Fiona moved back to LA, she called Mom and we got in touch again.”

  “Did you go to Disneyland with her?” Joslyn asked. “I went with her once.” Fiona had gone to Disneyland maybe once or twice a year, and she usually went with her roommates, or whatever group of friends she could get together.

  Amelia nodded. “I went with her once, too, but my marriage was falling apart at the time and my husband didn’t like me going to Disneyland so much. Actually, when I divorced him, Fiona went with me and some friends on a trip to Hawaii.”

  “I think I remember that,” Joslyn said. “It was just before Fiona left LA. She came back with a great tan. It was last-minute, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, one of my other friends had to cancel at the last minute, so I asked Fiona if she wanted to take her spot.” Amelia frowned. “She was a little down on the trip.”

  “I remember she was a bit down just before she left,” Joslyn said. “I never figured out why or what caused it.”

  “I talked to her about it a little, you know, when we were lying on the beach. It was two years ago, so I don’t remember exactly, but I think she said something about being unhappy with her job.”

  “Job?” Joslyn shot a bewildered look at Clay, who looked equally perplexed. “I hadn’t even realized she had a job.” She’d seen Fiona almost every day for the months they’d been in the same master’s program. They’d hung out, laughed together, had dinner and lunches together, and yet Fiona had never mentioned she had a job. “Did she say what her job was?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t remember it very well, so maybe she told me and I just forgot.”

  Maybe it was nothing. It might have been something she was doing for Martin and couldn’t speak about because of a nondisclosure agreement. Was that why Fiona hadn’t mentioned seeing Martin very often? Joslyn realized they still weren’t completely certain if that was why Fiona had always bought candy from that store near Martin’s office building.

  “So what else did you guys talk about?” Joslyn asked.

  Amelia thought a minute. “Gabe. We only started dating a few months ago.”

  “Did Fiona say she was seeing someone?”

  “No.” Amelia laughed. “She said the only romance in her life was from books.”

  Joslyn remembered all the romance paperbacks in the box she’d left at her old house.

  “We talked about a lot of stupid stuff,” Amelia said. “Our favorite restaurants, the latest thing trending on Facebook. Maybe we were avoiding the topic, or something like that. Honestly, I can’t remember what else we talked about.”

  “What did Fiona have with her when she came? And what did she take with her?”

  “Hardly anything. I let her take some of my clothes. She’d lost her phone, her jacket, and she said she pawned her watch in order to get out of Phoenix. I gave her a heavy jacket and a sweatshirt, and all the cash I had.”

  “How much?” Clay asked. “I can pay you back.”

  Amelia waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. She and I borrowed stuff from each other all the time…” She suddenly sat up straight. “Actually when I left my house, I put Jessica’s stuff in a messenger bag that I borrowed from Fiona and kept forgetting to give back to her. It had some stuff inside she’d left there. Did you want to see it?”

  Joslyn nodded eagerly, and Amelia went to the bedroom and returned with a large black over-the-shoulder bag made of heavy canvas. It had scuff marks and wear spots on the corners.

  Inside, Joslyn found a little fairy doll, which she gave back to Amelia, and a romance paperback. There were also a few receipts for water bottles from kiosks in the Los Angeles airport.

  “These aren’t yours?” Joslyn asked Amelia, who shook her head. “Looks like Fiona used this for traveling.” Had she taken this with her on those mysterious trips her roommates had mentioned?

  Suddenly the door swung open and a man with wavy brown hair entered the apartment, carrying a briefcase. He froze at the sight of Clay and Joslyn, then shouted, “Who are you? And what are you doing in my apartment?”

  FIFTEEN

  Once he got over his anger and shock, Gabe was a great host. Clay couldn’t blame him for being upset at seeing two strangers with his girlfriend and her young daughter, especially since Amelia had told him everything that had happened with Fiona.

  Gabe had even cooked dinner for them, talking with them about safe topics like sports and the trips he and Amelia had taken, mostly hiking at various national parks in California, and showing them pictures. Amelia talked about what she had been up to over the past several years.

  It was past midnight now, and Amelia was
sleeping in one of the bedrooms with Jessica. Gabe had offered his bed to one of them, but they’d both refused. Clay had opted for some blankets and a pillow on the floor, while Joslyn took the couch.

  Except neither of them were sleeping. They both sat at the dining room table, the lamp overhead the only light in the quiet apartment. Outside the glass windows, the many lights of Los Angeles sparkled.

