Power Play. Beverly Long

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СКАЧАТЬ the timing worked, give or take a couple minutes. Close enough that he was satisfied she hadn’t gone anywhere else besides straight to Hagney’s house.

      “How long were you at your house before you took her to the bus depot?”

      “Not long. Maybe five minutes.”

      Trey pulled up the address of the bus depot and mapped it to Hagney’s house. Eighteen minutes. Probably less at that time of the morning. Now, he just needed to figure out where she’d gone from there. “Thank you for calling,” Trey said. “I mean that. And if you do happen to hear from her, tell her to call me right away.”

      “What are you going to do?” Hagney asked.

      “Go after her,” he said. He hung up but didn’t put his phone away. Instead, he dialed Anthony’s cell phone. It rang four times and went to voice mail. He did not leave a message. He found his office number and dialed.

      “Dr. McGarry’s office. How may I help you?”

      “Dr. McGarry, please.”

      “This is Dr. McGarry’s answering service. May I take a message?”

      Of course. It was a Saturday night. His office receptionist wouldn’t be working. “I need to reach Dr. McGarry,” he said.

      “One moment, please.”

      He waited, thinking of the best way to tell his friend that his sister was in trouble.

      “I’m sorry,” the woman said, coming back on the line. “Dr. McGarry’s status is that he’s unavailable for the next six hours.”

      “But—” Trey said. He wasn’t answering his cell and wasn’t taking calls through the answering service. Based on past experience, Trey knew that he was likely in surgery.

      “I’m sorry. One of his partners is taking calls if you need to speak to a physician immediately.”

      “No. Thank you. I’ll call back.” He hung up.

      In six hours, he better have found her.

      The next call he made was to Rico. They weren’t high-priced physicians but each week, one of the partners was also on call, in the event that there was an after-hours emergency. They had a gentlemen’s agreement that if anybody was going to be suddenly unavailable or out of commission for any reason, they needed to let the on-call person know.

      “Anything I can do to help?” Rico asked after Trey gave him a brief rundown.

      “Yeah,” Trey said. Rico could data mine better than anybody in the company. “There is. Get me everything you can on Kellie McGarry. Age twenty-eight or twenty-nine. Not sure of her birth date. Moved to North Las Vegas about six months ago.” Information was power and Kellie had just given up all rights to privacy.

      On one hand, he was incredibly happy that Kellie had escaped the destruction at her apartment. But he was really frustrated that instead of calling him for help, after he’d just offered it hours earlier, he was now chasing after her. What the hell kind of trouble could she be in and where could she be headed?

      He knew that the right thing to do was contact the police about the damage at Kellie’s apartment. But that could delay him for hours. Instead, he simply turned the lock on the door and closed it behind him, leaving it how he’d found it. He walked out the front door of the building, toward the carport. He wanted a better look at her car.

      From the outside it appeared fine. But when he looked inside, he immediately saw that the glove compartment door, which had been shut last night when he’d watched her get in her car, was now hanging open. She could have opened it, of course. But given the damage in her apartment, he thought it very possible that someone had been in her vehicle. He saw no obvious signs of entry but it was easy enough to get into a locked car with the right tools.

      He put two fingers under his shirttail and then tried the door. It was unlocked. Last night, he’d watched her use her fob to unlock her car. For most people, especially people who lived in places where their car wasn’t in a secured spot, it was habit to lock the doors. He suspected it was her habit.

      But if he was right and somebody had searched her car, they hadn’t cared enough to lock up after themselves. Hadn’t cared enough to shut the glove compartment. They hadn’t been careful. Just like they hadn’t been careful in her apartment.

      He walked back to his truck. Hagney had said he dropped her off at the bus station. Trey quickly used his phone to see the early morning bus schedule. There were a couple options. She could have headed north toward Reno or west toward Los Angeles. This was like looking for a needle in a haystack. His only option was to go to the bus station, see if there was anybody working now who had been working the previous night, and hope they remembered Kellie. Rico would verify there had been no credit card activity, but he wasn’t expecting any. She’d gotten cash from Hagney and that’s what she’d be spending.

      When he got to the depot, it was busier than he’d anticipated. People coming and going into Sin City. What were the chances that somebody was going to remember her? Given that she’d purchased her ticket sometime around four thirty in the morning, that might help him. There had to be far fewer people traveling at that time.

      There was no one at the information desk, so he had no choice but to wait in line to talk to a cashier. He was a young white man with an earring hanging from his nose. “My sister took a bus out of here really early this morning,” Trey said. “Maybe 4:30 or 5:00. It’s very important that I find her, a family emergency. Do you know who I might talk to who would have been working then?”

      The young man shook his head. “Night shift comes on at seven. They all work twelve-hour shifts.”

      Damn. That meant the same people weren’t working every night. Full-time employees probably worked three or four shifts a week. He had to hope that somebody scheduled for tonight had been here last night and that they had seen Kellie. “Okay,” he said. He had fifty minutes to kill. He walked back to his truck. Considered his options. He could call Rodney Ballure. After all, Kellie worked for him. He was a pompous moron with nonexistent morals but he would no doubt be concerned about Anthony’s little sister. But what had Anthony said the night before? Something along the lines that he didn’t think Kellie would be too happy if he involved Rodney in trying to reach her. She’d likely feel the same way if Trey reached out to Ballure now.

      He really didn’t want to piss her off. He wanted to find her, ensure she was safe and convince her that whatever was the problem, he could help.

      While he waited for the night shift to come on duty, he would go home and get better prepared for travel in the event it was necessary. He had a handgun in his truck, always carried it. But since he believed in being prepared, he’d also grab a rifle and lots of ammunition. Some clothes, too.

      He drove fast, his mind reviewing the chaos he’d seen in Kellie’s apartment. It could have been random destruction but he was confident that somebody had been looking for something. And they hadn’t cared about being neat. They hadn’t cared that Kellie was going to know that somebody had been in her apartment.

      Which meant that maybe they’d been there when she’d gotten home, waiting for her. That thought practically made him run his vehicle off the road.

      But somehow, he didn’t think she’d gone inside. She’d told Hagney that she suspected СКАЧАТЬ