A Gift of Thought (23 page)

“His daughter’s disappeared and he’s not worried about it?”

“No. Just angry.”

“That does sound as if he knows more than he’s saying. And might explain why he didn’t want the FBI involved.”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

Sylvie shook her head, then sighed, wishing Lucas were close enough that they could share thoughts. She didn’t want to say what she was thinking out loud, but the pieces weren’t adding up to her. She would have pegged Chesney as the vindictive type. If he thought his ex-wife had kidnapped his daughter, wouldn’t he use every power at his disposal to go after her, including the FBI and the full force of the law?

Instead he let Ty and James go racing off into the night without sharing whatever it was that he suspected.

It didn’t make sense.

“Do you want me to keep searching?”

In the room behind her, Sylvie felt movement: two people coming closer to the door. “I’ve got to go,” she said hurriedly. “Keep me posted.” As the door opened, she was slipping her phone back into her purse.

Without even a glance in her direction, Chesney stalked past her, followed by another man. Automatically, Sylvie fell into step behind them, wondering where they were headed. She’d expected Chesney to socialize with the peons eventually, but that was before Rachel disappeared. Could he really be intending to shake hands and bestow jovial holiday wishes on the employees as if nothing was happening?

He headed straight for the elevator, however, and it wasn’t until Sylvie followed him inside that he seemed to notice her presence.

“I won’t be needing your company, Ms. Blair,” he said, voice brusque.

“Sir?” She let her confusion show.

“Is there something wrong with your hearing? Your services are not required for the remainder of this evening,” he said with a snap in his voice.

Sylvie glanced at the other man with them. He was tall, solidly built, but middle-aged and with a bit of a paunch. If he’d been military, he hadn’t stayed in shape. He definitely wasn’t a bodyguard.

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to disregard my orders, sir.” Sylvie tried to keep her voice smooth but her mind raced with speculation. What the hell was Chesney up to?

“I’m your employer. I give the orders.” His snap had upgraded to a growl.

“Of course, sir,” Sylvie acknowledged gracefully. “Under the circumstances, however, I have no way to ascertain whether those orders are being given under duress. Should you depart the premises without your personal security, I’ll have no recourse but to immediately contact the authorities and inform them of your daughter’s disappearance and your own unusual behavior.”

Chesney stared at her. He kept his expression as blank as hers, but she could feel his fury. She felt a laugh rising—was it hysteria?—and firmly suppressed it.

“How exactly do you think you’ll be able to protect me, Ms. Blair? Are you even armed?” The scornful up-and-down glance would have annoyed Sylvie from a stranger. From Chesney, it enraged her and stilled the laugh that she’d been fighting.

“I was off-duty, sir.” She avoided the question. “I can, however, serve as a liaison between you and the team searching for your daughter.”

“And how will they know you aren’t under duress?” He put mocking air quotes around the phrase.

“We have protocols for that, sir.” Sylvie met his gaze, her own firm. She didn’t know what was going on, but if Chesney thought he could find Rachel, she was accompanying him no matter how he felt about it.

If looks could kill, she’d be drawn and quartered and burned at the stake.

The elevator reached the ground floor and the doors slid open. For a moment, no one moved. The stranger looked uncomfortable, but kept silent.

“All right, if you feel you must.” Chesney finally grudgingly acquiesced. He led the way out of the elevator.

“I’ll get my car and bring it around to the front,” said the other man.

“Fine, fine,” Chesney waved him off. Sylvie followed him without saying anything more as he went to collect his coat from the coat check. She’d won. She should be content with that. Instead, she desperately wanted to ask questions.

Lucas stood by the security desk, talking to the guard who sat at the counter. Sylvie felt a wave of relief when she saw him. He turned at the brush of her mind against his.

‘What’s going on?’
he thought to her.

‘Fuck if I know.’
Her return thought was fervent.
‘Chesney’s going somewhere. Without calling Ty. Without security. Usually, the man doesn’t move without two guards half a foot away.’
Sylvie scanned the room, searching for threats, using all her senses to assess the risks but finding nothing.

‘He must know something.’

‘Yeah. But I don’t feel good about this. Can you follow us?’

