Amanda shut her eyes for an instant. “Thank you for understanding,” she said simply. “My friend Melissa has offered to stay with him whenever I need to leave. And it’s not as if the hospital staff isn’t in constant contact with me. I just feel better when I’m close by. It’s not logical. It’s just being Justin’s mother.”
“I don’t blame you.” Casey pushed back her chair and rose. “You go to your son. I’ll call you as soon as we’re good to go.”
Ryan was leaning over his computer, deep in concentration, when Claire walked in.
“Where is everybody?” she asked.
“Ever hear of knocking?” Ryan’s gaze never left his monitor.
“Why? Is this a private sanctuary?”
“Actually, yeah, it is.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Then put a lock on the door. Or at least keep it shut.” She walked over to Hero, who’d jumped up from his nap the minute she walked in. He gazed at her hopefully, and with good reason. Claire was definitely the soft touch of the team, not only in her handling of the cases, but in her handling of Hero. Her sensitivity went right along with her pale blond hair, light gray eyes and willowy figure-not to mention the ethereal quality that emanated from her.
She didn’t have many buttons that set her off. But Ryan McKay was one of them.
Now Claire’s lips curved as she scratched Hero’s ears. The bloodhound’s gaze was locked on her.
“In my pocket,” she told him, reaching in and pulling out a piece of cheese. She offered it to him. He slurped it up and swallowed it in one bite.
“You’re a doormat,” Ryan noted. “And you’re going to put five pounds on him in less than a year.”
“It’s low-fat cheese. No harm, no foul.” Claire scanned the room, taking in the workout equipment, the vast array of computers, servers and network wires, and the centerpiece of the room: a long line of semicompleted robots-all surrounded by a pile of metal and plastic parts that were just waiting to be used.
“I wouldn’t worry about my touching anything in your precious basement,” she retorted. “I’d trip and kill myself if I tried. Plus, I don’t know what half this stuff is anyway. Especially your toy section. Robots were never my thing.”
“No, you’re more of a tarot card girl.”
Despite her vow to remain impervious to Ryan’s barbs, Claire grimaced. “You’re so narrow-minded, it’s sickening. And FYI, I don’t do tarot cards. Or Ouija boards.”
“Séances?”
“Nope.”
“You’re a boring psychic.”
“And you’re a pain in the ass.”
Ryan spun his chair around, leaned back and folded his arms behind his head. He looked disgustingly amused. “Nice comeback. Cold, too. I’m getting to you.”
Claire shot him a look. “Not a chance in hell.”
“Then why’d you drop by? No one uses the basement but me. The conference room is two flights up.” He pointed at the ceiling.
“I know where it is.” Claire folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m here because I got a call from Casey. She said we’re having a full team meeting. I went straight to the conference room. When no one was up there, I chose the obvious-you. You live in this cave. So, I came down to check and see if you knew anything.”
“Yup. A full team meeting it is. Casey called me, too.” Ryan glanced at his watch. “She’s on her way. So’s Patrick. And Marc’s in the kitchen, brewing a pot of coffee and probably eating my trail mix.”
“Fine. Then I’ll go up and wait.” Claire hesitated. “Did you find anything?”
Ignoring Claire’s question, Ryan leaned forward and pressed the print button on his computer. A handful of pages glided out. He strolled over and picked them up, perusing them as he did. “You’ll know when everyone else does,” he said at last.
Claire didn’t answer. Trying to reason with a preschooler was pointless. She just left the room and shut the door behind her with a firm click.
Ryan glanced up at the closed door, his lips curving into a lazy smile.
All humor was off ten minutes later as the team gathered around the conference room table.
“I met with Amanda Gleason,” Casey began, hands folded in front of her. “Marc was dead-on in his assessment. The woman is desperate. The situation is heartbreaking. Time is of the essence. And we’re going to save this baby at all costs.” She turned to Ryan. “What do you have for us?”
“Let’s start with my facial recognition software. I did a comparison of the guy in Amanda’s photos with the enhanced image of the guy in the cell phone picture. Using elastic bunch graph matching techniques and a cutting-edge sparse representation algorithm, I was able to determine…” Ryan glanced around at the table of blank faces. “Never mind the details. I’m ninety percent sure it’s the same guy.”
“Nice odds,” Marc commented.
“Yup. I’m willing to bet that Paul Everett is alive.”
“A fact that we’re not going to pass on to Amanda Gleason,” Casey informed them. “Not until we’ve ruled out the other ten percent.”
“Agreed.” Ryan nodded. “Moving on, I got in touch with a couple of Paul Everett’s former business associates. Lots of praise. No red flags.”
“So a dead end.”
“Nope. Now comes the interesting part. Marc got me some personal info from Amanda-Everett’s birthday, where he banked, a few key dates like when they first met-that kind of stuff. I did a little bit of strategic guesswork and a lot of poking around. It took me some time, but I managed to hack into the guy’s banking records.”
“And?” Casey perked up. She knew that tone of voice. It meant Ryan was leading up to something big.
“And Paul Everett had some hefty bank balances and some equally hefty withdrawals. The withdrawals followed a pattern. Same amount each time-twenty grand, and same time increments between withdrawals-six weeks. Interesting that this came at the same time that he was fighting for construction permits to upscale his dock operations into a waterfront luxury hotel. With all the amenities he planned and the close proximity to the new Shinnecock gambling casino, this would have been a gold mine.”
“Sounds like our guy was paying someone off to get what he wanted.” Marc stated the obvious.
“Sure does.”
“So he wasn’t so squeaky clean after all,” Patrick stated. After thirty-plus years as an FBI Special Agent, he was a no-bullshit guy who played by the rules-mostly-and called it like it was.
The playing-by-the-rules part was a huge rub at Forensic Instincts. But Patrick was good-very good. And, as he put it, he kept the team as close to “legal” as possible.
Now he pulled over his pad and started scribbling. “We’ve got two main possibilities here. Either Paul Everett was paying someone off like Marc said, or he was being blackmailed by someone who had dirt on him. Either one could get him killed or convince him to disappear.”
“So much for true love conquering all,” Claire murmured.
“Self-preservation trumps true love plus a whole lot more,” Ryan replied tersely. “And murder trumps everything. If I’m wrong-and I’m not-and Paul Everett’s at the bottom of the ocean, he didn’t exactly have a lot of choice about whether or not he hung around for Amanda.”
“I get that.” Claire looked thoughtful. “I wasn’t suggesting that Paul should have-or could have-stuck around. I was just wondering if the relationship between him and Amanda was even real, or if he was just using her as a cover for whatever he was involved in.”
“Good point.” Casey’s eyes narrowed as she scrutinized Claire. “Is that a random question or a feeling?”