I nod and then wave my hands in mercy. I can’t think about this anymore right now. “Enough about me. When are we going to eat?”
“Whenever you all are ready,” Kate announces.
Seems like that’s now, so we all line up. Once they’ve filled their plates, the ladies go upstairs to hang out in Jim’s private rooftop park with the kids. The guys sit around the dining room table. We do some more catching up and eventually move to talking about work.
“I got an interesting call this week,” Jim says. “You guys all know Tim Lehman? The Seer of Cincinnati?”
He goes on to weave a tale of a billionaire’s daughter who’s gotten herself mixed up in some sort of cult. She’s made hefty financial donations to them, and now she’s disappeared.
Jim shakes his head. “I want to vet the story they’ve given us before we get involved. I’m going to send Bash and a small team to their location in the desert in Nevada.”
I nod. “Okay. Let me know if you’re going to need me.”
“Great.” Jim drains his glass of bourbon and looks at me. “Speaking of you, I heard through my contact at the FBI that they think the avalanche was purposely triggered.”
My eyes widen. “What? Are you sure?”
Jim nods. “It killed six people and injured dozens.”
“Do they know what set off the avalanche? Someone out of bounds? Explosives?”
Jim shakes his head. “They’re thinking microwave radiation—the same sound that causes Havana Syndrome.”
I sit up straight. Havana Syndrome has been dismissed as a conspiracy theory by some, but the people at the US Embassy in Havana when it was deployed might disagree. It caused significant emotional, physical, and psychological damage.
“But it’s been proven that sounds don’t cause avalanches,” I say aloud. “The base was ice, and then they had a big dump of snow on top, so couldn’t it just have been that conditions were right? Why would they think someone set it off?”
Jim shrugs. “I don’t know the science of it. But the FBI is investigating.”
“They haven’t talked to me,” I grouse. “I could tell them about the conditions and what happened. The resort even closed the lift and the run.”
“But no one knows why Ski Patrol was told to close that part of the mountain,” Jim notes.
My brows hit my hairline. “What?”
He shrugs. “I’ll pass your contact information along so you can talk to them about it and maybe get more information.”
There’s a pounding of feet, and some of the kids come running in. “We’re making s’mores on the roof,” one of them says.
“I can’t miss that,” I announce, ready for this conversation to be over.
Jim pats me on the back. “I’m sure they’ll figure it out. It’s not like someone is after you, right?”
I blow out a breath of air and hope he’s right.
Chapter 9
Anna
“Ms. Standing?” the police officer says.
I barely hear him. I can’t focus on anything. I run my hands through my hair and survey my office. It’s been completely destroyed. The cardboard swatches are on the floor and torn to shreds, which means I’ve lost all my samples. That will be thousands of dollars to replace and probably won’t happen quickly. The furniture in the small seating area where I meet clients is toast. My keyboard is saturated in something dark brown and sticky, which I assume is Coke. Every paper from every drawer has been strewn around the room.
Who would do this? Why would they do this?
There’s nothing here to take, nothing of value to grab. Fortunately, they didn’t find the safe and try to rip that out of the wall. There’s nothing but the computer backup in there, anyway. I need to call my employees. I think a couple of them might have been coming in today. There’s certainly no reason to do that now.
“I’m sorry.” I paste a smile on my face and turn to the officer. “This happened at my home last week. I don’t know what this city is coming to.”