In His Sights

by Justine Davis

  As he was about to blithely trespass onto Redstone property. At least, his undercover persona was about to; as a member of Redstone security, he had open access to any Redstone facility, but as Rand Singleton, photographer, he could have some explaining to do to keep his cover intact if he was caught.

  He made his way through the trees carefully. The ground was already partially obscured by fallen leaves, and on unfamiliar turf it made it difficult to be sure you were stepping down on solid ground. When he was into the woods several yards, he turned to his left and started up the rise. When he’d scouted this place out yesterday, he’d found a perfect spot to set up a surveillance. There was a small break in the trees, giving a view of the towering, rugged Olympic Mountains, a vista well worth photographing.

  That the spot also looked straight down on the Redstone plant was, he would insist to anyone who asked, purely coincidence.

  Slipping off his pack and setting it and the camera bag down, he stood for a moment, marveling at the view. Those were some very serious mountains, he thought. He’d spent a rough few days in the Andes once, and hiked a long stretch through the Rockies, and these mountains were just as impressive in their own way.

  He had to remind himself what he was here for. He dug through his camera gear bag, set up his portable tripod, attached the camera, then aimed it at the most dramatic stretch of rock and glacier he could see. He doubted anyone would spot him up here, but if they did, his story was ready.

  Then he opened the backpack and pulled out a small folding tripod-based stool; it wasn’t that he didn’t want to sit on the ground, but more that the small seat gave him the option to rest his elbows on his knees for support. Something that was going to be necessary soon. Next he took out a pair of ordinary-looking binoculars that were, in fact, quite unusual. A product of Redstone Technologies, they were lightweight but very powerful, wide range, had pushbutton zoom capability, a range finder with pinpoint accuracy, a remarkable new polarized coating that made it possible to see through glass and water and a stabilizing system that made them easy to use even set for great distances.

  But right now they were serving the simple purpose of letting him survey nearly all of the Redstone plant below at once.

  Not that there was much to see. The work of the plant was done indoors, and good as the binoculars were, they couldn’t help him see through walls. There was the occasional passage of someone from one building to another, and vehicles came and went from the outside, but mostly it was quiet. This whole place was quiet, he thought.

  Once, he saw Kate come out of the main building and walk quickly across to the manufacturing building, where he could see several vehicles parked, including two of the bobtail trucks used to move product out from this production center. He hadn’t had his eyes to the binoculars at that moment, but nevertheless he knew it was her. He could tell not only by the dark, shiny fall of hair that swung as she went, but by the very way she walked, with that long-legged grace he’d noticed in her the first time he’d ever seen her move.

  She was in the manufacturing building for nearly twenty minutes, and when she came out she was walking more slowly, as if thinking about something. Halfway across the courtyard that was landscaped to look almost like the untouched land surrounding the facility, she picked up speed again and went back to the main building where he knew her office was. He settled back down to watch some more, not sure what he was waiting to see, only that he would know it when he did.

  By noon he was glad of the sandwich Dorothy had insisted he take with him. He opened the bottle of water he’d brought and took a bite of the thick stack of ham, cheese, tomato and some nicely spicy mustard on slices of bread so fresh he wondered if she’d baked it herself. It wouldn’t surprise him after the incredible stuffed pork chops she’d insisted he join her and Walter for last night.

  I’ll have to add board to the room rent, he thought idly, shifting his glance once more to the mountains to the west. Amazing to see all this salt water around, yet know the actual ocean was on the other side of those towering peaks. This was truly a magical place. From everything he’d seen, life seemed slower, easier and much more sane than he was used to. He could see where it would grow on a person. And why Josh so loved it here that he’d sited this wing of Redstone in this place.

  Even Kate’s life seemed simple and clean here, he thought as he walked back to the camera, figuring he’d better have some actual shots to show, to prove he was for real. She went to work, she spent lots of time with the people she loved, she breathed clean air, she glowed with health, appreciated the loveliness around her, she—

  He snapped out of the uncharacteristic reverie as an oddly furtive motion from below drew his attention. A young woman, a girl really, had come out the same door Kate had, but she had turned and headed toward the small car parking area. She was walking oddly, hunched over, holding a sweater that looked too big for her closed in front with both hands as if it were much colder out than it actually was. That distracted him for the moment from the maroon-tinted hair that told him Summer Harbor was perhaps not so isolated from the rest of the world after all.

  The girl walked quickly to an old blue sedan with oxidized paint. She fumbled with a set of keys, dropped them, clutched the sweater tighter as she bent to pick them up. She finally got the trunk open. She leaned over, slid something out from under the sweater and into the trunk. She backed up hastily and slammed the truck lid closed.

  She turned and ran back to the building.

  Rand clicked off the last shot of the girl that would be recognizable, took his finger off the shutter release, and began to think about where to have some film developed.

  And to wonder if he’d already found the thief.

  Chapter 6

  “I was just about convinced I’d slipped back in time here,” Rand said as he leaned into the shovel. “Then I saw a girl with maroon hair.”

  Dorothy laughed. “Melissa Morris. She’s actually Kate’s new mentee, I guess you call it. You should have seen her before she started the program—it was blue.”

