Their Virgin Captive(23)

“We can’t say anything to Hannah until we know for sure, but he’s not coming anywhere near her.”

“Agreed.” Slade walked in from the hallway that led back to the bedrooms. “I settled her in.

She’s not particularly happy that she lost her cell phone.”

Gavin eyed Slade. “Lost?”

Slade pulled the small phone out of his back pocket with a grin. “It got lost in my pants.” Gavin sighed, the sound so familiar to Dex that he no longer winced at it. He was used to disappointing Gavin. But it was nice to know their oldest brother handled Slade the same way.

“And why would her phone decide to hide in your slacks?”

Dex held his hand out, and Slade turned the phone over. Dex immediately started going through her recent calls. “Slade and I talked about it earlier. Hannah knows a lot of people.

Maybe one of them is her stalker. But if she has this phone, she’s going to answer it. She might even call her friends to let them know where she’s gone. We can’t risk that.” She’d had twenty damn phone calls in the last ten hours. Dex ignored the ones from Wendy and the other female office workers Hannah had befriended. There were several numbers from inside Black Oak that Dex didn’t recognize, and Hannah didn’t have contact names for their numbers.

“We need to keep Hannah’s whereabouts quiet. Wendy is the only one who knows where she is. She’s been with the company for over a decade. I would trust her with company secrets.” Slade flipped open his laptop and started it up.

“And Wendy loves Hannah,” Gavin offered. “She views her as the daughter she never had and has lectured me several times on the importance of taking care of Hannah properly. Wendy wouldn’t give up her whereabouts. She knows the danger.”

Dex sat down beside Slade, who had pulled up the company directory. “Who has extension 709?”

Slade’s fingers flew across the keys. “Scott Kirkwood. He works in IT. That’s the guy she was supposed to have lunch with today so he could talk to her about something ‘important.’” Dex remembered Scott. Short, scrawny. Pale hair to go with his pale face. When Dex had gone to the IT section to interrogate the little prick, he’d been out with a ‘personal appointment,’

according to his supervisor. Scott was supposedly both reliable and punctual, but the timing smelled damn fishy to Dex. “Send Burke his name.”

“Already done,” Gavin advised.

Satisfaction rolled through Dex. “Good. I’ll bet we have dates and times on some of this damn stalker’s actions. Maybe we can use those to narrow the list of suspects down and eliminate others.”

“I think you should have this conversation with Hannah,” Gavin suggested.

Dex turned to him. “We don’t want to scare her unnecessarily. Once we know something, we’ll bring her in and tell her everything.”

“I understand not wanting to frighten her, but you can’t pretend the problem doesn’t exist when she’s around. Isn’t she our best resource on figuring this out? I mean, she does know who she speaks with on a daily basis.”

“I don’t want her involved.” Dex flipped through her phone. “Extension 830?” A few clicks on the computer, and Slade had the answer. “That’s Heather Coleburn. She’s in the business management office. She and Hannah have had lunch every Wednesday for the last year.”

“She makes friends so easily,” Dex murmured with a hint of a smile. She was a genuine friend, and some people took advantage of that. “722?”

Slade rolled his eyes. “That’s Lyle. You know Lyle.”

Dex knew him well. Lyle was the head of the help desk and a supposed computer genius. He just seemed like an unctuous prick to Dex. “Yeah. He left a message on her machine at home, I think. He was supposed to fix her laptop tonight. Maybe we should give his name to Burke.” Gavin shrugged. “Next time I talk to Burke or Cole, I will.”



“Good. Now does someone here want to tell me why I didn’t know that Hannah filed a sexual harassment complaint against our CIO?”

“I didn’t know, either,” Slade added.

Gavin’s eyes hooded. “She told me it wasn’t serious. He got a little handsy at happy hour a couple of weeks back. He and his wife are separating, and Ward was drunk. I talked to him yesterday, just after I found out. I told him I would fire him if he even looked Hannah’s way again.”

“And you didn’t bother to mention this to either of us, why?” Slade asked, looking up from his computer.

Gavin’s perfectly polished shoes tapped against the hardwood floor, a sure sign he was getting impatient. “By HR’s standards, Hannah’s complaint is confidential. The only reason I knew about it was Preston himself. He was worried HR would pursue the matter, and came to plead his case to me. Then I asked Hannah.”