Be on the Lookout (13 page)

Slipping into the flats she'd taken off in the living room, Kate padded to Jake's bedroom. To her surprise he still wasn't in the apartment, but then again, she knew that cases could often keep an agent away from home for days at a time. The larger room had a bed, desk and three waist-high filing cabinets. All with locks. Kate went to the one she'd jimmied open the night before—right before Jonathan had called her to dinner, noting she looked suspicious—and pulled it open. Jake had an office at the Bureau as well as one within Greg's lab. In both he had files and places to keep them safe. However, just as Jake had learned to become neat, he'd learned the importance of hard copies and backups. The filing cabinet she'd opened had information on dates and events that seemed to be tied to his job as Greg's handler. Most seemed to be written with code names, and as far as she could tell, there was no mention of the drug.

However, she had seen something the night before that was bothering her now. She shuffled through the files, trying to spark whatever trail she'd dismissed already. Minutes rolled by as she thumbed through and pulled out several different files.

What had she seen?

Frustrated, she turned and perched against the cabinet, trying to remember. Her eyes roamed the room around her as her mind went blank. She took in Jake's sparse bedroom decor—some knickknacks he'd saved through the years, pictures of trips he'd taken and memorabilia he'd collected and been given—when suddenly she knew exactly what it was she was looking for.

The theory that she had unconsciously formed even before waking became less of a
what if
and more of a terrifying possibility. With her stomach having dropped somewhere past her feet, she walked to one picture sitting on Jake's desk. Her hands trembled as she picked it up.

There it was.

It all made sense now.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She had been so focused on the picture that the motion startled her. She dropped the frame and winced as the glass cracked on impact.

Then she realized that was the least of her worries.

She fumbled for her phone and read Jake's ID flashing across the screen. Her stomach twisted.

“Jake,” she started. But the man who responded definitely wasn't the boy she'd grown up with.

“No, but you can save him.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Jonathan rolled onto his side, throwing his arm out so he wouldn't hit Kate. With his eyes still closed, he lowered it to the bed, careful he didn't hurt her.

But there was no Kate beneath it.

Jonathan opened one eye, took in the light from the window and looked at the empty spot next to him with a split feeling of warmth and coldness. Seeing where the scientist had been reminded him of what they had done, bringing a sense of unfamiliar happiness over him. At the same time, the empty spot highlighted the one fact that bodyguards needed to know at all times about their clients.

Where they were.

He swam his way out of the sheets and stopped when something fell to the floor. Confused, he bent over and picked up the book.

“Kate?” he called out into the apartment, pulling on his pants as he realized what he was holding. He opened the bedroom door and saw an empty kitchen and living space. Turning, he scanned the bathroom and found it, too, was empty. Cursing beneath his breath, he went for Jake's room.

Empty.

“Kate?” he called again, even though it was obvious she wasn't in the apartment. He ran to the front door, expecting there to be signs of a break-in. But there wasn't. Everything looked like it had after he'd locked them in the night before. The door's dead bolt was still thrown. Jonathan checked the windows next, but they, too, were locked.

“What's going on?” he asked the empty apartment.

Jonathan retrieved his phone and found no new calls or messages. He dialed Kate's number. It went straight to voice mail. The lack of ringing created an instant feeling of fear laced with panic. He looked down at the black book in his hand. Kate had left her notebook for him, he was sure, but why? And where was Jake? Had they gone somewhere together or had the agent not come home at all? He opened the notebook to the first page, hoping she'd left him some kind of clue.

He was disappointed. Kate's past five years of work were between his hands. Entrusted to him, but why?

Jonathan quickly dressed and decided to search the apartment for clues once more. All of Kate's things were still in the bedroom, but he noticed her toiletries had made it to the bathroom. There was also a wet towel. She'd showered. He moved on to the kitchen and living area, but nothing seemed to have changed from the night before. Lastly, he hit Jake's room, the least likely to hold any clue as to where the woman had gone, seemingly of her own accord.

Or was it?

One of the three filing cabinets beneath the window had a drawer pulled out. Even from the doorway he could see the lock had been broken. Jonathan walked over to inspect it when he noticed most of the papers were disheveled, like they'd been taken out one by one before being crammed back inside.
This
was what Kate had been up to before dinner.