‘Not unless you can delay. My car’s still at the hospital.’

‘Damn.’
She should have known that. She did know that. She just hadn’t wanted that answer.

‘Slow him down,’
Lucas suggested.
‘I can get someone here in twenty minutes.’

Sylvie didn’t shake her head, but she knew Lucas could feel the negative. ‘
He doesn’t want me to come to begin with. If I delay he’ll leave me behind.’

‘Let him.’
The thought was close to an order. Sylvie might have bristled but under the command lay concern and she was worried, too.

‘Can’t,’
she replied briefly as she followed Chesney to the door and stepped outside.
‘Finish searching the building. If I’m gone too long, get Zane. Find me.’

As soon as Sylvie was safely seated in the back seat of the car next to Chesney, she pulled out her phone and called Ty. She knew exactly how he was going to react to Chesney’s departure from the AlecCorp building. Within the first thirty seconds of the call, she was handing the phone to Chesney, saying calmly, “He’d like to speak to you, sir.”

She gazed out the window at the well-lit streets of Washington, trying to pretend she couldn’t hear every word Chesney said as he argued with Ty.

“You don’t need to know where I’m going.” Chesney’s anger was an almost palpable third presence in the back seat. “I don’t give a damn what you think, Mr. Barton. You’ve lost my daughter. I want her found.”

Ty’s response was indistinct, but Sylvie had to press her lips together to stop her own grim retort. If Chesney wanted Rachel found, why was he making life difficult for them? Why this distracting road trip? And why not call the damn FBI? They needed more resources than half a dozen private security consultants chasing after a GPS.

“Yes, of course this excursion is related, but you don’t need the details. Suffice to say that I know my enemies.”

Sylvie had no idea what that might mean.

Enemies? Would he consider Rachel’s mother an enemy? That seemed a harsh description for the woman she’d met in the art gallery. Victim felt more appropriate somehow.

But who else could he be referring to?

A drug cartel? Not a chance, Sylvie thought. The cartels might control Mexico, but kidnapping a teenager from a closed party in a secure facility in Washington? No way.

At least not without inside help.

Then could it be a corporate enemy? Sylvie had a low opinion of AlecCorp, but the idea of infighting among the executives leading them to kidnap their co-worker’s children was insane. No, Chesney’s actions made no sense.

“No, I don’t need more guards. I want every person you have here in Washington, searching for my daughter.”

That was the first reasonable statement Chesney had made. For a moment, Sylvie had a spark of sympathy for Chesney. He was putting Rachel’s safety ahead of his own.

“Ms. Blair has insisted on accompanying me. Contact her when you know something,” Chesney finished brusquely, pressing the disconnect button before handing the phone back to her.

Sylvie took it, not letting her annoyance show. She would have liked a slightly longer conversation with Ty herself. But the phone rang almost immediately and she answered.

“Do you have any idea what the hell he’s doing?” Ty demanded.

“No.”

“What the hell is he thinking?”

Ty’s question was rhetorical but Sylvie almost opened her mouth to provide a flippant response before she thought better of it. If only she could have smuggled Lucas into the car. Under the circumstances, being able to read Chesney’s mind would have been damn useful. “No idea.”

“All right.” Ty sighed and she could hear the worry. “We’re still chasing down Rachel’s GPS, but I’m not feeling good about it. It’s looping around like whoever has it is going in circles.”

Sylvie didn’t respond immediately. If her first suspicions were correct and Rachel had gone willingly—or mostly willingly—then the GPS almost had to be a ruse. Rachel understood how the tracker worked. She could easily have disabled it if she wanted to. But they had to follow the lead and at least confirm that their fail-safe had failed. “What about her cell phone?”

“No,” Chesney snapped. She glanced at him as he continued. “No one learns about this. Do not communicate with the cell phone company.”

GPS tracking wasn’t enabled on their phones. Too easy to hack, Chesney’d said, and Ty had agreed. Making your location continually visible to anyone with sufficient computer skills was poor security. The only way they could track Rachel’s phone was with the service provider’s assistance.

“Did you hear that?” Sylvie said to Ty, making an effort to keep her voice even.

