“Here is the information we have so far.” Liam, one of the lead case managers for Cole Security places a folder on the dining room table, and Tessa reaches her hand out to rest on my thigh like she knows I might need the support
I lower my hand to take her fingers in mine and squeeze before opening the folder.
At this time, Cole Security hasn’t been able to locate Travis. However, they show a money trail that would make it appear like he’s gone somewhere out of the country. There’s a plane ticket, a hotel reservation, and car rental in three different places. One of them is the Caymans, which…of course it is.
The other one is in Europe and the third in South America.
None of it really makes sense because it’s not clear if he went to any of these. There are notes on the side that basically sum up the same conclusion that I have—nothing is adding up.
“What does any of this mean?” I ask.
“There’s a summary on the last page, but basically, we’ve ruled out him going to the Cayman Islands. I have two very good friends who are there that would absolutely have confirmed his arrival. It doesn’t show that Travis ever boarded that flight and they were able to say with certainty, he isn’t there.”
“How would they know?”
Liam clears his throat. “They’d know.”
That answers nothing. “Okay, let’s go with that then—what about the other two flights?”
“The Europe one is pretty easy to confirm. The agency we communicate with has been digging and have no records of him ever arriving,” Liam explains and then points to the third page. “My guess is that if he did leave the country, which we can’t find any flight record that has him listed, it was to South America.”
“So you think he’s in South America?” Tessa asks.
Liam smiles at her. “I think it’s possible. I do have an asset in that location. I’ve reached out, but as you can imagine, communication is difficult at times. I’m working on verifying with one of my coworker’s contacts, but my gut says he’s not there either.”
Tessa and I share a look and then I return my gaze to Liam. “No?”
“I think he’s still local. I think when someone works this hard at misdirection, they’re usually hiding in plain sight. Do you have any information on Travis’s past? Anything he ever mentioned in passing that would be a good place to start?” Liam asks.
I think back on anything he ever said, and I can’t remember even having conversations like that. We didn’t talk about our lives. It was all very much about business and visions for the future.
“I really don’t know,” I admit.
“Did he talk about how he got started?”
Tessa speaks up. “When I did some research on him, I found that he started in Kentucky. He comes from a racing family. His father started his love of horses. However, both of his parents passed away when he was nineteen, which is how he ended up working on a ranch with another pretty famous trainer.”
I stare at her, a little shocked. “You researched him?”
“Of course I did. I get why you didn’t. He was already well-known in the racing world, but I was looking into his past so I could use it if I needed to.” She shrugs.
I could kiss her right now. To know she cares this much means the world to me.
Liam clears his throat, causing me to look away from Tessa.
“Right.” I turn to him. “I didn’t do any of that.”
He nods once. “I get it. We’ll start there. If I can build his backstory more, then I can find possible places where he’d be laying low. What I don’t understand is why he’d just take off like that. Do you think there’s any legitimacy to the rumors?”
“No, I test my horses regularly. One of my closest friends is a veterinarian. The only thing Everett has ever said was that Travis tended to work the horses too hard at times, but he never found anything that would indicate he was doping them.”
I even asked him again the other day, to which he emphatically said he didn’t believe Travis did. The signs of a horse being given performance-enhancing drugs were not visible, and he did routine blood work to make sure. Nothing ever showed as abnormal.
“All right. Give me about a week, and either I’ll have Travis in hand, or we’ll discuss the next step.”
Tessa and I stand and we each shake Liam’s hand. “Thank you.”
“Of course, I’ll be in touch.”
