Blake turned away from the mirror. “We’re one step ahead of you, kid.”
Carter shook his head. “Waste of time. Maybe we’ll get lucky and catch this guy on a monitor once they’re up and running.”
“What a cluster. Wish to hell Neil was here.” Then he would have one less thing to worry about.
Dean walked out of the interrogation room and into theirs. “It’s not him.”
“We figured.”
“Are you ready to go through Neil’s things?”
Blake hated invading his privacy like that, but what choice did he leave? He ran a hand through his hair.
“Gotta be clues somewhere as to where he is,” Carter said.
Blake pushed out of the room. “Let’s get this over with.”
Dean walked them out of the station. “I’ll be along in an hour. I have a couple of leads I want to follow up on first.”
On the way back to Malibu, Blake gave Carter some good news. “Samantha’s pregnant.”
Carter swiveled in his seat and removed his sunglasses. “No shit.”
“We’ve been talking about it for a while.” Blake pulled onto the freeway and merged into the crowded California interstate.
“Sounds like you’ve done more than talk about it.”
Blake smiled, remembering the not talking nights with his wife. “Morning sickness is kicking her ass. I wanna get all this shit wrapped up and get back to her, Carter. It’s the only reason I’m going ahead with searching Neil’s personal space.”
“I get it. Neil’s a private guy. But when you run off and think a murderer’s on your tail there’s no telling what’s going on. Neil wouldn’t expect you to sit back and do nothing.”
“He’d expect me to trust him.”
Carter placed his sunglasses back over his eyes. “If anything was panning out to suspect foul play toward Gwen or Neil then it would be a hell of a lot easier to trust the man.”
Back at his estate, Blake and Carter let themselves into Neil’s home. The house was a guest quarters that mimicked the main house in style and structure. The sparsely furnished inside space suited the needs of a bachelor. One room was dedicated to monitoring the main house and Gwen and Karen’s place in Tarzana. The other was a bedroom with the bare minimum of furniture. Although the small kitchen had everything it needed to feed a family, the only things that looked used were the refrigerator and the microwave.
There was a leather couch and a recliner along with a flat screen television hung on the wall of the living room.
“Where do we begin?”
“I’ll start in his office,” Blake told Carter. “You look in his bedroom.”
Carter headed around the corner and into Neil’s room. “What are we looking for exactly?”
“Anything personal. Pictures. Addresses to a friend, family.”
“Aren’t his parents dead?”
Blake sat in Neil’s chair and opened the top drawer of his desk. “Yeah…but I remember him talking about a grandmother.” The drawer held the usual suspects. Pens, notepads, old bills, and receipts for miscellaneous items.
“If Neil thought someone was after him, I don’t think he’d lead whoever that is to his family.”
“True, but the grandmother might know where Neil would go to keep Gwen safe and capture the bad guy.”
“You think that’s what he’s done?”
“He sure as hell wouldn’t run forever.” The next drawer held files of equipment purchase dates and software updates. There were employee files in print, which Blake wondered about. Why print out any of these things? Why not keep them on a computer hard drive?
As his mind moved in that direction, he turned on the computer monitors and waited for them to power up. The wall of monitors lit the room with images throughout the Malibu house and Tarzana. Blake clicked on the main screen and shifted between images. Each one that he highlighted opened the audio of the room it was in. Inside the Malibu house, Mary was in the kitchen humming.
The phone on Neil’s desk rang, and Blake reached to pick it up. “Hello?”
“It’s Dillon, Mr. Harrison. I noticed someone on Neil’s channel watching. Is he back?”
“No. It’s just me.”
“Oh. Any word yet?”
“None. Nothing from your end?”
“Nothing. Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Harrison.”
Before Dillon hung up, Blake stopped him. “Wait, Dillon. Before Neil left…was there anything going on that struck you as odd? Something unlike him?”
“He…he was a little more edgy. Not sure that isn’t his normal, though. He always worked long days and didn’t ask me to take over much while you and Mrs. Harrison were away.”
None of that sounded out of character for Neil. “Any luck on finding the bugs he talked about?”
“I wish I did. There was definite interference at the Tarzana house. It didn’t feel right to me.”
“Like it was planted.”
“I wish I could say that for certain. It just wasn’t right.”
Everything felt odd. “Thank you, Dillon.”
“No problem.”
Blake hung up the phone and continued to search the desk. There wasn’t anything personal there. Just piles of work-related invoices and bills.
Carter walked into the room with a picture in his hand. “Found this.”
It was an 8½ by 10 photograph of what looked like Neil and some of his marine friends.
“Neil looks thicker. I didn’t think that was possible.”
Carter laughed. “You ever see this before?”
“No. He doesn’t share that part of his past. Except that one time in the bar.”
“You think these are the guys that died?”
Blake took the photograph and looked at each face. His gaze popped over to Neil’s and another one that looked familiar but he couldn’t place. “Could be. Not all of them died. Just a few.” But which ones? “Have you thought of calling in a favor and finding out what the Raven thing is all about?”
Carter leaned against the desk. “There are plenty of secret missions done every year overseas. The military doesn’t take it kindly to have their top-secret missions blabbed about to just anyone. Although I’m the governor, I’m one of those ‘just anyones’ at this point. If we’ve exhausted all our resources, and haven’t heard from Neil or Gwen, then I’ll make the call. I don’t want to stir up more trouble and have Neil on the tail end of a court martial because he’s overly paranoid. We owe him that much.”