by Lee Winter
“Where’d you get that idea? While I’ve no earthly clue exactly where he’s at right now, I do know the crazy old coot is alive and well somewhere.”
“How come you don’t know where he lives?” Lauren asked.
“Gray moves around a lot.” Della shrugged. “He also likes to live off the grid. One day he’s in the backwaters of Ohio or a farmer’s shed in Mississippi, next he’s under a bridge in DC. Doesn’t like to be tied down.”
“Gray?” Ayers murmured. “Is that a first or last name?”
“Both. He didn’t like his real name, so he took just that name.”
“Mrs. Sands, Jon definitely told me his father was a casualty of the war,” Lauren said.
“Oh. Well, I suppose that’s true in a way. Gray came back from the war not able to fit in any place. He was a casualty in that sense. That man never had a day of peace, what with the nightmares and all. It’s really sad.”
“Does he visit much?” Ayers asked curiously.
“Oh no. We see more of the family’s other black sheep,” she said and gave a small laugh. “That’s Jon’s sister. She not only works in publicity, but she married the CEO of some huge New York marketing corporation, much to Jon and his daddy’s horror.” She rolled her eyes. “Gray wouldn’t even talk to her after that. Shame, because Susan’s a sweetheart.
“As for Gray, well, Jon and he catch up occasionally when his wanderings get him close by.”
Della stopped moving the books around. “I’m not sure what happens now,” she said. “I mean…are they going to search Topaz Lake or what?”
“That depends on whether the two police counties involved can come to some agreement,” Ayers said.
“Agreement about what?”
“Your husband’s car is parked right on the border of California and Nevada. No one knows whose jurisdiction it is. It’ll probably be stuck there for the duration until they decide. That’s probably what they meant about the note, too. Which side looks at and processes the evidence is yet to be hashed out.”
Della’s mouth dropped open. “Right on the border?”
Ayers nodded.
“No one told me that,” she said. “You’re sure?”
Lauren watched curiously as her face lit up. “We’re sure,” she said. “I checked it on my car’s GPS before I left.”
“Then Jon’s fine!” Della jumped to her feet.
“How can you know?” Ayers asked.
“Because he took me to that spot once. Ages ago, for a picnic. So don’t you see? I thought maybe he’d been kidnapped and forced to write that idiotic note. But if he’s put the car there, it’s like he’s telling me that he’s fine!”
“Or he wanted to be somewhere meaningful that he connected with you,” Ayers suggested gently.
“The key is in the note!” Della snapped.
Lauren held up a placating hand. “Why did he park on the border the day of your picnic? Did he say?”
Della paused. “Not really. It was, I don’t know, maybe a year ago, and I think he was in a strange mood. He said something like ‘Borders are funny things. The world revolves around them, and everyone watches them, and they’re the most important pieces of real estate on the planet. They even go to war over them. Yet they’re still just indistinct bits of land like any other.’”
Della looked at them expectantly. “What do you think it means? Obviously he wants us to understand something. Why else is his car there?”
Ayers and Lauren looked at her doubtfully.
“Here,” Della said in frustration as she scooped up the photo of her husband’s note and thrust it at them. “Take that. Figure it out. What it all means—the burglaries, his message, why he parked where he did. Everything. And then you’ll find Jon.”
“Uh,” Lauren said, cautiously. “I’m not sure we, I mean…”
“No! You’re supposed to be journalists! So investigate this. It means something.” Her voice caught. “It must mean something.” She glanced at the disarray on the floor. “This is all so pointless,” she said. “Why they’d burst in here and take that computer is beyond me. It’s not like he does any of his work on it. He hadn’t even plugged it in for months.”
“But isn’t that his work laptop?” Ayers began. “How could he—”
Della appeared faintly embarrassed. “That’s Jon. He does things differently sometimes. One day, out of the blue, he decided it would be better to use Fee’s computer for his work whenever he’s here.”
“Your daughter’s,” Lauren repeated slowly. “So a top government IT professional has been working on his daughter’s My Little Pony laptop?”
Della sighed. “Look, I know it sounds crazy. But he figured no one would think to ever steal it.” She suddenly looked up. “I suppose he was right about that, wasn’t he?” She rose. “Just a minute.”
She returned with a hot-pink, plastic laptop, barely bigger than a fat paperback. Della placed it on the coffee table. They all stared at the machine. It was absurd that this eyesore was being used by any grown man.
“Has this thing even got ten megs of RAM?” Lauren asked, incredulous.
Della shook her head. “No idea what that means. But you’re welcome to borrow it and figure out what’s going on.”
Lauren shot Ayers a skeptical glance. “Are you sure he uses this for work? I mean it’s so…”
“He did,” Della said with confidence. She glanced at a wall clock. “He used to play with it at all hours. Now, you’ll have to excuse me, but I have to get to work.” She led them to the door. “Please don’t give up on Jon. Let me know what you find, okay?”
Della looked far too hopeful, Lauren thought guiltily as she tucked the pink machine under one arm, along with the copy of the note, and headed outside.
“We’ll do our best,” she said. “And we’ll take good care of this.”
“Take care of what?”
