“You look serious, is everything okay?”
While lost in his thoughts, he hadn’t been aware of Marie moving from her spot on the couch to where he sat on the floor by the coffee table.
“Yeah, I was just thinking.”
Marie nodded. “About what happened today.”
Isaac didn’t question how she knew what he was thinking about. “Can I ask you a couple of questions about it?”
Abruptly Marie got up and headed back to the box she’d been unpacking before the pizza arrived. “I suppose.”
He wanted to go over there to comfort her, but stayed where he was. Distance while he questioned herwas likely the best idea. “I know it’s the last thing you want to do, but anything you can share will help in working out if and why you were targeted.”
“Go ahead,” she said, but the walls were going back up, and after the camaraderie they’d shared over dinner, Isaac wished he hadn’t brought the subject up. Yet burying it wouldn’t achieve anything either.
“You were at the hospital before you called Yolanda to meet her for lunch, right?”
“Yep.”
Great, one-word answers. This is going to be long.
Isaac shushed the voice in his head. If it took all night, it took all night. And Marie could answer any way she wanted to. “While you were there did you happen to notice anyone that looked out of place. That perhaps shouldn’t have been there.”
Marie paused in her unpacking and gazed toward the window. Isaac gave her time, and didn't pepper her to answer him quickly. As a doctor, her observation skills were more honed than the average person. She would have to be able to read between the lines of what a patient was actually saying and what was really wrong with them.
“I can’t say that I saw anything out of the ordinary,” Marie said eventually. “The admin floors were busy, but no one looked out of place. I did go down to the ER and, like always, it bordered on chaotic, andpicking out anyone who didn’t belong there would be hard.”
“And when you went to meet Yolanda, did you notice anyone following you?” This one was a long shot, but he had to ask it anyway.
“I admit to not paying attention. Once I got in the car, I pulled out my phone to finish reading an article in a medical journal.”
“Did you take the same kind of rideshare as the one you were getting into outside the building?” He felt like he was a police detective, peppering her with the questions, but he was building a picture, one he would share with the guys in the office in the morning.
His phone had stayed worryingly quiet, which meant Cass hadn’t found a thread she could pull to see where the kidnappers had headed.
“Yeah, this one was fine. It pulled up out the front of the hospital and I got in and started the ride.”
Driverless cars were an anomaly to Isaac, he couldn’t imagine giving up control of a vehicle, especially in LA traffic where anything could happen and sharp reflexes came into play. “Why do you go for one of those instead of getting a rideshare with an actual driver?”
“I figured it would be safer. I mean you never know what’s going to happen when you get into a carwith a stranger.” She smiled wryly. “Guess even a driverless car is just as dangerous.”
“Seems that way. It’s something whoever runs the company needs to look at. When they get blocked in they can’t seem to move, which doesn’t make sense, especially if they can do the impossible and parallel park,” he joked.
“The ultimate goal in driving is to be able to parallel park on the first go and not go in and out fifty times.”
“I’m a dab hand at it,” Isaac winked, but there was still more he wanted to talk about so that the picture he was drawing became fully fleshed out. “So nothing stood out at the hospital and on your drive over to see your mom. What about at lunch? Anyone lurking or watching you that gave you creeper vibes?”
Creeper vibes? What was he, fifteen?
Fortunately, Marie either didn’t hear it or she was giving him a pass, because her nose screwed up a little in concentration—something he hadn’t seen from her before, but he found that he really liked it. “Not that I can remember. Mom and I were talking, so all my focus was on her. And before you ask, when we left I didn’t feel like someone was following me.”
“Right.” Isaac pondered everything she’d said. Nothing she said suggested that someone had beenwatching her or following—not that she noticed anyway.
Perhaps it had been a case of her being in the wrong place at the wrong time and no one was after Marie. As much as he wanted to believe that, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to this than bad luck. “Did you get a new phone when you returned from Guatemala or do you have the same one?”
“I’ve got the same one. I added an international roaming package on my phone, but considering the lack of cell towers in the area, I could’ve left it at home considering the amount of time I got a decent signal and actually used it.”
“Will you need your phone tomorrow?” he queried, wondering if her cell was the key that would unlock the issue.
