Bounty Hunter Ransom

The door opened immediately and Beau went inside. An interminable amount of time seemed to pass, though realistically it was probably only a minute or two. Then he emerged holding a screaming child. He gave a signal to Lori.

“Come on, that’s our cue.”

Without knowing what she was doing, Aubrey jumped in the Mustang along with Lori, who cranked it up, put it in gear, and skidded around the corner. Beau met the car, opened Aubrey’s door and handed the kid to her. “Get out of here.”

Lori hit the gas.

The child screamed despite Aubrey’s attempts to comfort him. “Is this legal?” she asked Lori. “Just snatching a kid away from his mother?”

“She kidnapped him first.”

“But…she’s his mother.”

“She’s a prostitute, and a junkie. We didn’t take her kid away, the courts did. We’re just enforcing what the court ordered.”

Aubrey wasn’t sure she liked it. That woman could have been Patti. Beau’s career choice seemed morally ambiguous at best. But then, that was her whole objection to how Beau earned a living. He followed the cash—even if that meant betraying his best friend.

Chapter Four

Beau wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing by taking Aubrey with him to extract Christopher Langford from the house. But he’d needed to act quickly. If he’d waited even a few hours, Shelley might have gotten spooked and skipped out with the kid. And he couldn’t think of any place to leave Aubrey where he knew she’d be safe.

He wasn’t sure when he’d decided that protecting her was his job. All he knew was that if something happened to her, he would feel directly responsible.

She might not know it, but he was on the job, whether or not she wanted to pay him. After what he’d done to Gavin, he figured he owed her and her family. The Schuylers and Clarendons had been the prevailing influence on his youth. Lord knew his own family hadn’t done much for him. His mother had died when he was three and his father had spent the next fifteen years drinking himself into a premature grave.

Lori offered to take over little Christopher, return him to his father and collect the reward on Beau’s behalf, and he was happy to let her. Ace was paying her a small salary to handle bureaucratic details, something all of the First Strike agents appreciated. But once Lori was earning enough of her own fees to make a living, they’d all have to do their own grunt work.

“That was…intense,” Aubrey commented once they were alone again. It was getting close to five o’clock, and they sat in his car at a Sonic Drive-In. “I can’t believe we’re just sitting here, drinking root beer. You seem so casual about it.”

“It’s my job. And that was an easy extraction. Shelley and her aunt took one look at me and crumbled. No guns, no chasing.”

“Will Shelley get in trouble?”

Beau shrugged. “Not my problem. If my client wants to press charges, that’s his business. Hey, it’s almost five o’clock,” he said, changing the subject. “Did you say Patti had a job?”

“She works for an insurance agent, answering the phone.” Aubrey was glad to refocus her energies on her own problems.

“Why don’t we pay this agent a visit? We can probably catch him before he goes home for the day. He might be able to tell us if Patti’s had any strange visitors at work, or phone calls. She might have even confided the problem to him, asked him to advance her salary or something.”

“It’s worth a shot, though I doubt she would confide anything in him. She thinks he’s a jerk.”

They arrived at the Greg Holmes Insurance Agency at five minutes to five. It was a small, one-agent operation, affiliated with one of the less prestigious national firms. The office was a bit run-down, but Beau couldn’t exactly criticize the man for his decorating taste, given where he worked.

A plump young woman with a discreet tattoo on her wrist looked as if she were about to leave. She stood behind her desk, putting a yellow camp shirt on over her sleeveless blouse. Her skirt was a bit too short for office wear. In fact, with her brassy bleach job and eye makeup à la Tammy Faye, she could have hung out with Jodie and Erin and looked right at home.

“Can I help you?” she asked, not particularly friendly.

“I’m a friend of Patti Clarendon,” Beau said.

“She’s not here. She lit out of here this morning, no explanation, stuck me with answering the phone when I could be out making calls. Hey, are you cops or something?”

“I’m Patti’s cousin,” Aubrey said. “We’re roommates. I’m a little bit worried about her.”

Beau silently applauded her. She seemed to know just the right tone to strike with this slightly hostile young woman.

“You’re Summer, right?” Aubrey continued. “Patti talks about you all the time. She says you’re really good at handling people when they come in all upset.”

That earned a slight smile from Summer. “People get real wacko sometimes. Usually it’s because they’re embarrassed they’ve wrecked their car.”

Beau found a chair and picked up a magazine. Aubrey was handling Summer just fine. He’d let her keep going.

“When Patti left this morning, she didn’t give you any indication of what was wrong?”

“She got a phone call. She’s not supposed to take personal calls, but she’s got that phone glued to her ear all day. Anyway, after this call, she said she had to go and she’d be gone the rest of the day. Oh, wait, I remember now. She said something about her kid being sick or something, and she had to pick her up from the baby-sitter.”

“I thought you said she didn’t give an explanation,” Beau couldn’t help asking.

“I forgot, okay? I got better things to do than keep track of Patti’s soap-opera life.”

“Why do you think her life’s a soap opera?” Aubrey asked.

“What, are you kidding? You live with her. She’s got that gross-out ex-husband, Charlie—I think he’s a serial killer in training—and she works in a topless bar and she bangs her boss.” Summer covered her mouth. “Oops, I’m not supposed to know that. But if that isn’t a soap opera, what is?”

Beau tensed as Aubrey’s eyes got bigger with every word Summer spoke. Come on, babe, don’t blow it now. Summer was spilling her guts to a perfect stranger. Aubrey really did have a knack for this. But she was going to blow it if she freaked out now.

