a lead.”
She stared at her salad, suddenly not hungry. “Is there any reason to think it was deliberate?”
Both men shook their heads. Johan added, “Not at the moment.”
She let out her pent-up breath. “Well, that’s something at least,” she murmured.
“It is,” Johan said, “but we’re a little worried and want to make sure you stay safe.”
“Is there anything in her history that shows she raised the alarm over any other missing stuff?”
“No. Nothing we’ve found so far,” Johan replied. “Yet files can be deleted, altered, or made into what they weren’t.”
“What about her friends and family? Can you talk to them?”
“She was new to town, and her apartment has already been leased. Her mother didn’t have anything to offer and didn’t want to talk much about her daughter.”
“Can’t you find any of Chelsea’s friends, at work or elsewhere?”
“The cops already have,” Galen said, “and we have a copy of their file on Chelsea, but we don’t have anything to go on yet.”
Knowing she needed the food, even though her stomach was now churning uneasily, she finished her salad and put the plate off to the side, pulling her large mug of coffee toward her. “That’s a little unsettling,” she announced.
“We’re not telling you to upset you,” Johan said. “We’re telling you so you stay aware.”
She gave him a flat stare. “Aware of what? Being run down in the dark? Aware of an intruder? Aware that somebody may want to target me? What are you saying?”
“All of the above,” Galen said.
She just stared at him in shock.
Johan nodded. “What you may have just opened up is one huge can of worms,” he said. “It could be that it’s not just centered within this company, and it could have been operating for a very long time, considering that Westgroup has been in operation for forty-odd years. Just think about how many drugs could have potentially gone missing if there was cooperation within the company?”
“That’s all a little raw to think about,” she said slowly.
“It’s more than that,” Galen said. “It’s dangerous as hell. We don’t have any connection from Chelsea’s death to the company, but we don’t want to find a connection too late and take any chances by not giving you a heads-up.”
Her breath let out with a heavy whoosh. “And I live alone, so thanks for that. Now I won’t sleep again,” she snapped, looking from one to the other.
“Better you sleep aware and wake up versus not being aware of the dangers and risk never waking up,” Johan said.
The waitress came and took away Joy’s plate. Joy watched as the woman strode off toward the kitchen, Joy’s mind already on a million other things. It was the mundane reality of the everyday world that often helped Joy to reset her mind. “Sounds like a pattern is here,” she muttered.
The men looked at her. “In what way?”
“It’s hard to say,” she said, “but one of the things that I do like, or seem to find, are processes. Whether it’s a process within the company, and that’s a good process, or it’s a process that, in this case, is not good. I think a process is working inside the company’s processes,” she said. “I know that sounds confusing as hell, but someone somewhere along that line has a pinch point,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, and she leaned back against the chair. “And I intend to find it.”
*
Johan knew a bit about what she had mentioned with pinch points and internal corporate processes from a previous job or two he had done. But those were dealing with chemical pinch points or mechanical pinch points, where physical problems could occur with employees. She was talking about theoretical pinch points or software pinch points here, like a double set of books or cooking the online books.
Even though the cops had been cooperative in sharing with Johan and Galen what little they had in Chelsea’s investigation file, the police had confirmed what Ice had said earlier. The detective was very clear and told Johan to back off the missing ketamine case and any attempts into delving further into Chelsea’s death. Those were his cases.
Still, like Ice had informed Harrison about the art theft case, Ice also instructed Johan that he and Galen would continue with their investigations into all elements as needed. That easily took care of that.
However, Johan didn’t know if Joy had taken the possible threat against her life seriously or not, given Chelsea’s fate, but everything inside Johan