Chapter Sixteen
“Is it the same sedan that followed us before?” Brenda resisted the impulse to turn around and stare out the rear window. Her pulse rate had already jumped into a frantic mode.
Every time they took what felt like a half step forward, something else happened to drag them back two steps.
Or maybe they hadn’t moved forward at all.
“Different color,” Ben points out. “The other one was black and there’s also a different driver.”
“Do we just keep driving or go home or turn around and go back to the police department?” This was so exasperating. When would they get to a point where they felt like they were moving forward?
Never, it seemed.
This Lanier person—the intruder, if he hadn’t lied about that too—was the perfect example.
Brenda had arrived at the interview in hopes he had something to tell her that would help her understand how to stop this nightmare.
But he’d done nothing but warn her of the consequences if she didn’t resolve it.
How was she supposed to know what to do?
Maybe the only way out of this was to take Janey and run. They could hide and hope they were never found. If Scott was really dead…
Except she had no idea what the truth was anymore, and the cartel’s resources were far too powerful, too broad to make running away so simple.
Obviously there was no winning against these people. The best she could hope for was to give them whatever it was they wanted and pray they went away. If she hadn’t been so depressed she would have laughed out loud at the thought.
Ben made a sudden right turn and braked to a stop. Brenda looked around at the closed food market and the abandoned parking lot. Why had they stopped? She turned to Ben. She reminded herself that he was a professional. He knew what he was doing.
“When I get out of the car, lock the doors. Climb over the console, and if there’s trouble drive away as fast as you can.”
“What? No way. I’m not—”
“Do it.” He opened his door and emerged from the car.
Brenda hit the lock button and scrambled into the driver’s seat.
She twisted around to stare out the rear window.
The air refused to fill her lungs and her heart thundered so hard she was certain it would burst any moment.
If something happened to him, what would she and Janey do?
Plus…she really liked him. Really, really liked him.
Please don’t get yourself killed.
The driver’s-side door of the other vehicle opened. Brenda’s world seemed to decelerate into slow motion, yet somehow the fear and anticipation kept building at a rapid-fire pace.
Please don’t let this guy have a gun.
Blond hair. Sunglasses.
Not a man. Brenda drew back a little. It was a woman.
The driver closed her door, leaned against it and removed her sunglasses. Recognition slammed into Brenda. This was the woman from LAX. The one with Scott on Tuesday.
Brenda was out of the car before she had time to think through the step. She left the door wide open and stormed toward Ben and the other woman. By God, she would have answers from this woman.
“It’s her,” she shouted to Ben. “She’s the woman from the airport. The one I saw with Scott on Tuesday.”
A whole other stunning reality hit Brenda then. It had only been two days. Two days. Forty-eight hours since all hell broke loose in her and Janey’s lives. Since her world changed for the second time in less than a month. She wilted. Grabbed on to the front of the woman’s car for support.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
Ben was already speaking to this person, but Brenda didn’t care. She needed to understand how this all happened. How this woman was connected to Scott. And why all of this—this total insanity—was happening.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” the blonde said to Brenda. “I’ve been trying to get a message to you since Tuesday night.”
“Who are you?” Brenda repeated, beyond angry now.
“I used to work for Scott,” she said. “I was once a court reporter until I got burned out. But I’m still a really good transcriptionist. I’ve worked for medical practices, law firms. All sorts of places.
For Scott, I would transcribe his conference calls and even the face-to-face meetings.
He recorded everything. He would send the recordings to me, and I would enter the dialogue into a program.
A quick edit and then I’d drop the typed pages into this file hosting service where he would retrieve them. ”
Sounded exactly like something Scott would want to do with his client meetings. Still, Brenda would just bet their relationship had not been a working one only. This woman, whoever she was, was exactly his type. Tall, thin and blonde. And gorgeous.
“I missed your name,” Ben said.
He hadn’t missed it; she was yet to give it. Brenda silently steamed.
“Ginger York. I live in New Hope but most of my clients are here in Huntsville.”
“Why were you in Los Angeles with him?” Brenda wanted to hear this. Transcribing a meeting for a man who was supposed to be dead?
“He was asked to go to Los Angeles by a man he thought could help him with the trouble he’d gotten into.
