Chapter Seven
Colby Agency Safe House
There had been no tracking device on the car.
Losing their tail had been fairly easy, or maybe he just hadn’t tried so hard to keep up with them. Either way, Leah had watched Owen expertly outmaneuver him. They made it back to the safe house without the trouble following them.
Now, seated on a stool at the kitchen island, Leah watched as Owen plugged up the phone he had found in her underwear drawer.
Heat climbed up her throat and rested on her cheeks each time she thought of him touching her underthings.
Thankfully, she had packed most of her favorites when preparing to come here, leaving the less-worn pairs in the drawer.
Who wanted such a handsome guy—any guy, really—discovering she preferred comfortable panties?
She shook herself mentally. What was she thinking? Someone had, in some way, disappeared at least two people she knew, and that same person seemed to want to pin the blame on her. This was not the time to be wondering what this man thought of her underwear.
“Here we go.”
The screen of the phone lit up.
Leah held her breath. Maybe now they would find some answers or at least a clue of some sort as to what the heck was going on.
Her pulse gained an extra beat every second or so as she watched him scroll, pausing now and then perhaps to read.
The furrowing of his brow and the stony set of his jaw made her stomach sink.
Finally, he stopped and looked up at her.
“I need you to scan the call list and see if you recognize any of the numbers. Then go to the text messages and read those to see if any of it is familiar to you or if you recognize the way the messages are worded. We all have our favorite buzzwords and sentence structures.”
Cold leeched from her limbs. “Okay.” She held out her hand, and he placed the seemingly harmless device on her palm.
Leah swallowed around the lump swelling in her throat and concentrated on the small screen.
The one currently displayed was the log of recent calls.
There were no names, just phone numbers and the word Him.
The call log ended on Saturday night and only went back five days.
From late on Monday of last week until this past Saturday—the night Raymond disappeared. Isla, too, apparently.
There were nine calls, one each day until Saturday, and then there were four. All to or from the same number.
Raymond’s.
Fear trickled through her chest. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have remembered a phone number so easily, except his last four digits were 1001.
It had to be his. But just in case she was wrong, she reached for her cell phone and checked the call log for the one time she had spoken to him. There it was: 312-555-1001.
“The person using this phone was talking to Raymond.” She looked up at Owen. “It wasn’t me. I swear.”
He nodded once. “Read the text messages.”
The urge to throw the phone across the room and run was nearly overwhelming. She did not want to read those messages. It didn’t matter that they had absolutely not come from her or been sent to her. This was not right.
Deep breath. She forced her fingers to work, tapping and swiping as needed until the Messages app opened. There was only one listing. She tapped on Him. The next screen opened to a long thread of message exchanges.
Are you ready for our big night???
That one was from whoever Him was.
Can’t wait. Are you sure you’re ready?
This message was sent via the phone found in her underwear drawer…the one she held in her hand at this very moment.
Leah forced herself to keep reading, though the rock in her gut seemed to be trying to push upward into her throat.
Him: Oh yeah. We have everything we need.
Underwear-Drawer Phone User: How can I wait as long as this might take?
Him: Patience. The five mil will be ours.
The ability to breathe grew harder and harder.
Underwear-Drawer Phone User: Sand, sun and water…forever.
Him: Just the two of us…
There were several more but nothing relevant, just the mushy back-and-forth of two lovers planning some sort of getaway.
She stared up at the man standing on the other side of the island. His blue eyes watched her intently. He would be analyzing her reaction…her every word. Deciding if he should continue trusting her.
Leah swallowed. “I didn’t send these messages. I have never seen this phone before. This is not me.” She shook her head, the movement stilted. “Someone else did this.”
Owen took the phone from her and set it aside. “Is there anyone else who might have a key to your apartment? Besides you and Isla?”
Leah struggled to steady her respiration. She needed to think rationally, which was difficult with her heart racing and her thoughts in a tailspin. Who would do this? “No one that I’m aware of. Isla said I was her first roommate.”
“But she could have given a key to a boyfriend or long-term lover,” he suggested.
