Broken Read online

  What was his first name? Dana searched her memory, but the last few days kept fuzzing.

  The office door opened, and Roscoe bounded out, kicked out his back leg, and then shook his fur. With a happy yip, he trotted toward the professor, rubbing against the man’s jeans.

  “Jethro?” Angus appeared in his doorway. “Do you have your old notes?”

  Oh yeah. Jethro. Cool name. Dana continued to observe the tension between Serena and the professor. What in the world was up with the two of them?

  Jethro tugged the wide strap of his satchel over his head and strode around the desks toward the first case room. “I have my notes, but I don’t see how any of this will help since Lassiter hasn’t made a move, if he’s even alive. I do think we should discuss the possibility that he’s dead. Sometimes evil does lose.”

  Angus followed him into the case room and shut the door.

  Roscoe flopped back down, this time lying across Dana’s tennis shoes and giving a short whimper.

  “Ha.” She reached down to pat his head. “I’m not dumb enough to wear high heels around you, buddy.” They’d be instantly snatched away. She pushed the notebook toward Serena. Why not? “These are copies of notes my friend Candy made about a story she was working on. She’s the journalist who disappeared two months ago.”

  “I see.” Serena opened the binder and flipped through the pages. She shut it and looked up, stretching out in the chair. “So. Tell me about Candy.”

  Dana stilled. “Those are her notes.”

  Serena smiled, and a dimple winked in her left cheek. “Did you think I’d look at the pages and then have a Good Will Hunting moment?”

  Well, yeah. “Maybe a Beautiful Mind one,” Dana admitted.

  “Or a Daniel figuring out the Stargate situation?” Serena laughed, leaning back and plopping her tennis shoes on the desk. She wore one yellow and one blue footie that barely peeked above the shoes, somehow looking right on her. “Tell me about Candy, so I can get into her head a little bit. Like, how did you meet?”

  “Same journalism class at Columbia,” Dana said, remembering fondly. “She’s a city girl, I’m a country girl, and we both love words. We worked together on several projects and became good friends.” In fact, one of her best memories was of taking Candy fishing one weekend when they visited Dana’s family. The city girl had done all right, although she just wouldn’t take a fish off the line to save her life.

  “What three words would you use to describe her?” Serena asked, intelligence shining in her eyes. This close, specks of green and gold were visible in the brown.

  It hurt to think about her friend, but she persisted in using the present tense. Chances were that Candy hadn’t survived the attack, but Dana had to keep some hope. “Three words? Hmm.” She thought for several moments. “I’d say organized, adventurous, and tenacious.” She’d never give up on a story, much like Dana. “She’s interested in how businesses work and how people can infiltrate them and cause problems.”

  Serena nodded. “All right. Who are her favorite authors?”

  “Steve Berry, Nora Roberts, Lexi Blake, and Stephen King,” Dana said instantly.

  “Favorite animals?”

  “Well, I don’t know that she had a favorite. She didn’t have pets.” Dana chewed her lip. “As for her family life, she had a brother she lost to a car wreck in high school, and they were raised by a single mom who died of breast cancer shortly thereafter.” Dana breathed out. “I kind of adopted her into our family during college and dragged her home for holidays. She enjoyed that, I think.” Then they’d gotten busy with work and their adult lives. It had been a while since they’d vacationed together.

  “What kind of people did she date?”

  “Very smart men,” Dana mused. “Past boyfriends include an inventor of some computer program, a theoretical physicist, and a quite successful stockbroker.”

  “How about you?” Serena asked.

  Dana chuckled. “Lost causes seem to be my type. How about you? What’s up with you and Professor British accent and cute butt?”

  Serena rolled her sparkling eyes. “Uptight academics who have lived their whole lives in the ivory tower just bug me.”

  Dana hadn’t tagged the professor that way. “And?”

  “He stole my office.” Serena frowned. “We both work at D.C. University, and we were up for a very plush, in the corner, perfectly situated office, and he got it. Butthead.” She reached down and rubbed between Roscoe’s ears. “I mean, I was new at the university, and I guess he had some seniority, but that was the empty office when I agreed to teach there and I assumed it would be mine.”

