Chapter Twenty-One
Alayah clicked her way through the video feed as she searched for Josh in the hotel.
According to Derek, neither he nor Hugo had seen him before he’d left for the cabin, but that didn’t mean that Hugo hadn’t seen him before he died.
Derek swore that wasn’t possible, but her line of work had taught her that anything was possible.
The remnants of their breakfast sat off to the side, but she continued to pick at the fruit as she worked.
She’d learned to be a grazer, so you rarely saw her at work without food beside her.
The team at Secure Watch had started grabbing her a snack and leaving it on her desk as they walked past. It reminded her of something Derek had said earlier about found family and how DNA mattered less than love.
While he wasn’t wrong, in her case, DNA did matter.
It mattered because it made her life difficult, so why would she ask someone else to deal with those same frustrations and pain when they didn’t have to?
Because sharing it with someone else can make the burden easier to bear.
She forced herself not to roll her eyes at the thought. It was nice in theory, but not so nice when the theory didn’t work out, breaking her heart in the process. “What’s that?” She paused the recording and pointed to the screen.
Derek leaned in and squinted. “I don’t see anything.” She backed it up again and slowed it down, pausing it again as she pointed to a shadow at the back of the stage. “It’s probably one of the convention employees helping connect his mic.”
They kept their eyes glued to the screen, hoping whoever was in the shadows would step out and be caught by the camera. Her finger darted out. “Look. Hugo is talking to the person, and his body language says he’s not happy.”
“Still doesn’t mean it’s Josh,” Derek said. “Hugo is always a hot mess before speeches. You should have seen him before his TED Talk. I wasn’t sure he would make it onstage, much less give the speech.”
She punched a few buttons, and the screen went blank.
“What happened?” he asked, glancing at her in surprise.
“I’m changing to a different camera angle,” she explained, waiting for the one to spool up to the time stamp she’d typed. “If we can see them from a different angle, we might be able to see what Hugo is saying.”
When her screen loaded, it was too dark to see anything. “So much for that,” she groaned, switching it back to the other camera. “We may not see who it is, but we know he interacted with someone before the speech.”
They kept watching, surprised when the exchange heated even more, and the mystery person stepped forward.
Derek gasped. “That’s Josh!”
Without thinking, she froze the frame. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “He’s all pretty-boy elite all the time. That fancy suit vest paired with a T-shirt and chinos is his signature look. I’d know him anywhere. You didn’t see this the first time you played the video?”
“No,” she said, grabbing her pen. “I never went this far. My job was to follow the water bottle, not Hugo. When I tracked you, I followed you through the hotel to backstage. Then, when you left Hugo, I followed you out of the convention center to the parking lot. Of note, I was working the comms when Hugo was having this discussion with Josh. We didn’t hear any of this interaction. ”
She clicked the mouse again, and the video continued to play. Hugo and Josh gesticulated wildly for thirty more seconds before Josh disappeared and Hugo turned, his face masked with anger. After several calming breaths, he fiddled with something attached to his belt.
“There,” Derek said. “He’d shut his mic off.”
“That explains why we didn’t hear them. Unfortunately, we can see their interaction but not hear it, which doesn’t help us much.”
“Other than knowing they fought about something. That’s not new, though. They were oil and water, so it could have been about whether the sky was blue. They were basically children.”
“Sounds like it,” she said, shaking her head at the immaturity of some grown adults. She knew how common that was after working in the industry, but it still surprised her sometimes. Her email dinged, and she clicked on her inbox. “Looks like Mina got us that footage of Josh in Superior.”
While she loaded it up, he leaned back in his chair. “Well, if nothing else, we know it wasn’t Hugo who killed him.”
“Fair point,” she agreed, opening the file. “But someone did. However, I doubt we will get so lucky as to see their face on this video.”
She pressed Play, and they watched as Josh parked his car and climbed out. He glanced around the area briefly, as though he wasn’t sure what to do next.
“He’s disheveled,” Derek noticed. “The Josh I know would never have gone out with his hair askew and wearing lounge pants.”
“Someone rolled him out of bed,” Alayah deduced, and Derek nodded. “The question is who and why?”
“And why did he jump when they said jump? Why didn’t he take the time to get dressed?”
“He doesn’t have a wife or kids, right?” Alayah asked to be sure. She assumed, but in this business, one must never make assumptions.
“Absolutely not. He thrived on his social image of being the man every woman wants,” Derek said, watching the screen as Josh wandered the parking lot. He checked his phone before he walked to the edge of the lot and out of the frame.
“Great,” Alayah muttered, calling up a map on an open webpage. “We need to know what’s over there.”
“Looks like not much of anything other than the public beach.”
“There has to be a camera on the beach somewhere, right?” she asked, ready to dig in when he pointed to another image.
“Maybe, but look. There’s a wooded area between the marina lot and the beach. I’d bet my last dollar the person he’s meeting is in those trees.”
“Like whoever it is knows where the cameras are?”
“Wouldn’t you if you were planning to kill someone?”
“That’s what gets me,” she noted. “If this person planned to kill Josh, why pick this area to do it? It’s off-season, so there aren’t as many people around, but there’s a highway on the other side of the slips. Anyone driving by could notice people walking around down there and remember them.”
“You’re saying they weren’t planning to kill him?”
“Maybe they just wanted to talk, but things got out of hand?” she asked, and he shrugged.
“Anything is possible, I suppose.”
She clicked back to the video. “We know it wasn’t Hugo, so who else had enough disdain for Josh that a simple meeting ended in his death?”
“Half the people who knew and worked with him?” Derek suggested.
