He smiled and said, “Well, I don’t know who this Maggie person is, but maybe you should try to contact her because I just went through her house, and it’s completely empty. Nobody’s lived there for quite a while.”
She slowly sagged into the chair and stared up at him. Then she snatched her phone and pulled up Maggie’s contact information and dialed.
It rang and rang and rang, and he knew there wouldn’t be any answer.
Chapter 11
Charlotte overheard the men talking about how Maggie had moved to the top of the suspect list again.
“Have you ever been to her place?” Nico asked.
Charlotte shook her head. “Originally I just met her at the coffee shop all the time,” she said. “And then I hired her, and she started working here.”
“Are you sure she doesn’t have another address?”
“Of course I’m not sure,” she said.
Keane punched away on this laptop. “She doesn’t have another address,” he said. “Her passport was checked leaving the country the same day you left.”
She looked at him in shock. “Seriously?”
He nodded. “She went to Australia too.”
At that, she sagged in place. “So she’s involved? I can’t believe it.”
“She is apparently, yes,” Keane said. “Or it’s mighty suspicious that she left at the same time you did. Not only left but completely cleaned out her place?”
Nico nodded. “I’ve got the team contacting the owner of the duplex to see if they have any idea if she handed in a notice or not.”
Just then Miles responded on the chat window and typed, Maggie’s rent is paid up until the end of the month. They had no idea the house was vacated.
“So she left without giving notice. But the lease is up at the end of the month.”
“Perfect timing on her part.”
“If she’s involved,” Charlotte said.
“How long ago was she working for you?” Nico asked.
“It was a while ago. Months at least.”
“Like eight weeks?” Joshua asked.
She stared at him. “She’s worked for me for the last six months.” she said.
“And that would make sense too,” Joshua said as he sat down at a chair. “We had what we thought was maybe a breach about six months ago. But everybody decided that nothing had been stolen. In the meantime, we lost two of our agents.”
“Wow,” Keane said, “that can’t be random.”
“I don’t know,” Joshua noted. “Those two were a little more visible. Only two other names were on that list, but nothing else appeared to happen.”
“Unless this is a long con,” Nico said. “But it wasn’t to take you out as much as to watch what you were doing.”
“It’s possible,” Joshua agreed, “but I would hate to think that all the raids that are going down right now will end up with zero results because of this.”
“Or it’s just the Australian side that’s dealing with that raid issue?” Keane asked.
“It’s possible,” Joshua said with a sigh.
“I don’t know what to think right now,” Nico stated. “But it does line up with the bugs placed here in Charlotte’s house within that six-month time frame. And Maggie’s access to Charlotte’s house makes it that much easier for her to do that. Joshua, can you get any information on how the raids are going?”
He frowned and then nodded and pulled out his phone and sent a text. “If they can tell me anything, they will but most won’t be public information and as I’m now compromised and out of the game, they won’t volunteer the information.”
“Right.” Nico shook his head.
“So again we’re in a waiting game,” Keane pointed out.
“I’m not terribly impressed with this waiting game,” she said. “In fact, it sucks.”
“Of course nobody likes the waiting part,” Nico said. “It does suck. But we also don’t know, for sure, that Maggie is involved, so keep the faith.”
“No,” she said. “She walked away from me too, so I’m back to looking for a new assistant.”
“You just said that you wouldn’t get another assistant,” Nico said.
“Right,” she said with a groan. “You guys are making me nuts. What we have here is the potential for Joshua’s undercover sting to have been found out a long time ago, and that’s why my kidnapping happened, and they’re just now working on the blackmail scheme part. Or it’s completely unrelated.”
“I don’t know,” Joshua said. “Like I said, we had two men disappear, and no other bodies were ever found.”
She stared at him. “Well, I sure hope you get out of this business. It sounds very dangerous.”
He looked at her and smiled. “I’m not the one who got kidnapped this weekend.”
She just rolled her eyes at him. “And I still don’t understand what that was all about. I get that my assistant’s quite possibly connected because she’s the one who just now left without telling me and had gone to the same country that I was forced to be at. So what are the chances that she’s the one who wanted me there personally?”
The men sat up and stared at her. “Is there any reason why she would?”
She shrugged. “I have no clue. Apparently I don’t know anything about her. Why would she care if I go to this rally or not? I know she loves Australia but not sure if she has any ties there.”
“Let me ask you this,” Keane said. “Just for the sake of discussion and completely off-topic, did anybody ever die in one of these rallies?”
She stared at him in shock. “Yes,” she said. “We had one death a couple years back.”
“And who was it?”
She shook her head. “The name eludes me right now,” she said. “It was a young man.”
Exhaustion had taken its toll. Even with the various naps, her brain wasn’t functioning. Brain fog was a real thing, she started to realize. She just hadn’t expected it to be something to deal with when she was jet-lagged and stressed. “I can’t remember,” she murmured. “Andy something, I think. I should remember though, shouldn’t I? I should always remember those who die during something like that.”