  “Well, then. You should teach him a lesson,” Dana said.

  Serena straightened up. “Go on.” Her tone was both interested and encouraging.

  “I don’t know, but your revenge should have something to do with the office, you know? Like fill it with confetti or foam or something.” Dana leaned back and set her shoes on her desk. “Candy loved practical jokes. I mean loves. She loves practical jokes.” The levity disappeared with her slip of the tongue.

  Serena sobered and opened the binder again. “Okay. Let’s see what we have here.” She read through the notes. “Is there a wall or a whiteboard I could use to tape these pages up?” She clicked the binder open.

  “Yeah.” Dana’s feet dropped to the floor, carefully missing the dog. “We can use case room two. I think it’s clear for now.”

  “What’s in the first case room?” Serena asked, glancing toward the three doors at the back of the office.

  Dana winced. “The Lassiter case.”

  Serena pulled her legs back and set her feet on the floor. “I worked with Angus before that case, but I heard it destroyed him.”

  Dana nodded. “Yeah. I think it did.”

  The elevator creaked, groaned, hitched, and then opened.

  Wolfe stepped out, a stack of dark brown folders in one hand and a tray of whipped-cream-topped lattes in the other.

  “Wow,” Serena whispered.

  Amen to that. The ex-soldier wore jeans that emphasized his long legs, a ratty T-shirt that showed off his broad chest, and a pissed-off expression that somehow made him seem even more handsome and yet unapproachable.

  He set the folders and drinks down. “I have copies of the police files for Albert Nelson and Frank Spanek, as well as the entire Candy Folks case file. Don’t ask me what I had to do to get them.” He handed a latte to Dana and then one to Serena. “I’m Wolfe.”

  Serena blushed a light pink beneath her darker skin. “Serena.”

  “Nice to meet you.” He took a latte, focusing on Dana. “Yours is decaf.”

  Irritation swept her, and she set her first latte down, definitely not needing the second one. “Knock it off, Wolfe.”

  Serena looked from one to the other and then sipped her whipped cream before glancing down at her deconstructed purse, still in a wet heap on the cracked floor. “This is sure an interesting place to work.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The pizza sat in a lump in Wolfe’s stomach, even though he’d eaten the veggie one with less cheese. “Stop staring at me,” he muttered to the dog while pulling his beer bottle closer to his opened laptop on the conference table in case room two.

  Roscoe barked once, whined, and blinked several times.

  Wolfe sat back. “Tell me you’re not batting your eyes at me.”

  The dog’s eyes widened, making him look pretty freaking adorable. He panted, his tongue rolling out, his tail wagging across the torn tile. “Woof.”

  Dana came into the room, followed closely by Serena. They seemed to be having some sort of mild disagreement about the original Star Trek versus The Next Generation, but he didn’t really care.

  Serena returned to her half of the wide wall board, where she’d taped rows of Candy’s notes. “Hmm.” She took a page from the bottom and exchanged it for one at the top, seeming to forget there were other people in the room. Wolfe kind of l
iked that about her.

  Dana drew the chair out next to him, and the tantalizing scent of orange blossoms tickled his nose. He had no idea if she used a lotion that smelled like that, or if it was just her, but for the rest of his short life, he’d think of her every time he saw an orange. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  He started and then covered by sliding his yellow pad filled with notes toward her. “Yeah. You?”

  “Yeah.” She wasn’t meeting his gaze, and he didn’t much blame her.

  He looked at the board in front of him, where he’d pasted pictures of Frank Spanek, Albert Nelson, Trentington, Candy Folks, Dana, and himself with lines between points of contact. He’d gotten the pictures of almost everyone from their police files.

  She frowned. “Is that you?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Didn’t have a picture, so I drew me.” It looked like a stick figure drawn by a drunk moron, but he’d placed a misshapen and rather chunky wolf next to it.

  Her lips pressed together. “Is that a wolf?”

