tonight?”
“Just getting off duty.”
“I’m sitting at Uglies with my Sam Adams watching the Knicks game.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Suzanne hung up and sipped her beer. She had friends with benefits, too, some of which were quite impressive.
TEN
Sean sat at his desk in his second-floor office. Lucy was sitting across from him, typing away on her laptop. The rain that had started when they left Woodbridge was a deluge by the time they’d pulled into his driveway. The steady downpour continued to drum against the windows.
The narrow, three-story, hundred-year-old house was both Sean’s business and residence. He and Patrick had done most of the renovation work themselves in December when they established RCK East. The living room downstairs had been converted into the main office, the library into Patrick’s office, and the formal parlor would someday be their assistant’s workspace-that is, when they had enough business to justify hiring an administrator. In the back, cut off from their work area by double doors, was the kitchen and living area. An enclosed sunporch led to a postage-stamp backyard dominated by two towering old trees.
Sean hoped the trees survived the storm. The winds were fierce.
Originally, combining their business and residences had seemed a smart move to save money while they built the business. Sean and Patrick had no problems living together because each had his own space. However, that was before Sean started sleeping with Patrick’s sister. Now, Sean wished he had his own apartment. Lucy had been uncomfortable sleeping with Sean under her older brother’s roof, and Sean certainly wasn’t going to ask her to stay with him now that Patrick was back in town. At least not until Patrick got over his problems with their relationship. Sean didn’t want to do anything to put his new relationship with Lucy in jeopardy.
He wanted to spend his time with her lying around in bed, talking, making love, watching her sleep. He missed the wonderful week they’d had before Patrick returned from his last job, when Lucy had spent every night in his bed.
“Do I have a zit on my nose or something?” Lucy asked.
He shook his head. “Sorry, I was thinking.”
“You were staring at me.”
“I was staring into space and you’re in the way.” He grinned and leaned forward. “You’re much prettier than empty space.”
“I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere,” Lucy said.
His computer beeped. He pulled up a message from Jayne Morgan, the computer magician at RCK. She could pull information out of thin air, or so it seemed.
He read the note and smiled. “Jayne came through. We got the name on that 917 number Kirsten has been calling. Jessica Bell.”
“Any idea who she is?”
“No, just the name and her address.”
“That’s a plus. New York City?”
“Yes.” He typed it into his computer. Up popped a map. “Three blocks from Columbia University.”
“Is she a student?” Lucy asked. “Maybe Kirsten was talking to her about going to school there.”
“She was only applying to California colleges,” Sean said.
“How do you know?”
“Her mother had a copy of all her applications. And I saw the brochures in her room.”
“Have you been able to retrieve her deleted emails?”
“Not yet. The program is still running, but the older they are the less likely I’ll be able to get them. I’m going to run a search on Jessica Bell at this address and see if I can learn anything more. Maybe Kirsten went to New York to visit this Jessica Bell, and got sick.”
“And didn’t have Jessica call her mother?” Lucy shook her head.
“Their relationship was rocky. Kirsten emailed Trey, not her mother, to let them know she was okay.”
“She was anything but okay.”
Sean caught Lucy’s eye. “She could have been high when she wrote that.”
“At eight in the morning?”
“Maybe left over from the night before.”
“I’ve been analyzing the message she sent,” Lucy said. “Sick can mean any number of things-being hungover, food poisoning, the flu-but she also says that she can’t walk.”
“You think she broke her leg?”
“If that’s the case, wouldn’t your search of the hospitals have come up with something?”
“Not if she refused to give her name, or used a false identity.”
“If she didn’t give her name, wouldn’t they have recognized her from the photo on the missing persons flyer?”
“I got this case yesterday morning. Less than forty-eight hours ago. I don’t think the hospitals have someone sitting on the emails and fax machines twenty-four/seven getting ready to distribute photos to all staff. Besides, we only sent out beyond a hundred miles when I found out about New York.”
Lucy glanced down.
“I didn’t mean to sound like that,” Sean said. “It’s just that in my experience missing teenagers are a lower priority. They probably posted her photo on a board and if someone recognizes her, they’ll contact the Woodbridge Police Department, or RCK. But she’s been missing since Friday, and the last time she used her phone was late Saturday night. Let’s assume she got hurt, broke her leg or something. Went to the hospital. If she tried to use her insurance, her name would be in the system, and as a minor they would have contacted her mother, or protective services.”
“You’re right.”
Lucy didn’t say anything more, and Sean mentally hit himself. She had been so defeated this morning, thinking she wasn’t good enough for the FBI, and here he’d shot down one of her theories.
He let it sit for a minute, then said, “What if she didn’t go to the hospital?”
Lucy either didn’t hear him or was ignoring him.
“Lucy, what is it?”
“It’s not important. You’re right, she was probably high.”
“Stop.”
She glared at him. “What?”
“You’re doing it again. I want to know what you’re thinking.”
“Why? It’s really just a way-out-there idea. You should probably talk to Kate. I bet she’ll have a reasonable theory.”
“If I wanted to bring Kate into the investigation, I would have done it already, but right now this isn’t a federal case, and she can’t help me.”
Lucy was torn, he could see it. He’d jabbed her where it hurt, because she didn’t want to feel like a failure. He needed her on her game, focused on finding Kirsten, and the only way to get there was to push her hard enough for her to realize that without her, they’d be two steps behind.
“I think she’s in hiding,” Lucy finally said. “I think she’s sick-either from drugs or the flu-but she’s hiding from someone. See?” She slid over a handwritten sheet where she’d copied down phrases from Kirsten’s email, rewording a couple but keeping them in context, removing all the extra words and unintelligible thoughts, and reorganizing the main ideas into groups under two headings.
Personal Facts