Jonathan began to go through a few of the papers, trying to discern what Kate had been after, but without knowing Jake or Greg—whom the files mostly seemed to be about—he couldn't glean whatever Kate had. He slammed the drawer shut and was turning to leave when he spotted a picture lying upside down on the floor near the desk. Without much thought other than to put it back, he picked it up. Broken pieces of glass remained on the carpet. Curiosity piqued, he looked at the picture inside.

It wasn't a picture at all.

It was a letter.

A different kind of coldness came back.

Jonathan reached for his phone and scrolled through his pictures, stopping on the bloody letter left on Kate's hotel door. By the time he'd taken the picture, the words had been smeared by the blood. He opened his email and found Kate's Orion file. He pulled up the photocopies of every letter she'd received before she'd left Florida and scrolled through each. Halfway through he stopped. He didn't need to look any further to know the handwriting was a perfect match with the framed note in his hand.

“How could we have missed this?”

Anger seared through him as he quickly recalled the last three days with his new revelation. The one, he had no doubt, Kate had come to when she'd seen the note. How she must have felt, how she must have reacted, tore at a part of him he didn't even realize had been reserved just for thoughts of her. He put the frame down and was about to dial his boss's number. It was past time to loop her in. He needed help. However, his phone came to life instead. The number was unknown but he answered, cautious.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Carmichael?” Even though the man's voice was lowered, Jonathan was able to pick out who it belonged to easily enough.

“Jett?”

“Yeah, it's me. I thought you should know that man is back.”

“Back? In the hotel?”

“I may have kept your and Miss Spears's reservations open in the computers,” Jett quickly said. “I thought that it might help to keep you two hidden if they thought you were still here.”

Jonathan could have kicked himself for not thinking of that before, just as he could have given the front desk attendant a huge bear hug right about then. This was exactly the break he needed.

“Jett, I need you to do me a huge favor,” Jonathan said, already running into the living area to grab his keys. “Kate's gone and right now that man is the only lead I have to finding her. I need you to follow him, but don't say anything to him, and tell me where he's going. Can you do that?”

Jonathan shut the door behind him, not caring that he no longer had a way to get back inside. Kate had a key, and when he had Kate back it would all be okay.

“Jett?” he prodded after hesitation on the other end of the line continued.

“Yes, I can. I'll call you from the car.”

* * *

K
ATE
LOOKED
OUT
the window and down into the construction. The building next door was a few stories shorter and currently being built to match the one she was standing in. Though at a much slower pace.

“Progress isn't always as fast as we'd like it to be.”

Kate turned in her leather chair and eyed the man who had been pulling the strings all along. A part of Kate withered at the sight of him. The other part flourished in anger.

“It all makes sense now,” she said. “I guess the analytical part of me should be happy about that, at least.” Kate laughed, a dry, quick sound. “From knowing what hotel I was staying at to knowing my plans while in New York.” She laughed again, still as bitter as dark chocolate. “You knew everything, because we disclosed the information to you willingly.”

Greg stood at the head of the table but didn't sit down. He wore a dark brown suit with a spotted blue tie she'd actually bought him for his birthday a few years back. A bandage covered his right brow while cuts and swelling could be seen across the same side. He placed his hands on the top of the chair and squeezed the leather. He wasn't smiling, but he sure wasn't frowning, either. Either expression would have incited more anger on her part, but the blank look he was giving her was almost too much to bear. She fought the urge to look down at her hands.

“But how far down does the rabbit hole go, Greg? When did you become
this
? I don't even know how to describe you.” Kate felt her eyes begin to water. She hoped she could keep it together long enough to at least understand
something
. “Why have you been terrorizing me—trying to kill me?” Her voice broke on the question and then nearly shattered on the next. “And where is Jake?”

Greg flexed his grip on the chair as if the motions helped him sort his thoughts. But Kate knew the man well enough—or at least she thought she had—to know it was a show. If Greg really had planned everything that happened so far, then he knew every reason why he'd done it without pausing.

“Do you remember when we first met, Kate? I believe you were eight. I asked you what you wanted to be when you were all grown up. Do you remember what you told me?”

Despite her desire to not play his game—whatever it was—Kate nodded.

“A dancer,” she said.

Greg snapped his fingers.

“A dancer,” he repeated. “Now, I have nothing against the performing arts or those who seek careers in its purview, but when I looked at you, saw how your mind worked, saw you talk and react to the world around you, I saw exactly what your mother did. I saw untapped potential coupled with an unquenchable curiosity. You didn't just question how the world worked, you tried to understand it. Seeing that raw innocence created within me a feeling of hope for the future so profound that I told you something I'd never told any other soul. Do you remember what that was?”

