Chapter 6
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E lizabeth sank back down and listened, as Masters answered his phone. She didn’t know why she was so jumpy, but that courier at her door had changed everything for her. Yet it also made it seem a lot more possible that her brother was alive. All she could think about now was that she’d missed something. Had there been something that had gone on all this time that she hadn’t seen and sorted out?
Masters had been right when he suggested that, from now on, she would have to exercise more caution. Assuming it was Masters at her door and flinging it open without a thought was foolhardy. While she had thought it was Masters, she also realized it was more than that. Another part of her still raced to the door to see if her brother was coming home.
She waited for Masters to finish his phone call, and, when he got up, she realized that this visit—or whatever it was—was officially over. She watched as he continued his phone conversation on the way to the front door. There he ended the call and told her, “I’ve got to go, sorry.”
She waved him off. “Tell me what you can, when you can, please.”
He stopped and nodded. “That is a reasonable request. Thank you.” And, with that, he was gone.
She stayed at the front door and watched as he drove away, feeling an odd sense of loss, something she hadn’t expected. She didn’t know whether it was because he was the first person who seemed to give a crap about her brother’s disappearance, or because of who he was and the fact that he’d been looking out for her, and had come when she phoned.
So many things were mixed up in her head, and she didn’t want to confuse emotions for something completely different. She liked Masters very much. He was a good man and seemed to care. He was a breath of fresh air when it came to all the other investigators she had dealt with on this case. It had seemed as if nobody had given a crap, and the fact that her brother was part of their own team had been forgotten.
Elizabeth was pretty sure that Nicholas would be heartbroken to think that nobody had considered his disappearance important enough to truly investigate, and the fact that they thought she may have had something to do with it was also devastating.
She understood why it would be considered, but she couldn’t imagine it would have been all that difficult to clear her, if they had only wanted to. Harming her brother, the only person she had in the world, was something she wouldn’t and couldn’t ever do. Nicholas was an important part of her life, and no way would she ever do something to hurt him.
She thought about her own finances, wondering if she would need to free up some money, just in case. If a ransom was suggested, she would pay it in a heartbeat, but she would also have to liquidate some of her assets to do so.
With that in mind, she quickly cleaned up the kitchen first, putting on tea next, and headed back to her computer, then settled in to return to work. Yet, in the back of her mind, she was looking at her options, figuring out what she could do if she was called to do something.
Frowning, she went through some of the investments she held jointly with her brother. She’d convinced him early on to invest in a few things, and she did control those in the sense of being his adviser on them. She checked his account, and everything there looked normal and stable. It was the one account that hadn’t been taken away from her when she had been struggling over her brother’s loss. Her lack of attention to her accounts had not gone unnoticed.
Now she was doing much better, or at least she thought she was. When her supervisor phoned her a little bit later and asked her to step into a group meeting, she stepped in virtually and listened, as the new CEO ranted about some new restrictions and some changes in the company policy.
Her eyebrows shot up as he talked about making people return to work in the bank, and she realized just how that would impact her day. Normally she worked from home and went in sometimes. Up until now, that had been fine. However, the new CEO was talking about making everybody come back in, and with positive attitudes. She kept her face schooled, watching other people’s reactions, noting a couple of them not liking it at all, including her immediate supervisor.
When it was over, her supervisor phoned her, and he asked, “What do you think?”
“I think it sucks,” Elizabeth replied. “I come in when I need to, but I certainly don’t need to be physically in the bank all the time to do my job.”
“And you’re still hoping for changes with your brother’s situation, of course.”
“Sure, of course I am,” she replied, “but that has nothing to do with my work.”
He hesitated.
“Wait. I’ve been back on track and making work a priority.”
“Yes, and it was at least partly my fault for not taking away some of that work earlier. Once I realized what was going on, I should have removed some of those accounts from the get-go, so that’s on me.”
She was surprised to hear him say that, but he’d always been a very fair supervisor, and she appreciated the fact that, when she hadn’t been able to look out for herself, he had been there.
“I guess there’s been no news on your brother, has there?” he asked.
