“ ‘One of the good guys’?” I didn’t know what to think of that, so I just shut up and let it sink in for a few minutes.
“Darling.” Derek rubbed my cheek gently. “We must drive back to Dharma tomorrow and talk to Robin.”
My shoulders sagged a bit, but I’d already reached the same conclusion. “I’m afraid you’re right. She’s in this up to her hip bones.”
“It appears she is.” He touched my leg in a comforting gesture. “Now, that doesn’t mean she’s guilty of anything, but I’m convinced she has more knowledge of this affair than she may even realize.”
“I agree,” I said. “I’d like to know more about Shiva’s friend Rajiv, too.”
Derek tapped his fingers on the arm of the couch. “I hate to suggest it, but this Rajiv might’ve cultivated Shiva’s friendship precisely to use her daughter as an unwitting courier.”
The thought made me angry all over again. “If that’s true, I hope your Interpol friends can track him down and make him pay.”
“If it’s true, I’ll be happy to arrange it.”
“Good.” I sighed and leaned back into the pillows of the couch. “The sooner we can resolve all this, the sooner I can go back to a life free of Ukrainians and Russians knocking down my door every other day.”
“The American dream.”
“Yeah.” I laughed dolefully. “I guess I should call Robin and let her know we’re coming.”
Derek jumped up, found my cell on the table, and brought it back to me. With a smile for him, I pressed Robin’s number and waited. There was no answer, so I left a message, then called Austin’s house. His voice mail picked up and I left another message.
“I guess they’re out tonight.” Or maybe they weren’t picking up the phone. After all, they were still under the dubious influence of Mom’s enchantment spell. “I should call my mom, too,” I mused. “Let her know we’re coming.”
There was no answer at my parents’ house either.
“What’s going on in Dharma tonight?” I wondered aloud. “Why isn’t everyone home and in their jammies?”
“Perhaps there’s a community event.”
“Probably so.” But I had to rub my arms against a sudden chill. “Are you sure Gabriel’s healed enough to keep watch on Robin?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“You’re not convincing me.”
“I’m not convincing myself,” he grumbled, and pulled out his cell to check in with Gabriel. Pushing himself up from the couch, he said, “I’ll let him know the latest and make sure he stays alert to any unusual activity.”
I smiled and mentally added one more item to my list of reasons to thank Derek Stone.
It was another late night of police procedure. Happily, no fingerprint dust was involved. However, our two intrepid inspectors, Lee and Jaglom, were unable to shed much light on who the dead man was, beyond what Derek had gleaned from his own search of the man’s passport and belongings.
Derek had already sent the information off to his contacts at Interpol.
Meanwhile, Inspector Lee warned that the FBI or some obscure Homeland Security agency still might step in, now that it seemed even more likely that the threatened turf war between the Russians and the Ukrainians was heating up. Apparently, it was all heating up inside my apartment.
Derek said nothing to contradict the police take on the situation, but I knew he didn’t agree with the cops’ assessment. At least, not as it pertained to Robin and her problems, which had nothing to do with a turf war and everything to do with a missing flash drive that some people were willing to kill for.
But unfortunately, Derek was not in a position to divulge the full story to the inspectors. It was turning into a highly sensitive international situation, and something Derek was not at liberty to turn over to the local police. I assumed that officials at the highest levels of government would eventually step in and take over. Meanwhile, my two main concerns were that Robin was safe in Dharma and that she’d told me everything she knew about Alex and Rajiv and the Kama Sutra.
It was a relief when the investigator got all the blood he needed from those few drops spilled by the Russian and gave me the okay to clean and sanitize my workroom floor right then and there. The thought of having to put off cleaning for days while the blood was analyzed was too depressing to think about.
The police traced my intruder’s bloody footprints from the curb outside my building, across the sidewalk, up the interior stairwell, and down the hall to my place. The same way he’d escaped the night Tyler had seen him.
Currently, there was a car parked where the footprints began out by the curb, but as the police inspected it, the owner ran over from the Thai restaurant across the street. So it was not the dead man’s car.
So he’d been shot, then dropped off in front of my building? It didn’t make sense. But then, nothing about this chilling situation made much sense at all.