Pike (The Pawn Duet #1) - T.M. Frazier Page 0,24
going to tell me what you’ve found or not?”
“I just pulled some files of hers.” He taps a few keys. “Here we go. Michaela Lovejoy.”
“Lovejoy?” I question. “It doesn’t even sound like a real name.” Yet, oddly enough, it fits her.
“If you’re done mocking your captive’s last name…” He squints at the screen. “Holy shit. You’re never going to believe this shit.”
“What?” I ask, sitting upright.
Nine’s eyes dart quickly from left to right as he reads. “It says here that she graduated high school at fourteen. College at seventeen with a double masters in behavioral neuroscience. She joined Mensa at age ten with a tested IQ score of one-sixty.”
“Is that high?” I ask, knowing nothing about IQ scores.
“For kids, it’s the most you can score.” Nine rubs his hand over his open mouth, and it annoys me that he’s impressed by the girl tied to my fucking bed.
He must mistake my irritation for confusion because he continues, “Think about it this way: I have a one-thirty-five which is well above average, and Albert Einstein had a one-sixty. She scored that at age ten.”
“She said she’s a teacher. Gives lectures or some shit,” I offer.
Nine scans the screen. “Yeah. She was a professor. She’s not just Michaela Lovejoy. She's Dr. Michaela Lovejoy Sc.D.” He says, with his mouth agape. His looks to me. “That’s a doctor of science.”
“I know that,” I mutter.
I did not know that.
My schooling consisted of never attending any classes, Christmas-treeing all of my tests, and finally, dropping out of high school before the end of freshman year.
I stand and round the desk, looking at the screen over Nine’s shoulder at a headshot of Mickey. She’s smiling and unbruised, but there’s no doubt the girl in the lab coat is the same girl in my warehouse. “What do you mean was a professor?”
“Was because she dropped off the radar a few years ago. Vanished. She has no social media, no online presence. Not even so much as a parking ticket, and her driver’s license expired six months ago.”
“What about her family? She’s always rambling on about them. Can you find out anything on ‘em?”
He hits a few keys. “Her family is…fuck me.” He whistles, leaning back in the chair and folding his hands behind his head.
“Her family is what?” I hate that I have to keep prompting him to tell me shit. I’d fucking read it myself if I knew it wouldn’t take me an hour to read the same thing it takes him a few seconds to get through.
His eyes meet mine. “They’re missing. All of them. The same time Mickey dropped out of sight, so did they. It says here––” he scrolls to an article written in the university newspaper. “––they went missing while on summer vacation here in Logan’s Beach and were never found.”
What the fuck? I shake my head. “That can’t be right. She talks about them now, not in the past. They’re alive, just like she is, and I’d bet money that she knows where they are.” I pace to the door of the office and back again. “Did someone stand to benefit if they died?”
“You think they faked their own deaths?”
I shrug. “It’s possible, if they were trying to collect on insurance or something.”
It takes a few minutes for Nine to pull up some court records. “Not that I can see. Mickey’s parents owed a lot of money to a lot of people, but they were never declared dead legally, which they would need to be for anyone to collect on anything. They owned a vacation property here in Logan’s Beach, a condo, as well as their main house in Ocala. Both properties went back to the bank.” Nine frowns and chews his thumbnail. “What could a girl with that kind of intelligence be doing mixed up with the kind of fuckers that have some sort of vendetta against us?”
“I have no idea,” I glance through the window where my captive is currently gagged and blindfolded. “But I’m going to find the fuck out.”
“More torture?” Nine asks. “Because honestly, I don’t know how you can stand it yourself. That fucking music, ugh. EDM is torture enough without being at that volume. What happened to old fashioned torture, you know with knives and shit.”
“Ear plugs,” I reply. “That’s how I put up with it. Came up with the idea after selling dope to kids at a rave. The noise cancelling feature kicks on when I hit the button.”
Nine slowly claps. “I’m impressed, Pikey-boy.