Numbers Never Lie (Crimson Romance) (3 page)

“Oh.” She really wished he hadn’t noticed it. She already decided to write the jacket off and get something else. She laughed a little nervously. “Man, you know, I just can’t seem to get rid of that ugly thing. My friend bought it for me last year. I keep leaving it lying around, and it just keeps finding its way back to me.”

The silence expanded between them as if her comment caught him off guard. Surely he possessed a sense of humor somewhere? He laughed an easy, untethered chuckle before responding. “Well, I could toss it in the trash if you like and we can just pretend I didn’t call.”

“No, no. My friend would probably never believe my excuses and then she’d be insulted that I don’t wear it anymore. Since I don’t have a lot of friends, I don’t really want to tick her off.” Honestly though, she warmed at the sound of his voice. She wasn’t sure why — he seemed a little strange. He was more serious than she liked. Sort of a moody, somber — or perhaps angry? — kind of guy. But then, first impressions weren’t necessarily accurate, especially with the torrential downpour they’d endured.

“I’m not at the office right now so if you want to drop it by and you’re in the neighborhood, just leave it at the reception desk and I’ll get it when I return.”

“Actually, I’m at lunch down the street from your office, which is why I thought I’d check. I’m leaving in a bit and should be able to get by there on my way back.”

“Oh, that’s great! I’m at Joster’s Deli, which is — ”

“Yep, I know the place. I eat there quite a bit myself. Even better. I can be there in ten to fifteen minutes, if that’s not too late.”

“Okay, I’d intended to take my lunch back to my desk but I’ll just wait here.”

“Great. See you in a bit.”

• • •

Trevor hung up the phone and turned to Nate. “Okay, I guess we see where this goes, but I still think we’re looking in the wrong direction with her.”

“Probably so, but we won’t know until we try. If it’s not her, then it must be someone close to her. See if you can get a reader on her cell phone while you’re there.” Trevor wasn’t sure how he’d possibly get that done. Installing a reader required replacing the battery with one of theirs. Theirs were made specifically for tracing not just calls, but also text messages. The reader stored it, then transmitted the data file to their server when the communication ended. Getting hold of her cell phone long enough to put in a battery, restart it, and return it without her knowing would be interesting.

Unlike on the day of Trevor and Sophie’s first meeting, the sun today was blindingly bright and there were barely any clouds in the sky. Not that it mattered — it was unlikely one would really see the sky a lot from downtown Houston anyway.

It took a while for Trevor’s eyes to adjust inside the deli, so he stepped away from the door to keep from blocking the path while the dark room came into focus. The food here was pretty good. The atmosphere stimulated the draw, though. Very fast-paced, lots of noise. It always smelled like bread and grilled onions. He wasn’t much on the noise, but loved the aroma. Casually, he surveyed his surroundings. Yep, there she was in a booth near the wall. He didn’t smile when she saw him with the jacket in his hand. He just acknowledged her wave by lifting his head a little in her direction, then he worked his way through the crowded tables.

“How’s the car?” Sophie asked.

“Fine. Fine. Good as new.”

“Did you call a tow?”

He looked around for a chair. Due to the lunch hour rush, seating space was limited. He observed the exceptionally small gap in the booth next to her, thanks to a really huge guy at the next table, and hesitated. He didn’t see any chairs.

“Nope, it ended up being nothing at all. How’s your day going so far?” He squeezed into the small space, pressing against the big guy in the booth a bit more than was comfortable.

“Sorry. It’s a little tight,” he apologized.

“No problem. There really wasn’t anything else available when I came in or I would have grabbed a table.”

“Works for me but you probably are getting squished.” This felt awkward, his hip pressed hard against hers, bone against bone, and if he looked up, he would be right in her face, within inches. He didn’t look up. She seemed a little uncomfortable, too, as she stared at her half eaten sandwich.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“No, I just ate, and besides I kind of need to get going.” The words came out sharper than he intended. This was
not
going to work — they were way too close to maintain a decent conversation. Her hip and rib cage burned into his. He couldn’t put his arm down — the only place it could go would be around the back of the booth behind her and, well, that couldn’t happen. If he turned his head, his nose would be in her hair. Did her hair smell like the perfume he’d noticed the other day? Like her jacket did. It looked soft.

