Trapped (Private Justice Book #2): A Novel Read online

  Private investigator?

  Laura had hired a PI to find her?

  She hadn’t expected extreme measures like that. A few circuits of her hangouts, a few calls to friends, maybe, but not this all-out effort.

  Her half sister obviously cared a lot more about her than she’d let herself believe.

  Warmth ignited in her heart, chasing away some of the chill—but in its wake came regret. Once again her actions had created trauma for someone who cared about her—perhaps even loved her.

  Would she never learn?

  Darcy’s throat tightened, and tears blurred her vision.

  “Is there anyone besides your half sister who might have hired this PI?”

  Forcing herself to refocus, she considered Mark’s question, unsure of the safest answer. In the end, she went with honesty. “No.”

  “Do either of you have any other relatives you haven’t told me about?”

  “No.”

  He studied her, his eyes measuring, assessing. Finally he exhaled, as if he’d accepted the truth of her answers. “Then I guess I have some work to do.” He snatched the card back, yanked her lunch from the fridge, and stomped to the door.

  Work to do?

  Heart thudding, Darcy scrambled to her feet, not certain what he meant but not liking the undertones of his cryptic comment. “Wait.”

  He paused on the threshold, key in hand, and looked at her over his shoulder.

  “What kind of work?”

  “When you have a problem, you eliminate it.”

  The knot in Darcy’s stomach squeezed tighter. Laura was a problem, and Mark was going to take care of her—the same way he’d taken care of Angela and Denise and Star.

  She clasped her hands in front of her, squeezing them tight, desperation drumming a staccato beat in her chest. “You don’t have to worry about Laura. She’ll lose interest w-when she doesn’t find me. She’ll s-stop looking. I know she will.”

  “I’m not going to take that chance. Don’t expect dinner tonight.” With that, he exited.

  As the lock clicked into position, her legs began to shake and she collapsed back into the wing chair. Drawing up her knees, she huddled into a protective tuck around her aching stomach as shudders rippled through her body.

  Mark was going to hurt Laura. Maybe he’d even kill her.

  All because her ungrateful younger half sister had been stupid, stupid, stupid.

  A sob tore at her throat. She didn’t care if Mark was watching from the other side of the peephole. She didn’t even care at this point if he killed her. She deserved to be punished after causing nothing but trouble for the people who loved her. And better her than Laura, who’d opened up her home and disrupted her life for a half sister she barely knew. That kind of sacrifice shouldn’t be rewarded with the boatload of grief that had been heaped on her.

  Despair settled over her like a shroud, and in the tomblike quiet of her prison, she continued to weep.

  But when at last her tears were spent and her shaking subsided, one clear thought emerged.

  Keeping Laura safe had to be her first priority.

  She might not survive whatever Mark had in store for her, but she couldn’t let him hurt the sister who’d taken her in. Before another day passed, she had to come up with a plan to thwart whatever he might be plotting.

  No matter the risk to herself.

  “You want to talk about Mark Hamilton and Faith Bradley?”

  At Nikki’s question, Dev looked away from his computer screen and waved her in. “Yeah. Have a seat. I’ll be done in a sec.”

  As she dropped into the chair across from his desk, he expelled a frustrated breath and went back to the email he was composing. With Cal caught up in a defense attorney client meeting in a neighboring suburb, and Connor staking out Davis Daycare in case Hamilton decided to take another impromptu trip—as he’d done soon after their meeting two hours ago to make a fast visit to his house—he’d drawn the short straw when an urgent call came in from the corporate client in search of its rogue executive. Things were heating up fast on that front. Fortunately, all three of them kept their passports in order. This would be a three-man job.

  So instead of helping Nikki research Hamilton and Bradley, he’d been exchanging phone calls and emails with the corporate security chief as they hammered out logistics for the Costa Rica trip. He’d be glad to turn this baby back over to Connor tomorrow. Foreign assignments were more his buddy’s forte, thanks to his years of foreign travel with the Secret Service.

  After hitting the send button, Dev swung toward Nikki. “Sorry to dump most of the research on you.”

  She cocked an eyebrow.

  “Okay. All of the research. I owe you a latte. What have you got?”

  She opened the folder. “You owe me two lattes. Your Mark Hamilton is an under-the-radar kind of guy. The man has no social media presence—my favorite place to scavenge. I had to dig pretty deep and turn on the charm.”

  “But you found some stuff to supplement the paltry facts I came up with last night.”

  “Yeah.” She consulted the file in her lap. “He was born twenty-nine years ago. That fact courtesy of the DMV. Property records show he bought the house in Soulard three years ago. He got it for a song since it’s in a historic district and was badly in need of renovation. You already know he volunteers at a homeless shelter. He’s worked at Davis Daycare for seven years, the last year as a manager, as you discovered in that bare-bones news story you stumbled on about his promotion. I found the original press release, which also listed his impressive accreditation in his field. I verified those credentials with the appropriate professional organizations.”

  “Any luck on his earlier history?”

  “That was harder. I scoured a couple of our best proprietary databases and public records, plus talked with our primo information broker. The earliest address that shows up for him from any of those sources is Columbia, Missouri, when he was eighteen. So I pieced together his social security number and gave Mizzou a call. They confirmed he was a student there. He graduated in three years with a degree in early childhood education.”