  They’d been brainstorming where Fiona might have gone, somewhere without a connection to Martin, somewhere remote. Clay had racked his brains and come up with a few ideas in Chicago, but a part of him didn’t think Fiona would go back there.

  “Did Fiona go to Sonoma with you?” he asked Joslyn.

  “No, I never went to Sonoma until after she left.” Joslyn sighed, then drew the messenger bag toward her. She pulled out the book and the receipts. “Would she leave the country?”

  “She didn’t have her passport with her when she was taken and she didn’t want to go back and get it.”

  Joslyn suddenly squinted at the receipt in her hand. “This one isn’t from the airport.” She passed it to Clay.

  It was a receipt from somewhere called Bara Grocery Store for a bottle of water and lemon drops. “Fiona likes lemon drops if she can’t get Chinese candy,” Clay said.

  “Look at the totals.”

  Clay choked. “Fifty bucks for a bottle of water?”

  “Is it really dollars? I didn’t see a denomination.” Joslyn reached for Amelia’s laptop, which she was letting them borrow, and got online. “What’s the address on it?”

  “There’s just a street number and name—1765 Ishibashi Street.”

  Joslyn typed, and suddenly turned the laptop so Clay could see. “It’s not in the US. It’s in the Tankoushoku Islands.”

  “I don’t even know where that is.” He stared at the online map she’d brought up, and saw that it was somewhere called Bara Island, in the Tankoushoku Islands, southwest of Hawaii.

  Joslyn grabbed the paperback book. “This was in this bag. I wonder if she bought it in Bara, too.” She flipped the book over and pointed to the price sticker. “Look, it’s in Tanko dollars.”

  Clay looked over her shoulder as she looked up Bara Island. What they discovered blew his mind.

  Joslyn’s eyes were wide. “Bara is known primarily for offshore banking.”

  “Maybe she went on vacation,” Clay said. “It’s an island—maybe it has nice beaches, too.”

  “There’s got to be a way to find out,” Joslyn said, as if to herself. “Where’s the box Fiona left at her old house?”

  They’d kept the box with them and brought it in from the car. Clay put it on the table, and immediately picked up the shell. “See? Nice beaches.”

  Joslyn grabbed all the books, flipping them over to expose the price label. “These three are in Tanko currency.”

  “She could have bought them all at once.”

  Joslyn pointed to the date on the receipt. “Two of these books were published after the date on this receipt. She couldn’t have bought them when she bought this stuff. She’s gone back to Bara Island at least once more.”

  Clay picked up on of the books. “Fiona would use whatever paper she could find for bookmarks.” He thumbed through the book and found nothing, but in the next book he picked up, there was a second receipt, again from Bara Grocery, for a different date. This receipt had both water and the book listed.

  “At least three times,” Joslyn breathed. “I can’t think of any other reason she’d go here three times except for offshore banking accounts.”

  “But she’s a software engineer, not an accountant.”

  Joslyn shook her head. “She took a few accounting classes.”

  Clay sat back in his chair. “Offshore banking. It has to have been for Martin.” And Clay couldn’t imagine his stepfather squirreling money away like this unless it wasn’t legally obtained. “I can’t believe Fiona would get involved in something like this.”

  “This might be why Roman wants Fiona,” Joslyn said. “I always thought revenge was a strange motive for someone like him. But what if he wants to know about Martin’s offshore accounts?”

  Clay could suddenly understand how frightened and hopeless Fiona must have been. She couldn’t contact Martin, because that was probably how Roman had found her in the first place, and she had nowhere to turn.

  “This changes everything,” Clay said. “It’s not just revenge, it’s money.”

  “It’s why those guys were so persistent when they came after us,” Joslyn said. “Roman’s on a time clock. Once Martin realized Fiona was missing, he’d have taken steps to move his money. Roman can’t use Fiona if there’s no money in the Bara accounts.”

  “Is it only Bara? Maybe she knows other accounts, too. I wasn’t directly involved, but I knew some of the accountants who worked for the Chicago mob family. When they needed to move money, it wasn’t a quick process, especially if they had to set up other accounts to move it to. And they needed to move the money quietly, most of the time, so no one would be able to track it.”

  “So would Fiona lie low until Martin moved his money?”

  “That would be my guess,” Clay said. “Somewhere off the grid, isolated.”

  “Somewhere without a lot of people around,” Joslyn said. “I know you said she didn’t like camping with Bobby, but if she had to, she could, right?”

