Taggart glanced from one of them to the other. “Best thing you can do is hole up here until we figure this out.”
“Give us a little time to digest all this,” Beau said. “Maybe we can come up with something useful.”Maybe. At the moment, none of the pieces seemed to fit together.
“That’s the reason I’m here,” Taggart said. “We’re hoping, now that you understand the bigger picture, something will occur to you we might be able to use. You understand this is highly confidential. Our discussion doesn’t go beyond this room?”
“Of course,” he and Cassidy said in unison.
Taggart rose from his chair. “Call if you need me.” He handed each of them a business card. Beau pulled out his cell and added the number to his contacts. Cassidy did the same.
“I’ll be in touch,” Taggart said. “In the meantime, you two be careful.”
Beau walked Taggart to the door, then returned to the kitchen, where Cassidy sat sipping her coffee, looking almost as tired as he was.
“Let’s go back to bed,” he suggested, “get a couple more hours’ sleep. Then we’ll start over, take a look at everything we’ve got.”
Cassidy managed a half-hearted smile. “That’s an amazingly good idea.”
Contract killers and terrorists, he thought. Could things get any worse?
Beau shuddered to think that, yeah, maybe they could.
Chapter Thirty-Four
After sleeping a few more hours, Cassidy felt a little better. It was midafternoon, the sun out but clouds beginning to build. Beau was already up, at work in his study.
She made a fresh pot of coffee, carried the thermal pot in with a couple of mugs, and poured them each a cup. She set Beau’s down in front of him and turned to leave, but he caught her arm and tugged her down on his lap. A soft kiss turned slow and hot, and Cassidy’s whole body lit up. The man really knew how to push her buttons.
“Thanks for the coffee,” he said with another soft kiss. “Maybe it’ll clear my head so we can figure this out.”
Cassidy felt a little tug at her heart. She was in so deep with Beau. Way too deep. She wished there was something she could do.
Heading for her side of the desk, she opened her laptop and went to work. As soon as the screen lit up, she checked the GPS on Vaughn’s car, then muffled a curse when she saw that the battery was dead. So was the battery-operated audio device that worked off her cell phone.
She’d been expecting it. Still, they were tools that could no longer be used.
“Anything?” Beau asked.
“Batteries are gone. We’ll have to use the information we already have, go back over everything again.”
His mouth flattened an instant before he went back to work. They started nosing around, going through files, hoping to spot something they had missed. After an hour of unsuccessful digging, Cassidy sat back in her chair.
“Let’s take a break from the computer. What do you say we talk it out, run through our notes out loud, toss some ideas back and forth?”
Beau ran a hand over his face. “I don’t know how much good it’ll do, but maybe it’ll help.”
She picked up the yellow pad next to her laptop, and they headed for the table in the corner. She held up the notepad. “Old school,” she said as she sat down across from him. “Let’s start at the beginning.”
Beau grumbled but nodded.
Determination and another cup of coffee fueled them as they delved through the information they had collected in the past few weeks. Cassidy printed the most recent information they had and they went over it verbally, sharing their thoughts aloud.
Beau got up to stretch, work the kinks out of his neck, then sat back down. Cassidy drummed her pencil on the table, drawing his attention.
“What is it?” he asked.
“We’ve gone over this again and again, but we always come to the same conclusion.”
“Yeah,” Beau said, frowning. “Zero, zip, nada.”
