Call Me Killer (20 page)

At any other time, I think I would have been pissed off that some girl claimed me as her husband. As if that was ever going to happen! But what went through me now was an oddly pleasant sensation. If we were married she would definitely be mine. No way to deny it. Marriage would be an irrevocable claim. Rory O’Malley. I liked the sound of that.

I couldn’t think about this for more than a second or two, though. Brandon Finlay opened the thing he had in his hand, which turned out to be a 7-inch tablet. A picture came up on the screen. He handed the device to me.

At first, I couldn't make out exactly what I was looking at. There were a lot of people in the picture, milling around inside some large, high-ceilinged structure. From the backpacks and suitcases most of them were lugging, it appeared to be an airport or maybe a train station. There was a foreign look to the place. I tried to nail the location down, but I wasn't exactly a world traveler. “Where is this?”

“Middle East somewhere?” Rory guessed. She was pressing against me and peering at the screen. “Or maybe eastern Europe, former Russian republic?”

“Close. It's Istanbul,” Connor said.

Istanbul? What the fuck?

He pointed to a spot on the top right of the photograph. All four of us were gathered around, squinting at the tablet.

“Here. The next picture has this area enlarged.” He flicked the screen to bring up the next shot. I leaned over the tablet.

My heart started hammering, and I felt a little dizzy as I saw her. Red hair. A wide mouth. A well-defined cleft in her chin. And a body much thinner than I had ever seen it.

Brandon Finlay cleared his throat and asked, “What do you think? Could that be Hadley?”

“There's another shot,” Connor said, and flicked the screen again. Same place, different angle, taken maybe a few seconds later. The redhead's face was turned away from the camera, but her profile was clear. “And another.” The following picture showed her face again, from closer.

It must have been some sort of surveillance shot, since she was on the edge of the frame now, moving out of camera range. There was a man I'd never seen beside her. It looked like he might have an arm around her, but it was hard to tell. The dude was wearing a hat that was pulled down to shadow most of his face.

Still, there was something about her body language that shook me. Her face was partly in shadow, but it looked haunted, maybe even scared. I had never seen Hadley look as if she was shaken by anything.

“It's her. She's alive.”

“Are you certain?”

I’m not even sure which man asked the question. I was fixated on the photographs. “Yes. Her hair, her mouth, her chin. It's Hadley.”

“What about the guy beside her? Ever seen him before?”

I shook my head. “He’s hiding his face, but what I can see of him doesn't ring any bells. You couldn't ID him?”

“Nope. Facial recognition requires more of a face than he’s showing in any of the shots.”

“She looks stressed,” Rory said. There was something strange in her tone, although I was too shocked to make much sense of it. “Is she there of her own free will, do you think?”

“It’s hard to tell. She’s out in public without being restrained. She’s not calling for help. Is she under some kind of compulsion? It’s possible. It’s also possible that she’s there willingly.”

My throat was too dry to say anything. Willingly? The word felt like dust in my brain. Was it possible that Hadley had disappeared on purpose?

“When were these pictures taken?” Rory asked.

“Three months ago,” said Connor. “She was alive at the end of the year.”

“Obviously, since she was alive three months ago in Turkey, you didn't kill her a year ago in Cranton,” Brandon said. “Her face matches enough facial recognition criteria to confirm her identity. Technically, you’re off the hook.”

I should have been happy, right? The cops and the FBI would stop hassling me. People would have to admit I wasn't a killer. The shadow that had been hanging over me would be lifted.

“Technically?” It was Rory who picked up on that word.

Brandon cleared his throat. “We’ve only had these photographs for a day. I wouldn't even have been here to tell you about them if he,” nodding to Connor, “hadn’t insisted. Right now the investigation is being kept private. No one can know about this until we have a lot more information.”

I would have brushed this aside. Other questions were flooding my mind. But Rory pushed it: “So you’re saying that as far as anybody outside the investigation knows, Griff will remain under suspicion of murdering a woman who is still alive? That is unacceptable.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. O’Malley, but that’s the way it has to be. This is new information and it's being shared only with her family and the authorities. I understand that Griff has an interest in the case because of the suspicions that were directed at him, but you’ll have to discuss that with the other agencies who will be taking over.” He glanced at me. “Congratulations, by the way. I didn’t know you’d gotten married.”