Lauren spun around to see a policewoman in a green uniform picking her way up the path to the front door. Her patrol car had Carson City Sheriff down its side.
She wanted to groan. Just how many police departments were they going to tangle with in one day?
“Nothing important,” Lauren replied casually. “We were just leaving.”
The deputy slid her gaze over the reporters in a manner she probably thought was intimidating. Lauren almost laughed.
“You those two LA reporters sniffing around town?”
“I see there are no secrets in Carson City,” Lauren said. “How’d you know?”
The woman flicked an assessing glance toward the door and noticed Della standing on the stoop. She gave Lauren a sharp look. “You bothering the lady? Harassing her maybe?” She sounded hopeful, as if she was itching to charge them with something obnoxious. Lauren sucked in an annoyed breath and straightened up to her full height.
“We were invited,” Ayers inserted. She placed her hand lightly on the small of Lauren’s back and steered her toward their car. “And now we’re on our way.”
“You here for the burglary?” Della suddenly called out, drawing the deputy’s attention. “I called over an hour and a half ago!”
“Ma’am, we have many calls to attend, and a B&E is not…”
Lauren took advantage of the distraction and picked up her pace for the car with Ayers literally breathing down her neck. A not so small part of her brain wondered why the woman had to be so damned close. It was not good for her concentration.
She hefted the laptop again—it was an awkward size, just that little bit too wide and fat to sit easily in the hand—and something niggled in the back of her brain.
And then she realized.
Damn thing was rattling.
Lauren lay on her stomach on the floor of Ayers’s hotel room, armed with a tiny screwdriver as she tried to pry the back of the laptop open which was held together by ev
en tinier screws. Ayers sat regally on her bed, one eye checking her cell messages, the other flicking to Lauren sprawled on the floor.
“Did you buy Della’s line that the car being on the border is a coded message?” Lauren asked as she focused on the final screw.
“Could be,” Ayers said. “Or could be that it’s too hard to accept the truth that you’re not important enough to live for. To quote Rankin.”
“That’s a bit harsh,” Lauren argued. The screw gave a little as she twisted harder. “It’s not that a loved one is not enough of a reason to stop someone killing themselves; it’s just some crap’s too much to handle.”
Ayers paused from scrolling through her messages and looked up. “Well, I think it’s an unlikely coincidence that one man’s property would be ransacked twice in a week. What does he have that someone’s after? Answer that, and the rest of it might make sense.”
“How about industrial espionage,” Lauren suggested. “He’s working with some pretty sophisticated tech at SmartPay. What if he stole some of it to sell?”
“A corporate theft,” Ayers mused. “But SmartPay should have been onto the police the instant they suspected. And Della would know if the cops were investigating him.”
“What if he wasn’t the criminal? Someone knew Sands had the tech and wanted to steal it from him. A rival company? Hence the break-in?”
“Then you’d go after some pivotal SmartPay employee, not an unknown government IT worker. This doesn’t smell corporate at all. It’s just a gut feeling, but it seems, maybe, political.”
“Okay,” Lauren said, thinking. “So let’s look at Sands and politics. We know the Nevada government bosses chose to smear him with the SmartPay party crap. Barry thinks it was because he was an easy target and had conveniently disappeared. Do we buy that?”
Ayers studied Lauren’s frustrated attempts to remove the battery cover. “There are really only three options,” she said. “One is Barry’s theory—Sands didn’t do it, and they want to cover up who really did. Or they don’t know who did it and chose Sands as an easy scapegoat either way.
“Or two, he did do it.”
“And three?”
“That none of this is related to anything. It could just be an odd series of coincidences and one eccentric, runaway husband.”
“Don’t say crap like that,” Lauren groaned. “No, come on, this has to be a story. This stuff doesn’t just happen on its own. Bus drivers getting scared off to Mexico? Uptight IT guys in weird possible suicides? Thugs in suits in booze shops? Pallets of cheap champagne disappearing? Hookers at business launches?”
The last screw flew up suddenly. Ayers dropped any pretence of indifference, tossed her phone aside, and moved to the edge of her bed. She peered over Lauren’s shoulder just as she clicked open the battery compartment.
“Huh.” Lauren plucked a white plastic card out of the compartment and held it up to the light. “Any guesses?”
“Security pass?”
“To where?” Lauren turned it over. The numbers “127/285” were inked on it in felt-tip pen. “An address? Apartment 127 of 285 Something Street?”
“It’d have to be a tower complex then. Not many of those around here. If any. Maybe in Las Vegas though? Some of those casino hotels are pretty big.”
As Lauren was pushing the battery cover back into place, she heard something else. She froze. “Hey! Hear that?” She gave the laptop a soft shake. “Something’s in the CD drive, too.” She put it down. “Can you hand me the power cable? Let’s boot her up and hit eject.”
A minute later, Lauren sat back and punched the power button. A cursor appeared and just sat there, blinking against the black screen.
Lauren frowned and stomped her thumb on the eject button. The CD tray didn’t budge.
“Sort of feeling out of my depth here,” she complained.
Ayers studied the screen, puzzled. “So…know any friendly neighborhood hackers?” she asked. “We need what’s in that tray, not to mention whatever’s on that laptop.”
