AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nate leaned his long frame forward as well, straining to see in the dark. “Not yet. Guess we’ll get out and head for the doors, see if anyone’s inside.”
The store was not as dark as the parking lot, though the blazing yellow lights did not seem to illuminate any customers. There were still a couple of cars parked here and there, but that didn’t indicate much. There were other businesses around the same lot, no doubt sharing it. It was late, and most people had gone home for the night. Laura parked near the entrance and got out of the car, feeling the cool evening air flow over the skin of her face like a welcome balm.
Nate stepped out away from the car, looking around, squinting into the distance. “I can’t see anyone at all,” he said. “Are you sure they’re open? Maybe if we—”
Laura only had a split second to grab hold of the back of his jacket and pull, making him stumble back into her. A moment later, the car that had pulled into the parking lot at a reckless speed rushed past the spot he had been about to step right out into.
“Jesus,” Nate panted, one hand going to his chest. “That was close. Thanks.”
Laura gasped in a breath, relief washing over her. It was short-lived. Her heart was hammering in her chest with the stress of pulling him back, of seeing what could have been his impending doom. The car had come out of nowhere, and she almost hadn’t seen it in time.
She wanted to think that she had just saved him from the shadow of death that she had seen hanging around him. But she knew she hadn’t. For one thing, the feeling would have been much stronger if the danger was that close.
For another, she could still feel the lingering chill of its touch as she let go of the back of his jacket. It was hanging over him still, and she still had no idea what it meant.
“You should be more careful,” she scolded him, as she got her voice back. “I might not be here to pull you back next time.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nate said, with enough sincerity and earnestness that Laura didn’t shoot him an elbow in the ribs for being cheeky. Even if she had wanted to, she didn’t want to feel that again. She couldn’t. Not when she needed to concentrate on what they still had to do.
They walked the short distance toward the entrance of the store together without further incident. As they stepped in through a blast of air conditioning—still turned on despite the fact that the outside temperature had cooled—Laura blinked to adjust her eyes to the harsh light. They were in a store that looked much like any other she had been in: several aisles of racks containing items for sale lined up all in a row, more items around three and a half walls. On the remaining half, a counter area was currently manned by an employee in his early twenties.
“Oh, hello!” That was an older man, in perhaps his forties or early fifties, approaching from the left. Laura’s gaze snapped to him, then back to the younger man behind the counter. A quick analysis of their features showed a familial resemblance. Same messy brown hair, same dark eyes, same angular nose. Laura guessed the server was his son. “You’re the FBI agents I’m supposed to be meeting?”
“Yes,” Nate said, flipping open his badge to show the man. “I’m Agent Lavoie, and this is Agent Frost. You recently sold a couple of items that we need to trace. If possible, we want the customer’s identity.”
“Right, yes,” he said, gesturing them over to the counter. “I’m the owner—my name is Fred. I’ve pulled up some of our records on the computer to show you.”
The young man stepped aside as the three of them all bundled behind the counter, taking up almost the whole space. He waited nervously by the side of the gate that let them in, holding one of his arms across his body. He looked nervous, his eyes constantly tracking over Laura and Nate, from one to the other, from one to the other. What did he have to be nervous about? Laura wondered.
“We log all of our sales through an electronic system,” Fred was explaining, something which Laura wasn’t particularly interested in. It was a standard modern system, and she just wanted him to get to the point. “If you have the item code, I can bring it up easily. Or I can search by name, too.”
Nate took his notebook out of his pocket. “Here,” he said, pointing to a scrawled note on one of the pages. “This is the type of item we’re looking for. It’s a cell phone.”
“Oh, yes, we don’t sell a lot of those,” Fred said, quickly typing in the identifier. “Should be easy to find them… Do you have the serial number for the particular phones?”
“I do,” Nate said, flipping back a page. “Can you isolate the exact sale?”
“Yes, we can,” Fred said, his eyes scanning the list of results as his finger hovered over the entry in Nate’s notebook.
Laura glanced over at the son again. He was looking even more shifty, now that the topic of the phones had come up. He had shoved his hands into his pockets and was rocking back on his heels slightly, looking at the floor. Like a naughty kid.
“Hmm,” Fred said. “That’s odd.”
“What is it?” Nate asked, instantly on high alert. For her part, Laura looked at the kid, not at Fred or the screen. Yes. He was biting his lip now. He knew something about what Fred was about to say, no question about it.
“Well, both of these are listed as shrink.” Fred checked the screen one more time, then shook his head. “They weren’t sold at all.”
“What does shrink mean?” Nate asked.
Laura had once worked a part-time job in a store while she was a student. “It means they aren’t accounted for in the stock take. Either they went missing somehow, or they were stolen. Right?” she said.
“Yes, that’s right,” Fred replied. He gave an apologetic shrug. “This happens from time to time. We review the cameras on a regular basis for thefts, but unfortunately, we don’t always catch things. These ones aren’t listed alongside a crime identification number, which means we couldn’t find any evidence of the theft on the tapes.”
“Do you at least know when they went missing?” Nate asked.
“To the nearest week, yes,” Fred said. “We only do stock take on Sundays. They could have gone missing any time within the past week.”
“So we can’t narrow it down to a day?” Nate sighed. “Then there’s not a lot of hope in going over the security camera footage again.”