What the hell shoved
that
thought into his head? Trevor cleared his throat and looked around the room. There was nowhere else to move to right now. The bony hip felt good though, he admitted.

“Oh.” Sophie’s eyes shifted to his hand wrapped around the coat. She reached across him, her chest grazing his arm, and took the jacket from him. “Well, thanks for returning this.”

He adjusted himself to get more comfortable in the seat. “You know,” he hesitated, “I thought about throwing it in the street and letting a couple of cars run over it before bringing it back. Maybe even a truck or two. Then you’d have a good reason not to wear it.” He grinned and looked sideways at her.

The big, macadamia nut eyes crinkled up a little and she choked out a giggle. “There’s a nice thought. What stopped you?”

“I didn’t want to cause a wreck.”

The giggle blossomed now and the teeth came out, full and white, in a laugh. “Well, that was probably smart. I’d hate to see you explain that to your insurance company.”

“Yep, that would probably be pretty hard to explain. Well, I need to get going. Nice talking to you again.” He worked his way out of the tin can between her and the big guy and stood up, turning and extending his hand to shake hers.

Sophie set the sandwich down and took his hand, holding it briefly and tugging it up and down once. “You, too. Hey, just curious. Did your iPod dry out okay?”

He held up the earphones in his pocket in response and backed away from the table, smiling at her. “Of course, these things are indestructible.” He plugged the earphones in his ears, turned and left the deli, but not before he registered the look on her face — disappointment?

“Smooth, real smooth,” Nate snickered in his ear. “Now what are you going to do?”

No clue, man.
Trev thought it but didn’t say it. “I’ve got it covered,” he responded.

It occurred to him that he’d never really surveilled someone like Sophie. Most of the women he’d watched were career criminals and he’d only done so because they associated with someone else he’d tagged. In fact, he didn’t think he’d ever tagged a woman initially … but thanks to Sophie’s Good Samaritan act the other day, he moved to front and center on this one. The meeting with his team solidified it. They harassed him for getting too close, but in the end, everyone agreed it might make it easier for him to get more information.

Nate had made a wisecrack that Trev was the worst person to charm information from someone like Sophie, and suggested that he should take over. Trev responded with something about Nate’s interest not being associated with the job and that he’d better put his brain back in the driver’s seat.

All joking aside, Trev felt a sudden sense of dread. He was probably out of his league. Maybe she hid the career criminal part of her personality and he was just too stupid to know it by looking at her. She sure didn’t look the part, though. Nor did she act it. And he had always been pretty good at spotting the signs. Shit, he really had to pay attention on this one or he’d screw it up. The bureau didn’t accept too many mistakes. It was time to go back to the office and do some additional research. Based on the meeting the other morning, they were expecting things to move faster. He wanted to see if he could get more details. Her lunch hour wasn’t sufficient for that. He also knew that a barrage of questions too fast would likely scare a suspect. So much so that they might disappear or avoid contact. He didn’t want to give her the “stalker” feeling. He’d leave her alone for three or four days while he gathered more information. That should be an acceptable amount of time to wait before he casually “bumped” into her somewhere. Right now, she was their lead suspect. Even though it didn’t make sense.

Back in his office, Trev dropped the file with Sophie’s details on the desk. He had gotten it from a box that contained files on most of the employees that had potential to be involved. The FBI task force was currently only following her and the head of the accounting department at Benton & Stanley, as they seemed to have the highest level of access. So far, none of the others had been given much attention. He decided to go over the file again, to see if he’d missed anything.

Sophie Henderson was the daughter of Brianna Henderson, a black woman from Chicago. Brianna met Sophie’s father in college. He was white, and while the interracial thing didn’t matter to them, their differences in aspirations were significant. According to Sophie’s neighbor, her parents split up when Sophie was a toddler. Her mother didn’t like the city life very much and ended up going back to her hometown after the breakup. Sophie and her mother lived in a small town outside Chicago. Her mother spoke very little of Sophie’s father but the neighbor said he was now some big shot in New York. Trev shrugged. Sure. He knew the statistics — 72 percent of children in urban black communities are raised by single mothers. This was the norm. Sophie’s family proved no exception.

