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“It drips, and it’s driving me nuts at night trying to sleep.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll get a work order going and get it fixed ASAP.”
“Thanks,” George said and hung up.
Wayne made a note to himself to call a plumber and dropped the passkey in a drawer.
Charlie and Wyrick drove in silence for several minutes until Wyrick suddenly spoke.
“If there are any blueprints for the original property, I want to see them. I know there would be some from the reconstruction that was done twenty years ago, but I’m not sure about original blueprints from a building that old.”
Charlie glanced at her before moving into another lane of traffic.
“Are you thinking there could be secret passages?”
Wyrick wouldn’t commit to that. “I’m not thinking anything specific. Right now it’s about covering all the bases.”
“If you find them, send them to me. That’s something I can easily do. What I want you to do is run background checks on all of the residents. Call Wayne Dyer for their names. Rachel Dean might not have any secrets in her past, but that doesn’t mean the rest of them are lily-white,” Charlie said.
Wyrick nodded and made the call.
Wayne was looking for his car keys when his phone rang. He had an appointment to get a haircut, and was already cutting it close.
“Hello. This is Wayne.”
“This is Wyrick. Charlie would like a list of names of all the residents. Could you please send us the list via email?”
“Yes, but I’m leaving for an appointment right now. I’ll do it as soon as I return. What’s the email address?”
Wyrick gave it to him and disconnected.
“He’s going out. He’ll send it later,” she said, then began rubbing at the space above her nose, trying to rub away the painful throb.
She’d been so sure that just going there would give them some answers, but instead, they’d hit the same wall the police had encountered. So she leaned back and closed her eyes.
“Is your headache getting better?” Charlie asked.
“Yes.”
“There are some painkillers in the console if you need them,” he said.
“I’m good. I’m just thinking.”
After that Charlie stopped talking. He didn’t want to interrupt a genius in motion.
Wyrick hadn’t given the hit man bounty much thought after making the threat. She was guessing they were in hiding, and if confronted, would all claim innocence. But she also knew a quarter of a million dollars would prompt some greedy people in the know to start pointing fingers. She didn’t have any preconceived expectations of what the feedback would be like, but she was curious.
“Have you had any hits on the hit men’s identities?” Charlie asked.
“I hadn’t this morning, but I’ll wait until I get home this evening to check. I’m keeping all of that on my computers, because I know those can’t be hacked.”
Charlie took the on-ramp to get back on the beltway and get back to their office, thinking what a force of nature she was.
“If you ever want to change occupations, you’d make one hell of a weapon for the government.”
“No, I wouldn’t. They have too many rules about hacking. I’m absolutely positive they wouldn’t like how I get my information. Remember how uptight Hank Raines got when I was running facial recognition, getting the identities of the girls who were in the Fourth Dimension because he needed proof that they were there to get his search warrants?”
Charlie frowned. “I remember plenty from that case. He crossed a couple of lines with us that I did not appreciate, especially trying to confiscate your drone to get the cloaking technology you had on it.”