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No one had rushed to save his brother. Now they would know what it was like to be hunted.
“Sir, did you hear what I said?”
Gary looked up and saw Colin standing by the office door. Gary didn’t remember him coming in and had no idea how long he’d been standing there. “No.”
“We have an opportunity to catch Jocelyn Raine tomorrow.”
The banking thing. He’d been hearing this theory for days. “She will not keep to her usual schedule. Because that would be stupid, and everything I’ve read about this woman suggests she’s smart.”
Colin stepped farther into the room. He held a tablet and had something cued on it. “I say she will.”
The whole idea was ludicrous. That a woman who had been attacked would stroll into the bank to take care of bills and deposits didn’t make any sense. That she even used the bank the way people did twenty years ago instead of depending on online bill payments and other services was madness. He could only assume she had a reason to stay somewhat hidden and pay with cash.
But that didn’t change the commonsense facts. “She’s been shot at and chased in her home, in someone else’s home and now at the hospital.”
“You don’t understand what I’m telling you.”
The tone grated on Gary’s nerves. Difficult and disrespectful. He waited to smash his security head until he’d heard it all. It would be so much more satisfying to let him spell it out in great detail, thinking he’d won over the boss, then knock him down.
Gary leaned back in his oversize chair. “Enlighten me.”
“She sticks to a schedule.”
“I’m sure that’s true absent an emergency.” There was no need to hear more. “You’re wasting my time.”
“I’ve watched the video. She has a significant problem with change. She has to do things the same way all the time.” Colin set the tablet in front of Gary and turned it around to face him.
Time-lapse videos ran in the four corners. The times of day were close and the dates suggested the events spanned exactly four weeks to the day. Gary saw the so-called evidence but didn’t see the obvious connection. “Meaning what?”
“She walks in the same bank door every time. Walks up to the center console, straightens the pens and all those paper slips.” Colin pointed at the screen as he ran through the list. “She comes on the same day each week, around the same time. She uses the same teller.”
Gary couldn’t help but smile at that one. “Not anymore.”
What with Pamela being dead and all.
“I think the Raine woman’s got that disease.”
Gary glanced down at the screen. He blocked out the noise of Colin’s talking and watched the videos. Then he hit Play and watched them again. Same walk. Same amount of time at the counter. She even looked as if she wore the same outfit—hospital scrubs.
Maybe Colin had a point that was at least worth exploring. Gary almost congratulated him for holding on to his job for another day. But that was by no means assured yet. “You mean you think she has some sort of obsessive-compulsive issue.”
“Exactly.” Colin nodded. “She can’t help it.”
But there was still one problem. Ben Tanner, a man with nothing to lose, which made him very dangerous to Gary’s plans. Leave it to loner Jocelyn Raine to hook up with the pariah who took down the NCIS. It would be a funny pairing if it didn’t threaten everything Gary had set up and arranged.
Then there was the Corcoran Team, Ben’s new employer. On paper, they helped corporations with risk assessments. Wanted to fly your company executives into some country no one had ever heard of? Corcoran would help you decide if that was a good idea and arrange for bodyguards to watch over all of them. If all else failed, they’d storm in and get the executives out.
All fine and not too problematic, except that the confidential memo Gary received told another story. If you drilled down, Corcoran sat in the middle of everything. The team worked with the police and government agencies and appeared to have a great amount of leeway in how it operated. Weapons, locked-down buildings, no trace of team members’ properties.
And if Jocelyn was messed up with them, she very well could know what was happening and be planning to stop it. Didn’t look as if she had the funds to hire them, but with Gary’s luck they could have taken her case pro bono. That made her Gary’s top priority.
“I’m not convinced the boyfriend, Mr. Top Secret, lets her out to go to the bank.”
Colin pointed at the security-camera images and smiled. “She’ll be there.”
If it was even a possibility, Gary knew he had to follow the lead. “Set it up. This will be very public, during daylight.”