“Actually there might be now,” she muttered. “I just don’t know which way it’ll all go.”
“Oh?… That’s huge, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. It’s nothing’s so huge, not when it’s been this many months.”
“Right,” he replied, his tone deepening. “I’m sorry about all this.”
“Me too, and I certainly don’t need more issues at work, but I’ll deal with it.”
“So you’ll work at the bank now?” he asked.
“The new rule doesn’t take place for a while. Maybe the lot of us will boycott it, and the CEO will change his mind,” Elizabeth suggested, not even believing her own words.
Her supervisor asked, “Or will you… quit?”
“Quit? No, I wasn’t looking to quit,” she replied. “Is somebody saying I am?”
“No, I’m just getting an idea of what’s going on,” he explained. “Nobody seems to be particularly happy.”
“Nobody likes change,” she pointed out. “We can get quite comfy in our own space, and there’s no real reason for us not to work from home.”
“I know. I understand,” he said, “and we start work early.”
“You guys do. I’m not on a stock market bench, like you guys are, so I work a bit later.”
“Right, another point in your favor,” he noted. “Anyway I’ll see how everybody reacts.”
“Will you challenge the CEO over it?” she asked, with a note of amusement. “Or will you consider quitting?”
“I’m considering it,” he admitted. “Yes, it might be a good time.”
“Right,” she muttered. “And this new CEO, being a friend of Fred’s and all, is that how this works?”
“Yeah, they’re friends, and apparently he’s been monitoring our work-from-home situation for a while now, and suddenly he’s decided that we all need to come back in,” he shared, with a note of humor. “I assume he’s spoken to Fred and his dad about it, but I don’t know that.”
“I don’t think any of this will apply to Fred anyway, so he probably doesn’t give a crap. As long as it keeps the money flowing and the business moving in the right direction, he won’t care either way. Interesting tactic though. He may lose a bunch of people.”
“I know, and that’s what I’m sorting out, like just how many will bail,” her supervisor told her. “It’s hard enough to get people now anyway, especially qualified people. No matter what, it’ll be painful.”
“And that will be on your plate too, I suppose.”
“Somewhat, yes. Depends on how many people leave from the various departments and whether I leave too,” he replied. “Anyway, have a good rest of your day.” And, with that, he was gone.
She stared down at her phone, just wondering about life, and its ability to send you for a loop out of the blue. The last thing she needed right now was something like this, but that was also one of the reasons why stuff like this happened.
With a shrug, she settled back in and buckled down to tackle the rest of her workday. She had just finished up when her phone rang. She looked down at it and didn’t recognize the number, but that wasn’t an oddity in her line of work. She often felt she needed to answer phone calls that were not numbers she knew, and so she did. Nobody replied on the other end, and she went to hang up, when a faint voice finally spoke.
“Sis?”
She froze.
“Sis, help me.” With that, the phone went dead.
*
Masters was just walking into the forensic lab to talk to the technician when his phone rang. He looked down, saw who was calling and frowned, but he answered it. “Hey, I don’t have any answers yet, and as I—”
“No, no, no,” she cried out. “I just got a phone call.” She gasped, her breathing hard, clearly rattled.
“Easy, easy, calm down,” he said. “Who called you?”
“My brother,” she cried out, with joy, tears, and pain all reflected in her tone.
“What do you mean, your brother?”
“He said, Sis, help me , I can’t believe it.”
Masters ran his hand through his hair, as he turned and walked back out of the lab, so the conversation was private. “Did he tell you where he was?”
“No, no,” she cried out in hysterics. “The line went dead at that point.”
“Crap,” he muttered.
“I know. I know. He’s alive. He’s alive! Don’t you understand what this means?”
“I understand some of what it could mean,” he replied cautiously.
Suddenly she caught on that he didn’t see this as good news. “I don’t understand why you’re not overwhelmed with joy,” she responded. “I am.”
“I would just like to know for sure that it was your brother.”
“Oh,” she muttered, and dead silence came afterward.
He winced. “Look. It’s the world I live in. I don’t want to kill your joy, but let’s just make sure that somebody isn’t playing you.”
