“Well, that’s the problem,” Joshua said. “Not only that but that would have been … how long ago? Charlotte, when did you agree to go to this Australian rally?” he asked, turning to his sister.
“Well, the organizers were telling everybody that I was coming, but I hadn’t agreed to go. So there was a big mess-up. I only ended up deciding to go within the last few days.”
“But they had your name up on the promos on the website?”
She nodded. “For a few weeks anyway, I think.” She looked over at Nico and said, “But that’s something that needs to be checked out.”
“I checked on a guy who quit the GA group, who is from Australia, Steve Darwin. It was his fault that your name was there. He thought you were going, and then, when it all blew up, they came back to him, but he’s been fighting cancer this last year,” Nico said. “So he wasn’t exactly capable of going to the rally or making the speech, and the organizers went back after you again, hoping that you would come.”
“Why would he offer my name?” she asked, puzzled.
“Because, when you and he were last active, you were quite visible and doing trips like this, weren’t you?”
She nodded. “I was doing all of them.” Then she winced. “Right. And, of course, once he got cancer and fought for his life, everything would have changed, and he would have been out of the loop. He wouldn’t have known I had stepped back so much this last six months.”
“Exactly. But I don’t know if that timeline works for Joshua’s group to have been alerted.”
“Depends,” Joshua said, thinking out loud. “If the Australian group had their suspicions about me for a few weeks, it’s possible. But I didn’t learn of this confirmation that we had this leak until only a little bit ago.”
“And it would have been awfully convenient for them to have found out that your sister would be over there.”
“And yet I wasn’t really,” she said.
“But then you decided to go, right?”
She nodded. “But again that was Maggie’s push.”
“So maybe we need to find if Maggie has any ties to Australia.”
“Well, I can tell you right now she does,” Charlotte said. “But I don’t remember how long ago.”
“What kind of ties?”
“I think she has family, but I don’t remember.”
“And how long has she been over here in the States?”
“I don’t remember,” she said.
Nico got exasperated. “Now we’re back to the fact that we don’t know anything about Maggie. While you guys sit here and reminisce, I’ll go to her house and see what I can find.”
“What? You’ll just walk in and say, Hi, I’m Nico. I’m investigating your life to see if you had something to do with your boss’s kidnapping?”
He stared at her for a moment. “You know what? That’s not a half-bad idea. Maybe I’ll get the cops to pull her in for questioning.”
“Hey, you can’t do that,” she protested.
“Maybe I should though,” he said. “Because all we’re doing is operating blind, and we don’t have enough answers. We need answers.”
She groaned. “Fine, but I don’t want you scaring her. Why don’t I instead call and invite her over?”
“Except we don’t want to let her know that you’re home. Remember?”
She threw up her hands. “Fine. She doesn’t live far from here. You can walk there and back easily enough.”
“Right,” he said. As he walked out the door, he turned to look at her and said, “She lives alone, right?”
Her lips met in a line as she said, “As I don’t seem to know anything else about her, I can’t answer that for sure. But my understanding is she does live alone, yes.”
He nodded and said, “Back soon.” And he turned, and he walked out. He was at Maggie’s house quickly, as it was only a ten-minute walk away. But no lights were on, and no vehicles were in the driveway. He snuck around to the back and found the rear kitchen door unlocked. As he entered, the house had an emptiness to it, something that he’d already figured out. She’d likely left.
If she’d been involved in Charlotte’s kidnapping, Maggie had booked it.
Nico stepped inside the kitchen through to the living room and the dining room, finding a single bathroom on the main floor. But an empty coldness remained, as if nobody had lived here for a while. He frowned at that and headed to the fridge only to have it confirmed. It was completely empty, and so were the cupboards. He raced up the stairs, but the bedrooms were completely empty too. If this woman had ever lived here, it had been a while ago, and maybe she’d moved out in a very short time. Why? He quickly sent a text to both his Mavericks chat box and to Keane.
With a complete search of the place done, he took several photographs and then slipped out the back door. There, he stopped and took several looks around. Maggie’s place was like a townhome duplex with another one on the other side attached, but only sharing the garage. As he stood here looking, his hands on his hips, the curtain moved at a window on the duplex on the other side and dropped back into place. He studied that for a long moment before it occurred to him that he possibly had the wrong address. He quickly asked Keane in a text, but Keane confirmed it was the right address. And then Nico asked for who lived in the one beside it and gave the duplex number. The answer came back with a company name.
A rental?
Yes.
Interesting. He turned and walked away, not having any reason to suspect the other house closest to it except for the fact that somebody had looked outside. But then again, if it had been his place, he would have looked out too. As he got back to Charlotte’s, he walked up to the front door and entered. She looked at him, and he could
