Facing It by Linda Winfree Read Free Book Online Page B

credentials case. “Listen, I’ll be here a couple of days. This has my cell number if you change your mind—”
    The cell phone in question rang, cutting him off. He tugged it from his belt and glanced at the display. “Excuse me. Beecham.” He listened, his face tightening. “You’re sure? Absolutely positive? Yeah. I hear you.”
    Unease shivered along Jennifer’s spine.
    “Yeah. Thanks for letting me know. Keep us updated.” He snapped the phone closed and returned it to his belt. He flicked a look at Jennifer before meeting Calvert’s inscrutable gaze. “That was Weston, our supervising agent. He’ll have my ass in a sling for telling you this without clearance, but you need to know. The agents who’ve been shadowing Stephen Chason lost contact with him. Supposedly he was checked into a hotel in Virginia Beach and supposedly they’d verified his presence, but now no one seems to know where he is.”
    With his words, Jennifer’s unease flared into downright dread. Calvert’s face tightened, darkened. “So he knows Ruthie’s gone and y’all have no idea where he is.”
    Beecham planted his palms on the table and leaned forward. “But you know where she is, don’t you, Tick? We can keep her safe—”
    “Like we kept Tessa Marlow safe?”
    Beecham recoiled slightly, stiffening as if in response to a physical blow. “That was different.”
    “No. This is different. This is my sister and no way in hell am I letting the Bureau use her as freakin’ bait to draw Chason out.”
    “That’s not our intent—”
    “That’s not your intent, Beech. But we both know how it works. I’ve been there, remember?”
    “Damn it, Tick. He’s going to look here first.”
    “Of course he is.” Calvert shrugged. “Let him look. He won’t find anything more than you have.”
    Beecham’s frustration manifested in his inarticulate growl. Jennifer held her fisted hands in her lap. The futility of this was making her crazy.
    “Beecham?” Falconetti spoke, her husky voice quiet and intent. “What do you know about Chason?”
    Beecham looked at Jennifer with a you-handle-this-one expression. She shifted, leaning forward. “He’s all about control. His business dealings, the house, the children, his wife. When you look at the man, you never know what he’s thinking. Hides his emotions well.”
    Falconetti nodded and turned to her husband. “Tick? What do you know about him?”
    “I’ve only met the guy a couple of times, Cait, in the entire time Ruthie’s been married to him. He was quiet, distant, when I was around him.”
    “Sounds like him,” Beecham said. “When we’ve tried to get to him in social situations, engaging him in a conversation is damned near impossible.”
    A frown drew Falconetti’s elegant brows together. “Did it feel like social incompetence or removal?”
    “Removal.”
    “Why are we having this conversation?” Jennifer asked, a trace of her earlier pique twisting through her in a painful spiral. She was missing something and she didn’t like being the outsider in the shorthand conversation taking place. She met Calvert’s unreadable gaze dead-on. “All you have to do is help us and we can help her.”
    Beecham didn’t move his eyes from Falconetti’s, but waved a silencing hand in Jennifer’s direction. She snapped her mouth shut and subsided, arms crossed over her chest. Intensity vibrated from his body and he leaned forward. “What is he going to do, Cait?”
    “I don’t know enough.” Annoyance colored her words. “You have to give me more. What happens when he loses control of a situation? Even a small one? Is he a shouter? A hitter? What?”
    The memory filtered through Jennifer, bringing with it the lingering nausea. The single time she’d seen Ruthie Chason attempt to stand up for herself, the dark rage on Stephen Chason’s face, icily controlled, his words not audible to Jennifer’s ears from her vantage point on their adjacent patio, but his actions