  So she was even younger than he’d thought. He got a sick feeling in his gut as the idea that Kate had recruited this girl to help in the thefts occurred to him. At least he told himself that’s what it was, that it wasn’t just the idea of Kate being involved herself.

  “Deep enough?” he asked, gesturing at the irregular six by six hole he’d dug.

  He’d come out this morning to find Dorothy trying to do this herself. He’d stopped and asked her about it, and she’d explained she wanted it done before Walt came back from the barber, so he wouldn’t feel compelled to volunteer to do it despite his knees.

  Dorothy had also made it clear she didn’t want him to feel compelled either, but he’d talked her into letting him take over anyway.

  Dorothy leaned over now to inspect the depth of her new bulb bed. “I need about another two inches, if you don’t mind. The daffodils need to be deeper.”

  “No problem,” he said, and hefted the shovel again before continuing the conversation. “Did Kate choose her?”

  “Melissa? Actually, it was the other way around. She wanted to work with Kate. Asked for her specifically, or I doubt Kate would have taken her on.”

  “Is she a problem?”

  “She’s been in a little trouble. Nothing serious, just kid stuff.” She gave a little chuckle. “But what’s serious out here would be kid stuff in the city.”

  Like theft? Rand wondered. Was that why Kate had agreed to take on a problem child, did she figure it would be easy to involve the kid?

  Don’t get carried away. You’re making her sound like Fagan, or whatever that guy’s name in Oliver Twist was, he told himself.

  “Melissa would be fine,” Dorothy said, “if it wasn’t for that boyfriend of hers. Now there’s trouble.”

  “Oh?”

  “You mark my words, one day we’re going to open the paper and see Derek Simon’s photo on page one, and it won’t be for anything
good.”

  “So…he’s a bad influence?”

  “You never would have seen her with that hair before,” Dorothy said. “But I tell myself it’s no different than the bobs women got in the twenties. They were shocking then, and this is now, which is the point at that age, I suppose.”

  Rand smiled at her. “It’s a tough age. I remember following a few trends in high school that make me cringe now.”

  “Funny how they think they’re being so unique, yet end up all looking alike, isn’t it?”

  He laughed at that, unable to deny the simple truth of what she’d said. “You sure you don’t want me to help with the rest of this?” he asked, gesturing at the hole he’d dug.

  “Oh, no, thank you dear. The rest is sheer pleasure for me, mixing in the bone meal and compost, and planting the bulbs. You just leave the soil there in the wheelbarrow, and I’ll do the rest.”

  “If you’re sure,” he said. “I don’t mind. My mom tries every year to grow bulbs, but she hasn’t quite got the knack of it down in Southern California.”

  “Tell her she should try planting ranunculus, and spar-axis. They’re considered bulbs, and they do well down there, I think. Lovely flowers, too.”

  “I’ll tell her that.”

  “You tell her to call me if she wants to talk about it. And thank you again, Rand. This was very sweet of you.”

  “No,” he said, meaning it. “It was good of you to let me help. I’m never in one place long enough to even think about a garden.”

  “So, it keeps you trotting around the globe, your photography work?”

  “I travel a lot,” he said; that at least wasn’t a lie. He tried to avoid direct lies whenever possible. “Speaking of which, if you’re sure you don’t need me, I guess I’d better get started.”

  “Oh, dear, I shouldn’t have kept you from—”

  She stopped when Rand held up a hand. “Please, I mean it, I was glad to do it.”

  “Walt can’t do this like he used to. His knees are just too bad. But he would have tried, and maybe hurt himself, so I truly thank you.”

  “Has he considered replacement? My grandfather did it, said it was the best thing he’d ever done.”

  “We’ve considered it,” Dorothy said, but she didn’t look at him when she said it. Nor did she say anything more on the subject.

  He thought about that as he loaded his photography gear into the car, and then headed out. He wondered if those bills he’d seen were what was stopping them. He frowned at the idea. No wonder Walt was gruff; he could well be hiding a lot of pain and frustration behind that crotchety exterior. Just like Dorothy was hiding a lot of worry and strain behind her cheerful demeanor.

  He was surprised at how much both ideas bothered him. He liked the Crawfords, and the idea that they might be doing without anything—let alone needed medical treatment—grated on him. He put it on his mental list of things to look into. Right behind the whereabouts of Kate’s former income, an inquiry he had yet to make. He wasn’t sure why he was putting it off, but he knew that he was. He told himself it was because he was still just getting started on this case, but even he didn’t quite believe that.

  His surveillance today took a different turn. Shortly after noon, Kate came out of the main, lodge-style building and walked to her car. There was no sign of the furtiveness he’d seen in the maroon-haired girl, but it was a change in the pattern he’d seen since he’d been here, so it caught his attention.

  Lunch? he wondered with a glance at his watch. Possibly. Maybe the post office, although she hadn’t been carrying anything. Could be in her purse, or briefcase, whatever that bag thing was she had slung over her shoulder. Heck, anything could be in there.

