In His Sights

And so now here she was, she thought as she finally continued on to the parking area on the far side of the building, distribution manager for Redstone Northwest. And while it wasn’t the high-power, moving-millions-of-dollars-a-day job she’d held in Denver, it was enough to keep her mind sharp. Even more important, it let her stay in Summer Harbor, to take care of her grandparents. And right now that was the most important thing in the world to her.

She pulled into her usual parking spot, the one she’d picked at the far end of the lot, although she could have had one with her name on it closer to the doors. She wanted this one to add a bit more exercise to her crowded days. The extra walking, coupled with lunch breaks frequently spent in the small basement gym Redstone had built, kept her in shape and the sneaky extra pounds off.

“Too much stuff,” she muttered to herself, not for the first time as she gathered up her purse and heavy satchel. The canvas bag that held both ends of her record keeping spectrum—her traditional clipboard and her more modern PDA—was a far cry from the elegant leather briefcase she had once carried. But it was far more practical—and less conspicuous—here in the casual Northwest.

She headed for her office, remembering how joyous her first months here had been. In fact, her work here had been immensely satisfying, and the longer she worked for Redstone the more she liked it. And the idea of someone stealing from the company made her very angry.

Furthermore, the idea that what they were stealing was being taken from people who desperately needed the help of Redstone’s newest invention turned that anger to fury. It was a fury tempered only by apprehension; she had some suspicions about who might be involved in this string of thefts—if two could be called a string—and she didn’t at all like the possibility that she’d come up with.

As she turned down the hall and headed for her office, nodding and greeting the staff she encountered, she renewed her determination to put a stop to this. Josh had opened this facility here because he loved the area and wanted to help the local economy, and she didn’t want him to ever regret it. She felt as if the reputation of Summer Harbor was at stake. She would not let what had so far been a small problem become a large one for Redstone.

To her surprise, when she got to her office the usually locked door was already open. She took another step forward. Not only that, but there was someone inside and that someone was sitting at her computer.

The computer where the schedules for the shipments of the insulin pumps were stored.

Chapter 3

Kate stepped into her office quietly. There was no mistaking who the unexpected occupant was; the maroon streaks in her brown hair didn’t leave much room for mistakes.

Kate watched for a moment before speaking. There was a spreadsheet on the computer screen, but she couldn’t see from here which one it was.

“Mel?”

“Oh!” Melissa Morris spun around, clearly startled. “Ms. Crawford, I didn’t hear you.”

“Looking for something?” Kate asked, not taking her eyes off the girl while she set down her purse and canvas bag. It wasn’t unusual for the girl to be there, but Kate was touchy these days.

“Yes. Those old shipping numbers. So I can finish that practice analysis you wanted.” She looked embarrassed. “I lost my copy.”

Kate relaxed. Inwardly, although she knew her critical data password was protected, she was grateful there was such an innocent explanation for Mel’s presence and her actions. Outwardly, she frowned. “Don’t you have a term paper to finish?”

The sixteen-year-old, who had adopted the nickname of Mel for the hated Melissa years ago, nodded. “But I keep getting them confused. If I sit down to work on the paper, I think of the analysis report. If I sit down to work on the report, all I can think about is the term paper.”

Kate, who could remember being in a very similar position in school more than once, smiled. “The brain sometimes sabotages you, doesn’t it? No matter how hard you try to focus on one thing, other things keep sneaking in.”

Mel gave her a look that trumpeted her relief that Kate understood. “Yes, exactly.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

Mel hesitated. “Aren’t you supposed to tell me that?”

Kate smiled. “The mentor program is supposed to give you the chance to learn. Sometimes the best way to do that is fight through to the answers yourself. And learn how to do that.” She shrugged. “I’m just here to nudge if you head down a wrong path.”

“Oh.” The girl looked disconcerted for a moment, then thoughtful. “Well, while I was trying to do my term paper, I had some ideas about a different way to do the distribution analysis I thought were good. So I came here to get that done, while the ideas were fresh in my mind.”

“All right,” Kate said. “But you need to balance that. We don’t want the work experience counselor revoking your privilege to spend mornings here. Tonight you work only on your paper.”

The girl perked up. “Okay. I think maybe I can finish the rough numbers today, and that will be enough to get it out of my head so I can concentrate on my paper.”

“If you can’t get around the roadblock, sometimes you just have to tear it down,” Kate said.

Mel’s nose wrinkled. “Is that another one of your grandfather’s old sayings?”

Kate grinned. “Yep. He prefers to think of them as axioms of wisdom.”

“Is that a weapon of some kind, an axiom?”

“It can be,” Kate said. “Look it up when you’re done with your paper,” Kate added.

“Yeah,” the girl said, then sighed somewhat morosely. “So, where can I find those shipping figures?”

“They’re in the distribution spreadsheet. It hasn’t been closed out for the quarter yet, so it’s in the open files.”

“Okay. I’ll move out to the other computer.”

“I’ve got some manifests to work on, so if you want to use mine, you can have it for about a half hour.”

“Great! It’s hard to concentrate out there,” she said, gesturing toward the outer office where Kate’s assistant had his desk, and held vendors, salespeople and job seekers at bay until their appointment times.

A few minutes later Mel’s maroon-streaked head was bent over the keyboard as she brought up the spreadsheet she needed. When the student started working here, she hadn’t been familiar with the software program Redwood used, but she knew computers and had quickly figured it out. The girl was bright enough, quite, in fact, but she was also chafing against the restraints of living in a small town that didn’t even have a movie theater. Kate had recognized the signs, which was why she’d offered herself as the girl’s mentor when she’d signed up for the program at her school.

Why Mel had accepted, she wasn’t quite sure. There had been people in other parts of the county who had volunteered for the mentoring program, places where there was much more of what Mel called “civilization.” But she’d chosen Kate, right here in Summer Harbor, the very place she wanted so desperately to escape.

And that, Kate thought, was the first thing that had made her suspicious. That and the occasional flash of anger she saw in the girl, anger at being stuck here in the place she derided with a very descriptive and obscene term. Kate had had to tell her she could curse up a storm anywhere else she could get away with it, but not inside Redstone. And then realized she was going to have to live up to her own rules and rein in the occasional “damn” that escaped her.

But when the thefts had started, she’d wondered. Wondered if there was another reason Mel had chosen her as the person she wanted as her mentor. If perhaps it wasn’t her, or her work that had attracted the girl at all, but Redstone, and getting on the inside. Kate didn’t like thinking that way, but she couldn’t help the questions that popped into her mind when the girl complained about tiny Summer Harbor.

Now that would be just peachy, she thought sourly, if she’d actually invited the thief into the nest, as it were.

She turned to look at the girl again. “Mel?” The teenager looked up. “Why did you pick me?”

“What do you mean?”

“You could have picked someone in L.A., Chicago or even Seattle. The kind of place you want to go. But you chose me, here.”

Mel nodded.

“Why?”

“Because you got out. Those others were always there, so they didn’t have anywhere to get out of. But you did, and you got out, even if you came back. That’s what I wanted to learn.”

It made a certain kind of sense, Kate thought. Teenage sense, but sense.

Of course, that didn’t mean she wasn’t involved in the thefts. It could just mean that part came later.

Kate began to sort the cargo manifests. As she organized them, part of her mind was still, as it had been since the start of this trouble, occupied with trying to solve the riddle of the thefts.

“Kate? Oh, she’s a good one,” the grocer said with a smile. “Not many who’d leave a big career like she had and come home to take care of her grandparents when they started having health problems.”