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“I’d better pack for New York.”
“If you do it quickly, we can make a pit stop on the way to East Hampton. We’re taking the Learjet.”
Good thing I kept an overnight bag in the office.
5
HALLIE
“You must be Hallie Chastain?” The older man who’d just walked into the conference room held out a hand. “I’m Collier Dafoe.”
I resisted the urge to fan myself. Collier Dafoe had to be touching fifty, but he was in better shape than a man half his age. A broad chest and muscular arms strained at a blue dress shirt. Not my type, but Peta who worked in accounting had a silver fox calendar on her desk, and she’d be licking her lips and calling him Daddy.
The smile he gave me when we shook hands was anything but fatherly, but I knew Dan wouldn’t have paired me up with a pervert.
“It’s good to meet you, Collier. We’ll be working together?”
He nodded. “Dan said you needed someone who knew the city, and I have a light caseload this week.”
“I appreciate your help.”
Plus I was still training, so I’d need to work alongside a licensed PI.
“Have you visited NYC before?”
“Only for a weekend, but I didn’t see much of the city.” Was I blushing? My cheeks sure felt hot. Ford had surprised me with tickets for a Broadway show for our four-month anniversary, and after we’d watched Hamilton, we’d barely left our hotel room for the rest of the trip. I wasn’t going to tell Collier that, of course, but his smirk suggested he’d guessed anyway.
“I grew up in the Bronx. Lived here my whole life, apart from a stint in the army, anyway. You got a plan?”
Kind of. I had a list. While I’d been speaking with Chelle and visiting Nico, Blackwood’s data analysis program had been beavering away in the background like a digital sidekick. Providence was Google on steroids with a side of Siri. She—yes, I thought of her as female—dug out information not only from Blackwood’s network but from the wider internet too, including some dusty corners she probably shouldn’t have had access to. And then she joined the dots. After I’d fed in the key points from Crumb’s files, she’d found current addresses and contact details for Kaylin’s former roommates, her agent, and her ex-boss at the events company. We’d start there. Chelle La Rocca had held back with Nico’s investigator—had others done the same?
“I’ll send you a copy of the file, but in summary, we’re doing a case review on a missing woman. Kaylin Marie La Rocca. She vanished after being accused of murder.”
Dafoe gave a low whistle. “There an arrest warrant?”
“There is. Her vehicle was involved in a hit-and-run, but our client believes there’s more to the story than meets the eye.”
“How’d they get to murder from a hit-and-run?”
“The victim was a cop. He was on his way home from a get-together, but the commonwealth’s attorney was up for re-election, so he said the cop could have died trying to do his duty and dressed it up as aggravated murder.”
“That’s a reach.”
“I agree, but there were no witnesses and no camera footage, so without Kaylin’s side of the story, nobody’s been able to refute the allegations.”
I’d had an off-the-record chat with an attorney friend, and he felt the charges wouldn’t stick if the case ever went to trial, but until then, Kaylin was a wanted woman who garnered no sympathy from those who didn’t know her.
“You got a starting point?” Dafoe asked, and with his neatly trimmed beard, he looked like Santa Claus’s hot cousin. Any woman on the receiving end of his charming smile would think all her Christmases had come at once. Yes, I was practically engaged, but I still glanced at his left hand. No ring.
“We have four possible witnesses to visit, and then we’ll see where their information takes us. Two former roommates—Anisha Kapoor and Charlotte Davison. Anisha lives in Hell’s Kitchen still, and Charlotte moved to New Brunswick. Then there’s Kaylin’s agent at Lux Model Management on West 26th.”
Dafoe nodded. “Over by Madison Square Park.”
“You know it?”
“I dated a girl from there once.”
“From Madison Square Park?”
