Kidnapped: A Jarek Grayson Private Detective Novel (Grayson Investigative Services Book 1) Read online

  “So you got the job if you want it. I can offer you better compensation than my competitor, as well as the latest equipment to play with. Your Alienware is nice, but everything I have… well, I don’t skimp on hardware. Jo can show you my IT room where all my toys are.”

  “You don’t have to offer me much more to get me to leave Tim Horton’s,” the girl said, still giving me a strange look.

  “Like I said, my competition can’t offer you what I can.” I looked her in the eye.

  “The coffee shop is your competition? Wait… compensation? What are we talking about?” she asked.

  “Three thousand dollars a month on salary, and a two-percent commission on every case you help close,” I offered, knowing how generous the deal was.

  “Three thousand dollars a month?” Skye said, standing up. She looked alarmed to me, her eyes wide open.

  “Don’t forget the two-percent commission for closing the cyber cases,” I told her.

  “Three thousand a month?” she nearly shrieked.

  This was going badly. Maybe I should have done better research. I hoped that Johanna stopped her from hurting me. Jo had gotten a similar deal, although her percentages and monthly stipend were much, much better.

  “Plus the two percent, so the three thousand isn’t really all that—”

  The woman launched herself at me, almost tackling me. I stood up in alarm, my eyes trying to find Jo, trying to see why suddenly this woman was… hugging me? I stood there stiffly with my arms out as Skye kept saying “yes!” over and over again.

  “So you’ll take the job?” I asked, knowing that Jo already had a contract written up by my accountant yesterday in anticipation.

  “Yes!” she repeated, breaking off the hug.

  “Hey,” Jo said, pulling her back gently. “Boss doesn’t like hugs or handshakes. Despite what you might have heard about him and the ladies, he avoids contact.”

  She was right. My breathing had gone up a notch, and I was sweating even harder than I had been before—and it wasn’t from the workout. I wasn’t prepared for this, and I didn’t have the magical Xanax my doc had prescribed to help me get through my dad’s funeral and dealing with his friends. I started to shake slightly.

  “Hey,” Jo said, standing in front of me, her eyes locked on mine.

  I dragged them up to meet her gaze and swallowed.

  “Listen, breathe. She didn’t know.”

  I... I…

  “I….” I stammered aloud finally.

  “She didn’t know. She’s excited. You just gave her an offer of a lifetime. She didn’t know. Don’t hold it against her, ok?” Jo said, her voice calming.

  Lately, Jo had been calming me quite a bit, when we weren’t arguing nonstop. My therapist said the eyes are the window to the soul. I gazed into hers and felt myself calming immediately. It took me several moments and plenty of deep breathing exercises to find my voice again.

  “Ok… I wasn’t going to hold it against her anyways,” I said, trying to regain my calm, my words coming out in small gasps.

  “Anxiety attack?” Skye asked, looking at her shoes again.

  I stepped away from Jo and tried to stand up straight in front of Skye.

  “The two percent is really the biggest part of the compensation package,” I told her, trying to get back on track.

  “I don’t get that,” Skye said.

  “We get a ten-thousand-dollar minimum retainer,” Joanna said.

  A dawning realization hit the young woman’s features like a garbage truck that had lost its brakes careening down the street.

  “That’s like…” she blew a bubble from some store of gum she had hidden in her cheek. “Two hundred a job?”

  “Minimum,” I told her. “A lot of them run about five times that when it comes to running down information. We don’t make as much when the police departments call us, but I don’t worry about that as long as we aren’t losing money,” I told her truthfully.

  “Who is GIS, really?” Skye asked, sounding a little overwhelmed.

  “Greyson Investigative Services. Private detective agency, cyber security analysts, and cyber forensics. We’re an international company. I thought the sign by the door said—”

  “We’re the ones people come to when the cops aren’t moving fast enough for them. We do all kinds of PI work, but someone with your talents would work wonders for us.” Jo finished the thought for me.

  “So you know how I got your phone number?” Skye said, looking at me now.

