LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

a lot more appealing than admitting he’d screwed up somewhere, and that the job he’d taken at the request of the Eckhardt family was quickly heading down the tubes. He’d been surprised when Becca Nelson, the University of Texas coed who ran his Austin-based private investigation business between classes from her Blackberry, had told him of Cindy Eckhardt’s call.

      He had a reputation for finding people who didn’t want to be found. The sixteen-year-old Dallas trust funder who’d wanted to play in a rock ’n’ roll band. The bride from Fort Worth who’d changed her mind on the way to the church. Most recently, the San Antonio bank executive who’d left his position in the midst of a midlife crisis, taking a new name—and a whole lot of his employer’s money with him.

      Jack owed much of the notoriety to Becca. She was in the fifth year of her four-year degree plan, having spent thirty-six months working her way around the world before starting school at twenty-one. Since hiring on five years ago when he’d first set up shop, answering an ad he’d placed in the UT newspaper the Daily Texan, she’d made it her mission to get his name out there in an effort to ensure job security.

      Hers.

      She’d had no problem with the fact that he ran his business out of his SUV, and had taken over converting him to a rolling electronic wonder, crawling around with a tool belt bigger than she was, outfitting the Yukon’s dashboard to resemble a Black Hawk cockpit.

      She’d set up the meeting with the Eckhardt family, flooded his PDA with scanned clippings and e-mailed him online stories. Seemed Cindy and Dayton had been loading the car New Year’s morning, heading for the airport and an Aspen vacation, when the kidnapping went down.

      With Dayton outside, Cindy had made one last trip into their Hyde Park home, coming out less than ten minutes later to find Dayton gone, the doors of his Lexus wide open, suitcases strewn about.

      The police had taken one look at the obvious signs of a struggle, interviewed witnesses who’d seen two masked men in a black Jeep without plates and put out an APB.

      Enough of the crime’s details had been in the news that Jack wasn’t surprised things had begun going south. The kidnappers had only to flip on a local broadcast and hear everything the media proclaimed the public had a right to know.

      Screw that. Dayton Eckhardt wasn’t the public’s husband or father. No one but the Eckhardt family, the Austin PD and the FBI had a right to anything. And, the way he saw it, in that order—the very reason he checked in with Cindy every few hours, new news or not.

      Unfortunately, so many of the particulars had been leaked that the kidnappers were no longer even a blip on the radar. If anything, they were burrowed deep underground. Three days and counting, the police were down to zero leads and were still waiting for a ransom demand. Jack had lucked out with the New Orleans connection—especially since the feds had turned up nothing much in Louisiana beyond rumors that a psychic was involved.

      Dayton Eckhardt had started Eckton Computing in the Big Easy before market conditions—property taxes, salaries, the value of a square foot of warehouse space—had sent the start-up to Austin a year ago. Eckhardt had left behind more than a few disgruntled employees—not to mention, rumor had it, Dayton’s disgruntled mistress.

      One of the ex-employees Jack had interviewed thought she’d seen Dayton at a Christmas party in the Quarter. That made no sense, but it was the only scrap Jack had, and he held on tight. There had been no activity on Dayton’s cell phone since the kidnapping, and none on his personal or corporate e-mail accounts. At least nothing outgoing. There had been plenty of incoming, and most of it junk. Even that had been analyzed by the Eckton tech working with the Austin PD. So far, nothing but ads for erectile dysfunction meds and spam mail promising live sex via webcams.

      Jack was more into having fun with the real thing. Or he would be, one of these days. When he found the time. When he found the woman. When he found a reason to look for either instead of spending his time looking for strangers who’d vanished without a trace. Instead of looking to find himself.

      His life had been in flux for a while, the transition from special ops to civilian PI tougher than he’d anticipated. Six years ago at his fifteenth high school reunion, after catching up with his friends who’d made up “the deck”—he’d been the jack, Quentin the queen, Heidi the joker, Ben the ace, Randy the king—fitting back into real life had seemed a doable prospect.

      The three-day reunion had been a hell of a party. He’d stood onstage at The Cave Down Below—the warehouse club booked for that Friday night—looked out at the four friends who’d been his high school anchors and choked himself up, barely recovering before belting out Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.”

      He remembered sitting on a picnic table next to Heidi the next day, and telling her about not wanting to hit eighty and wonder how he got there. Or what happened during the years in between.

      And even though he’d been tired of traveling the world, he hadn’t been quite ready to settle down. He’d continued to drift for a couple of years after the reunion, living on the road and out of his duffel bag for the full tour that he’d fronted for Diamond Jack, the band he’d put together once his discharge had come through.

      Music had been a huge part of his life for as long as he could remember. His days playing bass in “the deck’s” high school ensemble had been one of the best times of his life. He’d learned about belonging. About true friendships and human nature, about faults and flaws and royally freaking things up—which was exactly what he’d done after graduation.

      And here he’d gone and done the same thing now. No, dude. You didn’t. You’re just stuck with the big stinkin’ pile of crap left by everyone who worked this case before you. Telling himself that was a whole lot easier than buying it as the truth.

      Truth held position number one at the top of Jack’s culpability barometer. And not the ask-me-no-questions-and-I’ll-tell-you-no-lies sort of honesty he’d witnessed too often, but balls-to-the-wall-or-die.

      If knowledge was power, then truth was omnipotence…and was why Jack nearly sputtered gumbo across the newspaper when he flipped to page fifteen, and the headline halfway down leaped out.

      Psychic Della Brazille to consult on Eckhardt kidnapping

      What the hell?

      Oh no. This wasn’t happening. He wasn’t having his case all mucked up by a scammer out to fleece a family already on the edge. After the hurt he’d seen during his years in special ops, the anger, the pain—and having to learn to live with it all—there was no way he’d let anyone latch on like a leech to his case.

      Especially not a con artist more interested in fifteen minutes of fame than anything resembling reality—or truth.

      PERRY BRAZILLE GROANED at the headline, thankful the story had been buried on page fifteen rather than splashed across page one. Della so did not need to see this newest mention connecting her to the case. The stress she was under was already making her sick.

      She’d been bombarded by the media, by former employees of Eckton Computing, by the Eckhardt family—all of them seeking answers she didn’t have to give. But the biggest stress came from the visions themselves. Visions which had started weeks ago and plagued her ever since.

      That was how it had been with Della from the beginning, Perry mused, hiking up her calf-length skirt’s yards of navy twill and climbing onto the stool behind the counter in Sugar Blues. Her aunt never saw things in her dreams, or as gentle imaginings.

      What she saw instead came as flashes. Harsh and jolting. Migraine-inducing. Blasts of intense color and heat and dizzying sound, each flash more draining, more agonizing than the last. It was an affliction which she’d suffered all of her life.

      Della was, in fact, upstairs sleeping after hours of excruciating pain. And Perry intended to see that her aunt—her last living relative, the woman who, though only eighteen years older, had been Perry’s mother for most of her life—slept as long as she needed to.

      That was why she

Скачать книгу