He asked me to go with him so that we looked like a couple traveling.
He hoped people would look at me instead of him.
” She rolled her eyes. “That’s why I was wearing that racy dress.
I wouldn’t usually wear something so daring during daylight. ”
As furious as Brenda was, the story sort of made sense. “Did it not cross your mind that he was supposed to be dead?”
“Hell yeah! He almost scared me to death when he showed up at my place.” She pressed a hand to her chest as if her heart were running away just recalling the event.
“I mean, I live in the middle of nowhere. In a cabin—sort of off the grid. I don’t get many visitors unless it’s someone I’ve invited.
And, as you say, I thought he was dead. It was freaky for sure. ”
“How did he explain his resurrection?” Ben asked.
Brenda might have laughed at the question if she hadn’t been so outraged. This woman made it seem totally not a big deal that a man she thought blew up in his office showed up at her house—other than it was a little startling.
“He said he had a bad feeling about the meeting—the one at his office the day of the explosion, I mean. His handler from the FBI, Chris or Clint, I can’t remember his name, had called an emergency meeting.”
“You knew he was working with the FBI?” Brenda was fairly sure that her blood pressure was going to make her brain explode.
“I did not,” Ginger insisted. “I’m just telling you what he told me. That surprised me too. Anyway, there was this guy with him that day. Some guy from the cartel—can you believe that? Poor Scott was involved with a freaking drug cartel. He said it was Jenner’s idea.”
Of course he did, Brenda mused. Poor Scott was never the cause of problems.
“Anyway,” she went on, “he didn’t want to go to the office because he knew his handler would be there and this cartel guy wouldn’t go away. But then the cartel guy demanded to see Tate, and Tate was at the office with the handler guy, who was pretending to be a new big-deal client.”
“Did he mention the name of the man from the cartel?” Ben asked.
Ginger shook her head. “I don’t think so, but honestly the story was so out there, and I was so shocked, I may not be remembering everything.”
“How did he get out before the explosion?” Brenda was ready for her to speed up the storytelling and get to the important parts.
“He said when they arrived at the office, the cartel guy saw the FBI guy and everything went crazy. Scott saw an opportunity in the middle of the fray to slip out.” Her eyes got bigger with every word. “So he rushed out the back door. He said he barely got out of the building before it exploded.”
“What about his partner?” Brenda demanded, appalled.
“Did he not try to save him?” Given this new twist about the attorney, Brenda wasn’t sure she should have any sympathy for Tate Jenner.
His wife was using the same attorney as the cartel.
Since Carlisle had this impressive reputation, she supposed it could be coincidence.
But no way was she automatically giving the woman that kind of grace.
“He didn’t because he was already dead,” Ginger told her.
“The cartel guy shot Tate. Then he was grilling the FBI guy, which is the only reason Scott had a chance to run. The cartel guy shot at him when he ran, but Scott figured he wasn’t trying for a lethal shot since he was the only one left who knew all the accounts and passwords. ”
Brenda shared a look with Ben. So maybe those numbers on the paper they had found were account numbers. But what about the passwords?
“You’re sure Scott said his partner was shot?” Ben pressed.
“Oh yeah. Scared the heck out of Scott. He knew he had to get out of there and that he couldn’t let them catch him under any circumstances.”
Even if it meant throwing his wife and child under the bus, Brenda mused.
Another wave of fury washed over her—at the police as well as at Scott.
She wanted to call Shelton and demand to know why he hadn’t mentioned the shooting to her.
Because he had lied to her. Shelton had kept that from her, and God only knew what else.
“Do you know where Scott is now?” Brenda wanted to find him and punch him for leaving them in this horrific mess.
“No. That’s the weird part. I’ve called him over and over, and I’ve gone by all the places I could think of that he might go and he’s nowhere.”
And just like that they still had nothing. Nothing!
“About these recordings,” Ben said. “Did Scott record all his meetings?”
“Most, I think, but I can’t be sure of course.”
“Do you have access to the sessions you transcribed for him?”
“No. Once I dropped the documents into the hosting site, I deleted them. And my only access to the site is to drop off. I can’t retrieve anything.”
“Do you recall the name of the host site?”
“Sure. It’s YourBox.”