  “You hacked Sprint with a VPN, then isolated what cell phones were in this room, and by GPS you knew it was either Jo’s or mine. Since you already had her number for setting up the interview, the last one was of course mine.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly, “but that isn’t always legal…”

  “When you’re working for me, it becomes my problem, not yours. I take the blame if there’s any backlash. Most of the work doesn’t involve hacking, just following an electronic trail and using the resources that have been made available to us. So from now on, you’ll be my IT person and help me with some of the more mundane information gathering that our clients want. Oh, and a few hacks. Jo has the contract. Now if you don’t mind, I really do need to shower,” I told them, turning and walking to my favorite stall.

  “Come on, let’s hurry out of here. I’ll show you the IT room,” Jo said, pulling at Skye’s arm.

  “What?” Skye asked as I stepped in and started the water.

  “He doesn’t get sarcasm. He can’t tell when he makes people uncomfortable. Taking a shower is part of his routine, so unless you want to—” Her words were cut off as the door to my gym slammed shut behind her.

  The water was hot, and my sore muscles started to relax under the unrelenting pressure from the Kohler unit. It had been one of my expenditures that even I had a hard time with, but so far business had picked up even more. Hiring Jo had been a good idea. Hiring Skye would help me close cases much faster. I knew what luck was, and how Murphy’s law worked. Understanding luck also meant I knew I’d had too much of it lately, and I was waiting for something to happen. Something unexpected. I knew that if there was any tech involved with the mayor’s daughter’s case, we’d be the first ones called in. The FBI would hem and haw for a few days, but in the end… the Mayor or the police department themselves would give Jo a call, and I would probably take the case.

  That made me think it’d be a good idea to study up on it more. So I walked out of the shower stall dripping wet and turned up the volume on the TV before rinsing myself off. Yeah, I would get called into this one somehow. At least it was a local case. That made things easier. Usually.

  3

  “I need you to focus here,” Johanna said, throwing a slow punch at my head.

  It was part of my Thursday extended workout. I’d gotten my ass kicked so many times in my life that I’d asked Jo to teach me to defend myself. She agreed, but only if I promised I would try not to make everyone so uncomfortable all the time. Specifically our new IT acquisition, Skye.

  “I am focused,” I said, almost too slow to weave my head out of the way before swinging back at her.

  She brushed my punch away with a gloved hand.

  “You aren’t even trying,” she said, her mouth guard muffling her words a little bit as she bobbed and weaved around me on the mats in the middle of the gym.

  “Don’t want to hurt you,” I mumbled back, throwing another punch, trying not to put too much force behind it.

  Jo caught my wrist, turned, and used her hip to pull my body across hers and toss me on the floor. My breath left me in a rush as she sat on my chest, tapping my face with her gloved palms.

  “You aren’t going to hurt me,” she told me, serious-like.

  The move had been so sudden, it’d left me in shock. I’d seen moves like that in a Jackie Chan movie, but she’d done it with the comical boxing gloves on, and I’d had half a heartbeat to realize what was going on before the wind had been k
nocked out of me. She stood and offered me her hand. After a few moments, I got to my feet, legs shaking.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, you’re my best friend,” I told her, watching her face redden.

  Maybe I pissed her off again. I seem to be doing that a lot lately.

  “If you hadn’t agreed to work with me, I don’t know if I could have pulled this off,” I admitted.

  “What?” she asked, spitting out the mouth piece and starting to unlace her gloves.

  I followed suit.

  “I can’t deal with the big public crowds. The noisy police office. You’ve kept me grounded. I can do public things with you around.”

  “Grounded? You’re not in trouble,” she said, her color returning to normal.

  Good, she couldn’t have been too mad at me then.

  “I can’t deal with a lot of stuff. I don’t trust nor like many people, Jo. You were my best friend in school, and you’re my best friend now. That’s why I don’t want to hurt you, even by accident. You’ve kept me going when the pain of my parents’ death—”

  Johanna choked on something and then slugged me in the shoulder.

