Page 1 of Crossing Paths
One
“Pax Bond Recovery,” Norah answered her cell phone.
“Which of you Pax girls is this?”
At Barney Thompson’s distinctive voice, she made a face. She would’ve rather talked to pretty much anyone other than the slimy bail bondsman who held the deed to their family home.Thanks for that, Mom.
“This is Norah,” she answered. “What can we do for you, Mr. Thompson?”
“Norah…Norah… Oh, you’re the mousy blond! POS’s kid. How’s he doing?”
“Fine,” she lied, not wanting to go into the gory details of the mess her dad, Dwayne “POS” Possin, was currently making of his life—especially not with Barney Thompson of all people. The only reason they were giving Barney the time of day was because they still hadn’t found their currently-on-the-run mom, and he could make their lives miserable if she missed her first court hearing. “What do you need?”
“All business, aren’t you?” he asked with a stiff laugh.
She scrunched her nose at the two out of four of her sisters who were watching with a mixture of sympathy and apprehension. Norah could barely deal with talking to people outside her family. Making nice with a scumball like Barney was not part of her skill set.
“I have another job for you,” Barney continued.
Her relieved exhale was silent. Even though he sounded a bit peeved, at least he was willing to get down to business. “Who’s the skip?” she asked.
“Devon Leifsen.”
The name didn’t ring any bells, so she repeated it for Molly and Cara to hear. Both of them gave her a blank head shake. “What did he do?”
“You mean what is heaccusedof doing?” Barney corrected archly.
“Sure.” There was a snap in her voice that she couldn’t help. Barney was quickly wearing through her thin veneer of patience.
“What with your mother’s…situation, I would think you’d be more of a stickler about the whole innocent-until-proven-guilty thing.” He paused as if waiting for her to comment, but she held her silence until he finally answered sullenly. “He’saccusedof being a hacker. He was arrested for deactivating home security systems so his buddies could burglarize the places.”
Norah felt cold rush through her as her gaze flew to Cara. Her sister had been kidnapped a few weeks ago after their security system had been disabled. Maybe it was just a coincidence, since there were lots of hackers in the world, but Langston,Colorado, wasn’t a huge place. Cara gave her a questioning look as Norah asked, “Is he local?”
“If you call Denver local, then yeah.” Barney sounded bored now that she hadn’t risen to his earlier bait. “Look, it’s all in the file I sent over. Find him fast, or you’re not going to like the consequences.”
Norah was already opening her email app and pulling up the business’s account. If there was a chance that this guy helped kidnap Cara, then she was going to relish her part in bringing him in.
“Hello?” Barney’s voice echoed faintly from her phone, and Norah twitched her shoulders in irritation. He’d said that everything was in the file. Why hadn’t he ended the call already? “Hello? Did you hang up on me, you little—”
Returning to the phone display, she pressed the end button. A snort from Molly brought her gaze from her phone screen to her sister’s amused expression. “What?” Norah asked.
Cara sighed, but the corners of her mouth twitched in a way that meant she wasn’t really that exasperated. “Don’t hang up on clients, Norah.”
“It was Barney.” She turned back to her phone, wanting to read the file.
“True,” Molly agreed, the laughter in her voice slipping away. “But as long as he may have the ability to evict us in the near future, it might be a good idea to say ‘bye’ at the end of conversations.”
Distracted by the contents of Devon Leifsen’s file, Norah just grunted an acknowledgment. “The skip is a hacker who’sbeen disarming residential security systems so his friends can burglarize homes.” She heard Cara’s sharply indrawn breath as Norah continued to scroll through the information. Even though she’d barely glanced at the file, she knew in her gut that Leifsen had to have been at least partially responsible for her sister’s kidnapping. Cara had almostdied.
For that, Devon Leifsen was going to pay. Norah would track him down so her sisters could make sure of that. She looked up as she promised, “I’ll find him, Cara.”
“Of course you will,” Molly said, giving Cara’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. “And then I’ll bring him in. He’s as good as locked up.”
“I know,” Cara said, although her voice shook slightly.
That tremor made Norah even more determined to locate Leifsen. Even though she wouldn’t be the one physically chasing down the skip and dragging him back to jail, she could at least do her part by discovering his whereabouts. He’d try to hide, but Leifsen would soon discover what hundreds of other skips had learned—the Pax sisters were very good at their job.
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