“Right,” she said, her tone more formal but in control.
“I don’t suppose you have a number for that call.”
“I checked right away, but it was a private number,” she explained, “and it didn’t,… it didn’t tell me anything.”
“I’m at the forensics lab. Let me talk to them. Then I’ll get right back to you.” He quickly hung up, walked back into the lab, and asked the techs at the counter, “If you have a recent phone call on a cell, is there any way to track it?’
They instantly frowned. One spoke up. “If it’s a private number, not really, but, if something else, maybe we can deal with it forensically.”
“Meaning what?”
“Just that we might get a location from where the call came from.”
“It read Private Number, but she has no record of it beyond just that the call came through.”
“Right. So, therefore, it was probably fast and short, leaving no way to trace it.”
“Right, that’s what I was afraid of.” Masters sighed. “So… back to the note. What did you guys find?”
“Not a whole lot,” he began. “No fingerprints were on any of it, the note or the envelope—other than Elizabeth’s. We also don’t have any record of this writing anywhere in the database,” he added. “So really, we don’t have anything. I’m sorry. We were hoping for better news.”
“Me too.” He thanked them, then turned and walked back out, calling Elizabeth back. “Did you recognize his voice?”
“I don’t… I don’t know for sure,” she told him, her tone subdued. “It was barely above a whisper and happened so fast.”
“I’m sorry,” Masters said. “I don’t want to stop the hope here.”
“No, but you’re right. If it was Nicholas, why wouldn’t they have contacted me a lot earlier? If it isn’t him, who the hell is playing these games?” she snapped, anger at being played coming through quite clearly.
“We also have to acknowledge the possibility that it was him and that he found a way to get a call out.”
“In which case,” she noted painfully, “chances are, he’s paying for that indiscretion.”
“Unless the kidnappers set it up,” Masters noted. After another long silence, he added, “I’ve just come out of the forensics office, and unfortunately nothing was on that note or the envelope, no fingerprints other than yours, which was to be expected.”
“Hey, wait, when you mean, mine ?… Oh, right.”
He smiled. “You’d forgotten that they fingerprinted you to clear you of anything.”
“At the time I wondered if they fingerprinted me to find me guilty,” she murmured.
“You still believe that, don’t you?”
“Can we trace a call?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “They weren’t on long enough, and it was a private number, so it’s probably a burner phone that they’ve already tossed by now.”
“But what would be the point of that?”
“That’s the question,” he muttered. “Does anybody want you to go off the deep end? Does anybody want you to quit? Does anybody want you to do anything in your world that something like this would stir up?” She sucked in her breath, and he winced. “I gather there’s a yes in there somewhere.”
“I… I don’t know,” she replied. “Let me think about it. I’ll call you back.” And, with that, she was gone.
He stared down at his phone in frustration. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d done only what he had done to her, which was abruptly end the call. Still, it was frustrating that she had something in the back of her mind but wasn’t willing to share it just yet. He drove back to the office, and, as he walked in, he heard a heated discussion ahead of him. As soon as he showed up, the conversation stopped. He looked inquiringly from Sam to Morgan. “Problems?”
Sam snorted. “As if you should have any part of this.”
“Am I the problem?” Masters asked with a smile, as he noted Sam’s disgruntled look.
“We don’t know anything about you.”
“No, and you might want to consider if that’s why I’ve been brought in.”
At that, both men froze, their eyes widening.
“What?” Sam muttered.
“Think about it. One of your own team members disappeared, a case not solved, and now we have another major event on this base,” he pointed out. “Also a case not solved. And who knows what other issues we have in this very department.”
“Hey, Mason’s case just happened,” Sam protested. “And we’re all on it, but we’re not getting very far.”
“Maybe that’s part of the problem too,” Masters noted. “The fact that the situation with Nicholas was never resolved is also a concern.”
Sam snorted at that. “We were told not to waste too much time on it because they were pretty damn certain who was responsible. The fact that you seem to be all over this chick is a whole different story.”
