“Who hired you?”
“That’s confidential.”
Audrey huffed out a breath. Pulling teeth was easier than getting information out of him. A pit viper’s teeth, to be exact. “Maybe I can help.”
“No, you can’t. And every second we waste explaining ourselves to you is another second your brother spends in captivity. So you need to back off, Ms. Van Amee, and let us do our job.”
“Gabe,” Harvard called across the room. “I got it.”
Without another glance in her direction, Gabe strode over to stand behind Harvard and studied the computer monitor. “Go back to his first appearance.”
Since nobody had told her to stay put, Audrey drifted over to see what Harvard was doing. An image of her brother leaving his apartment building showed on the computer screen. The timestamp in the corner read 5:58 a.m. Forever prompt—that was so like Bryson. His pixelated image left the screen.
“Another angle?” Gabe asked.
Harvard pecked a few keys and Bryson’s image returned to the far left corner. He waited there for something, impatient.
The limo, she thought as Bryson checked the screen of his phone and answered her call. A few minutes later, the limo arrived and a tall dark-haired man opened the door for Bryson. A moment after that, the vehicle pulled away from the curb with her brother inside.
“License plate?” Gabe asked.
“Partial. I’m already running it. And the phone call…” Harvard rewound the footage to check the timestamp. “…came in at 0620. With a little finessing, I can get into his records, see who he spoke to.”
“Do it. Also see if—”
“It was me,” Audrey said and Gabe turned narrowed eyes on her.
“What?”
“It was me,” she repeated. “I called him. I have—was supposed to have an art show this weekend in San Jose and wanted to make sure he remembered. He didn’t.”
Gabe straightened away from the computer. “What else did he say?”
She shrugged. “Typical Bryson stuff. He had to work. He was off to another meeting.”
“Where?”
“He didn’t say. I started lecturing him on how he works too much, how he’s missing out on his sons’ lives, and how his doctor said he needed to take it easy.” She noticed a faint scowl pass over Gabe’s hard features at that, but he hid it in a blink.
“The medical records I have for your brother don’t mention any serious conditions,” Jesse Warrick said, concern in his voice.
“Uh, no, he doesn’t have any,” she answered. “I mean, nothing that he needs medicine for or anything. He just had some chest pains last summer. They ran tests and are keeping an eye on him, but so far, it seems to be an isolated incident. The doctors think it was caused by a panic attack.”
Jesse looked at Gabe. “The records I have don’t mention anything about chest pain.”
Gabe appeared frustrated and said something back, but she didn’t hear him because Quinn asked from across the room, “Did you hear anything else when you were on the phone with Bryson?”
She glanced over at him. Such solemn intensity. He made her uncomfortable, so she returned her gaze to Gabe. “I heard a man’s voice say in Spanish that Bryson needed to relax, that nobody was going to hurt him because he—” She had to stop and clear away the lump forming in her throat. “Because he was worth too much money. After that, the line went dead.”
“So naturally you jumped on the first flight to Colombia and put yourself at risk.” Gabe held up a hand when her mouth opened to fire back a defense. “Forget it. What else did Bryson say? Can you remember anything else about that conversation?”
Oh, what a condescending, overbearing…
No, she told herself and clenched her teeth to reign in her temper, don’t let him get to you. There would be plenty of time to rip into him later. Now, she had to focus.
For Bryson.
She shut her eyes, replayed the conversation for the hundredth, maybe thousandth, time in the last twenty-four hours. “He didn’t say anything else to me. When the limo arrived, he had a short conversation with the driver. I couldn’t hear all of it, but I think the driver introduced himself as Jacinto.”
Gabe snapped his fingers and turned to Harvard. “Any clear shots of the driver’s face?”
“Not clear, boss. One profile. Pretty grainy, but I might be able to clean it up. If I can get a clear enough picture, I’ll find you a name, birthday, and the name of his last one-night-stand.”
“Do it. How’s the EPC research coming?”
“Getting there. I have some possible EPC hangouts that need checking.”