Point of Contact

54

Jack entered the third-floor office where Lian was located. She’d commandeered the space to meet with him privately, out of earshot.

“You wanted to see me?” Jack asked.

“Have a seat.”

Jack took a seat. “You were saying something about a stolen van?”

“The Singapore police called earlier this morning. They found one of our vans smashed to pieces over in the warehouse district across town around two-thirty this morning.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Anybody hurt?”

“Not that I’m aware of.” Lian’s eyes narrowed, studying Jack’s face. “You don’t look so good yourself. How are you feeling this morning?”

Jack shrugged. “Didn’t sleep well last night. The storm kept waking me up. Besides that, pretty good.” Jack had taken the time to cover up his black eye again — thankfully, he hadn’t taken the time to toss out the base makeup from his kit. He was fully shaved and showered, and his limp had mostly gone away. He was lucky she didn’t ask him to take off his shirt. A wicked purple bruise painted his arm from the bottom of the shoulder down to his elbow, where the bat had hit and grazed him. It was sore to the touch, but nothing had been broken. Raising it over his head to wash his hair, though, had been a real treat.

“I hate to ask, but as head of security, I must: Did you steal our van last night?”

“No. Why would I? I have a company car at my disposal.”

“Because you didn’t want to be followed? To hide what you were doing?”

“I didn’t do anything last night except watch the local news with Paul, then I went to bed. I was feeling a little under the weather.”

“And he’ll vouch for you?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t he?”

“Of course.” Lian smiled. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“What was in the van worth stealing?”

“It was one of our delivery vans. Electronic parts, wires, catalogs. The contents were worth maybe four or five thousand dollars, American.”

“I’d think there would be more valuable things to steal around here.”

“There are. That’s what’s so puzzling.”

“And they took it all?”

Lian shrugged. “No. Actually, nothing valuable is missing, as far as we can tell.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Unless they weren’t stealing the van for the cargo inside.”

“You mean, like, selling the van for parts?”

“Perhaps. But that doesn’t make any sense, either. A Toyota Camry would be worth a lot more than that van. Why risk going to jail to part out a generic van?”

“Nothing else is missing from your property?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“What did your security cameras show?”

“Isn’t that an interesting question? I checked them first thing. Somehow, all of the security footage for the last twenty-four hours has been erased.”

“That’s weird.”

“And on a hunch, I decided to take a look at the Steady Stare footage. Unfortunately, the drone wasn’t up last night, due to the weather. But do you know what I found?”

“No.”

“Twenty-four hours of video had been wiped away.”

Jack frowned, genuinely confused. “How could that happen?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Jack knew it wasn’t him. But whoever had done it must have known that Jack had accessed that footage last night. He decided to take a chance. “You must have logs of whoever accessed that video yesterday.”

Lian’s eyes examined Jack’s face, searching for a tell. “I don’t suppose you can guess what I discovered?”

“That the logs have been scrubbed, too.”

“Precisely.”

“Someone’s covering their tracks.”

“Yes, they are.” Lian sat forward. “I’ll ask you again: Was it you?”

“No, I can guarantee you, it wasn’t me.”

She sat back, confused. “Then who?”

Good question. Apparently he had a guardian angel. Whoever had deleted the surveillance footage and log-in data probably disposed of the bodies at the warehouse, too, otherwise Lian would’ve mentioned it. Murder was rare in Singapore, and she would have heard about four dead foreign nationals from her police contacts. And if she thought that Jack really had stolen the van, she would’ve had him arrested already, or at least fired from the job. Since neither had happened, she must have had her doubts.

Or maybe she was saving that trump card for later.

Jack decided it was time to deflect and go on the offensive.

“I don’t know if it’s connected, but Paul and I were just looking for a file that has disappeared from the mainframe.”

Lian frowned. “What kind of file?”

Jack had to be careful. He didn’t want to tip his hand, and he didn’t want to offend her. “Just one of the files we needed for our audit.”

“That’s rather vague.”

“Agreed. But it’s an interesting coincidence.”

“Check the mainframe backups for copies.”

You thought of everything, didn’t you? Jack said to himself. “We did. All gone.”

“Maybe it was never there to begin with.”

“It was there, believe me.”

“If it was so important, why didn’t you download and copy it?”

Jack had been wondering the same thing. Why didn’t Paul download it? It seemed an obvious thing to do, and Paul was a sharp guy. Did he really just forget, or was it intentional?

Hell, maybe Paul’s the one that deleted the file, Jack realized.

“I guess we blew it. But I promise you I’m going to keep digging until I find it.”

“Good, that’s your job.”

“Agreed.” Jack stood to leave.

“I’ll warn you once, Jack. If I catch you doing anything illegal, I’ll have you arrested.” She smiled. “Nothing personal.”

“Yeah.” Jack started to leave, then turned around. “You said that you were going to run those Aussie IDs past a friend of yours in the PD. What did you find?”

“Oh, yes. I forgot to tell you. Two of them have been released from hospital and deported. The third is still in hospital but scheduled to be released and deported tomorrow. All three have criminal records in Australia — mostly petty crimes, a few dropped assault charges — but no evidence of IC or military status.”

“So we just got lucky and were jumped by the only three criminals in Singapore?”

“They were here illegally, too. Hooligans, the lot of them.” She paused, then added, “Good riddance.”

“Is ‘Good riddance’ for them or me?”

Lian smiled. “Good day, Mr. Ryan.”