“As a matter of fact I might know two someones. Acquaintances of Josh. They’re not entirely on the right side of the law. Might be what we need?”
“How good are they?”
“They hacked into some designer’s website before it was even online. They also got a copy of a new documentary on Anna Wintour before it was in the theaters.”
“Fashion hackers?” Ayers said. “Terrifying. Watch out, FBI.”
“They’re not into fashion at all actually. It was a favor for someone, okay?”
“I can’t possibly imagine who.” Ayers gave her a knowing look.
“The point is they did it without blinking. Unless you have a better idea?”
She waited and, when Ayers said nothing further, grabbed her cell and punched in Josh’s number. It switched through to his voicemail.
“Damn, Josh’s still avoiding me,” she muttered.
“Why?”
Lauren groaned inwardly. No way was she touching that grenade. She waited for the message beep and said, “Hi Josh. It’s Lauren. I need to borrow your two new BFFs for a top-secret project. And, yes, we will still be talking about your Facebook page. But this is really important. Call me. Thanks.”
As she hung up, Ayers’s cell phone shrilled.
“What can I do for you, Neil?” Ayers switched into ultra-pleasant mode. Had to be their editor.
Ayers listened, and her face gradually lost its color.
“He can’t do that,” she said coldly. “We had a deal. He can’t just come in and…”
Ayers’s lips clamped together. “Understood.” She flicked a dark look at Lauren. “I’ll tell her. Yes, she’s right here. See you soon. Bye.”
“It seems,” Ayers said as she dropped her cell phone to the table, “that our illustrious publisher got wind of our road trip and has ordered it be shut down. We’re to return home now. Not even first thing tomorrow.”
Lauren glanced at her watch. “But we’d get in just before midnight!”
“Neil’s well aware. He pointed that fact out to the Boy King, and it earned a care factor of nil.”
“Why? What’d we do wrong?”
“I’d say it’s what we’re doing right. Certain people in various powerful positions have been calling Harrington, complaining about us sniffing around this story, and they want him to intervene and spike it.”
“That’s censorship!”
“That’s politics,” Ayers countered. “It happens all the time, pressure calls to editors. Usually publishers don’t get involved at all, and editors just tell whoever it is to shove it.
“So now Harrington is either being his usual weak self or he’s getting his kicks sabotaging me by making it as difficult as possible to finish our investigation. Or both. It doesn’t matter. At least he hasn’t killed the story altogether, just ordered us home. Anyway, let’s get packed.”
“How can you be so calm about this?” Lauren demanded. “We’re this close to solving an incredible mystery. I can feel it! It’s like we just have to pull one thread and it’ll all come apart. We just need to find the right thread.”
Ayers’s understanding gaze fell on her. “And there it is,” she said softly.
“What?”
“I knew there was a real journalist in there somewhere. It’s that feeling—so hard to explain, isn’t it? Impossible to teach, but it’s there. When you’re about to crack a great story, and you just feel it in your bones. You just know. There’s nothing quite like it.”
“Then how can you be so relaxed about our boss trying to rip that away from us now?”
“Because the imbecile won’t succeed,” Ayers said. She pointed to the laptop. “Because what’s in front of us could hold the key to everything. Or not. But we don’t need to be in Nevada to find out. I’d been about to suggest we head ho
me now anyway. This is not the end of our story. Not even close.”
“But Harrington—”
“Is not half the man his father is. Like most arrogant young men, he makes the mistake of assuming everyone is motivated by what motivates him. And right now, he’s trying to tell senior editors, men who have ink in their blood, who live and breathe the news, to bury a potentially huge story. He might have the title, but it isn’t earned. And I believe our Boy King is about to discover the limits of his control.”
“Are you seriously going to fight the publisher?” Lauren asked in astonishment.
A Cheshire cat smile spread across Ayers’s face.
“No. I’m going to destroy him.”
Chapter 10 –
Gorillas in the Midst
Lauren watched the streaks of street lights coming toward her and suppressed a yawn. It was almost midnight; the trip had taken an extra hour due to a couple of rest stops and one flat tire near Water Spout Gulch.
Uncharacteristically, Ayers had offered no biting commentary on that incident even though the tire blowout had been entirely Lauren’s fault. She’d lost concentration and the car had strayed onto the road edge and sliced against a jagged rock.
She glanced at the sleeping woman beside her, her face partially lit in the inky night by the dash. Lauren was struck again by how peaceful Ayers seemed in repose. There was nothing soft about Ayers by day, beyond the slope of her smooth neck and those wicked lips.
And therein lay the contradiction. It was hopeless even trying to understand the push-pull Lauren felt toward Ayers. She was both everything and nothing Lauren thought she desired.
Casual cruelty usually repulsed her. Yet in Ayers she found that biting tongue and sharp mind addictive to be around. Nonetheless, it was unsettling to realize that much of Ayers’s appeal lay in her prickly edges.
She exhaled heavily as she realized what that meant—what she wanted.
Who she wanted.
It was 12:13 a.m. when Lauren saw the signs for Ventura Freeway and knew they were getting close to Ayers’s turn-off. She softly said, “Hey, wake up.”
