Page 41 of Insidious Threats
“Sounds like a plan. You want to grab lunch in a few hours?”
She flipped her desk calendar open and scanned her schedule. “I might be able to. Pop your head in when you’re ready to eat, and I’ll let you know.”
He gave her a quick kiss. “Okay. Have a good morning.”
“Uh-huh, you, too.” Her attention had drifted away from her calendar and back to Cinco’s drawings.
When he left, she was still staring down at them with a perplexed look.
* * *
The metal doorbanged shut behind Stasia as she barged into the airport bathroom. She crouched and checked under all three stall doors. No shoes. Still, she shouted Amanda’s name. Her voice echoed off the tile walls and came back to her as a taunt.
“Sonofa—.” She drove her fist into the mirror hanging over the sink with an explosive punch.
The glass shattered and blood dripped from her hand. She hardly noticed. Leith’s lawyer had run, and Stasia was going to have to be the one to break the news to him.
Her nostrils flared as a swell of rage broke over her like a wave. When she caught up to ATJ, she’d enjoy making the little lawyer pay.
For now, though, she had to switch into damage control mode. She wrapped a rough, unbleached paper towel around her bleeding hand and steadied her breath.
When she had herself under control, she bumped the restroom door open with her hip and opened the trashcan just outside to drop the bloodied towel inside. She’d use the first aid kit on the plane to treat her injury properly. As the lid swung open, a glint of shiny metal caught her eye. She scanned the mostly empty space before she reached inside. She retrieved Amanda’s cell phone, then wadded up the paper towel and tossed it into the refuse container.
She tucked the phone into the pocket of her fitted dress and smoothed the fabric over her hips. She returned to the counter and removed her own mobile device from the shelf. She powered it up and placed the call to Leith’s home.
“Delone residence.”
“It’s Stasia. Put me through,” she instructed the house manager.
Raquel complied immediately, and a moment later, Leith’s voice sounded in Stasia’s ear.
“What is it?”
She ignored the tone. “Your lawyer ran.”
“What?”
“When ATJ arrived at the airport this morning, I told her to call you, as you wanted. She spoke tosomeoneon the phone. Was it you?”
“It was not.”
She took Amanda’s phone out of her pocket and powered it on.
“She ended her call and indicated she needed to use the restroom. She never returned to the boarding area, so I went looking for her. I found her mobile in a trashcan. She left her suitcase and computer here. So she’s on foot with nothing more than what she has in her pockets,” Stasia told him.
“This is unacceptable. Who did she speak to?”
Stasia rolled her eyes heavenward. “Tell me her PIN, and we’ll find out.”
Leith required his inner circle to share their PINs and passwords with Raquel. Updating or changing them without reporting the new one to his house manager was grounds for termination and banishment.
“Raquel, get in here,” he barked on the other end of the phone.
A few moments later, Raquel rattled off the digits, Leith repeated them into the phone, and Stasia keyed them into Amanda’s device. The screen came to life, and she navigated to the call log.
“She took an incoming call. The number comes up as McCandless, Volmer & Andrews, and it’s listed in her contacts as SMC,” Stasia reported.
“It’s the lawyer she met with yesterday,” Leith told her as if she didn’t already know that. “She must have told ATJ that her client wasn’t budging and rather than face the music for her failure, ATJ decided to run.”
