The Ex Who Glowed in the Dark (Charley's Ghost) (4 page)

BOOK: The Ex Who Glowed in the Dark (Charley's Ghost)
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“It’s a few years old,” Dawson said softly, reaching one finger to touch the boy’s image. “We didn’t take pictures after Mom and Dad died. I guess I should have, but I never thought about it.”

Dawson had a brother. Pictures didn’t lie.

Amanda’s gaze moved from his haggard face to the empty bed.
More evidence that his story was true, that his brother had been kidnapped. But if she believed him, she had to believe the whole incredible story about the false identities, hiding from mysterious murderers and trying to find hidden source code. “We’ve got to call the police,” she said decisively. “Detective Jake Daggett, the guy who helped take down Roland Kimball, he can help us.”

“No! Not the police! They said not to call the police! They killed my parents. They’ll kill my brother.”

“We can ask Daggett to keep it quiet. We can trust him.”

“No!” Charley protested even more vehemently than Dawson. “You cannot trust that damned Daggett.”

Amanda arched a questioning eyebrow at him.

“He’s—he’s a cowboy. He could get you killed. Remember how he acted in Silver Creek.”

Amanda remembered that Daggett had charged in at the eleventh hour to capture Roland Kimball, and she and Daggett had subsequently spent some time together as she went through the process of giving her statements so they could convict the evil man. Charley had no reason to call him a cowboy except that he was really good looking and rugged in a Texas cowboy sort of way.

And that probably explained why Charley didn’t want Detective Daggett around. Jealousy of something he’d never been. That and the fact that Charley fancied there was some attraction between Daggett and her. That was ridiculous, of course.

Well, maybe not completely ridiculous, but it had nothing to do with the fact that they needed his help right now.

Dawson turned away and ran a hand through his hair, making it even messier. “We don’t dare call in the police. I’ve got to find that source code and give it to those people.” He threw his hands out in a gesture of helplessness. “But I don’t know where else to look. I have no idea what Project Verdant is. Verdant means green.
A green project? Recycling? Solar energy? There's nothing like that in any of Dad's programs.”

“Okay, okay!” Amanda moved to him and took his hands in hers. She could barely manage her own life, but somehow she was going to have to take control of the situation, calm Dawson,
figure out what to do next. She knew how to repair motorcycles, open a can of Coke and call for pizza delivery, but she had no idea how to soothe her frantic friend or how to locate a missing boy.

“Dawson, you’re the smartest person I know. You just need to relax and think. We can do this.” She tried to sound as if she really meant that last sentence. 

He grabbed onto her hands as if grabbing a lifeline, his desperate expression suddenly hopeful. He seemed a lot more confident of her abilities than she was.

Damn. He was counting on her and she had no idea what to do.

When all else fails and your mind goes completely blank, fall back on manners.

It was Texas, and a stressful situation called for a hot beverage even though it was at least ninety degrees outside.

“Do you have tea or hot chocolate?”

Dawson nodded.

“Let’s make something to drink and talk this through. Where’s your tea and where are your cups?”

He led her back to the living room and indicated the small kitchen separated by an open bar.
“In the cabinet.”

Amanda didn’t ask which cabinet.
There were only a couple to choose from. She’d find what she needed. 

She located two thick white mugs, filled them with water and turned around once then twice. No microwave. She was definitely going to have to redo her budget and figure out a way to pay him more. How on earth did he cook frozen dinners without a microwave?

She found a pan, poured in the water and heated it on the small stove, then cringed when she found the tea—store brand tea bags. Well, it would have to do.

She poured the hot water into the cups, added tea bags, and took them to the table in the dining area.

“I might like to have a cup of tea, too,” Charley complained. “But no, just ignore the ghost.”

“Do you have a notepad and pen?” Amanda asked Dawson, trying her best to ignore the ghost.

He brought the requested items to the table.

Charley sat on the chair in front of Amanda’s cup of tea and grinned at her when she approached. “Come sit on my lap.”

Amanda took another chair and moved her cup over. “You write,” she said when Dawson shoved the paper toward her. “Can’t read my own writing once it gets cold.” She took a drink of the store brand tea and tried not to grimace. “First we need to search through everything you brought with you when you left your old house.”

“We didn’t bring a lot, just what we could throw in the car, and I’ve already been through all of it three times searching for something—an external hard drive, a flash drive, a CD, even a printout, anything that might contain source code. I haven’t found anything.”

Dawson could spot a 6-32 set screw in a bin full of fasteners from across a tool crib, so if he hadn’t found anything, there probably was nothing to find. But she couldn’t say that, couldn’t let him accept defeat. “I haven’t been through it. Fresh eyes. Write that down. Number one, search possessions for something that could contain source code.”

Dawson dutifully wrote on the notepad in his meticulous penmanship. He’d probably never had a teacher tell him he was going to get a C in penmanship when he actually deserved an F for such terrible handwriting, but all his other grades were
As. Not that Amanda’s bad handwriting bothered her. That was why God invented word processing programs.

Dawson finished writing and looked at her, waiting.

Amanda took another sip of tea, trying to think of what to say next. “What about the rest of it, the stuff you didn’t bring, the stuff you left in Kansas City?”

“The mortgage company foreclosed on the house and set the furniture and everything out on the sidewalk for strangers to take.”

Amanda flinched at the image. “Are you sure? How do you know when you’re down here and the house is up there?”

“Internet.”

“Oh.” She drew in a deep breath. “If that program was still somewhere in the house—” She bit off the sentence as she realized what she was about to say. The unspoken conclusion hung in the air between them.

