Point of Contact

“Never mind.” He turned to Paul. “She’s waiting for me on the third floor. I’ll talk to her, then come back here so we can pick up where we left off. Okay?”

“Take your time. I’ve got plenty to do.”

Jack nodded and headed for the elevators.

Now Paul had to deal with Bai.

But how?

54

Jack entered the third-floor office where Lian was located. She’d commandeered the space to meet with him privately, out of earshot.

“You wanted to see me?” Jack asked.

“Have a seat.”

Jack took a seat. “You were saying something about a stolen van?”

“The Singapore police called earlier this morning. They found one of our vans smashed to pieces over in the warehouse district across town around two-thirty this morning.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Anybody hurt?”

“Not that I’m aware of.” Lian’s eyes narrowed, studying Jack’s face. “You don’t look so good yourself. How are you feeling this morning?”

Jack shrugged. “Didn’t sleep well last night. The storm kept waking me up. Besides that, pretty good.” Jack had taken the time to cover up his black eye again — thankfully, he hadn’t taken the time to toss out the base makeup from his kit. He was fully shaved and showered, and his limp had mostly gone away. He was lucky she didn’t ask him to take off his shirt. A wicked purple bruise painted his arm from the bottom of the shoulder down to his elbow, where the bat had hit and grazed him. It was sore to the touch, but nothing had been broken. Raising it over his head to wash his hair, though, had been a real treat.

“I hate to ask, but as head of security, I must: Did you steal our van last night?”

“No. Why would I? I have a company car at my disposal.”

“Because you didn’t want to be followed? To hide what you were doing?”

“I didn’t do anything last night except watch the local news with Paul, then I went to bed. I was feeling a little under the weather.”

“And he’ll vouch for you?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t he?”

“Of course.” Lian smiled. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“What was in the van worth stealing?”

“It was one of our delivery vans. Electronic parts, wires, catalogs. The contents were worth maybe four or five thousand dollars, American.”

“I’d think there would be more valuable things to steal around here.”

“There are. That’s what’s so puzzling.”

“And they took it all?”

Lian shrugged. “No. Actually, nothing valuable is missing, as far as we can tell.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Unless they weren’t stealing the van for the cargo inside.”

“You mean, like, selling the van for parts?”

“Perhaps. But that doesn’t make any sense, either. A Toyota Camry would be worth a lot more than that van. Why risk going to jail to part out a generic van?”

“Nothing else is missing from your property?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“What did your security cameras show?”

“Isn’t that an interesting question? I checked them first thing. Somehow, all of the security footage for the last twenty-four hours has been erased.”

“That’s weird.”

“And on a hunch, I decided to take a look at the Steady Stare footage. Unfortunately, the drone wasn’t up last night, due to the weather. But do you know what I found?”

“No.”

“Twenty-four hours of video had been wiped away.”

Jack frowned, genuinely confused. “How could that happen?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Jack knew it wasn’t him. But whoever had done it must have known that Jack had accessed that footage last night. He decided to take a chance. “You must have logs of whoever accessed that video yesterday.”

Lian’s eyes examined Jack’s face, searching for a tell. “I don’t suppose you can guess what I discovered?”

“That the logs have been scrubbed, too.”

“Precisely.”

“Someone’s covering their tracks.”

“Yes, they are.” Lian sat forward. “I’ll ask you again: Was it you?”

“No, I can guarantee you, it wasn’t me.”

She sat back, confused. “Then who?”

Good question. Apparently he had a guardian angel. Whoever had deleted the surveillance footage and log-in data probably disposed of the bodies at the warehouse, too, otherwise Lian would’ve mentioned it. Murder was rare in Singapore, and she would have heard about four dead foreign nationals from her police contacts. And if she thought that Jack really had stolen the van, she would’ve had him arrested already, or at least fired from the job. Since neither had happened, she must have had her doubts.

Or maybe she was saving that trump card for later.

Jack decided it was time to deflect and go on the offensive.

“I don’t know if it’s connected, but Paul and I were just looking for a file that has disappeared from the mainframe.”

Lian frowned. “What kind of file?”

Jack had to be careful. He didn’t want to tip his hand, and he didn’t want to offend her. “Just one of the files we needed for our audit.”

“That’s rather vague.”

“Agreed. But it’s an interesting coincidence.”

“Check the mainframe backups for copies.”

You thought of everything, didn’t you? Jack said to himself. “We did. All gone.”

“Maybe it was never there to begin with.”

“It was there, believe me.”