“Graham, I called—”
“Hello. Dammit. Shut off. Hello.”
“Oh. Hi. I didn’t expect you to be in so early.”
Graham could hear the unease in Tarin’s voice. “What’s up?”
“I... uhm... can’t come in today. Sick. Sorry. I’ll call you later. Bye.”
“Wait.” But Tarin had already hung up. That was odd. He looked at the time; it was barely five o’clock. She’d deliberately called that early to avoid him. But why? He was only in the office that early because he was desperately trying to get on top of what was going on at Caspian Winery as well as get caught up on several of their other cases—cases he’d been neglecting.
Logging onto his computer, he realized it was way past time he did some serious digging on Tarin. It was time that he listen to his gut. He’d done a basic background check but nothing too deep—partly due to his ever-present time constraints and partly due to misplaced guilt as if he was betraying her trust. In truth, he felt like he was betraying himself.
He typed in her name; Tarin Roth, not a common name in his opinion. There wasn’t much on her. He scanned through the first page of search engine links. At the bottom was the article in the Vancouver Sun he’d read before. He opened it and skimmed it again. The information was interesting and relevant but something about it bothered him, though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what or why.
He flipped through several pages on the website. As he was reading another article he noted something interesting and on a hunch he hacked into their system and did some snooping around. The information he discovered was eye-opening, but just as he was about to do more sleuthing, Guy flew through the door looking steamrolling mad. It was something he’d only seen twice before with Guy—when someone had been shooting at him and when Geoff had taken Bailey with the intent to kill her.
“What’s up?”
“Another two trucks of wine en route to the East Coast have been hijacked.”
“Shit!”
“Yeah. Same kind of scenario, late at night, two armed men.”
“And that IP address you had me track down. It’s in the middle of nowhere, Algonquin Park to be exact. I don’t think they even have internet capabilities in that area. There’s nothing for miles. So no way, it came from there. Another was at Toronto Public Library. Doesn’t look like it came from there either, at least not the one on Yonge St.”
“So someone knows their way around faking IP addresses and using proxies. This is nuts.”
“Right, so where do we start? We need to get on top of it. Maybe Tarin can help with—”
“She called in sick.”
“Oh. Okay well, I can help you today at least for a couple of hours.”
“Gee thanks there, buckaroo. Sure you remember how to turn on your computer?”
“I’ll show you, you young whipper-snapper.”
They both burst out laughing at their really bad impressions.
Guy sat and logged onto his laptop. Graham watched him for a few moments, enjoying the old comradery. It was like when they started the business five years before. They’d always made it fun.
He wondered where that had gone as he realized how far from that he’d come. He used to laugh and joke all day, every day and still get lots of work done. Now, it was all about trying to stem the overwhelming flow and always keep his eye on the bottom line.
It hit him that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a day off. “Uh. I’m not going to be in tomorrow. I’m going to take the day off.”
“About damn time.”
Graham nodded before turning back to his emails. “Walters wants to meet with us to discuss what’s going on with the stolen wine. Wants us to meet at a coffee shop on Queens Quay in about an hour. Okay?”
“Yeah. Let’s hope he can tell us some more about the hijackings.”