  Clay winced. “Yeah, but I don’t know that she’d go survivalist. She’d try to find someplace a little more comfortable…” A picture flashed in front of his eyes of Gabe and Amelia hiking. “Of course! Can you check to see if Gabe or his family owns some type of cabin or vacation home somewhere? He and Amelia went hiking at Santa Cruz, didn’t they? They had to stay somewhere.”

  Joslyn typed rapidly on the laptop, and Clay held his breath. If he were Fiona, that’s what he’d think to do—look for some cabin, somewhere without too many neighbors around to ask questions.

  Joslyn suddenly grinned, her smile bright as sunlight. “You’re right. Gabe’s family owns a cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains.”

  *

  “Someone just tried to run Liam off the road,” Elisabeth said when Joslyn answered her cell phone.

  “What?” Joslyn’s hands jerked on the steering wheel and she adjusted her Bluetooth headset in her ear.

  “What happened?” Clay grabbed the dashboard. His forearm was knots of corded muscle.

  “He’s okay,” Elisabeth said. “He didn’t get the license-plate number, but it was near downtown Sonoma, so Detective Carter is looking at the traffic cameras.”

  “Who was it?”

  “He thought it was that guy you said was called G. He only saw that picture of him once, so he couldn’t be completely sure.”

  “Why Liam’s car?” Joslyn asked, but then realized the answer herself. “Because we were riding in it, when we got back to Sonoma.”

  “The good news is that it means Met and G don’t know where you two are or what car you’re driving. And there are any number of friends of friends whose cars we could have borrowed.”

  “But Liam…” The last thing Joslyn wanted was for her friends to be hurt. And yet, look what had happened to Patrick’s house, to her neighbors at her apartment complex.

  “He’s fine,” Elisabeth said firmly. “It’s not the first time he’s had to employ defensive driving.” The two of them had been on the run from not one but two Filipino gangs last year, and all on account of Joslyn.

  The guilt gnawed at her. She was a walking disaster zone. This had to stop. They had to find Fiona, and protect her, and figure out how to stop Roman for good.

  “Where are you now?” Elisabeth asked.

  “We’re on Highway 17, about to hit the summit,” Joslyn said. “The GPS unit doesn’t have a map for the mountain roads where Gabe’s family cabin is, so we’ll have to look for street signs.”

  “Those mountain roads are a maze. Be careful.”

  After Joslyn hung up with Elisabeth, she told Cl
ay what had happened.

  Clay’s jaw muscles flexed. “Maybe we shouldn’t have asked for their help. It’s only brought trouble on your bosses.”

  “I was thinking that, too, but we couldn’t have gotten so close to finding Fiona without their assistance.”

  Clay’s expression grew pensive. “I have a hard time accepting people’s help.”

  “I do, too,” she said softly. “For a long time, it was just Dad and me. Finances were tough. It seemed like everything was a struggle. And the one time it seemed too good to be true, well, it was.” Tomas and his charm, and the trouble she got into, dating a murderous gang captain.

  He glanced at her, but he didn’t pry, didn’t ask her to explain. It was as if he shared her pain without knowing what it was, and she was grateful to him for it, because it was still too raw for her to be able to talk about it.

  “It was just Mom and me, too, once she divorced Martin,” Clay said. “He saw Fiona every weekend until he got full custody, but me…” Bitterness was ground into his words. “I wasn’t his blood. He said he didn’t want to see me.”

  She remembered what Bobby had said about Martin, and she suddenly realized how viciously, carelessly, he had cut into Clay as a boy, and as a young man, with his words and actions.

  “I guess Martin taught me that you can’t really trust anybody,” Clay said.

  She reached out and touched his shoulder briefly, softly. He gave her a smile that was like a flower opening up to the sun.

  Was that what Tomas had taught her, too? To not trust anyone? But she’d trusted Liam, and Elisabeth, and the O’Neills.

  Yet she’d also been trying to get back control of her life after the chaos last year. She never wanted to feel weak, afraid or vulnerable ever again. But had the experience made her be more guarded, more aloof?

  And was that really the way she always wanted to be? She wasn’t sure. It was safer, but was it good for her?

  They turned off of the highway onto a road, which soon split into smaller roads that wound around the mountain. The woods on either side were sometimes sparse, sometimes thick, and smaller driveways appeared on either side almost like rabbit holes. Sometimes Joslyn caught a glimpse through the trees of a clearing and a house. The neighbors weren’t quite as far away from each other as the homes in Tahoe, but there was enough distance and trees in-between to give a definite air of privacy.