Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,76
of your time. Somewhere private, if possible.” She glanced at Sara, who must have escorted her into the stadium and was standing at my shoulder, waiting for instructions.
“Of course.” My face smooth, smile benign, betraying no hint of the blood that had just significantly picked up its pace. I swept an arm upstairs, inviting Nora to proceed. “Sara, I’ll be in the press box if you need me.”
She nodded and walked us as far as the elevators. “Have you heard from Logan yet? We’re still trying to get ahold of her to go over the night’s itinerary.”
Logan hadn’t shown up for the morning status meeting, and it had been someone’s action item to track her down and brief her. Obviously that person hadn’t been successful.
“No.” A shadow passed over Nora’s face as I said it, there and gone.
“Okay, no worries.” Even though her voice registered several octaves of worry, Sara flashed a shaky smile. “We’ll track her down.”
Nora and I stepped into the elevator and were enveloped in quiet as soon as the doors shut. I resisted the urge to move closer, to take the undeserved comfort I desperately needed and invoke a familiarity we didn’t, in fact, have. I’d been inside this woman, I’d tasted her two days ago, but every intimacy moved us farther apart. She could have been riding the elevator with a stranger. There was no body language I could read, no indications, no tells beyond the fact that she was, as always, prepared. She faced the doors, giving nothing away.
“I’m sorry about the other day,” I offered, with a quarter turn to face her, riding the nebulous edge between confrontational and dismissive.
“We’ve located the account where the Magers Construction refunds were sent.”
I nodded, relieved and simultaneously rebuked. We weren’t going to be speaking of personal lives, much less living them.
“The account details were basically listed on the deposit slips, right? You confirmed them with Magers?”
“No. That was an intermediary account, a holding area to stage international transfers. We’ve located where the money went after that.”
The elevator stopped and somehow I made my feet move out of it, feeling my rage at Logan deflating, knocked aside by the enormity of this news.
“Where?”
A trace of satisfaction crossed her features. “Nassau.”
“That’s where we went for Logan’s birthday.”
“I know.”
A smile broke over my face, the first genuine dawn of happiness I’d felt in days. Everything was finally falling into place.
“You actually did it. You found twenty million dollars in less than a week.”
The compliment drew no smiles. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Mr. Abbott. We’re going to take the next step and see where it leads. Since Strike is the listed owner of the account, you have the right to inquire on and transact the funds.”
The next step took longer than I thought. Banking, it turned out, was tedious as hell and Nora had the patience of a saint, asking for us to be transferred, waiting on hold, producing account numbers and confirming information. All I did was sit next to her in the press box, checking email and social media blasts, stifling yawns, and saying, “Yes, this is Mr. Gregory Abbott. I authorize the information to be released,” from time to time. At one point I asked about her partner and whether he’d regained consciousness yet, but Nora just shook her head, refusing to even look at me.
During the fourth round of telephone banker questioning, Sara came into the room with two other Strike employees. All of them were panicking.
“We still can’t find her,” Sara stage-whispered over the speaker.
One of the other admins jumped in. “We’ve been calling her cell phone every twenty minutes. It goes straight to voice mail and the voice mail is full. No one’s seen her at the office or gym. They said she hasn’t been in all day.”
“There’s no reason for her to be at the gym today. There’s no classes this week.” Then, louder, toward the phone. “Yes, this is Mr. Gregory Abbott. I authorize the information to be released.”
Sara nodded to a trainer, who spoke up. “Last week she made plans with her Friday class to go for a run along the river, since the normal session was canceled. They were all there at noon, waiting, but she didn’t show. I … I took them instead.”
All three of them exchanged looks, anxiety riding high on their cheekbones, tightening their shoulders.
“Is she with the twins?” Daisy and Darius sometimes commandeered Logan for hours at a time, styling her into whatever look