  “Fast track.”

  “Yeah. The guy’s no slouch, that’s for sure. While I had the clerk at Mizzou on the phone, I chatted her up a bit. I told her we were doing a background check, and asked if she’d mind confirming his address at the time of his application.”

  Dev grinned. When it came to finagling information out of people, Nikki had all three of the Phoenix PIs beat. “You got it, right?”

  “Yep. Holyoke, Mass.”

  “A state with open access to vital records. Finally something goes our way with this case.”

  “We lucked out on that one, for sure. According to the birth certificate, our guy’s mother was Lillian Hamilton, age eighteen. No father was listed. I dug into death certificates too. Lillian died at age thirty. Suffocation was listed as cause of death, but it wasn’t ruled as suspicious.”

  “Why not?”

  “Same question I had—so I did a little digging in the local newspaper archives. From what I was able to cobble together based on articles that quoted police reports, she was a drug addict who made her living as a hooker. She was found ODed on coke in bed, lying on her stomach, face buried in a pillow. BAC was high too. I couldn’t find any mention of family other than a son.”

  Dev leaned back in his chair, rested his elbows on the arms, and steepled his fingers. “Hamilton must have ended up in the foster care system.”

  “That would be my assumption—not that we’ll be able to prove our theory.”

  “Yeah.” Juvenile records weren’t even available to law enforcement personnel in most cases, a fact that had grated on him in his former career whenever he’d had to deal with punks who had the law on their side. No way could a PI get access to those records.

  He picked up his mug, took a sip of coffee, and made a face as the cold liquid sluiced down his throat.

  “Looks like you could us
e a warm-up.” Nikki glanced over at him.

  “On the coffee and on the case.” He set the mug down and pushed it away.

  “Nothing I found is going to help you much on the latter score. Hamilton comes across as squeaky clean.”

  Clean.

  An image of Hamilton’s hands, along with Balloon Man’s ditty about Mr. Clean, suddenly replayed in his mind. The homeless man had started singing it after Dev asked him whether he’d seen anyone talking to Darcy. He’d dismissed the tune as the rantings of a man whose brain was no longer firing on all cylinders, but there might be more to it than that. The red, chapped condition of Hamilton’s hands suggested he washed them a lot. Was that because he worked among children all day and wanted to avoid passing germs—or for more dysfunctional psychological reasons?

  In any case, he’d been wrong to write off Balloon Man’s tune. His little song helped validate the volunteer’s claim that he’d seen Hamilton talking to Darcy.

  All the more reason to target the guy.

  “Hey . . . are you still with me?”

  At Nikki’s prod, he refocused on her. “Yeah. Just making some connections.”

  “Helpful ones?”

  “Maybe.”

  “As I said, we’re looking at a Boy Scout here. There aren’t even any traffic citations on his record. No family ties, though, as far as I can tell.” She lowered the file. “Quite an impressive life in view of his less-than-ideal childhood.”

  Dev drummed his fingers on his desk, frowning. “What about Faith Bradley?”

  She closed the first file and opened the second one. “She was easy. Great Facebook presence. Age twenty-two. Born in Chicago, moved here for college. Dropped out two years ago but reenrolled in night school last fall. Lives in an apartment in South City. No problems with the law, either.”

  “Any connection between the two?”

  “Other than working at the same place, nothing that I could find.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Nikki closed the file and slid both onto his desk. “This doesn’t help much, does it?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “No. But my gut tells me Hamilton has information he’s not sharing. And his background is interesting—a drug addict hooker for a mother and no father figure.”

  “Sounds to me like he overcame those impediments.” Nikki leveled a direct look at him. “Some people do. Sometimes that kind of background is an incentive to create a better life.”

  He’d put his foot in that one. “Not everyone rises above their upbringing like you did. That takes a lot of strength and fortitude.”

  Her eyes widened, then thinned. “Is that on the level?”

  “Yeah. I admire your accomplishments, even if I don’t say it very often.”

  “Like never.”

  “I don’t want you to get a swelled head.”

  She snorted. “Like that’s gonna happen. Raising a teenager, even if he’s my brother, is a constant reminder of my shortcomings.” She stood. “If you need me to do anything else, let me know. In the meantime, I’ll surf some more as time permits and see if I can dig up a few more facts.”

  Without giving him a chance to respond, she turned and disappeared into the hall.

  Rocking forward in his chair, Dev pulled the files in front of him and tapped his finger against the top. Nikki was the best database searcher he knew. If this was all she’d come up with, there wasn’t much else to be found aside from a piece or two of stray information. There was nothing here to suggest the man was involved in anything nefarious.

  Yet the Mr. Clean connection, combined with his own instincts, was enough to convince him Phoenix’s time would be well spent further investigating the man.

  That left only one option.

  Surveillance.

  Putting someone on Hamilton’s tail 24/7 was going to be expensive, however, and would require client consent. Might obtaining that consent justify a visit with Laura?

  No. A phone call would suffice. He needed to honor his promise to Cal and keep his distance from his client for now.