I probably would have been embarrassed by the lie if I weren’t still so floored at the sight of Hadley’s photographs. “If those pictures were taken several months ago, how do we know she’s still alive?”

“We don’t,” said Connor.

“Why would she just disappear? And why Istanbul? She must be in some kind of trouble.”

“Not necessarily,” Brandon said. “Sometimes people decide to throw their old life away and start again somewhere else. It’s unusual, but it does happen.”

I thought about the Hadley I had known and I just couldn't buy it. I looked at Connor Finlay, ex Special Forces or CIA or whatever the hell he’d been. So leet a hacker that even Rory respected him.

“Who took her?” I asked him. “And how the fuck do we get her back?”

Griff

I felt Rory shift beside me, and I sensed she was uneasy. I’d gotten to know her pretty well; I could tell now when she was upset.

She didn’t say anything, though.

“Right now there’s no evidence that anyone took her,” Brandon said. “She’s strolling through an international airport.”

“Do you have a record of her traveling? Using her passport? These days you can’t go anywhere without the airlines knowing exactly who you are, right? You must have checked that months ago, when she first disappeared.”

“That’s right, we did. There were no hits. But if she wanted to run for some reason, she was wealthy enough to purchase false documents.”

“Why? Why would she just leave? Suddenly, without telling anyone? Without leaving a trace?”

“Maybe that guy she’s with had some sort of hold over her,” Connor said. “Maybe he threatened her. Or her family. It could even be some sort of sex slavery thing. Trafficking. A woman as young and gorgeous as Hadley would be a valuable commodity.”

I choked up at the idea of Hadley as a commodity.

“If someone got her out of this country and into a foreign airport without being stopped, there could be powerful people involved. One of the big drug cartels, maybe, or some wealthy international businessman.”

“But how would these international creeps even know about Hadley? You're not trying to tell me there are sex traffickers operating out of Cranton.”

“Probably not, although with two fancy colleges in adjoining towns, it’s not impossible. What's more likely, though, is that Hadley came into contact with someone through her family. Her dad's conglomerate owns hotels in countries all over the world. Hadley worked for her father during the summers. She was in Thailand one year and in Dubai the next. She might have met someone who took an interest in her.” 

Neither of them said it, but I knew what they were thinking—she might have had sex with one of these trafficking freaks who “took an interest in her.” Risk-taking Hadley.

Why the fuck hadn't I been able to stop her doing that? Maybe if I'd been willing to try some of the edgy shit she'd wanted to do, she wouldn't have needed to seek satisfaction from strangers?

I knew it was a fucked-up way to think about this. She was alive. Or at least, she had been alive recently. I needed to stop blaming myself for what had happened to her.

“There must be other explanations?” I said. “Isn’t sex trafficking far-fetched for a woman like Hadley? Why not demand a ransom? Her father is wealthy.”

The two men exchanged a look. As if they knew something they weren't telling us.

“What? Spill it, for fuck's sake. After what the cops have put me through, I have a right to know.”

“We’ve known for a while that there were a few irregularities in her father’s business,” Brandon said. “Some of his overseas dealings were not strictly within the letter of the law. One possibility is that Daddy may have pissed off some important people. Nasty people. Abducting his precious daughter could be their way of punishing him.”

“Seriously?” That sounded odd to me. Like something out of a movie.

Brandon Finlay shrugged. “It’s a theory.” He nodded toward Connor. “As I said, we’ve just become aware of these photographs. It’s a break in the case, but there’s a lot of work to do before we have any definitive answers.”

“Well, I need to know how we're going to rescue her.” I knew some people got rescued because my brother used to do shit like that. “We need to send somebody in to find her and bring her home.”

“There’s no ‘we’ about this, Griff. We’re only telling you as a courtesy. The rest is up to her family and the authorities. You’re out of it.”

Rory cleared her throat. “You know what? This is bullshit.”

She said it with such assurance that we all looked at her.

She’d been much more passive than usual so far, but now she elbowed her way between me and the two guys, looking bristly.