To her credit, Aubrey managed a smile. “I guess my cousin is a bit colorful. But she’s not as tough as she pretends. She’s in trouble, but I don’t want to call the cops if I don’t have to.”

At the mention of cops, Summer’s expression closed up. “Hey, I don’t know anything. But you might ask Greg. He knows Patti better than I do. Way better, if you catch my meaning.”

The girl was as subtle as an army boot.

“I gotta go. Greg’s in his office,” she said, nodding to a closed door. “He’s got a client with him, and he doesn’t like to be interrupted. But he has to come out eventually.”

Without any further ado, Summer pulled her purse out of a drawer and left.

Aubrey sank into the only other chair in the waiting room. “She was sleeping with her boss?” she said in a low voice, sounding appalled.

“I take it you didn’t know that.”

“Surely Patti would have told me if she had a new boyfriend. Anyway, she thinks Greg is a jerk. And what was that garbage about a topless bar?”

“Some of the waitresses at Kink go topless. Or almost.”

“But she doesn’t work there anymore.”

“Does she spend all her evenings at home?”

Aubrey said nothing for a few moments. “I wonder what else she hasn’t told me.”

Beau stood up and moved behind the desk Summer had just abandoned. “I’m gonna see if Patti left anything helpful in her desk. This is where she usually works, right?”

“Beau!” Aubrey sounded panicky. “You can’t just search her desk. What if Greg Holmes comes out here and catches you?”

Beau already had the desk drawer open. “He’ll yell. Big deal.”

The desk drawer held the usual office supplies—pens and pencils, stamps, rubber bands, paper clips. There were a couple of snapshots of a baby, which Beau assumed was Sara. He tucked these in his pocket. Might be useful later.

The file drawer held an array of untidy hanging folders. None of the labels sounded promising. They seemed to contain client policies. A drawer on the other side of the desk held more personal items. Beau examined and set aside a box of tissue, a bottle of antacid tablets, a couple of alternative rock CDs—and a brown envelope. He pulled out the paper inside.

“What is it?” Aubrey asked nervously.

“Looks like a copy of the document Patti’s boyfriend signed, giving up his parental rights. Was she having trouble with him?”

“Not recently. Besides, that voice on the phone didn’t sound like Charlie, although…I guess he could have been disguising it. The voice was kind of hoarse and whispery.”

The murmured voices inside the office got louder, and the doorknob rattled. Beau quickly closed the drawer and scooted out from behind the desk. He pretended to study a picture on the wall of a clown when Greg Holmes’s office door opened.

“I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know,” said the older of the two men who emerged from the inner office. He wore a suit—cheap and ill-fitting—and sported a determined five-o’clock shadow. His thinning hair was styled in a comb-over.

He vigorously pumped the hand of the other man, who was younger and kind of punk-looking, with ratty clothes and a scraggly beard.

The older man, whom Beau assumed was Greg Holmes, stopped suddenly. “Who are you?” he asked in a startled voice, his beady eyes focusing on Beau.

“Summer told us we could wait here,” Beau said affably.

The punk looked a little nervous. He made for the exit, as if he didn’t want to prolong any conversation with strangers.

“Summer knows better than to let customers sit in here unattended,” he muttered angrily. Beau thought he was rather inhospitable for an insurance agent. For all Holmes knew, they could be in the market for millions of dollars’ worth of life insurance.

“I’m Patti’s cousin, Aubrey Schuyler,” Aubrey said with a smile, extending her hand. “She’s told me so much about you, Mr. Holmes.”

Holmes softened a bit. Who could blame him? When Aubrey turned those liquid green eyes on a man, he couldn’t help but fall in line with her wishes. He gave Aubrey’s extended hand a grudging squeeze. “Is something wrong?” he asked. “She’s been gone all day. I was starting to get worried about her.”

“We don’t know where she is,” Beau said, extending his hand. He introduced himself as a friend of the family. “We were hoping you might shed some light on the situation.”

“Why would I know anything?” Holmes asked, suddenly defensive. “She’s just an employee. I don’t know anything about her personal life.”

Beau thought the man’s reaction was just a bit too emphatic. “People who work together all day long often know more about each other than their own families,” Beau said.

“Look, she answers my phones and does a little typing. I don’t spend significant time with her. I’m much too busy with clients to socialize with the receptionist.”

Beau thought Greg Holmes had just taken a giant step back from I was starting to get worried about her. Maybe he wanted to hide the fact he’d been sleeping with her. He wore a wedding ring.

“She apparently got a phone call this morning that alarmed her,” Aubrey said gently. “We wondered if you knew who—”

“Why would I know who?” Holmes said, even more agitated. “I don’t listen in on my receptionist’s phone calls.”

“Do you have a caller ID?” Beau asked.

“No. What right do you have—”

Beau held up his hands to slow Holmes’s rampage of words. “Easy, easy. We don’t have any right at all. We’re just asking, and of course you can refuse us. But the sooner we locate Patti, the less likely the cops will come here looking for the same thing we are. Only, they’ll have a warrant.”

Aubrey gripped his arm. She obviously didn’t like the sudden escalation of hostility.

Holmes backed down slightly. “I don’t have any way of knowing who called.”

Aubrey handed Holmes a card. “That has my cell number on it. Will you let me know if you think of anything, or if anyone else calls or comes by looking for Patti?”

Holmes took the card and stuck it in his jacket pocket. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get home. My wife isn’t feeling well.” He ushered them out, then watched until they got into their car and left.

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