Chapter 8 #2
He nodded. “And, for that, I’m sorry. I know she wasn’t necessarily a friend of yours, and you’ll feel some guilt, no matter how much you deny it. That’s human nature, but where you’re wrong is that you still feel that this is all due to you, but it’s not due to you at all.”
“It’s all due to Senator Forman,” Hayden stated sarcastically.
Tricia snorted. “When you say it like that, it makes me feel a lot better. I can just blame him, right?”
“You know what he means,” Rubin said, while staring daggers at Hayden.
“Yep, I sure do,” she confirmed bitterly. “However, you were right. It’s all due to my father, and that’s something that I need to remember.”
“But you can’t blame him for that either,” he pointed out, “because he didn’t ask for this to happen either.”
“I wonder,” she muttered.
He turned to her and asked, “Seriously?”
She waved it off. “No, I’m sure that his principles wouldn’t allow him to do that. I’m just being …” She let her words trail off, not sure what to say.
“Bitchy?” he asked, with a chuckle.
She had to laugh at that. “Tired, … fed up, … don’t want to be here.”
He studied her face for a moment, then nodded. “I understand.” With a glance at Hayden, Rubin settled back into place.
She decided it was a good time to shut up.
It wouldn’t do any good to alienate these two.
They were military, still worked for the same government that her father represented.
So, as far as they were concerned, her father probably could do no wrong.
He was still her father, flawed and arrogant, the kind of guy who absolutely loved the work he did, and to hell with the consequences to anyone else who may have suffered for it.
Yet somebody had to do his job, and it might as well be somebody who could at least be counted on to do the right thing for the people, and that would be her father.
So, she had to just let it go. She was almost ashamed of her comment after she had a chance to think about it.
Yet, after years of not having him around, years of his not being in her life because she was off in a private university, it was her first reaction.
It was the epitome of the poor little rich girl persona, and she knew that nobody would have any sympathy for that.
She was just lucky that she got a decent education and was heading off—at some point in time—to do something with it, whatever the hell that would look like.
She stared off in the distance until they finally came to a stop at a gas station.
She looked around for the bathroom. As she got out, she made her way to the far corner where the washrooms were.
Hayden stopped her and asked, “Do you need any food?”
She shrugged. “I will at some point in time, though nothing really appeals right now,” she replied. “All of this is just getting to me today.”
“And we understand that,” he acknowledged. “Don’t worry about what you said earlier. We’re not holding anything against you. We just want to get you, safe and sound, where you need to be.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you. I appreciate that. You really are a nice man.”
Apparently Rubin heard her, and he asked, “What? I’m not nice? Why does he get compliments and not me?”
She glanced at him, shrugged, and teased, “Maybe he’s nicer.
” Leaving Rubin standing there, astonished.
But she was grinning by the time she stepped back out again.
She passed by several women waiting at the cash counter to purchase stuff.
She stopped because something was almost familiar about one of them.
She slowly turned, about to check it out because, damn, that woman looked like someone she had seen before, but Rubin caught her hand.
“No,” he whispered, his tone hard.
She glanced at him, catching a warning in his gaze.
He added, “I saw it. The answer is no.”
“I was just checking out something.” She turned to look back at that woman.
“I know, and I’m telling you right now, the answer is still no.”
“The answer is no?” she repeated, as he nudged her out of the little gas station store. “As in, no, it’s not what I think it is, or, no, I’m not allowed to go look?”
“No, you’re not allowed to look,” he stated.
She glared at him, and he nudged her into the vehicle. “You need to stay put. We’re leaving now. Get down so you can’t be seen and stay quiet. We’ll be out of here in seconds.”
And, with that, she lay down on the car seat.
He covered her up with a blanket and sat on the hood of the vehicle, as if waiting for Hayden. As soon as Hayden arrived, they got into the vehicle and drove out, making a rapid exit.
When Rubin told Tricia that it was safe to sit up, she did and asked, “What did I just see?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Rubin replied. “You were obviously intent on checking someone out, so what did you see? Someone you know?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “That woman waiting for the cashier, she works at the university in New York. She’s an administrator, and I have seen her in the offices.”
He frowned at her, immediately searching something on his phone, and then held up a picture. “Her?”