“So, you’re saying he was well-liked,” Alayah said, tongue in cheek. “Not super helpful.”
“We don’t have much, do we?” Derek asked, rubbing her tense shoulders to help her relax. “That gave us nothing.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she disagreed. “We know he didn’t take time to prepare for the meeting, and he wasn’t carrying anything except his phone. That makes me wonder where his phone ended up.”
Unsure of her next move, she called Mina. “Secure Watch, Whiskey.”
“Secure Watch, Alpha,” she answered, shoulder-bumping Derek, who had unfortunately dropped his hands from her neck.
She’d been enjoying his touch. She rarely got the pleasure of someone’s touch who wasn’t afraid to hurt her.
Derek knew exactly what he could and couldn’t do regarding her body.
Sure, she’d made her condition clear, but he’d obviously paid attention and found other ways to offer her comfort because he wanted to, not because he had to. “You’re on speaker.”
“Did you watch the video?” Mina asked.
“Sure did,” Alayah answered. “It was somewhat informative but wasn’t super helpful.”
“You found it informative? We got nothing.”
“It could have been more helpful, but Derek pointed out that Josh had jumped out of bed and driven to Superior without pause.”
“We noticed the bedhead,” Mina agreed with a chuckle. “We figured he got a surprise hookup phone call.”
“You had to know the guy,” Derek explained. “He never left the room if he wasn’t spit-polished to a shine. He also didn’t have his briefcase or computer with him. Was it in his car?”
“Don’t know, but he’d have to have left it in there the night before. He wasn’t carrying anything when he left the hotel at 0300 hours. We know he had his phone, but otherwise, it doesn’t appear he took anything with him from the room.”
“That’s also a red flag,” Derek said. “He had this leather attaché that I swear was glued to his hand. If this meeting was for business, he wouldn’t have gone out without it.”
“Which brings us back to a personal reason for being out there,” Mina said.
“There weren’t any other cameras available to pull from?” Alayah asked.
None that were usable. The other cameras are static, so if someone did push him into the water from that area, it wouldn’t be caught on camera.”
“Which is probably why whoever he was meeting picked that spot,” Derek mused.
“Do we know where he was found in the harbor? Was he near that wooded area or somewhere else?” Alayah asked.
“He was found floating near a small bridge just down from the beach. It wouldn’t be impossible for him to float that far in the amount of time he was in the water. I’m currently trying to get footage from the camera at the beach to see if there’s a time stamp of him floating past.”
“To say we’re dead in the water until then is a bit on the nose?” Alayah asked, smiling when Derek covered his mouth with his hand to maintain his composure. “Or maybe we should consider this a dead end?”
“Alayah,” Mina said, trying to bite back laughter. “You’re killing me here.”
They all broke into a fit of giggles brought on by too little sleep and raw nerves.
“I’m sorry, that was inappropriate. A man is dead, and that’s nothing to make fun of. I’m just frustrated by the lack of evidence. Our business is to find proof of these crimes. What are we missing?”
“Wait. Our business is to find proof of these crimes,” Derek repeated. “Almost as though whoever is behind this knows how not to leave any digital evidence behind.”
“Because he works in the industry?” Mina asked.
“It’s possible!” Alayah exclaimed. “This town is crawling with tech bros right now.”
It was Mina’s turn to laugh. “Tech bros. I know how much you love them.” Alayah didn’t interject to say there was one whom she was growing rather fond of. “Derek, do you know any other businesses that may have had issues with Josh?”
Alayah wasn’t sure if Mina heard Derek’s scoff, but she sure did.
“Open up Google, type in ‘tech companies,’ and pick one. You’ll find someone who had an issue with Josh. Hugo included. Their history is well known in the industry as we discussed.”
“A very likable kind of guy, apparently. Always the worst kind in life and death. Death because it’s hard to narrow down the field of potential killers when everyone was a hater.”
“That sums it up well,” Derek agreed. “I wouldn’t dig too deep into Hugo and Josh’s feud, other than to look for any commonalities between them regarding employees or shared close business consultants.
If it would help, I could come up with the top five companies with a bigger bone to pick with him than most.”
“As long as we don’t have to track their whereabouts down,” Alayah clarified. “Cal wants us to make notes of everyone Josh talked to at the conference, and we’re just getting started with that. That doesn’t include looking into his business dealings to see if there are any red flags there.”
“Let me start with that aspect of the dig,” Mina said.
“If I start looking into his business dealings, that will naturally reveal people he had issues with and may have angered. I’ll assign several people to work on it, and once we have the names, I’ll forward them to you.
With that information in hand, Derek can tell us the strongest trails to follow.
It will also help you rule in or out interactions that you may witness with people on the footage from the conference. ”
“That would be a huge help,” Alayah confirmed.
“The faster we can get the information to Cal, the better. Let’s face it, it can’t be a coincidence that the opening and closing speakers of this conference were killed.
There’s a connection somewhere. We need to find it.
Let’s use our Messenger app to exchange information in real time. ”
“You got it. Whiskey, out.”
Alayah disconnected the call and turned to Derek. “We make a great team.”
“We sure do,” he said with a genuine smile. “Now, while you spool up the camera feed, I’ll make us more coffee. The faster we figure out who killed Hugo and Josh, the faster I can take you out on a real date.”
“I don’t remember you asking to take me out on a real date,” she answered, batting her lashes coyly. He had, but this time, she had a different answer for him.
He turned back and knelt, taking her hand in his. “Alayah Heath, would you do me the pleasure of going out on a real date where we eat good food, drink great wine and talk about anything other than computers or tech bros?”
Her laughter filled the room, but she melted into a pile of goo on the inside. “I would love to.”