“Please, call me Ivy. And yes.” Ivy reached into a bag, and Faith experienced a slight twinge of satisfaction when Luke reacted to the motion by surreptitiously reaching for his weapon. He didn’t completely trust this new girl. Good.
Ivy extracted nothing more dangerous than a stack of papers. “I brought printouts of everything I could find on her. I have her fingerprints, visa application, the background checks we did—all here.” She slid the stack of papers toward Luke.
Faith intercepted them. This was still her case. “Thank you. This should be quite useful.”
“It’s impressive you were able to compile this so quickly.” Luke pointed to the papers.
“I have a wonderful assistant,” Ivy demurred. “She does all the heavy lifting for our interns.”
“How many interns do you have?” Faith asked.
“I host five to ten interns twice a year. They come in for four months and learn from us. Sometimes they’re techy types, sometimes science grad students, but usually they’re business majors. We receive ten times as many applications as we have slots available. I only accept four international interns each year because the red tape we have to go through makes it prohibitive.”
“She’d been here for four months?” Luke asked as he scribbled notes.
“Yes. She’d completed her time with us. She was supposed to be returning to South Korea the week of the bombing. Her last day at our office had been on the Friday before.”
She took a sip of her water before continuing. “It’s not unusual for our international interns to take advantage of their time here in the States to do some sightseeing or even interview for jobs at local companies, so we always make sure there is some cushion in their visa to allow for that. Mi Cha began working for us in September and had taken a week in late October to go visit a family friend in Washington State. That was the only time she took off. She didn’t have to leave the country until early March, but she was ready to get home.”
“Do you know why? Was there something wrong here that she was trying to get away from?” Luke asked.
“No. Nothing like that. At least, nothing that I was aware of,” Ivy clarified. “Her mother was ill, and while she was here, theprognosis went from stable to grim. She was close to her mother and was anxious to spend time with her. The last time I saw Mi Cha, I told her to be sure to reach out if she ever decided she wanted to return to the States. I didn’t say this to her, but I wondered if she might be willing to consider coming back after her mother passed.”
“But when she left that Friday, as far as you knew, she was getting on a plane and you had no expectation you would see her again?” Luke tapped his pen on the side of the yellow legal pad he’d been scribbling on.
“Correct. Has her family been notified?”
“We’re still trying to confirm that she’s the unidentified person from the bombing. We have a lot of circumstantial evidence but no hard proof. We do know her mother passed away in February, but we haven’t spoken to her father yet.”
Tears welled in Ivy’s eyes. Well, wasn’t that special. She was even pretty when she cried.
“Her poor father.”
Luke handed her a box of tissues and she took one. “Did she talk about her father much?”
Ivy dabbed under her eyes. “I take the interns to lunch at least three times while they’re here, and we did discuss family and friendships. She was an only child, and she was doted on by both parents. I remember her talking about them fondly. Her father was in the Korean military, and they traveled extensively in her teens. And I gathered she enjoyed the travel. Beyond that, I’m afraid I can’t say.” Ivy held up her palms in frustration.
“That’s very helpful,” Luke said in a soothing voice.
“I have one more question, if you have the time.” Faith wanted to give herself a pat on the back for how civil she sounded.
“I’m at your disposal. Whatever you need.” There Ivy wentagain with the earnest, eager-beaver attitude. She was making it very difficult to dislike her.
“Is there anything you make or do at your Raleigh office that would be appealing to another country, or have you ever been a target of corporate espionage?”
Ivy nodded, casting a shrewd but, unless Faith was badly mistaken, also appreciative look at her. “We’re always on the lookout for that. We have security measures in place to discourage theft of intellectual property. The most stringent is that everyone, from the building maintenance crew to the vice president of operations, has to pass drug tests quarterly and also has to be willing to have their financial records accessed at any time.”
“You have permission to look at people’s bank statements?” If Luke had been trying to keep the surprise from his voice, he had not succeeded.
“Not me personally,” Ivy hastened to assure him. “We have a company that does spot checks on everyone.”
“What are they looking for?”
“Anomalies. Too much money or too little, sudden big purchases, etcetera. The type of work we do is highly secretive and would be appealing to certain competitors, as well as a few nation states.”
Luke sat back in his chair, tapping the pen on his lips. “Had her records been accessed recently?”
Ivy patted the stack of papers. “It’s a little bit different with our interns. They are only here for a short time, and they don’t typically establish a large financial footprint. But yes, her records had been checked twice.”