According to the file, Brianna was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer three years ago, and died nine months later, leaving Sophie alone.

Sophie graduated with a bachelors in computer science and then went on to get a masters in information technology. Her mother was extremely proud of her and everyone in town knew of Sophie’s success. The details went on; nothing stood out. “Blah, blah, blah,” Trevor muttered under his breath. Faceless, unemotional facts. Wasn’t it interesting how someone’s life could be reduced to a non-personal itemized group of details that could describe any number of people? The file listed the stores she frequented to buy clothes, groceries, even music. It had a short list of her routine schedule, the days of the week listed at the top and the places she went on those days. There wasn’t anything new.

He ran his thumb over the photographs of her. One taken as she left her office, another as she entered her apartment building. Her skin was bronzed and silky with no visible blemishes. She was tall and reasonably thin, maybe a bit too much so for his interest. Her macadamia nut eyes were a very intriguing dark brown with gold and silver specks that showed when she was in the sunlight … or when they crinkled as she smiled, he remembered. Her shoulder-length hair had a natural tendency to curl into cascades of waves that she appeared to fight by styling it in a smooth, loose knot at the base of her neck and tucking a clip or comb into it. She dressed professionally but understated. She liked dangly earrings but never appeared to wear any other jewelry than that. This last part wasn’t in the report, just things he’d noticed.

Two loud raps on the door broke Trev’s concentration. Nate entered without waiting for an invitation. “Got a minute?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“I need to make sure you know in case something happens — my Dad’s sick. I may have to leave abruptly.”

“No problem. You should go. Did you tell Cook?” Cook was their department head.

“The rest of the family is there and I’d just be in the way. He needs a pacemaker. Heart’s stopping once in a while. He’s had a couple of near misses and went in to get it checked out. The doctor told my family it’s not a big deal and he should go home pretty fast after. I’ll tell Cook if I go.”

“Who cares if you’re in the way — that’s not important. You need to go.”

“I’m thinking about it. I’ll let you know. To be honest, I’m not very good with that kind of thing.” Nate concentrated on the street below the window as he spoke. He didn’t turn around but the tension hung between them.

“I’m sorry, man. I hope it works out okay,” Trev said. “I like your Dad.” He’d only met the man a few times but he liked him. No wonder Nate had been a little on edge. He watched Nate turn and leave the office without even glancing back.

Nate had overseen the research on this project and it appeared to be done. If he needed to go, it was probably a good time for it.

After Nate left, Trev dug through some of the other files to see what kind of people Sophie was surrounded by on a daily basis, and whether that had any bearing on the situation. He pulled all Nate’s files into his office and spent the remainder of the day reviewing them one by one. Nate had sent it all to him electronically but he’d asked Cheryl to print it out so that he could read it without having to sit in front of the monitor all day. As a data security expert, he should be comfortable with that, but sometimes his back and neck just didn’t agree. So, Cheryl would print out the data, organize it in files to read, and then when the analysis was done, they’d shred everything. This wasn’t unusual. Apparently several of the other techs operated the same way.

By the time he left to go back to his apartment, he had gone through about two-thirds of them. So far, nothing really stood out as interesting about anyone, not even her. Her only marking factor was that she had a higher level of security to all the systems and therefore had easy access to possibly alter or tamper with the systems in order to hide something.

Chapter Two

Friday just before noon, Trev leaned against the brick wall next to the coffee shop where Sophie dragged him the night he met her, and watched the sidewalk. There was an outside seating area with large green umbrellas opened over tables just past where he stood. The speakers on the wall above the seating area were blaring the song “Suzie Q” by Creedance Clearwater Revival. He kept an empty coffee cup dangling from his hand and the stir stick for the coffee in his mouth. He had a nervous habit of chewing the sticks when killing time. The earphones were planted in his ears but he intended to drop them upon her arrival. As it turned out, he didn’t even need to invent a way to run into her. She’d called this morning and asked if he could meet her during the lunch hour.