  But as he reached for the phone to tap in her number, he couldn’t help wishing he was just a tad less conscientious.

  At the vibration of her phone, Laura jerked and snatched it off her belt.

  Dev.

  The patron she’d been helping gave her a startled look.

  “Sorry. I’ve been waiting for this call.”

  “Go ahead and take it. I’d like to page through some of these books.”

  With a nod, she retreated a few steps.

  “Hi.” She kept her voice low in the hushed quiet of the library and put some more distance between herself and the man in search of books on woodworking. “Any news?”

  She listened as he briefed her on his visit with Hamilton and his discovery that the woman who’d been watching the man’s house was a co-worker.

  “What do you make of that?” She sent a quick look toward the white-haired man, who’d gone back to perusing the shelf of books she’d pointed out to him. He seemed absorbed for the moment.

  “I don’t know. But I’ve been in this business long enough to know when someone’s trying to cover up something—and Hamilton’s behavior says cover-up loud and clear. That’s the main reason I called you. I think it’s worth putting round-the-clock surveillance on him for a few days, but that’s pricey and I wanted to get your approval.”

  Laura didn’t hesitate. After seeing Dev in action, she trusted his instincts. “I’m fine with that.”

  “Okay. Connor’s on him now at work, and I’ll take over later when he goes home. There’s a spot on a side street that will give us a view of both the exit for the dead-end alley in back, where Hamilton parks, and the front of the house. It would be easier to have two people on the job, but I don’t want to waste your money. If I think we need broader coverage at any point, I can always call in reinforcements.”

  “That sounds reasonable.” She straightened a book about macramé on the shelf in front of her, noting the title on the spine. Tied Up in Knots. How appropriate, given the situation with Darcy—and her feelings about the man on the other end of the line.

  “So is there anything else I can do to help? I’m off tomorrow, and other than running a few typical Saturday-morning errands, I’m free. I know Nikki is a whiz at database searches, but I’ve done a fair amount of those in my work too. Would you like me to see if I can find out anything more about Hamilton or Faith too?”

  “It can’t hurt. The more eyes on this, the better.”

  Silence fell between them, and she adjusted a bookend. He hadn’t mentioned the birthday dinner last night—nor suggested any further in-person contact. Was that because he was sorry he’d told her so much . . . or because he was simply too busy with the case?

  She chose to believe the latter, even though his tone was far more professional than personal today.

  “I guess I’ll hear from you if you have any news, then.”

  “Of course. I always keep my client informed.”

  Client.

  That put her in her place.

  Maybe he was regretting their intimate little interlude last night.

  When the silence lengthened again, she realized it was her turn to speak. “All right. Thanks.” Her reply came out stiffer and more abrupt than she intended.

  He noticed.

  “Look, Laura, I need to keep some distance while this is an active investigation. Company policy. But once Darcy is home and the case is over, that rule won’t apply . . . unless you want it to.”

  Meaning he wanted to see her after this was resolved—in a nonprofessional capacity. Her spirits lifted a notch. “I think we could dispense with the rule at that point.”

  “I’ll look forward to that. Now, I’m off to relieve Connor, who no doubt has a hot date tonight.”

  That’s right. It was Valentine’s Day.

  “I’m sorry you have to spend the evening sitting in a cold car.”

  She heard him si
gh. “Me too. I can think of other places I’d rather be.” A spark of energy crackled over the line, and Laura’s heart skipped a beat. “However, I’ll console myself with the hope of a better Valentine’s Day next year. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Okay. I’ll keep my cell with me at all times in case you have any news.”

  The line went dead, and Laura slowly depressed the end button, visions of cupid dancing in her head.

  “Excuse me . . .”

  Clearing her throat, she composed her face and turned toward the patron, who held up a book with a porch swing on the cover.

  “I wanted to thank you for helping me find this. I had no idea what project might catch my fancy, but this”—he tapped the photo of the swing—“will be the perfect gift for my wife’s birthday. We courted on a swing just like this.” The tips of the man’s ears pinkened as he tucked the book under his arm. “Next stop—pick up a bouquet of roses for my valentine.” With a wave, he headed toward the checkout desk.

  Laura smiled as she watched him disappear. Ten minutes ago, she would have felt melancholy—and sorry for herself—at such an expression of sentiment. Now, she felt hopeful.

  This year’s Valentine’s Day might be a bust.

  But with a certain PI waiting in the wings, next year might be a whole different story.

  18

  Stifling a yawn, Dev shook a handful of smoked almonds into his hand and tossed them into his mouth.

  Some Valentine’s Day dinner.

  He snagged the bottle of water from the Explorer’s cup holder, took a swig, and watched a cloud of breath form in front of his face. Too bad he hadn’t included a second thermos of hot coffee in his gear for the night—or rationed the one he’d brought instead of finishing it off forty-five minutes ago. He angled his wrist until the LED display on his watch came into view. Four hours since he’d relieved Connor of surveillance duty, eight to go.

  It was going to be a long, cold night, even with the heat packs in his pockets, the Gore-Tex clothing, and the electric blanket plugged into the cigarette lighter.