  He wondered if it was a holdover from her big-city days, where women often carried a pair of walking shoes to travel between a subway station and their office, where they then changed into dress shoes. Or maybe she was just one of those that had to have a ton of stuff with them all the time; he’d never understood that. But it seemed to be the norm; his frequent partner, Samantha Beckett—Samantha Gamble now, he corrected himself—had been the only woman he’d ever known who preferred to carry no purse at all.

  It suddenly occurred to him how small the insulin pumps were. And that it would be easy to carry several of them in a bag that size.

  Could it be that simple? Was she simply walking out with them, in plain view of everyone?

  The more complicated the plan, the bigger the chance for failure.

  Rand tried to remember. Had it been Draven who had said it? No…St. John. It had been Josh’s mysterious right-hand man who had said it, but Draven had agreed, in the more blunt terms of Keep It Simple, Stupid. Whenever one of them came up with some elaborate plan for a job, he always found a way to simplify it, telling them to leave the Mission Impossible schemes to Hollywood.

  Simple. What could be simpler than sticking a few things in your big purse and walking out the door, the same way you did every day? Were the boxes that were found empty at the delivery point in fact empty when they went into the truck in the first place? Was that why there was no sign of damage on the truck’s locks, because in fact the trucks had never been broken into?

  Suddenly where Kate was headed became critical. He waited until she opened the driver’s door and got in, and he heard the car start. When it was clear she was actually going to leave, he grabbed up his equipment hastily and headed down the path to his car at a run.

  He tossed the camera and binoculars somewhat haphazardly into the front seat, jumped in, then started the rental and maneuvered back toward the road. Her blue coupe was nowhere in sight. He inched forward, until he could see both ways down the road. He was just in time to catch a flash of blue headed toward town.

  “Such as it is,” he muttered as he turned that direction, at the same time being thankful there was so little traffic that he didn’t lose her.

  She turned into the small shopping center that held the post office, the sandwich shop and the Curl and Cut.

  The post office? he wondered. Was she actually mailing the things through the U.S. Mail? You couldn’t get much more basic than that. Draven and St. John would appreciate the simplicity of it.

  She parked at the outer edge of the parking lot, although there were several spaces available closer in. Odd, he thought. He pulled into the lot, stopping several yards away in the shelter of a huge four-by-four pickup. He watched as she got out of her car, waited to see where she was headed. If she indeed went to the post office, he wasn’t sure what he would do. Come up with some story to get the clerk to tell him where the package had been sent. Maybe something about Kate sending him, afraid she’d put the wrong zip code on it or something. Or maybe—

  She went into the sandwich shop. It was small, and even from here he could see the edge of the counter, where a couple of people stood waiting. She walked up to the end of the short line, her head tilted back, apparently studying the overhead menu.

  Lunch.

  He let out a long breath that warned him he was way too tense about this. He’d been right the first time, before his imagination had run riot on him. Or maybe she was just going to eat first, mail later.

  That didn’t seem likely. Who’d sit around with hot property burning a hole in their pocket—or purse—when they could simply be rid of it so easily, two doors down? The longer she lugged the stuff around, the more chance there was she’d get caught with it. Of course, who outside of Redstone would even realize? She worked there, after all, so why shouldn’t she have Redstone property?

  Rand sighed. Why was what should have been a simple theft investigation getting so complicated? Maybe he should have gone in on the inside, it would have been easier.

  But his gut told him it also would have been less effective. She—or whoever the thief was—might have gotten suspicious of any new personnel coming in. It wasn’t likely they would know him as security; they kept a very low profile whenever possible. But any changes tended to make thieves
nervous. Guilt made them inclined to see everything that happened in relation to what they were doing, even if it had no connection at all. Even if it was something as simple as a new employee. Especially in a small facility like this one.

  And that nervousness might make them shut down operations entirely. Which would, admittedly, solve the theft problem. But Josh wanted whoever was responsible for this, and he wanted them badly.

  Rand had rarely seen the big boss angry, but when it happened, it was enough to make the most dangerous of opponents think twice. There was a long history of has-beens who were has-beens because they’d underestimated the brilliance, tenacity, passion and vision of the lanky, gray-eyed man with the lazy drawl. That tendency of many to see only the surface, the easygoing manner, the quiet demeanor, the tinge of the many places he’d lived in his voice, and then judge him as a bit naive, maybe even slow, was one of Josh’s greatest strengths. He knew it, and used it without qualm; the fault was on the side of those who failed to look beyond the surface. Anyone who thought he’d stumbled into his wealth, or had built his empire on the backs of underlings or through dumb luck, paid the price such ignorance and presumption deserved.

  Rand watched as, now with a sandwich and a mug of soup on a tray, Kate moved to one of the small tables by the door. When she set the tray down and slipped her bag off her shoulder, clearly intending to stay and eat, Rand got out of his car. He considered the gun, but since he wasn’t about to use it in this very public and busy place, he left it. He kept his eyes on her as he walked toward the shop. She took something out of the bag, what looked like a PDA. She tapped it a couple of times with the stylus, then propped it up on the bag and picked up her sandwich as she looked at the small screen, apparently not relaxing even now.