Beaches in Paradise Page 5

  “She said something about a party for work. Given that it’s almost four o’clock in the morning, I’m going to assume she decided to stay over with her boyfriend.”

  “So Gina does have a boyfriend?”

  Spencer narrowed his brows. “If you really are her friend, shouldn’t you know that?”

  “We work together but haven’t really had a chance to hang out for a few months.”

  “I see.” The expression on Spencer’s face indicated he didn’t see at all.

  “If Gina has a boyfriend, do you know his name?” I asked.

  “She didn’t say and I didn’t ask. To be honest, even if I knew, I might not tell you. I’m still not sure you’re who you say you are. I should probably call the cops and report a break-in, but I’m exhausted and would like to get some shut-eye, so if you don’t mind showing yourselves out…”

  I glanced at Kyle. I needed to get the keys from him to check the desk for the list before we left, but I couldn’t think of a single reason to offer to Gina’s already suspicious brother regarding why I needed to get into the desk in the room where he appeared to be staying. I was struggling to come up with a lie when his phone rang.

  Spencer looked at the phone. “I need to get this. Please show yourselves out.”

  “I left my purse,” I lied. “I’ll just grab it and then we’ll be on our way.”

  Spencer nodded, then headed toward the stairs. I grabbed the keys from Kyle and used one of the keys on the ring to open the locked drawer. Sure enough, Gina’s list was in a file labeled “recipes.” I grabbed the list, folded it, and put it in my pocket, then headed into Gina’s room for a purse because I hadn’t brought mine. I found an empty one in the closet, then nodded to Kyle. I put the purse over my shoulder and we headed down the stairs.

  Spencer was in the living room, pacing as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the call. I held up the purse and mouthed the words “thank you,” then left through the front door. I supposed I should have been glad Spencer hadn’t seemed to notice the lack of a vehicle parked in front of Gina’s house. Once we were well away from the house we cut through a neighbor’s yard and headed toward the forest where we’d parked.

  “Do you think we should have told Gina’s brother that she’s missing before we left?” Kyle asked when we were safely out of sight of the house.

  “I considered it, but we don’t know he’s her brother for sure. He might be, but he doesn’t look anything like Gina. And if she had a brother visiting town, that would be huge news. I’m sure she would have mentioned it when we spoke, even though our conversation was brief.”

  Kyle raised a brow. “So you think he’s lying?”

  “I’m not sure, but my instinct at this point is to err on the side of caution.”

  “I agree. I don’t know who he was speaking to, but he looked pretty agitated. If he’s not Gina’s brother, maybe he’s working with whoever is behind this whole thing. It did seem odd that he let us go so easily if he actually is Gina’s brother.”

  “Maybe we should call Kate and report a break-in at Gina’s,” I suggested. “If he’s Gina’s brother, he should be able to prove it. And if he isn’t, she can get to the bottom of his real reason for being there.”

  “If we call Kate about a break-in at Gina’s, she’ll know we aren’t staying out of her investigation,” Kyle pointed out.

  “That’s true,” I acknowledged.

  “However, I have a burner cell at home,” Kyle informed me. “We’ll head back to my place and call 911. We can leave an anonymous tip about a prowler that someone will probably follow up on.”

  “Okay, that’s a good idea. It’s getting pretty late and we really do seem to be spinning our wheels. There’s so much going on, I need to get things straight in my head.”

  When we arrived at Kyle’s house, I fed Echo as well as Kyle’s dog, Trooper, and then we went to Kyle’s computer room. The first thing he did was call 911 to report a prowler at Gina’s address. Then he ran a trace on Gina’s phone, which was, as Kyle had predicted, still off-line.

  Kyle glanced at his watch. “It’s going to be light in an hour. Maybe we should get some sleep.”

  “There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep knowing Gina could be in real trouble,” I countered.

  “Okay. I’ll get started on a search of the records Gina saved to Cybersecurity, but I’m going to need some coffee. Do you want some?”

  I nodded, suddenly too tired to form words.

  Chapter 5

  Friday, August 11

  I woke to the feel of the sun on my face. I slowly opened my eyes and looked around. I’d been sleeping fully dressed on Kyle’s bed. Echo was lying on the floor next to me, but Kyle and Trooper were nowhere in sight. The last thing I remembered was talking to Kyle in his office. I looked at the bedside clock. Eight fifteen. I hadn’t slept long, but I hadn’t meant to sleep at all. I didn’t see evidence that Kyle had joined me, but knowing him, he must have carried me in here, then continued to work.

  Kyle must have taken off my shoes before pulling a quilt over me because they’d been placed neatly at the side of the bed. I sat down on the bench at the foot of the bed and gazed out the huge picture window that looked out on the icy-blue lake in the distance. Kyle had remodeled the entire house after inheriting it from his grandfather, and while he’d done a fantastic job in every room, the bedroom was my favorite. Not only did the large windows seem to bring the trees and lake inside, but the stone fireplace at the end of the bed gave the room a feeling of coziness. In the past month I had pictured my first night with Kyle on more than one occasion. We’d light the room with scented candles and build a fire in the fireplace even though it was still the middle of summer. I figured we could open the windows if the room became too hot. In the past I hadn’t given a lot of thought to the question of when to become intimate with the man I was dating, but Kyle was different. He was special. I knew in my heart that my first time with him would be my last first time with anyone, and I wanted it to be memorable. More than memorable, I wanted it to be perfect.

