Hidden Heat: Hauberk Protection, Book 4 (22 page)

“I didn’t have to be a cop to make that assumption.” Andy lowered his voice, “I figured you were up at the club since you weren’t answering your phone.”

Shit. All he needed was Andy digging into his whereabouts. The cop could be like a pitbull some days. “What did you want?”

Before he could answer, Chad appeared at the gym’s door. “Scott. Andy. Hit the showers then come into Sam’s office for a minute, will you? We’ve got a job for you.”

Less than ten minutes later, Scott followed Andy into Hauberk’s management sanctum. He slowed as he passed Sandy’s desk, concerned about the way she avoided looking up at them, instead of greeting them with her normal bright smile. “You all right, Sandy?”

“Fine.” Except she didn’t raise her eyes.

If there was someone less fine, it was the woman in front of him. What the hell was going on? Shit, had something happened to Troy?

“Sandy?” He crouched down beside her and softly asked, “Come on, honey, what’s wrong?”

“I’m fine.” Tread carefully. He’d learned long ago that when women said they were fine, they meant the opposite. From the way she snapped out the words, something definitely wasn’t fine in Sandy’s world.

“Scott? You coming?” Andy called from the doorway to Sam’s office.

“Yeah, in a minute.” He stayed squatting in front of her. “Come on, Sandy. Talk to me.”

Her eyes rose to meet his gaze. Instead of the tears he’d expected, her whole expression blazed with anger. “Someone hacked my Hauberk account. They’ve been using my system to look for Hauberk’s safe houses. If I get my hands on the douchebag who did it, I’ll cut his balls off.”

Shit. At least it was something containable, not that Troy had been hurt or broken up with her or anything. “It’s okay, beautiful. We’ll cut them off for you. And look at it this way—it could have been worse. They could have gotten to you.”

“Yeah, I know you’re right. I feel violated.”

The mood inside Sam’s office was grim. There were no chairs left so he and Andy stood by the closed door. Chad was already there, looking just as pissed off as Scott felt. The IT manager, John Lake, occupied the other visitor’s chair, his grey hair sticking up on end, bags under his eyes from too many long nights from the looks of it. Frustration radiated from Sam as he stared out the window, his fists balled on his thighs.

“Gentlemen, we believe we have a possible suspect as our hacker. One Mitch Young—he’s been dating Sandy’s roommate Jessica Guidry. Scott, I understand you’ve met her? And that she was with you and Sandy this weekend?”

“Yeah, though I was told her name was Jazz. As far as I know, she was in the apartment alone when I was there Saturday morning. I guess it’s possible someone was in her bedroom but I didn’t see anyone.”

“How’d she act when you arrived?”

Guilty, now he looked back on it. “She was jumpy. She didn’t want to get near me. Kept her back to me and stared out the window until Sandy mentioned she wanted to go back to Troy’s and paint. All of a sudden Jazz was all ‘hey, I want to help’ and next thing she was packed and pushing Sandy and me out the door as if she couldn’t get out of the place quick enough. Rest of the weekend, she was hard to judge. Sometimes she was real quiet, others fidgety. Come to think of it, it was like she was nervous. Sandy figured it was probably because she and her boyfriend had had a fight but now I’m wondering.”

Sam withdrew the cigar he habitually kept in his shirt pocket and toyed with it. From the teeth marks on the end, Scott wondered if it was the same one he’d kept in his pocket for the last six months, ever since he’d promised Rosie he’d give up smoking. “D’you think she was trying to distract Sandy and used that as an excuse to keep her away from their place?”

He lifted one shoulder for a second and let it drop in a half-hearted shrug. “Could be.”

“All right, then for now we’ll treat them both as suspects.” Chad thumbed the button on his phone. Both Scott and Andy pulled out their notebooks to take their own notes. “Here’s what we’ve found out so far. Jessica Ann Guidry. Twenty-eight years old. Single. Never married. No criminal record. No outstanding warrants or arrests. A couple speeding tickets over the period of five years. Not a registered voter. According to Sandy, she’s currently employed as a dancer at the Blue Angel out in Alexandria.”

