Page 100 of Lost and Found

She slid her hands into the pockets of her dress, tightened them into fists, then relaxed, curling her fingers tight again. A slight chill skittered down her spine. “We have to figure out what the key goes to.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Wes turned on his truck as Bailey climbed into the passenger seat. Her mind had a hundred questions, but one kept rising to the top. “Do you think the key had something to do with Natalie’s death?”

Wes pulled away from the curb and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “The timing of Ryan wanting to meet me, his accident, and everything that we know Erick and Martin were doing to influence the feds backing off of Peter…makes me think yeah.” He cranked the air conditioning as soon as the vents started blowing cold air.

“This is bad. Really bad.”

“Let’s set aside what Dean showed us about the minivan brakes.”

“Why?”

“We have nothing that connects any of this to Caitie. The numbers one through eight…” He shook his head. “Statistically, we could probably find many people strangled on a specific date. But I think the key has to do with Natalie.”

“I do too.”

“I know you’re not working on that right now—”

“I don’t care what I’m working on. I want to know more about that key.” All the unconnected strings she couldn’t thread into a cohesive story. Every time a unifying thought surfaced, she buried it. She had nothing but conjecture and coincidence. No evidence to build a dark explanation that she still couldn’t quite make sense of.

They arrived at Titan’s mansion, but this time, dread curled through her. Wes guided her inside and through what had once been a parlor room, now an office. They moved through a short passage and descended stairs into the basement. Dimly lit and humming, Bailey stepped into a modern electronic hub. “What is this place?”

“Dean’s office. Our servers. Whatever else he needs to support our team.”

Though the ceiling was low, the expansive space stretched out under what had to be the entire mansion’s footprint. Cold air circulated. She shivered. “Wow.”

“Hey, got your message,” Dean said as he joined them. “Come on back.”

She followed the men down a hall lit with an eerie grayish-purple light. Dean and Wes were both large men, and the low ceilings made them seem giant. “Why are the ceilings so low?”

“A lot of wiring overhead and underfoot.” Dean gestured them into his office.

A coffee maker, drink fridge, and microwave took up a corner. A folded blanket sat on top of a pillow at the end of a worn leather couch. On the opposite side of a desk with several keyboards and monitors, another door opened into what must have been a room full of computers and electronics. “Holy wow, Dean. Do you live here?”

He snickered. “Sometimes.”

She and Wes sat in chairs across from Dean. He tapped a keyboard, and a large television screen came to life. A map of New York State appeared, with dots clustered in densely populated regions.

“There are six possible variations of the E, M, and P. I started with company registrations and property records in New York and came up with a whole lot. But nothing that caught my attention.” He zoomed in on a section, and the dots displayed information. PEM Accounting. MPE Associates. PME Consulting. EPM Collections. “A lot.”

“Did you find anything useful?” Wes pressed.

“You don’t want to hear about the genius way I sifted through an electronic pile of data?” He read their expressions. “Fine. A shell company was incorporated in Delaware seventeen years ago. Ten years ago, they purchased a swanky condo in Washington, DC.”

“Like an office condo?” Wes asked.

“Nope.” The screen changed to the website of an exclusive luxury condominium on Pennsylvania Avenue, boasting breathtaking views and easy access to the White House and the US Capitol. “Residential in Penn Quarter. More than a million and a half dollars for most units.”

“Do you think they own it?” she asked. “Like it’s some kind of crash pad? I mean, Martin lives in DC, but Peter and Erick don’t.”

“Where’s Peter?” Dean asked.

“New York City.”

Dean leaned back in his office chair. “Erick is in Baltimore, right?”

She nodded. “That’s where he lives, though he’s at the Cosgrove estate a lot. He and Angus treat it like a corporate compound to some extent.”