  After I had slipped into my shoes I went downstairs. “I didn’t mean to crash on you,” I said as I walked into the kitchen, where he was working on a laptop.

  “You didn’t sleep long, but I figured you could use a short break. Coffee?”

  “Please.” Kyle handed me a large cup and I took a long sip. “Have you been working the whole time?”

  “I got a few minutes of shut-eye, but yeah, basically.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  Kyle topped off his own coffee and took his seat at the table. “I found quite a lot. Gina not only had a username and password for Cybersecurity on her cheat sheet, but she had them for her email account as well. I was able to access it and found several items of interest.”

  “Such as?” I tucked my legs up under my body and eased back into the comfortable chair.

  Kyle took a sip of his coffee and then answered. “First of all, I was able to confirm that Gina does indeed have a half-brother named Spencer Becker. I found a series of emails between Gina and Spencer going back a couple of weeks. It seems he contacted Gina, introduced himself, and explained that he’d always wanted to get to know the sister he hadn’t seen since she was a toddler. He wondered if he could visit. Gina replied that she was thrilled to finally meet the brother she’d only heard about in passing.”

  “I guess I feel better knowing the man we met was most likely Gina’s brother and really did have permission to be in her house. Still, something seems odd to me.” I ran a finger around the rim of my coffee cup as I considered the situation. While it appeared Spencer was exactly who he said he was, it seemed suspicious that he’d come into Gina’s life after all these years just weeks before she turned up missing. “Do we know what sort of job Spencer has?”

  “According to the emails, he’
s currently unemployed. If I had to guess, the reason he reached out to Gina when he did was because he needed a place to stay. I looked in to his background and didn’t find any red flags, although I wasn’t able to find a photo or current address for him. He doesn’t have a police record and his employment history seemed pretty solid until a few months ago, when the company he was working for went under. I only took a quick peek and will continue to dig if you have a weird vibe about him.”

  “I suppose as long as there are no immediate red flags, we should focus our energy on finding Gina. You said you managed to get into her email account. Were there any that seemed suspect?”

  “Most were work-related. I guess it makes sense that she would prefer to call or text friends. There was a file that I think might explain why Bristow and Gina were together.”

  “Please don’t tell me they were lovers?” I groaned.

  “No. At least I don’t think so based on what I found. It looks like Gina has been working for Bristow.”

  Okay I wasn’t expecting that. “Working for him? Why? In what capacity?”

  “Again, I’m only speculating, but after the blackmail fiasco, he must have realized his project was in real trouble.”

  Striker Bristow had found some dirt on Judge Harper, who was acting mayor before his death, and tried to use a mistake he’d made as a young attorney to get him to change his stance and support his mall project. Judge Harper refused to give in to the pressure, but the fact that Bristow had even attempted to blackmail the acting mayor made him a bad guy in my eyes and, I thought, in everyone else’s as well.

  “So how did Gina get involved?” I asked.

  “It appears Bristow contacted Gina about a month ago and asked her if she’d be willing to sign on with him as a financial consultant. I’m not sure how much of a background she has in finance, but she’s more than competent when it comes to dealing with numbers, so I suppose that makes sense.”

  “She helped him with his new proposal?” I asked.

  “It appears she did. I haven’t had a chance to look at everything, but it appears she helped him cut costs significantly. Bristow used the extra savings to pad his proposal to benefit the town. He not only promised to build a park if his project is approved, but he had plans drawn up to build a new computer lab at the school.”

  “Sounds like a bribe.”

  “Maybe. But in this case the bribe was seen as more of an act of goodwill, where the developer makes an effort to give back to the community he’s planning to move into. I know how you feel about the strip mall and Bristow, but I think he was going to get the votes he needed. The town really would benefit from another park and the school really does need new computers. And the gifts he promised are only the icing. If Bristow hadn’t died and had received the go-ahead to build his mall, it would have done a lot to provide jobs and revitalize the community.”

  I couldn’t help but frown. “Will you think less of me if I’m not as sorry as I should be that a man is dead and the strip mall will probably never happen?”

  Kyle crossed the room and pulled me into his arms. He leaned forward and kissed me gently on the lips. “There’s nothing you can do or say that will make me think less of you.”

  “I’m not sure I deserve that, but thank you.” I took another sip of my coffee. “If Gina was working with Bristow, it makes sense they would spend some time together, but it doesn’t explain how he ended up as a passenger in her car with a gunshot wound to the back.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Kyle said as poured me a second cup of coffee. “There are several scenarios that could fit the facts we have, but the one that seems to fit best is that Gina and Bristow were together, Bristow was shot, and Gina somehow managed to get him into her car and was going for help when something occurred to cause her to change direction. At this point my entire theory is speculation, but given that Gina’s car ended up wrapped around a tree on the side of the road, I suggest whoever shot Bristow followed them, Gina tried to outrun them, she lost control of the car, and they ended up in the forest. She must have tried to flee, even went so far as to get out of the car and head for the cover of the trees, but the person or persons who were after them managed to track her down.”

