“So what would you like me to do?” I asked.
“Go to the lab and see if you can find anything about what happened,” Hamilton said without hesitation. “I’ll pay you, of course. Your going rate.” She seemed to suddenly notice Cody’s hand near her purse, and she scooped it up and placed it in her lap.
“You need to report this,” Shannon said.
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“What if I promise to keep it under wraps?”
Hamilton thought about it and then finally nodded. “Okay. If you’re sure you can do that, but only after Autumn takes a look at the lab. I know how long the police will take to process the scene. We may miss a window of opportunity.” She stood, as if expecting immediate compliance.
Cody scowled and Shannon sighed. I met his eyes and gave him a nod, indicating that I wanted to do this. If Cody went with us, he could find the information every bit as easily as I could have if I hadn’t gone blind.
Shannon took out his phone. “I’ll get my partner and a couple others to meet us there.”
“No police cars,” Drewmore stated. “They may be watching.”
“Do you think there might be a ransom?” I asked.
JoAnna Hamilton shook her head. “There’s not enough money in the world to reimburse them for the knowledge in my brother’s head. If someone has taken him and he refuses to cooperate, they’ll kill him.”
Silence fell over the room, and even though it wasn’t my problem, not directly, I felt eager to help Hamilton’s brother. I suppose it’s why I was in the business.
I arose and the vertigo was back. Shannon grabbed my elbow. “You okay?” he mouthed. Still seated across from me on the couch, Cody’s scowl deepened.
I nodded. “I need to get changed. So does Cody.” I wondered what Hamilton and Drewmore would make of my supposed bodyguard’s worn jeans and whatever else he chose to wear. He certainly didn’t look like a bodyguard, but I needed him too much to make him stay at the apartment.
Ten minutes later, we were in Shannon’s truck, following Drewmore’s car through Portland, heading toward Lake Oswego. I lay back, resting my head on the seat. Next to me, Cody stared out the window into the darkness, wearing paint-splattered jeans and a blue shirt, his white hair only marginally tamed. On my other side, Shannon drove in silence. I had a bad feeling about this, though that might be my empty stomach growling.
Shannon bent over and fished for something inside a mini cooler he must have taken from my kitchen. “I thought you might want this. I brought a fork. I know how you hate chopsticks.” He plunked a box of takeout in my hands and immediately I perked up.
“Thanks.” I ate as unobtrusively as possible, seeing that I was squeezed between the two men. There was little worse than smelling food you weren’t going to eat.
“I think you have an admirer,” Cody said into the silence.
I turned to him, fork poised in the air. “What?”
“Young Drewmore. He couldn’t take his eyes off you.”
“You’re seeing things.” I looked at Shannon for confirmation. He kept his eyes on the road, a hint of a smile touching one side of his mouth. I rolled my eyes. “I imagine that would go over well with Hamilton, and don’t forget that he has very big reasons to please her.”
“She’s not his mother,” Cody said.
Shannon glanced over at us. “No, but she holds the purse strings and, even more important, his career.”
“Maybe he’s part of this,” I said. “Maybe he paid someone to steal the copies of the research. With those, he could write his own ticket with Hamilton’s competition or go off on his own entirely.”
Cody nodded. “That might explain why there was no sign of a break-in, but wouldn’t he have taken them in a less conspicuous way?”
“Not if he didn’t want to make himself a suspect.” Shannon signaled and turned into Hamilton’s drive. “But he seems rather young and ineffectual to do something like that.”
“Oh, come on, he’s not all that young,” I said. “I’m impressed with him. He could have done it.”
Shannon laughed. “So that’s how to impress you—to show you’re capable of a crime?”
“That’s right.” I was glad we were back to joking, the tension between us gone.
“I need to touch something of his,” Cody said. “So we’ll know.”
