Page 36 of Fatal Conspiracy

Chapter Twenty

When Cal opened the door to his room a mere ten minutes later, the rest of the team was already gathered. Derek could still taste Alayah’s sweetness on his lips and wanted nothing more than to be back in bed with her, pretending that the outside world didn’t exist. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Josh and Hugo died at the same conference. Someone was killing tech giants, and he wanted to know who and why.

“Fill us in,” Alayah said as she sat next to Selina and patted the chair beside her. He slipped into the seat and rested his hand on her knee. When he touched her, his center calmed, and he could concentrate on what Cal had to say.

“I got a call from Detective Henry about thirty minutes ago that Josh Hunt was found floating in the Superior Harbor by a passerby. As we are security for the conference, he had to notify me that another speaker was killed.”

“Is he sure the guy didn’t just fall in? Maybe he was drunk or something?” Efren asked from the other side of the room.

“While he wouldn’t share how Josh was killed, he assured me it was undoubtedly murder,” Cal answered.

“Josh was an attendee and guest speaker, but he wasn’t staying here,” Derek said. “At this hotel, I mean.”

“He wasn’t,” Cal agreed, walking to the whiteboard he’dpropped up against the television. He wrote “The Suites” in black. “He was staying at this hotel a few blocks away. When I spoke to him yesterday, he said he preferred hotels directly on the water when he was in Duluth.”

“Okay, but why would they find him all the way in Superior and not just outside his hotel room door? If he was found in Superior, the trip was purposeful. He had to drive across the bridge to get to that harbor. There had to be a reason,” Efren deduced.

Cal nodded. “That was mine and Detective Henry’s thought, too. Had he just fallen into the water outside the hotel or at Park Point, you could assume he was drunk or slipped. Driving all the way to Superior feels purposeful.”

“Maybe he went to one of the restaurants over there?” Eric suggested with a shrug. “Or he had a hookup planned at a hotel where no one knew him?”

“According to the information I received from the detective, which was reluctantly, I might add, there’s video footage of Josh leaving his room at 0300 hours.”

“Bars are closed by three a.m. around here,” Roman said, and Cal nodded before he started writing again.

“Right, so he leaves Duluth at 0300 hours, and assuming he drove directly to Superior, where they found his car, that’s a ten- to fifteen-minute drive, probably ten when the roads are relatively empty. He arrives at the marina, or at least that’s where they found his car, and does what? It’s 0315 or 0330 at the latest. Maybe he was hooking up with someone on one of the docked boats? That’s a possibility.”

“Do we have any footage from the marina to show his arrival and what he did while there?” Zac asked.

“Not yet, but it’s supposedly coming. I doubt we’ll be privy to it once they have it.”

Alayah’s laughter lifted Derek’s lips. “Like that’s ever stopped us before.”

Cal pointed at her, his metal-and-plastic fingers making a telltale clicking sound in the room. “And it won’t stop us this time, but my guess is, whatever the footage shows, it won’t be his death. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and it will show him entering a boat or meeting someone, but if it was anything more than an innocent hookup, there’s no way he’d meet someone in an area with cameras.”

“That’s the odd part,” Alayah agreed. “Why would he park his car somewhere with security cameras if he wasn’t going to meet them there?”

“Proof of life at the time he parked,” Selina answered, and everyone swiveled to her. “Think about it. If this was something other than a hookup on a houseboat and he didn’t return to his car, it would be found as soon as the marina opened, and people would start asking questions.”

“Like someone took him hostage?” Derek asked, and she nodded with a shrug.

“That or he knew the meeting could result in his death. There’s no way to know what he was thinking when he parked there.”

“Well, we know that whatever he was doing, he didn’t want anyone to know,” Cal added. “He didn’t leave a note, at least on paper. The police are looking at his electronic footprint.”

“So that brings me back to a hookup,” Alayah said. “Working on that theory, the question is, how did he end up in the water? Obviously, if the detective said he was murdered, it likely wasn’t by drowning. He had to have been killed before he went into the water. Why would a hookup end in death?”

“Unless he was lured there on the pretense of a hookup, but it was a setup,” Derek said, and Cal clapped once.

“Yes! Now that makes more sense,” he agreed, writingsetupwith a question mark on the board before writingwhoandwhy. “Our job is to answer these questions,” he said, tapping the board.

“Isn’t that the cops’ job?” Derek asked.

“Technically,” Cal said. “But we don’t have to work around the bureaucracy that they do. Since the conference has officially been canceled, but we’re all suspects, we may as well focus on clearing everyone to extract ourselves from this mess.”

“We’re all suspects?” Alayah asked. “Let me guess. Detective Henry told you that.”

“But who else?” Cal asked, tongue in cheek. “Actually, the only ones who are cleared would be me, you and Derek since we were meeting with him at the time Josh left his hotel.”