Hired right out of Harvard Law School and moving quickly along the fast track, Leo Bolender was a newly made partner, working in the real estate group.
"I don't know where he is. But why don't you put her through to me?"
Cathy had only met Kimberly Cage a couple of times, at office parties. She worked in sales… some kind of rep. Cathy couldn't exactly remember. She seemed like a nice enough person, and very pretty. The two of them looked really cute together.
"Good morning, Kimberly."
"Cathy! Thank you for taking my call," the young woman said, sounding agitated. "By any chance, have you seen Leo this morning?"
Cathy glanced toward the young man's office. "Well, I know he's here. I can see his briefcase and suit jacket. And this morning when I came in, his office light was on. I haven't seen him personally, though."
"Oh, thank God," the young woman blurted, clearly relieved. "I've been so worried about him "
"Worried?"
"I'm in Seattle this week. But last night I couldn't get him at home. And I tried his cell, too, but he didn't answer it. I left half a dozen messages on his office line, too. I know he's been busy with the Dubai resort negotiations…."
Cathy put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered thank you to one of the secretaries for bringing her a cup of coffee.
"And when I talked to him yesterday morning," Kim continued, "he said he wasn't feeling well at all. He was wondering if he should switch medicines."
Cathy logged on to her computer and checked Leo's appointment schedule. As the office manager, she had access to all the partners' appointment calendars, just as her phone could check their voice mail and pick up their lines.
"These young bucks just don't know how to take care of their health, do they?" she said brightly.
"I told him he should take the time and see a doctor. Do you know if he went yesterday? He's been fighting whatever it is he's got for two weeks now."
Leo's first meeting of the day wasn't until eleven. She noticed that there were eight messages left on his phone line. He had to be around.
"I don't think so, hon. But I told him the same thing. He was coughing and hacking all over us yesterday."
Cathy returned the wave of one of the summer interns as he passed by her desk. She watched the young man go down the hall toward the restroom. Dardo Saldano was going to be a senior at Georgetown this year. This was his second summer of working at their office, and Cathy really liked the young man.
"Well, I'm not waiting for him anymore. I don't want him to go through the entire weekend feeling miserable," Kimberly said. "Will you please tell him that I've made an appointment with—"
Someone was shouting.
"Hold on a sec, would you?" Cathy took the phone away from her ear and stood up. Everyone else in their section of the office was looking in the same direction.
The bathroom door banged open.
"Call 911!" the intern called out, staggering out of the bathroom.
He was as white as the tiled ceiling.
"Call 911," he croaked again before bending over and throwing up into one of the office plants.
Cathy dropped the phone and ran toward Dardo.
"Do it," she shouted to one of the other assistants who was staring in disbelief a couple of steps away from the sick young man.
She crouched next to Dardo. He was gasping for air, crying at the same time.
"Get me some towels," she ordered a young lawyer who'd just arrived. She was standing with her briefcase in hand, watching.
"Towels?"
"In the bathroom," Cathy said. "There's a supply closet in there."
"No!" Dardo shook his head. "Don't go in there."
It was too late. The young woman had opened the door. "Oh, my God! What's that smell?"
When the young lawyer started screaming, she was loud enough to let everyone from here to the Capitol Building know the problem wasn't with the sick intern at their feet. Something else was lying on the floor in that bathroom.
Chapter Nineteen
She was standing there one minute and the next she was gone. Austyn shouted for Ken over his shoulder and pushed his way through the passing wedding celebration. When he reached the sidewalk, a sea of angry faces greeted him every way that he looked.
He didn't care. He couldn't see her. He strode to the place where he'd seen the dervish sitting, but he was gone, too.
Ken reached him. "Where is she?"
"Gone," he said angrily over the music and cheering of the wedding procession, which had stopped and formed a circle in the street.
He grabbed a wooden box from a stack next to a fruit stall and climbed on it. He scanned the crowd. Still, he could see no sign of her.
"I'll go talk to those Peshmerga," Ken told him.
Austyn saw the three uniformed Kurdish soldiers standing by the curb, enjoying the festivities. Based on what he'd heard so far, he doubted they would help a foreigner at the expense of a Kurd — no matter what the reason was. They took care of their own people and their own problems.
Inside, he was kicking himself. He had somehow gotten to the point with Fahimah that he actually couldn't believe that she would do this to him… that she would just walk away. Like a moron, he thought they'd formed a working relationship, at least. They had an agreement. He'd believed her when she said she was going to help them.
Austyn thought about the five years that she'd been held in their prisons. What kind of grudge would he carry after being treated like that? What a fool he was!
"Fahimah!" he shouted out, knowing there was no purpose to it. He wouldn't answer if their places were reversed.
A few people in the crowd near him turned around and gave him a side look. They soon went back to watching the wedding celebrations.
Ken was walking away from the soldiers. Austyn saw the soldiers' attention turn to the dancers again.
"Anything?" he asked as he stepped down from the box.
Ken shook his head. 'That was a waste of breath. They haven't seen her. They don't have time to look for her. And they didn't know what I was talking about as far as Jalal goes. There's no such person, so naturally they couldn't know where he lives."
Austyn kept looking beyond the crowds as he talked. "We can spread out and check the side streets. Also, I need you to get hold of Matt. I want him and the rest of our men down here. Can we get help from your base?"
"I'll call them," Ken suggested. "But it will take time to round them up and get them down here. As I told you before, we have only a skeleton crew stationed in Erbil."
"I'll take whatever I can get."
"You know, maybe you should give her a little time. She might come back on her own. Fahimah did tell us that she wouldn't be able to get any answers if we were hovering over her shoulder."
"I'm not willing to risk that," Austyn told the other man. "She might have been abducted."
Ken shook his head doubtfully. "I know that's an everyday occurrence south of here, but you just don't hear it happening in Erbil."
Austyn disagreed. "If this is all connected to Al Qaeda, if the sister is behind the attacks, then the word could be out that Fahimah is here and that she could ruin everything. And even if Rahaf is not involved, she could hold the key to the remedy. If that's the case, then it doesn't matter which sister they get hold of. They'll know grabbing Fahimah is one way to stop any cooperation with us."
Suddenly, Ken seemed a lot more motivated in getting to a phone.
Austyn wanted to think of Fahimah as walking away of her own free will. He didn't want to think her life was in danger. It was so much easier to be angry at her than to think that he hadn't done a good enough job protecting her.