Andy hissed in a breath. “That’s a rough joint. Or it used to be back when I was on the force.”

“Dancer?” Scott leaned forward, glancing between his partner and his boss. “Am I right in thinking by dancer you’re talking exotic?”

“Yup, the Blue Angel is G-string and pasties optional. We busted quite a few of their girls for their extra services—” Andy curled his fingers and made air quotes, “—while I was in Vice. Bouncers didn’t enforce the no-touch rules. Owner didn’t care either. I’ve heard that the owner sold out last year so I guess it’s possible they’ve cleaned up their act.”

“When Sandy introduced us, she said Jazz works at a call center and Jazz didn’t correct her.” Then again, would a woman volunteer she was a possible hooker to someone like him?

Chad’s scowl deepened. “Apparently Ms. Guidry prefers not to tell her best friend her real profession and Sandy lets her get away with it.”

“So we’re keeping her on the list of suspects,” Sam added. “If she’s lyin’ about that who knows what else she’s lyin’ about.”

Chad turned back to his report. “Parents are divorced. Father’s last known address was in Richmond, Virginia, dropped off the radar approximately twelve years ago. Mother currently resides in Ocala, Florida, and works as a housekeeper at a no-name motel. From what we’ve been able to dig up so far, until she started working as a dancer four years ago, she was habitually late paying her credit cards. She’s now got over twenty grand in a bank account and her credit cards are at a zero balance. Mostly cash deposits from the looks of it, so there’s no way to check if she’s making her money from more than just stripping.”

“Maybe she wants to get out of the dancing business,” Andy speculated. “If someone offered her enough money for access to the router and Sandy’s accounts.”

“Talk to her and see if she’ll tell you anything.” Chad dragged his thumb across the screen of his smartphone. “Our other suspect is Ms. Guidry’s former boyfriend. Goes by the name of Mitchell Young. But he’s lied about his name–the Mitchell Young who works at ITF is African American. The guy we’re after is Caucasian.”

“Maybe that’s why Jazz broke up with him. Maybe she found out he’d lied to her.” Or maybe she’d tried to blackmail him and he’d broken it off. Or maybe he’d simply decided to move on to the next chicky.

“Sandy got any pictures of him? Of either of them?”

“We have one of Ms. Guidry—I’m forwarding it to your email—but nothing for our alleged hacker. Sandy’s given us a description of him so we’ll have to go on that for now.” He consulted his notes. “Five-ten, maybe five-eleven, around two hundred pounds, Caucasian. Mid thirties.”

“Maybe Ms. Guidry’s taken a photo of her boyfriend. I’ll bet she’s got at least one on her cellphone.”

“Here’s hoping.”

“So the question is,” Scott interrupted, “is
Young
working on his own or for someone else?”

And had Jazz helped him? It cheesed him off that she had sat there the entire weekend, pretending to be Sandy’s friend, when the whole time she’d been using Sandy’s connections.

“That’s what we want you two to find out.” Chad held up a key. “Sandy’s given us a key to her place. I want you to go over there and see if you can lift some fingerprints and perhaps find anything else that might be of interest while Miss Guidry is working.” In other words, toss Jazz’s room for evidence she was in on the plot. Although all she’d had to do was copy Sandy’s list of passwords, so unless they found that, Scott doubted they’d find anything incriminating.

“Dan Bridges is going to go with you to check out Sandy’s router,” the IT manager added. “We need to make sure her security password is changed on her router and he’s also going to check to see if there are any network extenders hidden anywhere nearby. Who knows, maybe it’s one of her neighbors.”

“How do we know it’s not someone spoofing the IP address?”

John went into a long explanation that lost Scott within the first five words but Andy seemed to follow all the geek speak. From the way John responded, his partner was asking intelligent questions. Huh, who knew the former cop was a closet geek?

Twenty minutes later while Andy drove a plain white van, Scott scrolled through the files on Jazz.

Andy checked over his shoulder at the tech then lowered his voice. “I saw Sandy’s roommate at the bar. She hit on Kris. He liked her. Said he wouldn’t have pegged her as the type to use her friends.”

