Chapter 3-2
550 Words
Brax’s email server dinged to notify him that he had one from Caleb. He opened it, wondering what the problem was when all it said was, Call me.
“What’s going on?” Brax asked as soon as Caleb answered his phone.
“We may have a problem. Run a check on one Jonathan Roberts.” Caleb gave him the man’s phone number after telling him about his visit. “He’s a shifter, although obviously he didn’t say so. I’m sure he knows I am, as well.”
“On it,” Brax said before hanging up. Since he was in the process of doing background checks on three potential clients for an attorney who wanted to know if the men were what they seemed, it was no problem to add Roberts to his search without Judd being any the wiser. Not that his partner checked up on what he was doing, because he didn’t. On the other hand, as far as Brax was concerned, there was no sense in tempting fate and having him walk in while he was doing that.
It only took ten minutes for Brax to discover that the Jonathan Roberts connected to the phone number was an investment counselor with an address in a very prestigious downtown office building. His home was in a gated community on the eastside of the city. All of that was a good fit for a man who might well be interested in obtaining less than legally acquired art work. Digging deeper, Brax found some photos of Roberts attending a charity function two months before. He pasted them into an email and sent it to Caleb with a question. Is this the man? He got a reply less than two minutes later. One word. No.
“Bad planning, Mr. Roberts, or whoever you really are,” Brax muttered under his breath. He called Caleb, asking, “What did our man look like?”
“Tall, thirtyish, dark blond hair, green eyes, well-built.”
“He’s a shifter, you said. Of course he is,” Brax replied with a small laugh. “I’m on my way over. He’ll show up on the discs from the security cameras.”
“You’re leaving?” Judd asked a moment later when Brax came into his office, his jacket slung over his shoulder.
“Yes. It is lunchtime and I’m starving.” Brax pointed to the clock.
“Want some company?”
“Umm, well…” Brax made a show of trying to come up with an excuse why he didn’t want Judd coming along.
Judd shook his head. “Whoever he is, tell him you have to be back by one.”
“Damn.” Brax grinned. “There goes my nooner.”
He left the office before Judd could come up with a fitting reply.
When he arrived in Caleb’s office moments later, he found it empty. Two minutes later, Caleb came in, carrying a disc that he inserted into the DVD drive of his computer. “That’s him,” Caleb said, pausing the disc partway through.
“Nice looking guy. Print that out. I’ll run it through our facial recognition program and see what I come up with.”
Caleb did, while Brax filled him in on what he’d found out about the real Jonathan Roberts. “I could pay him a visit, but I doubt he’d tell me anything, if he does know our guy—which he may not.”
Brax left Caleb’s office the normal way, since he planned on eating lunch at a nearby restaurant. He chuckled when the receptionist said, “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Because you were probably using the lady’s room.”
“But the buzzer…Never mind. It’s been acting up. I don’t suppose…” She looked at him hopefully.
“No problem.” Brax checked the wiring for the buzzer, fixed the problem, then left with her thanks ringing in his ears.
- Writer
