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She lifted her shoulders. “Maybe he never memorized my number. Stop trying to find fault. We finally have a way to contact him.”
“Find out where he is and we’ll pick him up.”
She keyed in her brother’s new number, rearranging the notepad and the adding machine next to the blotter. “This is what I hate about texting. You can never tell when the person you’re trying to communicate with even sees your message.”
“Give him time.”
The light bar at the top of Les’s message displayed a different number from the cell phone she rang now. “Look.” She pointed to Bea’s phone. “He didn’t call from the number he gave me. Let’s try the one he called from to leave the message.”
She hit the return-call icon and left the captioning on to make her brother’s answers visible. Technically, as a hearing person she wasn’t supposed to use this feature, but Mitch needed to see the conversation and the feds surely wouldn’t come after her for this one time.
The call rang. One, two, three times. She crossed her legs and bounced a foot. Four. Come on, answer.
“Hello?” A female voice Cath didn’t recognize answered.
“Oh, sorry. My brother, Les Hurley, called from this number yesterday. Is he there by any chance?” She crossed her fingers.
“Wait.” The captioning operator typed in a note about talking in the background.
“Cath?”
Her brother! She sagged against the chair back.
“You were supposed to text me.”
Cath shook her head. He’d sounded irritated. “I tried but couldn’t get through. Did you set up the number?”
Silence. With his disability, Les couldn’t understand over a landline phone—not that she knew for sure if this was one, but if it was, Les would be handing the receiver back to the girl.
Could she have lost the connection? Cath tensed over the desk again.
“Tell me what you want, and I’ll relay that to Les.” His hearing friend had come back on.
“Is he hurt? Bleeding?” Dying? This was crazy. At least when she texted Les, she felt more of a connection. “Who am I talking to?”
“He’s okay.”
Muffled voices came from the background again, then Les said, “This is on the speaker now. You can talk to me if you don’t talk too fast.”
Paper rustled. Her brother’s friend must be getting ready to take notes.
“Don’t worry.” He no longer sounded annoyed. “I’m still in one piece for now.”
Mitch jotted a note on the desk pad: Get his location.
I’m working on it. Cath lowered her gaze to Bea’s desk calendar to better concentrate on the conversation.
“How come that old lady wasn’t in your office?” Les asked. “You weren’t there either.”
She picked up her pen, put it down again, shaking her head at Mitch. Where was her brother’s urgency? Was she the only one worried here?
“We’ve been out.” And how. “There was a fire in my apartment, and I had to suspend my business.”
“A fire? You okay now?”
“Right. I’m staying with a friend.” She clamped her hand over her mouth and looked at Mitch. Sorry.
Her brother had no reason to think she’d hooked up with the bounty hunter chasing him, but she didn’t want to arouse his curiosity either. “Enough about me. Tell me where you are.”