Scott grunted. “What about you? Did you peg her as being a stripper and possibly a hooker?”

“No, and, not all dancers earn their money on their back. A lot of them are students trying to pay for college.”

“If you say so, but I’m not ruling anyone out. It says a shitload about her character as far as I’m concerned.” Shit. Had she snooped around Troy’s place for info? What if she’d been snooping around, letting them think she was going to the bathroom?

What type of agent was he that he hadn’t picked up that she was no good? A fucking useless agent. Just like he’d been to Dev in Colombia. “It pisses me off that she lied to Sandy. That she may have used her.”

“Look, this guy lied to her, and to Sandy, even to Troy. If Troy didn’t suspect him, why would she? Besides, Sandy said they’d broken up. Maybe she found out something and dumped his sorry butt. First rule of investigation is don’t assume. So don’t judge her guilty yet. Not until you’ve heard her story.”

“You can pamper her all you want, but I’m not buying her shit.”

“I guess that means I’m playing the good cop today.”

Didn’t he always?

Never had he been so glad to arrive at a potential crime site as he had when Andy pulled into Sandy’s parking lot. He grabbed the fingerprint kit and headed up to the third floor, Andy behind him. Who gave a fuck if they’d left the tech to struggle with his equipment by himself? Being on the move, having a mission, helped him focus and let him shove his ire at Jazz aside.

Upon reaching Sandy’s door, Scott bent down to examine the brass casing around the lock. The brass gleamed bright compared to the dulled finish of the other apartments’ locks. From the security report Chad had given him, the alarm system in Sandy’s apartment had only been installed a few weeks before, and the new deadbolt had been installed at the same time. Troy’s doing, no doubt. “Doesn’t look like it’s been picked.”

The geek shifted his case from one arm to the other. Whatever the tech carried had to weigh fifty pounds. If he didn’t think to put it down while he waited, that was his own damned fault. Laughing to himself, Scott ran a hand along the metal framework. “Hard to tell if someone used a 2x4 to pop the frame but it doesn’t look like it.”

Probably wouldn’t work. He’d bet the new deadbolt would be a good two inches long.

“Of course, they could have used a bump key,” Andy helpfully suggested. From the way he choked out the suggestion, Andy had realized Scott’s delaying tactics and was equally amused by the tech’s cluelessness. “That wouldn’t leave any mark.”

“I suppose that’s true.” He stared down the hall and scratched his nose. “Maybe we should interview the neighbors to see if they’ve noticed anyone hanging around.”

“We should interview the superintendent too. Maybe see if there’s any security cameras or anything around?” Andy made a studied inspection of the ceilings as if he were searching for cameras. It was the tech’s own fault for not noticing his partner’s shoulders shaking in his futile attempt to stop himself from laughing out loud.

“All right already. You can make love to the doorframe all you want, and I can tell myself there aren’t any security cameras,” the tech groused. “Just let me get in the damned place and put this damned equipment down, would you? It’s fuckin’ heavy.”

Scott unlocked the door and stepped inside to disable the security system. While the tech unpacked his equipment, the two operatives set to work dusting for prints. Scott concentrated on the area around the lock and the frame; Andy dusted the router and the modem.

“Probably wasting my time,” the tech grumbled. “I bet they don’t have the WPA turned on, so whoever’s in the neighborhood can steal her bandwidth.”

“You’d lose the bet, kid.” Andy held up his smart phone. “I already checked. The security is activated and password set.”

“Big deal. I’ll bet she’s used ‘password’ as her password. People think they’re so fucking clever.”

Scott tuned him out as he lifted the prints off the inside of the door. The prints scanned and emailed to the office, he finally investigated the apartment. From the knickknacks on the windowsill to the quilted pillows to the photos on the bright freshly painted walls, the place screamed
Sandy was here
. No wonder Troy had been spending more time over here than he had been at his own place.

By the time he’d finished dusting Jazz’s room for prints, he was ready to punch a hole in the wall. How dare she lie to Sandy? Use Sandy to earn money or whatever the hell her motivation was. Worse, he’d bought into her act hook, line and fucking sinker. When the fuck was he going to learn that you couldn’t trust anyone?