She looked at it and nodded. “Yes, her.”
His jaw worked, and he began firing off texts.
Tricia continued. “Her name is Arlene Cuddy. She reports directly to the dean. What’s going on here? Maybe she’s vacationing here? Why in the hell pick this area?”
Rubin snorted. “Something’s going on all right because she’s not on holiday. She’s missing, or at least she’s missing according to the reports that we have.”
“Missing?” Tricia repeated, staring at him.
“Yes.”
“But we just saw her.”
“Which also means that not only is she not missing,” Rubin stated, as he glanced back at Tricia, “but chances are good that she’s a part of this.” He exchanged glances with Hayden.
“How do you want to proceed?” Hayden asked.
“I need to do some quick research here,” he began, “so I can get more answers.”
Tricia sat back and thought about her brief interactions with the woman.
“She was never really friendly,” she shared, “but she was always, well, I don’t want to say nosy, but kind of nosy.
I didn’t like her,” she announced, not that anybody was listening.
Still, even when they didn’t respond, they always heard everything.
“She was always around, just a regular part of the university,” she added, “and maybe that’s why nobody ever really paid any attention to her. Of course that just makes it a perfect cover, doesn’t it?”
“It really does,” Rubin confirmed to no one in particular.
She groaned. “And we didn’t even know.” She shook her head. “We had no idea that she had anything to do with this.”
“We still don’t know for sure that she does, but we really don’t believe in coincidences either,” Rubin pointed out. “I am working to find out.”
Tricia continued ranting to no one in particular, but Rubin asked her to quiet down. “Just—”
“I know. I know. Give you a minute.”
He laughed. “You’re as impatient as anybody I’ve ever met.”
“Not really,” she countered, “but I just saw somebody I literally thought I knew, and here, where she shouldn’t have been, even if she was on holiday. Yet maybe that’s possible. People do have holidays. But no such thing as coincidences, right?”
Her gaze went from one man to the other. Both men shared a knowing look, then Hayden glanced back at the road. He said, “We’re not people who are great on coincidences.”
“Right,” she agreed, “because you’re also the people who see enemies everywhere.”
He snorted at that but didn’t say anything.
She slumped back in her seat. “If Arlene really is part of this, that’s absolutely awful.”
“Any idea how long she’s worked there?”
“No. I only knew her as a grad student for the last year or so, and she worked in the grad department.” Tricia stared off in the distance.
“I didn’t have any particular relationship with her or anything.
I didn’t have any reason to deal with her.
She wasn’t part of my team at all, so I don’t know that she would have even known anything about my plans or what I was doing. ”
“But wouldn’t it have been noted in your schedule?”
“Sure, in the sense that I would have been so many days working on research, would have had meetings, would have had things that would have been on my particular schedule.”
“So that makes sense,” Rubin muttered, and Hayden snorted.
“What makes sense?” she asked.
“That you had a schedule known to the university. Doesn’t matter that Arlene was not involved personally in any classes you took.”
“I still don’t get what you are talking about,” she snapped, frustrated now.
“Your schedule of classes and whatnot, silly,” Hayden teased.
“He’s right,” Rubin acknowledged. “It would have been enough for Cuddy to keep an eye on exactly what you were doing in terms of time frames on campus, right? It may also be that she’s been checking on your schedules in the London program.”
Hayden interjected, “As long as you were there and not taking off on holidays.”
“Yes, that’s true,” she muttered. “We always had to keep track of our time. It still doesn’t make sense to me why she would be a part of this.
” The more she sat here and considered it though, the angrier Tricia got.
She leaned forward and asked, her tone dark, “But, if she is, can we make sure that she pays for it?”
“What part do you want to make her pay for?” Rubin asked absentmindedly, as he flicked through documents on his phone.
“Shirley’s death,” she snapped, “if not Sam’s and my suffering.”
He looked up at her and nodded. “Yes, that is something we can do, but we need to verify that it’s her first.”
Tricia sat back and shook her head. “I can’t let it go now.
She must be involved. It’s one hell of an answer as to why she’s here.
So how did she know I was even here?” she asked.
“I certainly didn’t plan to be kidnapped after a concert I attended on campus.
I wasn’t even supposed to be there to begin with. ”