“Yes, I still don’t understand.”
“We don’t either,” he said. “It’s not like I have any answers for you yet.”
“Okay.” She frowned as she looked at him. “I don’t understand why being singled out would be something to worry you either.”
“Well, it depends. What was she doing over there?”
“She was over there as my photographer, as I’ve told you.” And, this time, she enunciated very clearly, quite pissed off.
Jerricho grinned at her. “Stay angry,” he said. “It’ll keep your brain engaged.” Suddenly they pulled in front of the hotel. He hustled her out and into the lobby.
“Why are we moving as fast as we are right now?” she asked in a tight voice.
He laced his fingers with hers. “Because we could have a problem here.”
“Will you ever explain?”
“Maybe, as soon as we can get to a room,” he said. They quickly checked in and headed up to their room. There he sent off more texts.
She looked at him. “I need an explanation.” She stood, almost vibrating in pain in the center of the room. “What’s going on?”
“I’m afraid,” he said, “Jessie might have had a reason for going over into that part of the world that you don’t know about.”
“And what does that mean?” she asked quietly.
“It means,” Jerricho said, “that there’s every reason to consider that maybe she was involved in something illegal.”
She stared at him in shock. “I can’t believe that would be true.”
“Maybe not. I get that, but I don’t know yet what was going on.”
“Okay, so if she was, what is it that you think could possibly be wrong?”
“I just worry,” he said, “that we don’t know the full picture.”
“Of course not,” she said, “and what you’re telling me right now is incredibly bad news.”
“Possibly, yes,” he said. “Until I get some information, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions.”
“I appreciate that,” she said, her voice tight. She sagged into the single chair in the room. “So what am I supposed to do now?”
“Relax,” he said. “As soon as I get some information, I’ll let you know.”
She sat, staring out the window, wondering what had just happened. She tried to think back over everything that she knew about Jessie and how long she had known her and the things that they had done. This was their first international trip together, and Jessie had seemed completely relaxed and settled into it, but was she? Brenna herself had done quite a few trips up and down the world, but this was her first to Malta, Libya, or Africa.
As she thought about it, she realized that Jessie had asked specifically for this trip. At the time everybody thought that she would fit in probably quite well because she had a similar skin tone and looked more native than she would have, even in western clothes.
Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, Brenna didn’t know, but it definitely hadn’t mattered to her. She liked Jessie well enough, and she hadn’t considered that they would have been in danger, so it hadn’t occurred to Brenna that there would be a problem. They hadn’t had any troubles coming in because they’d been traveling under their journalist passports, along with the other journalists.
And then Brenna stopped, wondering, because she remembered Jessie talking to somebody. And it hadn’t been very long afterward that suddenly they were slowly moved away from the journalist group. Was it actually the men who had cut them out, or was it Jessie? Hating the suspicion that now crawled up and down her spine, she looked at Jerricho. “It’s possible that Jessie separated us from the other journalists.”
He looked up at her, his gaze sharp. “Explain.”
“It’s hard for me to be certain,” she said, “but she was talking to somebody, who she might have known a little too well, not like a stranger, and then, all of a sudden, we were moved around, supposedly to go to another area. Instead we were separated and put into a vehicle.”
“Did she sound horrified and terrified about the whole thing?”
Brenna thought about it and said, “She was actually really calm.”
“Did she appear to know the people in the vehicle?”
Brenna thought about it for a long moment. “I have no idea. I was too traumatized to notice my surroundings. Although I was nervous and worried, I was calmer because she was calm.”
“As if maybe you were intended to go somewhere else?”
She looked at him, shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just such a blur.”
“When did Jessie start to get really freaked out about it?”
“She got really quiet after we were transferred off to another group of people,” she said.
“As if that wasn’t part of the plan?”
“If there was a plan,” she said, “no, I wouldn’t think that that was part of it.”
“Right,” Jerricho said. “I’m just wondering if she had some other plan, maybe to meet her partner and to potentially spend a life with him, and somehow something else went wrong.”
“It’s possible,” Brenna said, bewildered. “I just don’t know why she wouldn’t have told me.”
“Did she go for a holiday any time before?”
“Yes,” she said, “but I don’t really know where.” She thought about it and then nodded. “And she had been with her partner for a bit before the job too. I don’t know where they were though.” She frowned. “I don’t know that I asked specifically, but I know that she was with him. For some reason, I thought they were in the US.”
“The US is a very difficult place to go,” he said, “particularly if you’re on Interpol’s watch list.”
She took a long slow deep breath. “So you’re assuming that she had a relationship with him, started the job with me, so she had an opportunity to come back over, and now would just take off with him?” she said, staring at him, puzzled. “Why not just take the job and come over and fly away? It’s not as if the country or the borders are closed.”
He nodded. “What if she was carrying something?”
Brenna felt something inside her just freak out from top to bottom. She sagged back and stared at him. “Now I really don’t like what you’re saying.”
“I’m not sure what I’m saying yet,” Jerricho warned. “It’s just something we might have to consider.”
“I don’t want to consider it,” she said faintly. “Besides, what could she possibly be bringing over?”
“Drugs always come to mind,” he said. “Would she have had access to anything at your company?”
She slowly shook her head. “I don’t think so, but I don’t know.”
“Any high-profile cases that she might have had information on? Did she know anybody who might have had something to do with this?”
Brenna was still shaking her head. “I don’t know.”
“Okay,” he said, “just relax about it right now.”