Gone Missing

by Camy Tang

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 Clay 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.

  It was also dark, because of the trees blocking out the midday sun and the mountainsides around which the road curved. But even more than that, the silence made Joslyn fe
el as if they’d entered an entirely different world. This was not like the suburbs or cities she was used to. This wasn’t even the open rolling foothills of Sonoma that she’d lived in for the past six months. It was almost like a ghost town, except for the occasional wisp of smoke from a fireplace chimney that could be seen through the trees.

  “How are we going to find the cabin?” she asked. “I don’t see house numbers.”

  Clay shook his head. “We’re wasting time looking for the house this way. There was that little grocery store on the side of the road right when we turned off of the highway. Let’s turn around and ask directions.”

  Joslyn did a three-point turn in a driveway. As she did, she caught sight of a curtain twitching over the front window of the house at the end of the driveway, but other than that, there was no other sign of life.

  Barnes Groceries looked like a long, rambling shack from the front, but was larger than it appeared once they went inside. There weren’t many people in the store, and they found two employees chatting over the fruit they were setting out.

  “We’re hoping you can help us find our friend’s house,” Clay said.

  The red-haired man who turned to Clay had a polite smile but a strangely wary expression in his eyes. “Oh?”

  “Gabe Speight’s family cabin? My sister’s there, and we’re trying to meet up with her.”

  “The Speight cabin?” The man’s face grew strangely still, and he hesitated before answering. “Sure, that’s not too far.”

  “Could you please draw us a map?” Joslyn asked. “I’m afraid we’ve tried to find it and got lost.”

  “Sure, sure.” The man led the way to one of the cashiers and got out a pad and pencil. He drew a map, with a square for the grocery store and an X for the cabin. “Be sure to stay right at the forks. Otherwise you’ll really get lost.”

  The man’s words were friendly enough, but there was something about his demeanor, or maybe it was the placid expression on his face, which made Joslyn’s suspicions rise.

  “Thanks, we appreciate it.” Clay said. He smiled at the man, but she noticed that the smile wasn’t quite the same as when he had spoken to other people. There was a tightness about his jawline that made her think that his instincts were saying the same thing—something was wrong.

  They got into the car. “I didn’t get a good vibe from him,” Clay said.

  “Neither did I.” Joslyn looked at the hand-drawn map. “So do we follow the map or not?”

  Clay sighed. “Do we have a choice?”

  “What if we’re walking into something bad?”

  “We’ve been in bad spots before. And Fiona might be out there. I have to at least try to protect her from Richard Roman.”

  As Joslyn started the car, she realized she would want Clay to pursue her this persistently if she were in trouble. She realized that after all they’d been through for the past few days, she trusted him to come for her if she were in danger.

  She wanted to be that important to him.

  She shook the thought away. Fiona was important now. And Clay was not someone she could invite into her life beyond these few days. She couldn’t control him. She couldn’t control or predict what would happen when she was with him, and that frightened her as much as a showdown with Met and G.

  The map was detailed enough that they were able to follow it easily. They had driven only half of a mile, but the roads were so narrow that it took them quite a while. They were in the middle of a long stretch of road when suddenly a RAV4 came toward them, headlights beaming. It slowed, but strangely, instead of stopping a distance from them, it came almost up to their front bumper.

  “Joslyn.” Clay’s voice was tight. He was looking behind them.

  A pickup truck had pulled up. She hadn’t noticed it because its headlights were off, and it also came right up to her rear bumper.

  They were penned in.

  Her heart rate shot up. She looked at Clay, who looked grim. “Now what?” she asked.

  “Wait for them,” he said. “It’s their territory.”

  Two men got out of the truck behind them, while a woman and a man in a red ball cap exited the SUV in front. Joslyn felt rather than saw Clay tense when the man casually fingered a shotgun. Behind them, two more men came out of the pickup truck, also with shotguns.

  The woman came up to the driver’s side, a false smile on her face, and knocked on the window. Joslyn lowered it only partway.

  “Mind stepping out of the car?” she said pleasantly.

  Joslyn looked at Clay, who gave a tight nod.

  She wasn’t sure what she expected, but no one threw her against the car or threatened her. The woman stepped back a few steps to let her exit the vehicle.

  “We aren’t too fond of strangers asking about other people’s houses,” the woman said.

  The man at the grocery store must have called these people and told them they were coming. Had he deliberately sent them this way to trap them?