Charley frowned. “If it was in the house, it’s gone and he can’t give it to the
kidnappers which means they’ll kill his brother. Oh. I see. You knew that, didn’t you?”

Dawson’s features crumpled and for a moment Amanda thought he was going to cry. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes then put them back on.

“So we will find your brother,” she blurted, then wondered if it was possible the absurd statement had come from her own lips. How did she expect to find a kidnapped child?

“Really, Sherlock Holmes?”
Charley jeered. “And just how do you think you’re going to do that?”

“How?”
Dawson echoed Charley’s question. However, unlike Charley, he still had the hopeful expression that made her cringe inside and swear a personal vow that she would somehow find Grant.

“Keep writing. Two.” Amanda gestured at the notepad.

Dawson ducked his head and dutifully wrote “
2”
on the pad.

Amanda took another sip of the bitter tea, buying time while she decided what on earth she was going to say next.

“Two. Search Grant’s room for, uh, trace evidence.”

“I’ve already done that.”

“But I haven’t. Fresh eyes.” She was just trying to find suggestions to make Dawson feel better. She had no intention of searching Grant’s room in case there was something the police could use when Dawson finally agreed they had to call them in. “Write it down.”

“This is crazy, Amanda!” Charley leaned through the table toward her. “You have no idea what trace evidence looks like, and you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you found it. You need to call the cops, just not that Daggett guy. They can either find the missing kid if there is one or get Dawson committed if there isn’t. Maybe he murdered his little brother and hid the body and this is his cover story.”

Ignoring Charley, Amanda watched Dawson write her words then look at her expectantly.

“Three.” She tried to remember what they did on TV shows when they were looking for a missing person. “We talk to your neighbors.” Actually, that didn’t sound like a bad idea. It was the only good one she’d come up with yet. “And we’ll do
three
before
one
and
two
since you already did
one
and
two
.”

Dawson frowned then started to tear off the top sheet.

“Stop. You don’t need to start all over and change the numbers.” The boy was definitely OCD.

He dropped the sheet of paper and looked at her, fear joining with the anguish in his eyes. “I don’t know my neighbors. I’ve avoided them ever since we’ve been here.”

“I know, fly under the radar. No problem. I’ll talk to them.” She pushed back her chair and stood.

Dawson followed her example, squaring his shoulders. “I’ll go with you. I guess it’s too late to try to hide.”

Amanda, Dawson and Charley went back out into the hallway with its stained green carpet and rancid smells. Three more apartments on the floor. That meant twelve apartments in all. Surely a boy couldn’t disappear from the building without somebody seeing something.

She turned to Dawson. “You don’t know who lives next door to you?” She indicated the apartment beside his, 3C.

He shook his head. “I know there are two women on the other side of me, but I don’t know anything about this apartment or the one next to it. Sometimes I hear strange noises coming from this one.”

“Strange noises?
Like what?”

“Electronic noises.
Beeps, buzzing.”

“Chainsaws,” Charley said.
“Chopping people up. I don’t think you should go in there.”

That image did not make her feel even a little bit better about this visit. “Okay, let’s go talk to whoever lives in 3C.”

Amanda knocked on the scarred wooden door.

“I’ll just pop in and see if he’s got the brother and if the kid’s still alive. If he has a chainsaw, you probably shouldn’t disturb him.” Charley disappeared through the door.

No one responded to her knock. No sounds came from inside. “Damn. Whoever lives here is probably at work.” Amanda knocked again.

Charley emerged back into the hallway. Amanda could only describe his expression as looking like he’d seen a ghost.

“He’s home all right! You are not going to freaking believe this!”

 

Chapter Four

 

Amanda gasped and jumped backward, away from the door, as images of a torture chamber with chains, saws and several dead bodies flashed through her mind.

“What’s wrong?”  Panic edged Dawson’s words “What did you hear? Is Grant in there? Are they hurting him?”

The door opened a crack.

Amanda turned to run but bumped into Dawson. He shoved her aside and pushed against the door, almost knocking over a short man wearing a tinfoil hat, thick glasses and an annoyed expression. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m your neighbor.” Dawson’s voice was surprisingly firm. Concern for his brother had emboldened his normally reticent nature.

His courage made Amanda braver. “We need to talk to you.” She glanced at Charley to see if he was going to protest, warn them away from whatever he’d seen inside.

“You gotta see this,” he said.

Amanda shuddered and sent up a silent prayer that Charley wouldn’t think she needed to see a torture chamber or mutilated bodies. “Can we come in?”

The young man looked at her, shrugged, causing his shiny hat to tilt precariously, and opened the door wider to allow them entrance.

For once Charley had neither lied nor exaggerated. If Amanda had not seen it for herself, she would not have freaking believed it.

The walls and windows were covered with tinfoil. The furniture consisted of four long tables holding monitors, computer towers, laptops and other machines Amanda couldn’t readily identify. Pieces of tinfoil in various sizes and shapes lay on or beside most of the machines. Electric cords and wires draped the tables and ran along the floor like Christmas tinsel on steroids.

“Come in,” the neighbor invited then darted back into the room and began shoving magazines off two wooden chairs.

Dawson strode in without hesitation.

“It’s like that in the kitchen and bedroom too!” Charley smiled proudly as if he were somehow responsible for the unique décor.

“Is Grant here?” Amanda whispered, inclining her head toward the open door to the bedroom.

Charley shook his head.
“No, just more aluminum foil. Guy must have hit one heck of a sale. A thousand rolls for the price of one.”

BOOK: The Ex Who Glowed in the Dark (Charley's Ghost)
13.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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