“Have we made any progress finding out who Elise Able is?” Elliott asked.
“Ellie Sable? I know that name.” Kay poked her head back into the room. “I remember from when I was filing things at your office.”
“Ellie Sable? You saw that name on one of the files at my office? So she’s one of ours, too.” He looked over at Tank. “Jeremy must have gotten the name wrong. Can you run it and find out what kind of job it was? It has to share a connection with the other case. Maybe this guy was a client at one point and he’s fixated on women with a certain profile.”
“I wish I’d known that file was important. I would have pulled it out and brought it home,” Kay said.
Tank held up a finger. “It’s okay. I’ve got it here. Ellie Sable is a six-year-old girl. She’s the daughter of a reality-TV-show star who hired us to supplement his personal security last summer.”
“What does a six-year-old girl have to do with any of this?” Kay rubbed her arms.
“I’m not sure yet, but we will figure it out. Everything indicates that the person we’re dealing with is intelligent and highly calculating. There is nothing random about this case. We just have to put the pieces together.”
“Was there anything unusual that happened on that job?” Matt asked.
Tank hit a few more keys. “Actually, there was. Not that it’s a big deal, but one of the guards was injured in a minor scuffle and Eli took his place.”
“I remember that. I didn’t want anything going wrong on that case.”
Matt leaned forward. “What about Tanya Cook? Did anything out of the ordinary happen then?”
A few key taps later, Tank looked up. “No, nothing. Although Eli was on that job, too. Maybe you’re bad luck, boss.”
“Wait, what was that?” Eli asked suddenly.
“I was just kidding,” Tank deadpanned.
“I know, but you may be on to something. I don’t go on every job, just ones where we’ve had problems or if the client is influential.”
It was quiet as Tank tapped keys. He looked up a minute later. “I ran a search for all the jobs you’ve been on in the past year. A month before Kay got the first letter, there was a spike in incidents. But only high-profile clients, the ones where Eli showed up. Ones where he was photographed.”
He turned the laptop around. There was a picture of Eli standing next to Tanya Cook. It was grainy but it was obviously him.
“After that, the threats seemed to slow down and focus on one target. Kaylee.”
“What does that mean?”
“He was targeting jobs that you were associated with. Then he focused on Kay when you took over her case. Maybe that’s how Sasha originally got involved. Maybe he targeted her since you were guarding all the girls in the singing group.”
“I don’t believe Sasha has anything to do with this,” Kay said.
Tank winced and then sent an apologetic look to Eli. “Sorry. I, uh, well I shouldn’t have said that.”
Eli took her hand and tugged her closer. He could tell she didn’t want to come but did it because she didn’t want to make a scene.
/> “Kay, remember yesterday when I told you we were going home so you could visit your parents?”
She shrugged. “Yeah, but Jackson and Ridley came up here instead.”
“I only told you that because I figured you’d tell Sasha. This morning, we sent two agents down in a SUV similar to mine. I wanted to see what would happen. As soon as they got to New Haven they were followed.”
“That could just be a coincidence. Or maybe they just thought they were being followed.”
Matt spoke up then. “We ran the plate numbers on the car that was following them. It was stolen. As soon as they tried to lead the guy into our trap, he took off.”
Kay crossed her arms. “That doesn’t mean it was Sasha. Maybe my cell phone is bugged or something.”
“Maybe.” Eli didn’t look at her. He figured there was no point explaining that it was simply more likely that Sasha was telling someone else things about her in exchange for money.