  “Shut up,” she said, her voice sounding strangled.

  Damn, she really was pissed. That blow stung, but it hadn’t been as hard as she’d hit me before when I was in full gear. It was either a warning or…

  “Why are your eyes wet?” I asked her, not understanding how women’s emotions combine anger and tears at the same time.

  “Shut up, and don’t talk about this in front of other people,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Johanna. I didn’t mean to make you mad at me—”

  “Mad? You think I’m mad? You know what, some days I think you’re mad!” she said, stomping out of the gym.

  “I missed something there,” I said into the mirrored walls. I sighed heavily and headed to the shower.

  * * *

  “What’ve we got?” I asked Skye as I slid into my chair in the IT room.

  It was now her darkened domain, lit by computer screens, but I had a similar setup in my office. In the last couple of days, I’d done a lot of side-by-side work with her, but I soon started to see that she could run a hack just like I could. Not quite as clever as mine, but she was young and hadn’t had the same experiences I’d had. She thought on her own, needed little direction and, as long as I kept a case of Monster Energy drinks in the fridge, she happily kept at it, oftentimes falling asleep on the cot I’d put in the large walk-in closet.

  There was a time when I’d literally lived in this room, pulling all-nighters while my parents slept in the building upstairs. I’d forgotten to mention to Skye that my parents had owned the entire building for twenty years. The first floor was dedicated entirely to the agency. The second floor, as she guessed, was my gym and apartment. The rest of the building was rental apartments. The tenants had a separate elevator access at the south entrance of the building. If Skye was any good, and I believed she was, I she’d have run down who I was by now, and I wouldn’t have to explain my wealth. People got weirded-out whenever they found out about it. They acted funny and…

  Skye interrupted my thoughts. “I just tracked down Lucas Williamson. He got online and updated his status on Facebook. I just finished triangulating him and sent the information to Detective O’Hara so they can pick him up.” A triumphant smile lit up her features.

  “Good deal. If they catch him before he moves again, that’s an easy twenty-thousand-dollar fee.”

  “So how does that work?” Skye asked, turning her chair to face me.

  “Well, he skipped out on a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bond. He was charged with aggravated assault and, after a few other guys missed him, the bondsman called me. If we can get him, the bondsman isn’t out the 200k, so the 20k he had to put up himself will come to us.”

  “So he’s not making any money?” Skye asked, looking at me questioningly.

  “He pays the other guys five grand. He only comes to us when there’s no hope. You’ve been on it what, a couple hours?” I asked her.

  “Yeah?”

  “So instead of him spending another 180k, he—”

  “Jarek?” Jo said from the doorway.

  I squinted as bright sunlight streamed into the room. The air outside was fresher, and I realized that the spare work surfaces were littered with takeout containers and empty energy drink bottles. I’d have to get the cleaners in here now that I saw the extent of the mess, but maybe it was how Skye worked. Still, I wasn’t one to complain about people being eccentric.

  “Yes?” I asked, shielding my eyes.

  “You asked me to tell you when the Caroline Taylor case came our way?”

  “Yes?” I said, sitting straighter in my chair.

  “The mayor is here, and he’s got Pete Ralston with him.”

  I groaned. Ralston was Susan O’Hara’s partner at the detective bureau, but he was more of a political ass-kisser, according to my father’s wisdom. He was balding, late forties, and aging badly. He had a pouch of a stomach that people would call a beer gut, and oftentimes he’d have leftover food sprinkled on his tie, mustache, or shirt. Or sometimes all three.

  “Susan sitting this one out?” I asked.

  “She got called away,” Jo said, looking at Skye. “Good job, kid.”

  “Thanks,” Skye said, wiggling at the compliment. “Just call me Tech Support,” she said with a mock salute.

  “I’m on my way,” I told Jo and stood.

  “Hey, Jarek,” Skye said, reaching out to grab my arm.