This time Kate didn't nod. She didn't have to sit there and tell him she remembered anything. They both knew she had never forgotten the words of a man her mother had once proclaimed was the smartest man she knew. Still, Greg waited a moment before continuing. He smiled as the words left his mouth.

“I told you that you were going to change the world.” He let go of the chair top and clapped. “And by God, when you told me you'd had a breakthrough in your research, you proved that I was absolutely right!” His excitement began to ebb away, his smile falling slowly. He put his hands on the top of the chair again. Suddenly he looked tired. “I was so proud of you that, at first, I didn't realize what it meant. You, not even thirty, had found answers I hadn't yet been able to obtain despite my vast resources. In fact, your surprising achievements began to highlight my lack of them, showing my superiors that while I had the full force of the FBI behind me, all you had were two part-time lab techs who did menial work on something they had no idea was so important.” One of his hands fisted. There was no trace of emotion besides a deep weariness that projected through the slight sagging of his face.

“Talk began to circulate about your achievement, about your work ethic, about your
potential
. For a while they praised me for finding you—for believing in you enough to challenge the Bureau to wait you out, to let you try to work out the solutions and not simply take them from you. That is, until their praise turned to anything but. Maybe I'd convinced them to wait for you because I didn't know how to do it myself. Maybe I had worked
so hard
to keep you associated with the project, without your knowledge, because I knew you wouldn't ask me to leave when
you
finally came on and took over. Maybe I was getting too old and a newer, brighter, younger face was needed.” Kate watched as his expression burned white-hot with a flash of anger. It went out as fast as it had ignited. The extreme change in emotion seemed to leave him speechless for a moment. Kate capitalized on it.

“If I was out of the way, then you'd be able to keep your position, your lab and your reputation,” she guessed. Even as he nodded, the child that had grown up looking to Greg as her role model tried to reason the admission away. He hadn't done anything. He couldn't have done anything. He was Greg.

But as his chin dipped down and then back up, the grown-up within Kate felt sick.

“I tried to warn you at first,” he said. “And then scare you away.”

“The notes,” she said. It was the connection she'd made in Jake's room once she saw the handwritten letter Jake had received and framed when he graduated from the academy. It was handwriting she'd seen all her life and yet never thought about when staring at the same writing on the letters she'd received.

“I wanted to scare you away, make you realize that the spotlight should be put on someone more experienced.”

“Like you.”

“Yes, like me.”

“But I didn't scare, did I?” she asked.

Greg's expression cracked again, showing another glimpse of anger she'd never seen from the man before.

“No, you didn't. Not even when a note found its way to your hotel-room door with real blood. You didn't even mention it to me the next day. So I had to escalate.”

Kate didn't know what to do or say. The world she was currently sitting in didn't make sense. It was like she was back in her dream world. But this time Jonathan wasn't there to save her.

“You got that woman to try to run me over on the street,” she breathed. “To just mow me down right in front of you. It was never about getting the case. It was about killing me.”

“They don't call it an escalation for nothing,” he said, almost teasing.

“But you were almost killed, too.”

“That was truly an accident. One variable I didn't count on when we planned it was that Candice was harboring some fierce anger due to Donnie's impromptu knife show when he cut her arm to supply the blood found on the letter on your door.” He dragged his finger up the inside of one of his arms. Finally she made the connection with the woman and the bandage. “I guess good help is hard to find sometimes, even from professionals. Her stress caused sloppiness that ended up working well for me in the end. Who would suspect me when I was so clearly a victim? Thankfully, I look much worse than I feel, and, luckily, not only did I have a backup plan, but Donnie was quick to employ it using a contact of his.” The paramedic. He had been the backup plan. “But it still didn't work. No, there was another variable I hadn't accounted for.”

“Jonathan.” Just saying his name made a darkening world momentarily seem to lighten.

“I never thought you'd accept the help of a bodyguard, to be honest. Especially not one who would go above and beyond the scope of his job.” He shook his head as if he was scolding her. “Breaking into the lab with Jake to save you was a big risk for him to take for someone he barely knew. Who really could have foreseen that happening?” He shook his head. “And just think, if Jonathan hadn't listened to you and saved you then, none of us would be in this situation we are in now.”

Kate twisted her hands together in her lap.