  It felt like there was a lead weight on my heart. “If all of that is true, it means she’s probably either dead or being held hostage by whoever shot Bristow.” I looked into Kyle’s eyes. “What are we going to do? How are we going to find her?”

  “I’m not sure,” Kyle admitted.

  “Did you find anything else of interest in Gina’s email account? Maybe something that would point to a motive for the whole thing?”

  Kyle nodded. “I found a series of emails between Gina and a man named Carter Kline, but the most interesting thing was a file that’s password protected. While I have no idea what’s in it, it’s the only thing I found with a second layer of security.”

  “Were you able to get in to it?”

  “Not yet. The file is labeled SCABS. Does that mean anything to you?”

  I shook my head. “Scabs? I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll keep working on it. It might help us to narrow things down a bit if we knew when and where Bristow was shot.”

  I placed my hands behind my head, lowering it slightly as I fought the fear and fatigue that threatened to cripple me. It had been hours since the accident. Was it even possible that Gina was still alive?

  “Tj?” Kyle said, concern evident in his voice.

  I lifted my head and looked at him. I tried to smile but I was sure it came out as more of a frown. “Maybe we can find out from Kate when and where Bristow was shot.” I didn’t think for a minute she would talk to me, but I couldn’t help but remember the way she had looked at Kyle. “The more I think about it, however, the less sense this whole thing really makes. It seems to me that if Bristow was shot before entering the car, Gina would have called 911 instead of trying to get him to the hospital on her own.”

  “What if she didn’t feel safe waiting?” Kyle asked. “What if she was at Bristow’s home or office and witnessed the shooting? What if the person who delivered the shot was still in the area, or what if they left but Gina was afraid they were coming back? In that situation, she may have just helped him to her car and headed toward the hospital.”

  I groaned in frustration. “There are too many unknowns for us to ever figure this out.”

  “Unknown to us, but I bet the crime scene guys and the medical examiner have a better handle on the sequence of events.”

  Kyle had a point. “So how do we find out what they know?”

  “Maybe it is time to call Roy,” Kyle mused. “I wasn’t sure we should at first, but things are really complicated. We need someone on the inside who can feed us information.”

  “Okay.” I agreed that calling Roy was a much better option than trying to get information out of Kate. “I’ll call him.”

  As it turned out, Kate had already called Roy, and by the time I spoken to him, he was on his way back to Paradise Lake. He planned to stop by to talk to Kate as soon as he got into town. In the meantime, he told me to wait to hear from him.

  “He wasn’t sure how long he’d be, but he said he was only ten minutes from town, so I guess it depends on how long his conversation with Kate takes. I hate to just wait around while Gina could be in real trouble, but I don’t want to miss him.”

  “Do you want some breakfast?”

  “I’m too upset to eat,” I replied.

  “Maybe, but you’ll need fuel to get through the day.”

  “I guess you’re right, but I’d like to clean up a bit before we do anything else. My hair probably looks like a rat is nesting in it and I never did brush my teeth last night.”

  “Your hair looks great as always and I have extra toothbrushes.”

  I picked up the large bag I’d been toting ar
ound. “I came prepared because I planned to come here with you after the bonfire.”

  Kyle looked more than just a little bit interested. “What else do you have in there?”

  I smiled despite my worry and fatigue. “Help me find Gina and I might show you.”

  I’d put a lot of thought and effort into what was to have been my first night of intimacy with Kyle. I’d shopped for and bought new undergarments as well as a new negligée. I had scented candles and sensual oils, as well as a playlist of relaxing and romantic music on my iPod. It looked like all that preparation would be for naught, but there was no way my mind could focus on romance until I knew Gina was safe.

  After I cleaned up I returned to the kitchen where Kyle was piling food onto plates. I hadn’t thought I was hungry, but once I smelled the bacon he’d fried to perfection, I realized I was ravenous. Once the food was on the table, Kyle sat down across from me.

  “This looks fantastic,” I complimented.

  “Thank you. I do scramble a mean egg.”

  I smiled and took several bites of the delicious food. “Earlier, when we were talking, you mentioned an email chain between Gina and someone named Carter Kline. I’ve thought about it and the name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “From the emails it appears Kline is a former academic associate of Gina’s. The emails indicated to me that she knew him well, so they must also have been friends, but there was a lot of discussion of equations and mathematical applications. The content of the emails was over my head, but if Gina doesn’t turn up, it might be worth our while to contact him to see if he knows what Gina’s plans were. There was an email dated this past Wednesday, so they’ve been in contact recently.”

  “Let’s see if we can find out more about him before we try to get in touch. Right now I’m suspicious of everyone I don’t know personally.”

  “I guess I can understand that.”

  Roy still hadn’t shown up by the time we finished breakfast, so I took the dogs for a quick walk. Kyle had returned to the computer room and was completely engrossed in trying to hack into the password-protected file Gina had saved to Cybersecurity, and I didn’t want him to have to stop what he was doing to see to the dogs. Besides, I was antsy and needed to blow off some steam.