“I guess so, but she never mentioned having given a key to anyone.” Then again, why would she?
Leah felt sick at where this was pointing.
“I didn’t know Raymond Douglas before two weeks ago, and I had no idea he planned to ask me on a date until one week ago.
” She searched Owen’s eyes. “How am I ever going to prove I’m telling the truth?
” She stared at the phone lying on the counter. “Everything keeps coming back to me.”
“This phone—” he gestured to the one he’d found in her drawer “—is commonly called a burner phone. I’m sure you’ve heard the term.”
She nodded. “On television, but I’ve never known anyone who used one in real life.
” She frowned. “That might not be true. Chris…” She took a moment to ride out the uneasiness she always felt at saying his name out loud.
“He and his thug buddies may have used them. I can’t be sure, but it would make sense. ”
“That’s a good guess,” Owen agreed. “Whoever bought this one wanted to make it seem as if you were communicating with Raymond in a way that couldn’t be traced.
And it couldn’t…not to you, except for the fact that the phone was hidden in your bedroom to do exactly that.
Lead those investigating the case to you. ”
It couldn’t be Isla. It just couldn’t be.
“In my opinion,” he went on, “the most telling aspect of what we have here is the fact that Raymond didn’t use one. This suggests that whoever masterminded this plot wanted it known that the user of this burner phone—you, presumably—was interacting with Raymond. That step was deliberate.”
Fighting a new bout of vertigo, Leah considered this for a moment. Owen was right. If the whole thing that went down on Saturday night was supposed to be some secret setup, all parties involved would have remained anonymous by using burner phones…except the one whom they wanted to get caught.
Bile stirred in her belly.
She struggled to articulate the fear pressing against her chest. “Are you suggesting that the person pretending to be me was actually setting Raymond up to be murdered, or are you saying they both wanted the police to believe he was being set up to be murdered?”
Owen’s brow lined in thought. “This is where the situation could go either way. We have no definitive proof one way or the other.”
“What about the life insurance policy?” Leah asked.
“Obviously, that detail would make it appear as though you were plotting to kill him, since you stood to gain five mil. This phone suggests the same. Except, if that is the goal, the rest of the plan seems counterintuitive.”
“How so?” Leah’s head was spinning. None of this made sense to her. It only proved to her that someone had set her up to take the fall for murder.
“If the goal was to get the five million,” he explained, “you need a body or the patience to wait a very long time until there is irrefutable proof that the missing person is in fact dead—at least, for all intents and purposes. Why set up a scam like this if the payoff is going to be that far down the road? Or denied. There has to be an official determination that Raymond Douglas is dead before there is an insurance payoff to anyone.”
“Are you saying the insurance policy is a ruse? Just something else to throw the police off…what?”
“We can’t be sure at this point. But personally…” He gave her a critical look. “If I were Raymond Douglas, I would be worried. With what we have right now, I see no way anyone stands to win at this game without a body—his body.”
Leah didn’t want to believe what she was about to say, but at this juncture, what else could she believe?
“The most likely scenario—for now, anyway—is that Isla and Raymond planned all this. She had access to my room, to my schedule…to my whole life.” It hurt to say the words out loud.
“And she knew Raymond. She downplayed her knowledge of him for my benefit. As much as I don’t want to believe that’s possible, I can’t see any other scenario where this comes together logically. ”
“It’s a difficult reality to accept,” he agreed. “But, as you say, at this time it’s the most logical theory.”
“How could Isla and I have been friends all this time—shared all that we have shared—and none of it matter when she came up with this plan?” Leah wondered if Isla had ever really cared about her.
Had her taking on a roommate been a setup from the beginning?
Surely she hadn’t planned this three years ago.
“Bad people do things sometimes that shock us.” Owen eased down onto a stool. “I do believe, unfortunately, that we should start digging even deeper into Isla’s background, with the idea that she is—without doubt—involved, if not spearheading this unfortunate series of events.”
“But,” Leah countered, “based on the money aspect, for this to work, Raymond has to turn up dead.”
Owen nodded. “It’s the only way the insurance policy pays out without a long legal battle.”