  Of course it was a wolf. “Drawing isn’t my specialty,” he said, feeling oddly defensive. Yet when she gave in and smiled, a weight lifted off his chest. “I can try to draw you, if you’d like.”

  “No. That’s okay.” She held up a hand. “Please don’t.”

  Fair enough. He tuned out the mutterings and tape-ripping noises of Serena in the corner. “What did you find in Candy’s file?”

  Dana exhaled and drew her notes out from under the file folder. “The police have been very diligent and have talked to pretty much everyone they could. They think her disappearance is associated with her current story, as do I. Their guys haven’t been able to decipher the code of her notes, either.” She looked pale.

  Wolfe clenched his fist on his jean-clad leg to keep from reaching for her to offer comfort. “What else?” he asked instead.

  She pushed her notes toward him. “I diagrammed the people they’ve talked to.”

  “Is Frank Spanek one of them?” he asked, wondering if there was a connection to the guy who’d had them drugged.

  “No.” Dana smoothed her hair away from her face. Today she’d worn nice jeans and a short-sleeved green shirt that brought out the color of her eyes. The dark smudges beneath her eyes did nothing to detract from her beauty. “The police estimate that Candy was missing for almost two days, maybe more, before anybody knew.”

  Guilt. He recognized it. “That’s not your fault, Dana.”

  “I know, but I’d been meaning to take her to lunch, and we both just got busy.” Even Dana’s lips were pale.

  He had to get her into bed to sleep, as soon as they finished this debriefing. “Anything else?”

  “They’re still looking at Candy’s current boyfriend, Brett Sawyer, who’s an investment banker. He doesn’t have an alibi for the time they think Candy was taken, and supposedly a neighbor heard them arguing a few days before that.” Dana scrubbed both hands down her face. “I find his involvement doubtful. I figure this is bigger than a domestic dispute. Not that domestic disputes aren’t big, but you know what I mean.”

  Wolfe nodded. “I do. This feels less personal and more businesslike, for some reason. But we should check out Brett, anyway.”

  “Agreed. Let’s do that tomorrow.” She sat back, partially turning toward him. “What did you discover?”

  He tapped his fingers on the Captive membership list. “I’m about a quarter through members and haven’t found much of interest, yet.” Leaning to the side, he tugged another list his way. “I’ve done a breakdown of the caterer and entertainment for the night, and we’ll research the employees and talk to the owners of the club soon. So far, I haven’t found the woman who served us the drinks, or how she relates to Frank Spanek and ultimately Albert Nelson. It has to all be connected, and my guess it all stems from Candy’s story and her disappearance. It makes more sense that way.” He’d looked up pictures of everyone he’d researched so far, using social media.

  “Do you remember what the woman who drugged us looked like?” Dana asked.

  “Kind of.” The woman had dark hair, blue eyes, and light skin, but the mask had covered a lot of her face. “The hair may have been a wig, but I think I’d recognize her eyes if I saw her again.” More memories were coming back to him all the time. “I’ll need another day or even two to finish researching both lists.” There were some high-up government employees on the membership list that he’d need to be careful in approaching.

  “All right.” She pushed the chart out of the way and tugged the two case files closer. “There’s some good stuff in here.”

  Wolfe closed his laptop. “Like what?”

  “The police were investigating both Albert Nelson and Frank Spanek for distribution of heroin, but couldn’t find enough to make charges stick,” Dana said.

  Wolfe went cold. His throat closed. “Heroin? When?”

  “The police started investigating the two men a couple of years ago, and from these files, it looks like the investigation heated up around three months ago,” Dana said, pulling out another notebook and not catching his tension.

  Three months ago. “Are you sure it was heroin? How did they know? What kind of evidence did they have?” Wolfe rapid-fired the questions at her, simultaneously reaching for the police case files.

  She paused and turned toward him. “What’s going on?”

  Serena pivoted. “Did you say heroin?”

  “Yeah.” Wolfe’s pulse started to beat too fast, and he took a deep breath to control his body. “Why?”

