Gone Missing

“Call me Jo.” The blonde lawyer smiled broadly. “And I love bacon cheeseburgers.”

Elisabeth Aday had come through for Joslyn and Clay. Since Elisabeth still volunteered at a local domestic abuse shelter, she knew several lawyers, and one of them had put in an urgent call to his friend Joanna Harnett in Phoenix. Joslyn had given Jo the copy of the video. Officer Winchester had apparently delivered the original video to the detective in charge of Clay’s case as promised, but the lawman had been stubborn about releasing Clay even when faced with clear evidence that he was innocent. Jo had pulled strings, because Clay was finally released an hour later.

They sat on a bench outside the police station to eat their burgers. The salty bacon, melting cheese and juicy beef was exactly what he needed after the frustrating afternoon in police lockup.

None of the people he talked to would believe him. He’d spent two years in jail for being a low-level thug for that Chicago mob family, and he’d gotten a good job as a bouncer for a nightclub in the years since he’d been out, but none of that mattered to them. He felt as if he would never be able to escape his past.

All he wanted to do was to find Fiona, to apologize to her for that last fight they’d had before she left Chicago. To show her that he’d changed. To make up for all the grief he’d put her through.

“The detective will look into the accident,” Jo said around a mouthful of burger. “It wasn’t on a street with many businesses, so there isn’t a good chance some bank ATM camera caught it on film or anything like that.” She had a slight Southern lilt to her voice.

“I don’t understand why they’d do that,” Clay said. “They tried to kill us with that bomb at Fiona’s house, then they followed us, but then they arranged to have me arrested. That’s like a step back.”

“We still don’t know for sure that they’re the ones who set the bomb,” Joslyn said. “But...I think I know why they wanted you arrested—to take you out of the picture. To separate us.”

Clay’s shoulders grew rock hard. “What happened?”

“They tried to kidnap me at the mall.” She spoke quickly, as if nervous about telling him.

“What?!” And he’d been stuck in a cage, unable to protect her. What good was he if he couldn’t protect people?

“It was fine, a police officer happened to be right there,” she said. “But they ran and he couldn’t catch them. It was the same officer who delivered the security video of you in the shoe store to authorities.”

“That was smart of them,” Jo said reluctantly. “Separate the two of you so they could more easily grab Joslyn. Then with Clay in jail, they could afford to wait and take care of him later.”

Joslyn swallowed. “That’s what I was thinking. They’re probably upset you got Clay out of jail so fast.”

“They could’ve tried something,” Clay said, “but I wouldn’t go down so easily.”

“What are you going to do now?” Jo wiped her mouth. She’d inhaled that burger.

“We still don’t know where Fiona is or why she disappeared,” Clay said.

“I want to get online to do some research on Fiona and Martin Crowley,” Joslyn said, “but I can’t do that if we’re being followed. Those men would interrupt us before I even had a chance to log in to my computer.”

“Those creeps have to know something about Fiona. I want to set a little trap so we can find out more about them.”

“Nope, I don’t want to hear this.” Jo stood. “As your lawyer, I don’t want to know.”

“We won’t do anything illegal,” Clay said. He’d learned his lesson years ago and was still paying for it now.

“Regardless, it’s probably best if you don’t tell me.” Jo smiled at the two of them. “I hope I’ll see you again, but maybe somewhere other than the police station.”

“You bet.” Clay shook her hand. “Thanks a lot.”

Joslyn watched the lawyer walk away. “She was nice.”

“And effective. The police could have been stubborn and kept me locked up.”

“Not all policemen are like that.”

“It’s because of what I used to do. I’ve never had a good relationship with cops.” And it looked as if he never would.

Joslyn leaned forward on the bench. “So what kind of trap did you want to set?”

“Where’s your cell phone?”

“I left it on, like you wanted me to, but at the hotel so they wouldn’t know where I was going.” She blew out a breath. “It didn’t matter because they probably just followed me from the police station.”

“But since it’s still on, those guys may not realize we suspect the phones are trackable.” Clay held up his own phone, which the officers had returned to him. “I want to lure them in. We’ll drop the cell phones somewhere, make them think we’re there, while we hide nearby. We can find out their license-plate number, maybe snap some photos.”

Joslyn narrowed her eyes at him. “Tell me you’re not also hoping to capture one of them.”

Clay thought he’d be able to take them, although it would be a tough fight, but there was always the chance one of them would grab Joslyn. He didn’t want to put her in danger or allow the men to use her as leverage. But he hesitated a fraction of a second too long before saying, “No.”

“Clay—”

“Really, no. It’s too dangerous. But it might be dangerous to set this trap for them, even if all we’re doing is getting a look at them.”

“Get me a good photo,” Joslyn said. “I have a facial-recognition program I’m working on that can scan the web to try to find them.”

“Really? I thought that was only on TV.”

“You’d be surprised what real-life hackers can do.”

He nodded and stood. “You ready?”

They tossed their trash and then got into Joslyn’s rental car, although Clay got behind the wheel. “Let’s get your phone and then make sure we’re not being tailed,” he said. “We need to be a few minutes ahead of them.”

They went to Joslyn’s hotel where they picked up her cell phone, and she gathered her things and checked out of the room, just in case. She seemed to have very few things—she’d bought new clothes at the mall today, and only had one other change of clothing. As she was looking through her stuff, she suddenly held up a small electronic device.

“Is that a...?” Clay said.

“GPS tracker.” Her skin flushed. “They went into my hotel room and pinned it under the collar of my jacket.”

“Don’t ditch it yet,” Clay said. “That way the men won’t know that we discovered the trackers just yet. We can get rid of all that stuff later.”