At that, Masters frowned and faced them. “Did you investigate her? Did you clear her or find anything to convict her? Did you do anything other than take insinuations from the brass as real? Do you have any reason, logic, or evidence to prove it?”
“No, of course not. If we did, we would have arrested her.”
“So, you did nothing, and, when she finally went to the local cops and her lawyers, it pissed you guys off.”
“Sure, she made it seem that we were at fault, but we weren’t. We’d been doing everything we could.”
“Did anybody keep in touch with her, let her know what was going on?”
“It’s not as if we have a customer relations department,” Morgan said, finally speaking up. “Keep that in mind too.”
“Sure, I get that, but she felt she had no choice but to bring in lawyers because the entire military organization had stonewalled her.”
At that, Morgan winced. “For an outsider I’m sure it felt like that.”
“Absolutely it felt like that, and, if you think I’m sleeping with her or in some way compromising my position,” Masters spelled out, noting Sam’s immediate eye roll, “you can put that right out of your head.”
“Right? As if we’re supposed to believe you,” Sam muttered.
“I don’t give a crap whether you do or not,” Masters replied, “but I will not tolerate disrespect. So one of us needs to go right now, and you choose which,” he added in a cool tone.
Sam stood in shock.
“Yeah, I’m serious. This isn’t how any military department works, and this isn’t how an investigation into the disappearance of a member of this military force should be treated. This isn’t how Nicholas deserves to be treated. I don’t know what shit’s going on down here,” Masters added, “but I sure as hell don’t want anything to do with it. If you guys are compromised because of it, I will find out.” And, with that, he turned and walked into Jasper’s office.
Jasper stared at him as he came in.
“I presume you heard that.”
“I deliberately make sure I hear everything that’s going on,” Jasper stated. “Definitely no love is lost on those two, yet I don’t know why.”
“I don’t know why either.”
Jasper nodded. “They sure don’t like any comments about Nicholas though, do they?”
“Not only that but they’re 100 percent against his sister, which I find odd. I don’t know about you, but, so far, I haven’t seen anything that points to her being involved.”
“I haven’t either, but I also know that there’s been some file tampering.”
At that, Masters raised his eyebrows, as he turned to stare at Jasper. “Are you serious?”
Jasper nodded. “Quite a bit is missing here. No statement from her as to where she was at the time. A whole lot of information I would expect to have is not here, something that would at least show a thorough investigation had been conducted. Instead what I’m left with is a skeleton of an investigation, which will make these guys look bad if they’re ever called to account over it.”
“Why would they do that?” Masters asked, puzzled. Then he frowned and asked, “Or is somebody else doing it?”
“That’s the question.”
Masters opened the door and called out to Morgan. Moments later Morgan stepped in, but it was obvious he was still pissed off from the earlier exchange with Masters.
“Close the door, please,” Jasper ordered.
Morgan stiffened but closed the door and turned to face him, his arms crossed.
“The investigation file on Nicholas’s disappearance,” Jasper began, “contains no statements documenting you guys have interviewed Elizabeth in any way.”
“Sam and I both did,” Morgan claimed. “All of it’s in the file.”
He spoke with such an off-handedness that Masters got pissed off all over again. “Are you always this sloppy and lazy with your investigations?”
Jasper snapped at Morgan, before he said more. “Look at me.”
At that, Morgan turned and stared at him.
“I am telling you that no interviews or statements are in this file involving the sister, about the sister, from the sister, at any point in time.” When Morgan started to bristle, Jasper stopped him again and went on. “I don’t think you understand what I’m saying here. This file, as it stands right now, shows that you guys haven’t done jack shit to find your colleague. Now I don’t know whether that’s how you want this to go down or you want to believe that we somehow removed material out of this file, but take note that the computer system absolutely does not allow us to have access for deleting things like that. So you might want to consider just what’s going on here. Either you guys completely dropped the ball on this case or somebody wants you to look as if you never did squat, if it ever comes to a full investigation.”
Comprehension slid across Morgan’s face. He sat down with a hard thump on the seat next to Masters.
Morgan whispered, “What the hell?”