I frowned. “That might be harder than you think. You’re lucky to have found an imprint on Hamilton’s purse. She probably has a dozen of them.” Imprints were funny sometimes. If a person didn’t really care about an item and nothing traumatic happened while they were holding or using it, they wouldn’t leave an imprint. Clothes were notoriously bad for imprints, especially those often washed, as they lost bits of themselves with each cleaning. Something about the material didn’t preserve them, with the exception of quilts and similar items that weren’t often washed, like Summer’s afghan.
The sudden thought that I might never experience my mother’s imprints again made me mourn her all over. For a few seconds, I focused on keeping my breathing steady.
“Uh-oh, look who’s here.” Shannon brought the truck to a halt behind Drewmore’s white sedan. Standing in the light from the row of lampposts in front of the mansion was Nicholas Russo.
Chapter 11
Russo was flanked by his bodyguard Charlie and the same two men he’d been with at Smokey’s. He wore a black suit and stood with his hands behind his back, his wide shoulders squared and his broad face unsmiling. Drewmore and Hamilton walked in his direction, Hamilton with her head held high.
“I gotta hear this.” Cody sprang from the truck, and we hurried after him.
“What are you doing here?” Hamilton’s high voice carried as we made our way toward them.
Russo’s dark eyes flicked to us and then back to Hamilton. “I’ve had Ms. Rain watched. As her particular talents are of use to me, I wanted to make sure to protect my interests. I thought to discuss this with you privately, but it seems you have brought Ms. Rain and her friends here after your visit to her apartment. May I ask why?”
For a brief instant, JoAnna Hamilton curled in on herself, the picture of dejection, but almost as quickly, her back straightened and she met Russo’s gaze with determination. “This is a family matter, Russo. It has nothing to do with you.”
Russo’s jaw tightened, though the rest of his face remained calm. The look unsettled me, made me feel anxious.
“You still have that squirrel watching me?” I bit down my anxiety enough to ask. “What do you think I’m going to do, skip town? I told you I’d read the contract. You don’t have to force me.”
Russo’s gaze shifted to me. “I assure you, my actions are solely for your welfare. I am sorry for any problems this has given you, but after what happened this morning, I need to make sure no one interferes with my business, and unfortunately for the time being, you are part of that business.”
I’d suspected as much from the moment I’d seen Ace outside my store, but I had my own point to make. “I assure you that I don’t need your protection. If I see Ace again, I’m going to call the police and put a restraining order on the man—even if I have to make something up.”
Russo studied me, his head slightly tilted. “If you’re referring to the private detective I hired last year to look into my cousin’s disappearance, be aware that he is no longer in my employ and hasn’t been since our last encounter. I don’t reward mediocrity, and he proved a disappointment. If he was watching you, it wasn’t by my command.”
Russo hadn’t employed Ace? Then why had he been outside my shop? I met Shannon’s gaze and he nodded, pulling out his phone. I knew he’d get someone tracking Ace down.
“Ace is the man who was with me earlier,” I told Hamilton, watching her reaction carefully. Could she have hired him to watch me? After all, he’d known exactly where she lived. Maybe that’s why she’d let him into her lab.
She looked aghast. “You brought that man here, believ
ing he was hired by Russo?”
“I made sure Ace knew I’d fulfill my promise regarding the contract,” I said. “I believed that was the only information he’d take back to Russo. Ace doesn’t usually exert himself for much more than the basics. Besides, I needed backup. For all I knew, you were the one who tried to kill me this morning.”
Her chin lifted. “I most certainly did not. And if I’d known this man, Ace, had his own agenda besides being your backup, which apparently he does, I most certainly wouldn’t have allowed him into my lab. The only reason I took you there was to make a point, to show you how important our technology is so that you would understand why I—” She didn’t have to finish. I understood exactly what she couldn’t say with Russo hovering nearby. She wanted me to understand why she was making a deal with the devil, and why she didn’t want me to tell him her secrets.
“Well, whoever he’s working for, he can’t have learned much,” Shannon said. “Ace was an officer once, and he has a good record.” Knowing his dislike of Ace, I appreciated how much it cost him to say that.
