“Now we’re getting somewhere. We can look through the DOD database for anyone named Kay. How many could there be?”
“I don’t know, I keep thinking about what she said that if it was meant to be, we would meet again.”
“So, you just going to sit back and wait for her to walk through the door?”
“I don’t know.” I wasn’t a superstitious kind of person, but there were those locally that belong to the older generation and they believed in such things as fate, karma and other powers. My grandmother had taught me about such things. I was pretty good with a divining rod too, so I knew there was some truth to what the older generation believed. And I thought about the old woman’s words outside of the night club a few weeks prior.
“Dude, this woman has you this messed up and you are willing to sit around just waiting for her to fall in your lap?” Logan shook his head.
“I don’t know man. I don’t know what to do.”
“So why has she come up all of a sudden. You haven’t thought too hard about her until lately.”
“I thought I saw someone that looked like her at the Mayor’s dinner. I never got a good look at her face. So, I don’t know if maybe I just imagined it. I’d had a couple of drinks that night.”
“Okay, well we can work with that too. If we can get the guest list maybe, we can find her on it that which is a much smaller list than the DOD database.”
“Yeah, I can ask John for the list.”
“The vice mayor?” Logan raised his eyebrows, “You know him for real?”
“Oh yeah, we go way back.”
“Well there you go. Now all you have to do is sober up.”
I laughed and then passed out. I woke up on Logan’s deck in a chair with my feet propped up in another chair. The smell of something bitter and strong had interrupted my dreams.
“Wake up sleeping beauty!” Logan kicked the chair out from under my feet.
“Ah!” I rubbed my stiff neck.
“Coffee.” He pointed to the mug on the table and then disappeared.
“Shit.” My neck hurt. I tried to rub the muscles into a more relaxed state. I drank some of the coffee. I coughed and sputtered.
“Holy shit, what is that?” I yelled towards the house.
Logan stuck his head out the back door. “Coffee.”
“Bullshit.”
“Chicory coffee with a little hair of the dog.”
“Good god! That is terrible.” I said walking into the kitchen.
“Yeah, it will cure what ails you.”
“I don’t know.” I eyed the mug suspiciously.
“Stop your whining and drink it. We’ve got to go to work.”
“I need a shower.”
“Yeah, you do.” Logan laughed “I’ll drop you by your place.”
“Okay.”
“Drink your coffee.”
It was nearly nine o’clock when I got to the office.
Stephanie and Jared refrained from making any comments about Logan and I coming in late. Our case load was stacking up. We had the missing schoolteacher which was a priority. We also had a fraud case and a possible misconduct case of a police officer. I put Jared and Stephanie on the missing teacher while Logan and I focused on the rest of the workload.
After Stephanie and Jared left for the night, I got up to stretch. Logan had barely moved from his computer all day.
“Logan, you’ve been at it all day. Go home.”
“Yeah, I am. I’ve just been tracking down this lead.”
“It can wait.”
“If you saw a picture of that woman Kay, you’d recognize her right?”
“Sure, I’ll never forget her. Why?” My heart leapt into my throat.
“Well, I think I may have found something. I’m not sure it’s the right person, says her name is Kennedy Dandridge.”
“Okay, well let’s see it.” I remembered something about her telling me her name was Kennedy and her friends called her Kay.
Logan tapped a few keys and then swiveled his monitor around.
Kay was staring back at me. Her hair was indeed shorter. She was just as beautiful as I remembered. I wanted to reach out and touch her cheek. The photo was professional.
“Where did you find this?”
“It took some deep digging on the web, I found it on a business news page.”
“Business page? What kind of business page?” I was curious.
“It would appear that your mysterious woman is in fact the owner and CEO of Port City Industries.” Logan raised his eyebrows at me.
“What?” I laughed.
“Kay Dandridge, Port City Industries.” Logan smiled. “You always were one lucky bastard.”
“That’s ridiculous. I mean not that it matters as she never said anything about the family business. She said she was working in the Middle East or something.”
“She wasn’t lying. She was a photojournalist and it looks like she mostly worked with the military, in the Middle East, Africa and a few other places. Logan looked distant for a moment and while I thought there was something more he was thinking on that front, I was more focused on Port City Industries. They had a huge building on the other side of town, and you could see it from our office. I started thinking that all this time she could have been that close, and I wouldn’t have even known it. And again, I felt a pang in my chest that she hadn’t looked me up.
“You said she told you she was home on family business six years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Well, apparently six years ago her mother passed away which left the company to Kay.”
“So that was the family business she was home to take care of, then.” I moved to stand behind Logan looking at the obituary over his shoulder. “She was home that weekend to bury her mother.” I felt sad and a bit ashamed that I had flirted with a woman who was grieving in her own way. I felt like a total jerk.
“She seems to be a complicated woman.” Logan said reading my thoughts.
I went back to my desk and sat down. “I don’t want to know any more about her from a computer. I want
