Snowbound With The Secret Agent. Geri Krotow

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СКАЧАТЬ Thanks for letting me in so quickly—it’s still pretty cold out there.” She began to unbutton her coat in the warm entryway. The receptionist nodded.

      “You’re here to see Detective Avery?”

      “Yes.”

      “Do you know where his office is?” Portia noticed that the entryway had a lot of people coming and going.

      “I do.”

      “Great. Just pass your bag through the scanner and step through the metal detector.”

      Portia turned to the security guard who led her through the procedure, clearing her to enter the main building.

      Portia walked back to Josh’s desk once the receptionist cleared her. She didn’t have a lot of business at SVPD, except to ask Josh, a high school classmate, if he’d read to the elementary school students when she’d been working at Silver Valley Elementary. And even then, she called or emailed him, didn’t pay the police department a visit. The bustle and sense of many different officers and detectives in constant motion hit her. It matched what she’d read: Silver Valley was in the midst of a crime wave unlike any ever seen before.

      A tall man at the end of one of the long corridors made her stomach flip in ridiculous anticipation. Walking away from her, toward the back exit, he could have been anyone. But her body sensed it was the man from the tracks. He was tall, with an angular build that only hinted at his sheer strength—the kind of power that enabled him to knock her out from an oncoming train. Short, military-style hair, a sandy blond. Her gaze travelled down his length. He carried a parka in one arm, the same color as the man who’d saved her wore. Without the extra goose down padding his frame seemed all the more impressive. His butt was all muscle in worn jeans, and his stride in his boots bespoke of stealth. It might not be him, but then he threw her a quick look over his shoulder. His eyes—silver like a wolf she’d seen once, visiting a wildlife preserve. He gave her a curt nod. As if he knew she’d been there all along. Her stomach leaped and she increased her pace, but he disappeared around the corner before she reached him. Clearly, he didn’t want to talk to her. She paused right before she got to Josh’s office. She’d been through a lot today, and she might be seeing things, seeing someone wherever she looked. What were the odds it was the same man who’d saved her from the tracks? The man who’d held her, made her feel safer than she had in a long, long time?

      “Hey, Portia. Come on in.” Josh Avery’s smile was as genuine as his quick, warm hug. He kept a hand on her upper arm after he pulled back and peered into her eyes. “You okay? Really?”

      Realization struck her yet again that the morning’s events hadn’t been a dream, or an almost-nightmare. She’d indeed missed being flattened by a locomotive, with no more than a second or two to spare.

      “I’m good.” She raked a shaky hand through her curls, not caring what she looked like. “I have some bruises that are going to be pretty ugly, but the man that knocked me off the tracks also protected me from the brunt of the fall, and the hard ground.”

      Josh motioned for her to sit in one of the seats in front of his desk and sank into his chair. “Did our receptionist get you any coffee or something else to drink?”

      Portia waved her hand in dismissal. “No, I’m okay, really. I’m so wired from the adrenaline rush that I’m sure any more caffeine would launch me to the moon.”

      “Okay.” Josh tapped on his keyboard and she watched as his eyes tracked the information on the screen.

      “Thanks for making time to take my statement. I know the other police officers are just as able to, but I’d feel better talking to you.” And she wouldn’t have to explain her hunches—Josh had known her since they were kids and had never patronized her.

      “Are you kidding? Annie would have my hide if I didn’t take care of this. Besides, it’s part of an ongoing investigation I’m working on.”

      “Really? You mean figuring out who’s stealing our library laptops, or something bigger?”

      “We’ll never figure out who took all of your laptops, Portia. I’m afraid we don’t have enough man-hours. But if you can find evidence on your security footage, you know to bring it in.”

      And she did, but their tapes had been wiped. “Um, speaking of that.” Heat rode up her neck, over her face. “The recordings were erased. My staff and I tried to replay the last several weeks’ worth, only to discover there was nothing there.”

      Josh’s brows slammed together. “What do you mean ‘nothing there’?”

      “There’s a file on the drive that only I have access to, and I open it up for the staff to watch regularly. We fast-forward through it, pause when we see something suspicious. So far we haven’t had any luck figuring out who lifted three computers back in October, and the more recent thefts are even more confusing, as we locked our laptops up overnight. In the mornings, they were gone.”

      “Yes, I read the reports.” Josh kept typing on his computer, taking notes. “Did you say you were able to retrieve the security footage back in the fall?”

      Portia nodded. “Yes. But these last two weeks, even after double-checking the camera equipment, doing a trial run on the system, we still lost it all. There’s no footage of the library for almost three weeks.”

      “And yet the video feed is still good? From the cameras to the monitor?”

      She nodded. “Yes. Our security specialist monitors the feed all day long. And we have it set for Record, always. Something goes wrong during the archival loop.”

      Josh frowned. “If anyone understands the information technology around this, you do, Portia. I’m damned sorry this is happening at the local library. Have you noticed anything else unusual?”

      She shook her head. “No. Except this morning, when I saw the woman trying to break into the back employee entrance. I should have called SVPD instead of taking her on myself.” She inwardly cringed at her transgression. If she’d told Brindle to immediately call 9-1-1, the woman might be in custody.

       And you’d never have met the dream man.

      She squirmed in her seat. She’d met no one, knew no one.

      “Can you give the sketch artist a good sense of the woman—you’re sure it was a woman—who took off for the tracks?”

      “Only her eyes—they were blue. And her mouth had bright red lipstick.”

      Josh paused in his note-taking. “I see why you think it’s a woman.”

      “I can’t be positive, Josh, but I’ve seen that woman before. And the fact that she had one of our laptops means she’s been in the library at least once before.”

      Josh paused, as if weighing something crucial. “Look, I don’t want to alarm you, but we’re working against some bad apples right now.”

      “You mean ROC? Russian Organized Crime?”

      Josh’s stern expression broke into a chuckle. “You’ve been reading the local paper.”

      “Of course. As well as the police blotter reports on social media. СКАЧАТЬ