  Serena looked up at the ceiling as she thought. Ignoring him, she turned back to the papers, muttering under her breath and tapping her foot.

  One issue at a time. Wolfe flipped open the first case file, his skin suddenly feeling too tight. The timeline fit with Rock’s drug dealings as well as his possible connection to Albert Nelson, but if the police had been investigating Nelson and Spanek for years, they probably had many enemies in the drug trade. Even so, Rock was getting closer, he could just feel it.

  “Wolfe?” Dana asked, placing her hand over the page he was reading. “What is happening?”

  Too much was happening. A boulder dropped into his gut with a force he felt to his toes. What had he been thinking sleeping with Dana? All of a sudden, the world came unexpectedly falling down. What if Rock had been working with Nelson and Spanek? Had he now put Dana on Rock’s radar? Although Rock would never go for a drugging. It wasn’t his style. Even so, a cold sweat broke out on Wolfe’s forehead, and his chest tightened.

  “Hey.” Dana leaned toward him, somehow sounding far away. “You okay? You just got really pale.”

  Was he having a heart attack? Wait a minute. No. This was a fucking panic attack. He hadn’t had one in so long that he almost didn’t recognize the signs. It was out of the blue, like usual, and he couldn’t stop it. He dropped his head into his hands, gasping for breath.

  Fur instantly pressed up between his palms, and a rough tongue licked his chin.

  His chest shuddered, and he pressed his face to the dog’s fur, sucking in air. Calm. Be calm. It’s all right. He ran the litany through his head, finding comfort in the animal, his legs shaking as he slowly came down. An instant headache blasted him between the eyes, and he winced, willing it away.

  Roscoe sat patiently, steady next to him, offering support.

  Heat roared into Wolfe’s face as reality returned, leaving him hollow. He wanted to crawl under the table with the animal, but that wasn’t how he faced life. He lifted his head, even though it weighed about fifty pounds. “I’m sorry.”

  Dana reached over and kneaded the back of his neck, her eyes soft and concerned. “Take a deep breath. It’s okay.”

  Her touch soothed him, easing the pain exploding through his head. Even his ears heated. Talk about losing control in front of people he’d just met. He looked over to apologize to Serena, but she was facing her board, moving back and forth, and muttering a bunch of science-sounding words to herse
lf.

  Dana leaned in, her mouth close to his ear. “She didn’t even turn around. I’m not sure she knows we’re in the same universe with her. I like how completely she focuses, don’t you?”

  Yeah. Especially right now, since the woman hadn’t seen his breakdown. If only Dana hadn’t seen it either. “I haven’t had a panic attack in ages,” he whispered. “I don’t know what happened, and it definitely won’t happen again.” Well, it probably would, but hopefully he’d be alone next time. Yet another reason why he shouldn’t enter into a relationship, even if he wasn’t about to battle to the death.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Dana said softly, her touch bringing more ease than any run. “I’ve had a couple since my run-in with the Senator, and I understand. Yours passed quickly.”

  Was she trying to build him up? Laughter tickled his throat, and he smiled. “Okay. I’m fine, now.”

  She leaned back. “Good. How about you tell me why you suddenly went into a panic attack?”

  There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to why, but when an attack hit, he knew he was dealing with anxiety. The woman was about to lose that sweet look on her face. “I want you to go home, to your parents’ house, for a couple of weeks.” He kept her gaze and wouldn’t release her.

  She pulled away from him. “No.”

  “Yes.” Before she could argue, the door opened and Angus stood there, his gaze somber.

  “What?” Wolfe asked, his body tensing.

  Angus focused on Dana. “I’m sorry. The police think they’ve found Candy Folks. You’re listed as her emergency contact, and the authorities need somebody to identify the body.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The rain splattered almost gently against the windshield of Wolfe’s truck, breaking through the humidity of the evening in Washington, D.C. Dana watched buildings and streetlights slide by outside as if the night was normal. “Do you think there’s any chance the police are wrong?” she asked.

  “Doubtful.” The lights and shadows played across Wolfe’s knuckles on the steering wheel. “I can do this for you.”