  “My sister is there,” Clay said through gritted teeth.

  “If she is, she’d have given you directions to the house,” the woman said reasonably.

  “Her name is Fiona Crowley and we think she’s staying at the Speights’ cabin.”

  “There’s no one by that name in this area,” the woman said firmly. “Now I’d like you to turn around and be on your way.”

  “I just want to find her and make sure she’s safe.”

  “If someone here needs protecting, we can take care of it.”

  “There is a man after her who will walk over dead bodies to find her,” Joslyn said.

  The two men behind them shifted nervously.

  “He’s been after us,” Clay said. “We’re trying to find Fiona so we can move her somewhere safe.”

  “How do we know you’re telling the truth?” one of the men said.

  “Shut up,” the woman snapped at him.

  Fiona was here. If she weren’t, the man wouldn’t have said that. “Please,” Joslyn said, “just ask her if she’ll see us. He’s her half brother, Clay Ashton. I’m Joslyn Dimalanta and I was in school with her.”

  “She’s not here,” the woman said again.

  “Ellen,” one of the men hissed, “we’re just bringing trouble on everyone by helping that girl.”

  “Shut up,” Ellen said to him.

  “You just like her because she fixed your wireless internet,” the man shot back.

  “She’s been more neighborly than you have, Gordon,” Ellen snapped. Then she stopped, and sighed.

  “Please,” Joslyn said again.

  “Before I do anything,” Ellen said, “you’re going to hand me that gun in your flashbang holster, missy.”

  Joslyn was impressed she’d seen it, considering her shirt wasn’t form-fitting. She turned her back to the men, reached in, and slowly drew it out, handing it to Ellen.

  The woman nodded to the man in the red ball cap who’d been riding with her in the SUV. He turned and trotted back the way they’d come, and about fifty yards down the road, he turned off into a driveway almost hidden in the brush.

  “Is Fiona there?” Clay asked. His body strained forward as if he could see through the trees.

  “She’s nowhere near here,” the woman said. Joslyn had suspected that—if the red-headed man at the grocery store had warned these people, he had also mostly likely sent them down roads away from the house were Fiona was staying.

  “She called me,” Clay said. “Three weeks ago. I’ve been searching for her ever since.”

  “If she wanted to see you, don’t you think she’d have called you again?” Ellen said.

  “We know she’s here so none of her friends and family would get hurt,” Joslyn said. “But we found out who’s after her and why. With her help, w
e might be able to stop him, and she’ll never have to worry about him again.”

  Ellen considered the information. “You really think so, don’t you?”

  “I know what it’s like to be hunted,” Joslyn said.

  Something passed across the woman’s eyes, and there was a subtle change in her expression. “I believe you do,” she murmured.

  “You’ve only known her for three weeks, and yet you’re protecting her like this.”

  “There’s some who’d be happy chasing her off, because they don’t want any trouble,” Ellen said with a side look at the man who’d objected, “but most of us aren’t like that. We take care of our neighbors—you have to, out here. And some of us know what it means to want to hide away.”

  A look passed between Joslyn and Ellen, and she somehow knew she’d earned a measure of respect from this tough mountain woman.

  The man in the ball cap came running back up the road. “She said she’ll see them.”

  Ellen nodded. “Gordon will drive your car back to the grocery store, and you two can ride with us.”

  “Are you sure about this?” said the ball-cap man. “How do we know they’re who they say they are?”

  “Use your eyes,” Ellen said to him, glancing at Clay. Then she opened the SUV back door. “Clay, you’re in back. Joslyn, you’re up front with me.”

  They drove through winding roads, and Joslyn was almost positive Ellen drove in a few circles to confuse them. Almost twenty minutes later, they turned onto a long side driveway that had six houses ranged along it, three on each side, each with elaborate vegetable and flower gardens in front.

  They stopped at the middle house, a two-story building with cream-colored siding and emerald green trim. The front door was on the side of the house at the top of a short flight of stairs, under a mini porch. As Joslyn got out of the car, the door opened.

  And there she was.

  This was the first time she’d seen brother and sister together, and she was again struck by how alike they were. Fiona’s features were more delicate, but they had the same blue-gray eyes, the same blond-streaked, brown hair. Hers was pulled back into a ponytail. Until this moment, Joslyn had never realized how Fiona’s intent expression mirrored Clay’s exactly.