LITMIR.BIZ

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only person who looked unhappy was Olivia’s friend. As we came off the stand, Dom put his arm around Olivia. “Would you like to sing with us steadily, sugar?”

      I thought for a moment that Ronald would object, but he finally nodded in agreement.

      I watched her carefully until she said, “I don’t know...”

      “Why don’t you come back tomorrow night and sing some more? You don’t have to make up your mind on the spot. Right, gentlemen?” he said, looking more at Ronald than me.

      She smiled happily at that, although her friend looked (if possible) even more put out.

      “So you’ll come back?”

      “Maybe,” was all she answered as she hurriedly put on her coat. People tried to talk to Olivia as she made her way to the door, but her friend urged her on. They disappeared into the night as quickly as they’d arrived.

      It was the first of many nights for the four of us at the Sal.

      Chapter 3

      Shannon O’Brien had tipped her chair back, the small notebook she was busily scribbling in resting on her crossed legs.

      The man sitting on the other side of her desk, Andrew Curran, was of Irish descent, like her. Sizing him up, she guessed his height at six feet, age around thirty-five and thought he looked sturdy enough, though slender. He had a strong face, a shock of nearly black hair and a light complexion, like many whose ancestry was Irish. She decided he should lose the mustache and goatee. The left side of his face was swollen, and he had one hell of a shiner. No wonder the guy was so angry at the joker who’d slugged him.

      The story he’d told of his mysterious girl singer had Shannon’s antennae twitching.After the ordeal she and her family had undergone at the hands of another “mysterious girl”, Shannon had little desire to travel down that path again, but the situation he described had piqued her interest.

      She surmised there was a lot Curran hadn’t told her, but that could wait. She had the bare bones of his story but needed to ask a few questions before hustling him out the door. She had another appointment breathing down her back.

      “Do you think the men who took your friend away might have been bounty hunters?”

      Curran looked confused. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

      “You told me they said they had a plane to catch.”

      “Yeah...”

      “Think back to what they said to you. Hear it in your head. Now, do you think they were American?”

      He concentrated for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, now that you mention it. They didn’t have one of those really recognizable accents, but the big guy used the word ‘huh’. A Canadian would have used ‘eh’.”

      Shannon smiled. “Now how about Olivia? Did she use ‘huh’?”

      “Not that I remember. Her accent is very neutral. She never talked a lot and never about herself.” He shook his head.“Actually, I know almost nothing about her.”

      “But could she be from the States?”

      “Maybe. There were certainly things about living in Canada that she didn’t seem familiar with.”

      Shannon nodded but decided to keep her questions about the girl for another time.

      “Why do you think those men might be bounty hunters?” Curran asked.

      “Do you know anything about this particular brand of slimeball?”

      “Not really.”

      “Well then, for a few reasons.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “One, bounty hunters are typically American. They have a system down there that allows this sort of thing. Two, you think the girl might also be from the States. Three, one of them said they had to catch a plane. That’s typical, too. If the value of the target warrants it, a private plane is always preferable to leaving the country by car or some sort of public transport. Last of all, there’s the way they behaved.” She raised one eyebrow to punctuate her point.

      “Surely they can’t just walk out of Canada with her?”

      “Of course they can. The Americans will be the ones to check their ID at the airport, and they certainly aren’t going to complain. Bounty hunting is legal in most places down there. As long as they had ID for her, they’re golden.”

      Curran slumped. “Do you think you can find her?”

      Shannon put her notebook on the desk and leaned forward. “Are you sure you want to find her? Bounty hunters only come after people who are on the run – and usually from bad things.”

      “But you could be wrong. Maybe they aren’t bounty hunters. Maybe she hasn’t done anything illegal. Maybe they were kidnapping her.”

      “You said she went with them willingly.”

      “They could have threatened Olivia when they were talking to her in the club.”

      “We’re only dealing with suppositions at this point, but your story gives ample reason to believe your girl was on the run, don’t you think?”

      Curran sighed and nodded. “When she was out in public, she could be pretty jumpy, always looking behind her. Stuff like that.”

      “Do you want me to see if I can find her? You may not like what I come up with.”

      “I have to know. Even if Olivia was on the run from something or somebody, she may need my help.”

      “Okay, then. I need to tell you from the outset that this could get very expensive. We may get lucky, and finding her might come easily, but that’s not usually the case. The United States is a very big country. Now you’ve only referred to this woman as Olivia. I assume she has a last name.”

      He looked awkward. “She said she didn’t want to tell us. Ronald eventually pushed her on that, and she told him it was Saint. None of us thought it was actually her real name, though.”

      Shannon closed her notebook with a sigh. “Do you have a photo of her?”

      Curran picked up a manila envelope he’d had in his lap and took a large photo out, sliding it across the desk. “This is a promo shot we had taken.”

      She studied it for quite some time. The make-up, lighting and soft focus helped to make a very striking photo of a very striking young woman. Her long brown hair glistened, framing a pale face which held an expression at once shy but also alluring. But there was something about her eyes that made Shannon fight down a shudder. “I’ll need to keep this.”

      Curran nodded. “How much will your services cost?”

      She shrugged. “I couldn’t begin to say. We’ll start with the simple and inexpensive ways to search, of course.”

      “And that might bring results?

      “It often does, now that we have the Internet.”

      “If we have to go farther, I could always mortgage my house, I suppose.”

      “I sincerely hope it won’t come to that, Mr. Curran. Shall we say a retainer of a thousand dollars? That should be more than sufficient to get this started.”

      Shannon ran her new client through all the fine print. They then signed an agreement with her secretary as witness.

      After showing her new client out the door with a reassuring, “I’ll be in touch immediately if we find out anything,” she went into her office.

      Leaning back in her chair, Shannon wondered what Curran’s reaction would have been if she’d asked if he and the girl were romantically entangled.

      She spent the remaining time before the next appointment staring at the haunting

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