Hamilton scowled, apparently not comforted, and I really couldn’t blame her. With her brother missing and Russo showing up on her doorstep uninvited. What was she hiding from him anyway? It had to be serious, if she’d allowed me into her lab—and if it would cost lives, as she’d claimed.
During this exchange, Russo watched us with clear interest, and I realized he hadn’t known Ace and I had come to Hamilton’s earlier. He waited for silence before clearing his throat and adding, “If it means anything, Ace did come to me a few days ago when I arrived, hinting that despite a very occupied schedule, he was available to me, but I told him I’d brought enough of my own men.”
We all looked up as Paige entered the driveway in a red Mazda, followed by an unmarked white Mustang that I knew belonged to the precinct. It looked a lot like the one Shannon normally drove, except for the dent in the bumper. Paige wore brown slacks and a dressy, fitted, pink blouse swirled with varying tones of brown, an outfit that told me she’d been on a date with her boyfriend when Shannon called her.
Russo stared at Hamilton. “More visitors, it looks like. Are you going to tell me what’s happened?”
JoAnna Hamilton sighed and nodded at Winston Drewmore, giving him permission to explain.
“We have hired Ms. Rain,” he told Russo, “to help us find JoAnna’s brother. We believe the reason Ralph didn’t show up to the meeting tonight wasn’t because he was working but because someone prevented him from coming. At the time we were with you, someone broke into the lab on these premises. All the hardware and software has been removed or destroyed, and our backups are missing—possibly they’re with Ralph.”
Russo’s nostrils flared. “And when were you going to tell me all this?”
“When we determined it necessary,” Hamilton said, a touch of imperiousness entering her voice. “It’s possible Ralph disappeared to avoid capture and that he managed to secure the data.”
She hadn’t mentioned any of those thoughts to me, and I suspected she was trying to placate Russo. After all, her safe had been opened. But I supposed Ralph Shatlock could have taken the hard drive from there and run for it.
“We’d better hope you’re right.” Russo’s gaze went to me. “Well, let’s get on with it. Maybe you can tell us what happened.”
“There is a matter of payment,” Cody said. “Autumn’s standard fee is five hundred dollars an hour.”
I barely stopped myself from gaping. The truth was, I’d never charged anything to use my talent, even when I’d been specifically sought out to find someone. Instead, I encouraged people to purchase something at my store. That way we all won. Only the police paid me, and they had a limit of fifty bucks a day.
“That won’t be a problem,” Drewmore said. “Now, if you’ll just come with me.”
He led the way to the front door, through the house, and down the stairs. Inside the lab, the destruction was immediately apparent. Machines had been smashed, pieces of glass, metal, and plastic scattered over the floor. Wooden tables were cracked in half as though by some deranged giant, filing cabinets caved in and overturned, and stray papers lay everywhere. The music box Shatlock had “printed” was also destroyed, splintered into a hundred little pieces.
Violence marked this deed, signaling that whoever had been here meant business. I could see why Hamilton worried about her brother.
Behind me, I heard gasps and murmurs of amazement. Drewmore didn’t show any reaction, though maybe he’d already been inured to the sight.
Russo shook his head. “This was personal. Who hates you this badly, JoAnna?”
“Competitors, of course.”
“Who are these competitors?” Paige asked. When no one answered, she added, “Please don’t touch anything until we’re finished.”
She motioned to the two plainclothes officers I recognized vaguely from the precinct to begin their examination of the room. One man was lean and had graying brown hair, while the other had black hair, a barrel chest, and a narrow chin. I remembered this last officer had once asked me to read his wife’s wedding ring to confirm her affair. I’d refused and recommended marital counseling. As far as I knew, they’d worked things out and were still together.
Hamilton bristled. “I hired Ms. Rain to examine this lab. She will touch what she wants.”
“I’ll be careful,” I told Paige, and she nodded. Motioning to Cody, I followed the officers farther into the room.