  I noticed it and watched her pull her hand back at the last second. It would take me a while to get used to her, but she was learning. I appreciated the restraint.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “Your new tablet came in. You said to get it set up and run it through the paces and then hook it into our networks?”

  “Yes?”

  “Here,” she said, handing me a leather-bound case.

  Opening it up, it looked like an iPad, but it was something much, much more than that. It was a custom tablet I’d had made for me in Japan, with the latest of technological wonders installed on it. It was supposedly one of the fastest custom tablets ever made, but since I’m more of a software guy and not hardware, I let the agent handle the order to the specs I needed. Skye gave it a longing look as I tucked it away inside the big wide pocket in my suit jacket.

  “Thank you. I’ll let you know how it works out. If you should ever need one, let me know,” I told her and turned to leave.

  I heard her chair rattle and hit the desk, and I spun around to see what the commotion was. She had covered her mouth and was looking at Jo. Jo was shaking her head at Skye, and I was confused. I shrugged and walked out.

  “You know why I like working with women?” I asked Jo suddenly.

  “Because you like walking around half to full-on naked? Because you are a sex-crazed lunatic?” she snarked, shutting the door behind her.

  “None of those. It’s because, although I don’t understand your motivations, you don’t make me feel uncomfortable the way chest-thumping football players would.”

  “So it has nothing to do with your hypersexual activity?” she asked.

  “Why are you so focused on my sexual habits?” I retorted.

  “You’ve just been behaving like such a… slut lately?” she said.

  I wondered if that was supposed to be taken as a question or a statement, so I didn’t respond to that specifically. We’d always been close, and I’d often talked to her about things, trying to understand what normal people were like.

  “No, because I don’t worry that you gals are going to stab me in the back. You are exactly what you seem to be. You’re both excellent at what you do, and I trust you implicitly. I think Skye is going to work out well.”

  “She thinks the world of you already,” Jo said, an edge in her voice.

  “You’re mad at her for some reason?” I asked her.

&nbs
p; “What? Mad?” She led me towards the conference room. “You really don’t get women, do you?”

  “I get them into bed sometimes,” I admitted.

  Johanna huffed in such a way that I knew without a doubt that I’d made her angry. She put a hand across the hallway and stopped my progress without touching me. She pointed at me and leaned in to deliver some world-class snark when the door to the conference room opened. Pete Ralston, detective of the Detroit Police Department, walked out, looking at us warily. Johanna dropped her arm, and we turned and walked into the room.

  The mayor was there, as well as his personal assistant, Craig—a man I knew from only press conferences. Three uniformed police officers, plus Detective Ralston were seated. I started to sweat and sat at my father’s spot at the conference table. Check that, at my spot now. I was nervous, and if I didn’t calm down, I would start to sweat badly. If I sweated badly, I’d need to go change my suit, and if I sweated really badly, I’d need another shower, totally throwing off my day, and once my schedule is off…

  “Mr. Grayson,” the Mayor said.

  “Mr. Mayor,” I said, ignoring the offered hand.

  The Mayor looked affronted, but Johanna had been sitting by my side and whispered to him. He nodded and looked at me a little more kindly.

  “Mr. Mayor,” I began again, “I’m sorry to hear what’s happened to your daughter. Has there been any news?”

  Talking to total strangers has been the hardest thing in my life to learn to do, and I often get choked up. I know what I want to say, but it never comes out right and usually sounds insulting. I don’t mean to do it, but it is what it is. This was something I’d normally let Jo handle, but she was letting me take the lead, recognizing that this was something a little above her pay grade. Question was… was it above mine?

  “No news. The FBI is assisting at this point. One witness said they saw my daughter being pushed into a van at knifepoint…” Mayor Taylor’s voice cracked.

  They were hoping for kidnapping and ransom, not for a sicko with rape on his mind. I knew that enough from cases my father had done in the past. I’d not had a kidnapping case since my father had died, nor did I like them. The family was always acting emotionally in ways I didn’t understand. It was going to be a challenge for me, but one I felt I was up to, as long as I had my support team in place.