Johan's Joy (Heroes for Hire #22) - Dale Mayer Page 0,73
necessarily drugs but items that have been moved off to the side, only to suddenly disappear, get moved over to the other warehouse. But we don’t have records on the inside of receiving them. Things in the shipping area have been left quite comfortably obtuse for a long time.”
“That’s because our foreman is great,” Edward said. “He’s taking care of all that.”
“Maybe, but if so, he’s also looking out for himself and not for the company,” Johan said. “And I think, now that things got a little bit dicey, he stepped out for a little bit.”
“Are you saying he’s involved?”
“No, not at all,” he said. “But I don’t think he checked into things as closely as he could have.”
“I need to talk to him then,” Edward said, jumping to his feet. “It still doesn’t tell us who’s involved though.”
“No, it doesn’t. I suspect we’ll find out fairly quickly,” he said. “Give us another forty-eight hours, and we should be on top of this.”
Edward hemmed and hawed.
Johan said, “We’ve got a lot of really recent breakthroughs,” he said. “We just need time to tie it all together.”
“Okay, I’ll give you forty-eight hours,” he snapped, “but that’s it.”
“Good enough,” Johan said cheerfully; then he walked out. With Galen at his side, they walked down the hallway back to their office.
“Do you think forty-eight hours is really enough?” Galen asked.
“I suspect we’ll know all about this by the time we find out who’s collecting the money tomorrow,” he said. “Speaking of which, have you heard from Tyson at all?”
Galen held up his phone to see a text had just come in. “He just got back to town with our stuff.”
“Wow, he made good time in rush hour traffic to downtown Houston.” They looked at their watches. “At lunchtime, maybe we should go set some stuff up.”
“Good idea.” And, with that, they had a plan.
At the doorway to their office, they stopped.
“So what about Joy?” Galen asked.
“Well, she doesn’t have lunch with her, and there’s no place to get it here, so why don’t we take her with us?”
They walked to her office and, as they stepped in, the other woman stood there, glaring at Joy.
Joy was completely oblivious as she worked on her computer. When the guys walked in, Joy looked up, smiled, and asked, “Is it lunchtime?”
They looked over at the other woman, smiled, and Galen said, “Hello.”
“Are you taking her for lunch?” the woman asked.
“Maybe,” Johan said cheerfully, his gaze watchful as he studied the other woman. “Any reason not to?”
“Much better if you do,” she said. “I’m not very good company right now, so I’d just as soon have the office to myself.”
They looked over at the empty desk. Johan asked, “Who belongs there?”
“None of your business,” the woman said coolly.
At that, he was surprised, but he nodded. “You’re right. It isn’t.” He looked over at Joy. “Are you ready?”
She nodded, hopped up, grabbed her purse, and walked out. She called out a goodbye as she left. The other woman didn’t answer. As they walked out to the car, he asked, “Is she always like that?”
Joy shook her head. “Obviously Doris must have had a shitty weekend.”
Chapter 18
Joy didn’t know if there was a bigger problem going on with Doris or not. The woman was grouchy today, but she’d never been overly friendly.
Lunch was a quick affair of sandwiches eaten on the run. They headed to the house of the two blackmailed men from the board. There they met up with Tyson, who had brought the equipment from the compound. They had a sandwich for him too. They quickly set up cameras on the outside and then another pointing to the driveway as well.
“Too bad we don’t have one in my office,” she muttered. “I’m forever feeling that somebody is staring at me.”
“Still?”
She nodded. “Yeah, it’s kind of creepy.”
“Well, I have spare equipment now, if you want to set something up.”
“We’d have to do it without anybody else knowing,” she said.
When they got back to her office, thankfully it was empty. “Perfect. No time like the present,” Tyson said.
After a quick look around, he found a place just above the door where he could fit the discrete camera against a bit of the molding that went around the doorframe. Within seconds he had it up and installed. He said, “I’ll keep the feed on my phone for now, just for testing.”
She nodded. “Fine with me.”
And, with that, he said, “I’ll disappear so I don’t attract more attention.”