Light in Shadow by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page A

needed."
    "Yes, sir." Leon cleared his throat and tried to keep his tone respectful. "But I'd like to point
    out that once I've found the patient, we're gonna need to think about how we want to bring
    her in."
    "The meds will make her easy to handle."
    For all his fancy degrees, Leon, thought, sometimes Harper could be as dumb as a brick.
    "The thing is, sir, the Cleland woman has been living under another name for a year. She
    probably has a job by now. That means there will be co-workers. Friends. Neighbors. Folks
    who will notice if we just grab her off the street."
    "Yes, of course." Harper tossed the gold pen aside and got to his feet. He went to the
    window. "I see what you mean. We'll have to do this discreetly."
    "Right. So what I'm thinking is, I go to L.A. find the woman, and watch her for a while. Get a
    feel for her daily routine. When we nail that down, we can figure out the best way to pick her
    up without causing a fuss."
    Harper gazed fixedly out at the lake while he considered Leon's logic.
    Leon's chest burned.
    "All right," Harper said eventually. "That makes sense.
    The last thing we want to do is to draw attention to this situation. The retrieval must be
    handled as quietly as possible."
    Leon allowed himself a small sigh of relief and took a step back toward the door. "I've already
    made my plane reservations. All I need to do is go home and throw some things in a suitcase.
    It's a long drive to the airport, so I'd better get moving."
    "Keep me informed."
    "Yes, sir."
    "I don't like this," Harper muttered. "But I suppose we can only be grateful that this GopherBoy
    person contacted us instead of Forrest Cleland."
    Leon shrugged. He knew there was no mystery about why the hacker had approached
    someone at Candle Lake Manor first. GopherBoy was clever enough to figure out how the
    place worked. He obviously understood that the management here had solid financial reasons
    for wanting to get the Cleland woman back without raising a fuss and that privacy and a real
    low profile were crucial to Harper's profitable operation.
    Leon cleared his throat. "Going to Cleland would have been a whole lot riskier. Cleland is a
    wealthy, powerful man, and he has no particular reason to keep things quiet. Hell, he might
    have called in the cops, which would have screwed GopherBoy's plan royally."
    Harper frowned. "How did GopherBoy reach the conclusion that I would be willing to pay for
    this information?"
    "Who knows? Probably something in that ID broker's files he hacked into that mentioned just
    how much money Cleland is paying to keep his relative under wraps here at Candle Lake.
    GopherBoy's gotta know what that income means to this place. Maybe more important is that
    he's figured out that the big thing you're selling here is a guarantee of silence. This place
    can't afford any bad press."
    Harper clenched and unclenched the fingers of one hand.
    Satisfied that he had made his point, Leon turned and walked swiftly across the thick beige
    carpet to the door.
    In the outer office, Fenella Leeds looked up from a file she had open on her desk. She was a
    centerfold dream, blonde, blue-eyed, and gorgeous. She was probably the most beautiful
    woman he had ever seen in real life, but he treated her pretty much the way he would have
    treated a cobra that happened to be coiled on the chair behind the desk.
    He was fairly certain she had screwed Harper for a while, but there was now some gossip
    going around that she was getting it on with the guy in accounting. He did not envy either
    man. If you slept with snakes, you tended to get bitten.
    "You're going to L.A to find the Cleland woman?" Fenella queried.
    It did not surprise him that she had somehow listened in to the conversation he'd just had
    with Harper. He wouldn't put it past her to have a tape recorder under her desk. He had a
    hunch she kept real good tabs on everything that went on around Manor. It was one of the
    reasons why he had to be very, very careful until