Drewmore came with us. “Is there anything I can help with?” he asked, tapping me lightly on the shoulder.
“We need something they might have touched,” I said. “But most of this damage looks like it was done with a sledgehammer or something very heavy.”
“What about the filing cabinets?” Cody hobbled in that direction, and I followed. We lost precious minutes while the officers checked for fingerprints, and then, squatting down, Cody picked up the scattered drawers and pushed them over to me one by one as I sat on my heels. I watched him carefully for signs of an imprint, but he didn’t react, so I shook my head after touching each drawer and pretending to read it.
“Could everyone step back?” Cody growled after a few minutes, his hand poised over the handle on a drawer. I wondered if his skin tingled like mine did when approaching a strong imprint.
“Please,” I said. “I need to be alone.”
Shannon ushered everyone back, but they were still watching. Cody shifted his weight until his back was toward them. Taking a deep breath, he let his hand fall. I waited several seconds, knowing that was a lifetime in a terrible imprint. Cody emitted a tiny grunt. I closed my hand over his, ready to pull him away from the handle, hoping I could do it without attracting notice.
My world tilted, and there it was, an imprint that seared me until I existed only in the memory that wasn’t mine.
Anger, burning hot anger. He was supposed to be here. Did someone warn him? The information we’d found on the computer was useful, but the flashing warnings announcing that the data had been destroyed because of unlawful access meant that any information the computer still held wouldn’t be enough. We needed complete data—or the scientist himself. I yanked out the drawer, spilling it to the ground.
The imprint ended and began again, but Cody and I both pulled away from the drawer. I let out an involuntary gasp as I fell back, head reeling, onto the cool cement floor that had been painted with a rubbery gray layer of enamel.
Shannon was at my side in an instant, looking between me and Cody. “You felt that,” Cody said in a low growl.
I nodded. Somehow I had. I swiveled my weight around, reaching for the drawer again but stopping short of touching the handle. Not even the slightest tingle. Did that mean Cody had somehow facilitated the reading? Instead of being discouraged, I felt a surge of hope. Cody or no, I had felt something. Maybe I wouldn’t always be blind.
“What did you see?” Hamilton poised over me in her purple skirt. Behind her, Russo
watched us both with hooded eyes. He still didn’t trust Hamilton, maybe even less now, but I bet he’d go through with the deal in an effort to get his hands on the software and diagrams.
Unless we never found Ralph Shatlock alive.
Everyone waited. Even Paige and the officers paused in their examination of the room.
“They were definitely looking for the data on nanotechnology,” I said to JoAnna Hamilton, not looking at Cody. “I think their original plan was to take your brother, but he wasn’t in the lab when they got here like they thought he’d be.” I shifted position, readying myself to come to my feet. I didn’t like everyone looming over me.
“They can’t have missed him by much.” Drewmore extended a hand to help me, but Shannon stepped in and helped me up himself. If we’d been alone I would have teased him about it.
JoAnna frowned and began pacing.
“What is it, JoAnna?” Russo’s voice was casual but bordered on command.
She stopped pacing and sighed. “I was sure they’d taken him. The time stamp on my safe upstairs says it was accessed after the door down here was opened. If Ralph was the one who opened the safe, that means he was still in the house when they got here.”
Shannon’s expression darkened. He hated when people intentionally hid important information.
“Maybe he’s still here hiding.” Drewmore started for the door, and we all followed, separating as we spread throughout the house. I followed Cody. Hamilton followed me, but she was called by Shannon to open a locked door, leaving us alone.
“Look, the safe,” Cody said when we found it at last in an upstairs sitting room. He reached out one hand to the door and the other to the combination dial. “There’s an imprint . . . I see him opening it. He knows the combination. Must be Shatlock. He’s hurrying. Fear. There’s another man in the hallway waiting. A lookout. I can’t see his face. That’s all.”
Before Cody removed his hand, I set mine on his once again, but this time I couldn’t feel the imprint or see the men he described. A lump formed in my throat.
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