She was cute when she was bristly.

“Let me see that.” She seized the tablet and enlarged Hadley’s picture with her fingers. She stared hard at it and then took it over near the window where the light was better. She looked again.

“What are you doing? It’s Hadley. No mistaking that face.”

“She’s pretty,” she said in a tight voice. “But pictures can be digitally altered. It’s not even hard to do.” She flipped to the other shots and studied the screen from several angles. “Could be ‘shopped.”

“It’s real,” Connor said. “You don’t even want to know what I had to do to get those pictures, but they’re one hundred percent authentic.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t believe you,” Rory said to Connor.

He looked amused. “Really. And I’m supposed to give a shit about your opinion?”

She was unfazed. “It’s too neat and tidy. I suggest you get surveillance pictures and presto, you get them. Takes you no time at all.” She looked at me, explaining, “Big files like photographs and videos require processing and that takes time. Then there’s the problem of knowing exactly where to look.”

She turned back to Finlay, who was watching her calmly, without interrupting.

“Pictures from airport surveillance in Turkey? How the hell did you get authorization for that? If you hacked it, fine, but how’d you know to hack Istanbul? Either you have a lot more information than you’re admitting, or these things are fake.”

Damn, it was good to have her backing me up. She knew stuff about technology that I had no clue about.

Before anyone could contradict her, she charged on: “Meanwhile, your pal Silas Marks tells us last night that he thinks Hadley’s still alive. Alive and out of the country. And voila, she turns up in Turkey? What a coincidence. That’s what he wants us to believe, so the evidence conveniently appears.”

She had a point.

“You know what I think? I think this is all an elaborate ruse inspired by our getting too close to the truth.”

Finlay raised his eyebrows. “And the truth is?”

His tone was scathing, but Rory ignored it.

“The truth is that that bastard killed her and buried her somewhere on his property. And the town police—” she scowled at Brandon “—are reluctant to meddle with the local billionaire.”

Brandon’s face got a trifle red. “If Mr. Marks had been a suspect, he’d have been arrested same as any other person, no matter how rich he is.”

“Yeah? So why isn't he a suspect? He admitted to us that he’d been involved with her. The man is a sadist. Have the cops even considered him as a possibility?”

“I can't comment on our investigation,” Brandon said stiffly.

Connor spoke again: “What is your interest in this matter anyway, Ms. Whatever Your Name Really Is? The girl you’re researching is O’Malley’s ex. Why this obsession with her? Before you started poking around, everybody thought Hadley was dead. Must be a shock to discover she’s alive just as you get your claws into your new boyfriend.”

Rory’s face colored. “My claws?! Fuck that! It’s not about me! It’s about ruining a man’s life. Accusing him of a murder he didn’t commit and never letting him come out from underneath that rock…that
boulder
of suspicion. It’s about Griff getting his future back.”

Brandon Finlay was frowning. “Wait. Her new boyfriend? I thought they were married?”

“Stop trying to deflect my objections,” Rory said. “I think this story about Hadley running off to Istanbul is bullshit. As for the sex trafficking theory—please. No billionaire’s daughter is getting sex trafficked. Ransomed, maybe. Or even killed, if someone had a vendetta against her family. But trafficked? No way.” She put her fists on her hips and got in their faces. “How about you tell Griff the truth? Because I think you’re both lying.”

I took Rory’s hand and pulled her back a little. But I wasn't trying to stop her. Only to protect her. I didn’t like the expression on Connor Finlay’s face and I hadn't forgotten the way he’d grabbed her round the throat the other day and tried to intimidate her. Or the way Silas Marks had grabbed her, either.

Rory seemed to have a knack for pissing these guys off.

But I loved the way she didn't hesitate to call people out when they tried to run their games by her. She was one smart cookie, and I loved that about her.

The brothers exchanged a glance. “Lemme talk to them alone,” Connor said.

Brandon looked doubtful, but some unspoken accord must have passed between them because after a few seconds he raised his hands. “Okay, fine,” he said to his brother. “The FBI and God only knows what international agencies are gonna be taking this case over, anyway.” To me, he added, “This was supposed to be a courtesy call to let you know the pressure would be easing.”