“Yeah.” The short answer held depths of frustration.

“Anything else?” Sylvie asked Ty.

“Take good care of Mr. Chesney,” he ordered.

“You got it,” Sylvie replied, disconnecting. She slid her phone back into her purse and set it on her lap. They were crossing the Frederick Douglass Bridge, she realized, so wherever Chesney was headed, it wasn’t home or in Washington. As they sat in silence on the parkway, then headed south on Branch Avenue, Sylvie speculated. What did Chesney know? Could he have already received a ransom demand?

“Do you speak Spanish, Ms. Blair?” Chesney’s words broke the heavy silence.

Sylvie considered her answer. She’d annoyed Chesney by insisting on joining him. His hostility toward her might get in the way of doing her job. Maybe she should make an effort to placate him. “I took it in the 9
^th
grade,” she said with a smile, trying to turn on the charm. “Senora Ramirez’s class. But grammar got the better of me and I didn’t pass.”

He accepted her response with a grunt and leaned back into the seat.

“Do I need it?” she dared to ask.

“No.” His abrupt response was a clear dismissal.

Sylvie didn’t push. She looked out the window at the tree-lined roadway and tried to remember what was down this road. Andrews Air Force Base. But why would Chesney be headed there? Did he think Rachel’s disappearance had something to do with AlecCorp’s involvement in Iraq?

She glanced down at her hands, clenched on her bag, and with an effort, she relaxed her white-knuckled grasp. Maybe it was the reminder of Iraq, but she felt as if she were back on convoy duty: not sure when an attack would come or who the enemy might be.

But they drove past Andrews with only a slight delay from traffic congestion. Sylvie tried to relax but she still felt tense and watchful as they finally pulled off the road, turning into a short driveway. The driver—whose name she still didn’t know—got out and opened a chain link gate, and then came back and pulled the car into a parking place.

“The lobby closes at five,” he reported. “Do you want to wait in the car while I get the plane ready?”

Plane?

Chesney glanced at Sylvie. “Might as well. Ms. Blair’s not dressed for the weather.”

Sylvie looked down at her dress, with its black leather bodice and layers of black chiffon. “Sir, if you’re intending a trip, I could call for back-up. We can get someone else here within the hour.”

“I intend to be on a plane within the hour, Ms. Blair. Relax, you’ll be warm enough at our destination.”

Warm enough, maybe, but she was also going to be ridiculously over-dressed. She tried to keep her annoyance contained as she asked, “Where are we headed?”

“Florida.”

Chapter Thirteen

Dillon spent a miserable night pacing the corridors of the train, which had finally started moving again.

When he stood still for long enough, tiny crystals of frost formed on the windows from all the energy he was stealing from the atmosphere because of his anxiety and stress.

Akira perceived ghosts who were beginning to overload with energy as having flickering pink edges. Like red auras, he’d once asked her, and she’d agreed that it was something like that. He couldn’t see it himself but he suspected that if Akira were here, she’d tell him that he’d started to flicker and to cut it out.

He knew he could make it stop if he could calm down and quit worrying. But his thoughts were on a relentless track of circular paranoia. What if Lydia was dead? What if the train was delayed? What if Rachel missed her bus? What if the next bus wasn’t until the next day? Where would Rachel spend the night? What if she got caught? Worse, what if she really got kidnapped? Even worse, what if she ran into a serial killer like Sylvie had?

He’d hit that point of the circle and tell himself that he was being ridiculous and stupid and he needed to quit worrying about things that he couldn’t control. And then he’d remember that as a ghost he couldn’t control much of anything, and he’d start worrying again.

But if he didn’t calm down, he might be in big trouble.

Flickering was dangerous.

A ghost who took in too much energy could become what Akira called a vortex ghost. That had happened to his gran. When she’d died from a stroke, just three days after his deadly overdose, her despair and grief had left her trapped in a nether state, lost in some sort of energy sea. Desperately seeking a way out and unaware of the physical world, she became deadly to humans who were sensitive to the energy, such as Akira, and to ghosts. Dillon had been lucky his gran hadn’t inadvertently destroyed him.