Owen Jarrett had dark hair and dark eyes. At thirty-one, he was in perfect shape, though outside of running along the river on Saturdays and the occasional visit to the local gym, he didn’t really work at it. He drank as much beer as he wanted, and there was never a time when he couldn’t double down and finish the last slice of pizza. Thin-crust. Deep-dish. Didn’t matter. Good genes, he’d tell those who marveled at his ability to stay in fighting shape. Guys who had to work at it were jealous. Women found themselves drawn in by his looks but somewhat annoyed by his relentless pursuit of being the best at whatever he did. A bit of a braggart. Definitely a man who was all but certain he deserved his place at the top of the food chain.
In the offices of Lumatyx, a loft over a downtown Bend art gallery, Owen walked around as if he owned the place. That was fine, as he and his partner, Damon West, actually did own the company. Lumatyx proprietary software assisted employers in determining which potential candidates were best suited for a job, how long they would stay, and at what cost. In essence, Lumatyx software would help companies manage the inevitable employee churn to their advantage. Slash the number of times they got burned by new hires who didn’t stay long enough to recover the costs of getting them up to speed. Fewer signing bonuses for hires who could be had without them. Owen, who had majored in computer science at the University of Washington, had met Damon at Microsoft. They’d missed the cash grab at the mega software company, and so they had plotted a way toward a fortune of their own. The answer was Lumatyx. Damon had the coding skills, but Owen had the heart of a marketer. He could talk a good game. It was up to Damon to deliver. That sometimes created a little tension.
Lumatyx was a few weeks away from an infusion of cash from a venture capital firm out of Boston, and Owen was on the precipice of a windfall. The Subaru Forester that he’d driven for the last three years was going to be swapped for a Ferrari the day after the trading bell rang. He already knew the color and model. A black convertible with a red leather interior. Flashy, sure. But he’d earned it. The house he and his wife bought from her family’s estate would meet the wrecking ball, and another mammoth dream home would rise up along the river.
Every single day was a tick of the clock closer to the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Damon stuck his head into Owen’s office. Owen didn’t say so, but he had noticed that over the past few weeks Damon had upped his game in the fashion department. His shirts were no longer Gap but English Laundry. He’d replaced his wireless LensCrafters frames with some thicker, hipper nerd style. He was living off charge cards and the promise of paying them off with a single click on his online banking account. He wasn’t really hitting it, though. In those glasses just now, he looked more like an African American Buddy Holly than a digital-solutions tycoon.
“Conference call in two minutes,” Damon said.
Owen looked down at a text from his wife asking him to call her. “Coming,” he said, Liz’s messages vanishing as he powered down his phone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MISSING: FIVE HOURS
“Holy shit, David, where have you been?”
David Franklin dropped a pile of lifestyle magazines and some other papers in a heap in front of Amanda Jenkins. He pulled back a little. Amanda and the lunch waiters at Sweetwater crowded him. That didn’t make him the least bit happy. It was the kind of greeting that portended some disaster: an oven that didn’t work, the salamander broiler on the fritz. David was dressed in black jeans and a gray linen shirt open at the collar. His shoes were black Italian loafers, and around his wrist he wore a matching woven leather bracelet. He was strikingly handsome, with a head of coal-black-and-silver hair that he let grow just long enough to allow for the gel and the humidity of the day to make his locks curl.
Stylish but not fussy.
That was David’s look, head to toe.
“What’s going on?” His brown eyes searched the faces of what he called his “superstar” restaurant team.
Amanda was his number one. Not quite an assistant manager, but as close as increasingly strained financials allowed. She was a willowy redhead with green eyes and a band of freckles that crossed the bridge of her nose like a tan mist. She was smart and cautious. She ran the front of the house with precision and didn’t suffer any hiccups in service. The food was David’s domain.
“Carole’s been trying to get you,” she said. “We all have. You haven’t been picking up.”
“Phone’s dead,” he said. “What’s going on? Carole all right?”
“Yes,” Amanda said. “I mean no. She’s not all right. David, Charlie is missing. The police are looking for you.”
David took a step back, as though doing so would turn back the clock and erase what Amanda had just said.
“What do you mean, ‘missing’?”
By now Amanda was losing some of her calculated cool. She could feel her heart race a little. This was bad. “Carole can’t find him anywhere,” she said. “The police are at your house right now. David, where have you been?”
His face went white. “Running errands. Jesus.” He turned toward the door, and the keys to his Porsche slipped from his fingers. Amanda dropped down to retrieve them. He held his hand out as she passed him the keys. His hand was warm, damp.
“Can’t find him?” he repeated. “Can’t find Charlie?”
Amanda’s heart raced more. “That’s what they said. Carole’s frantic. You want me to drive you?”
David shook his head. “No. No. I can do that. You take care of things here. We have a full house tonight. No mistakes.” He reached for the handle on the back door, a shaft of light beaming into the restaurant as he swung it open.
“What the fuck kind of response is that?” Mitchell, a sous-chef, asked when the light beam had cut out.
“He’s in shock,” Amanda said. “He’s out of his mind with worry.”
Mitchell rolled his eyes. He’d never liked David Franklin. “His kid is missing and he’s worried about tonight’s service?”
“Stop it,” Amanda said. “Can’t you see he’s in distress?”
“He didn’t look all that distressed to me.”
“You want to get a new job?” Amanda was used to defending her boss. David could be a tyrant in the kitchen and a charmer in front of diners. “Is that what you want?”
Mitchell, who had been a sous-chef at three other Bend restaurants before coming to Sweetwater, shrugged. He could get another gig. “You banging him?”
Amanda felt her face flame red. She pointed her index finger at Mitchell. “You are fired. Get out.”
“Fine,” he said. “This place is a train wreck anyway.”
“Go!” she said. “Now.”
When he’d slouched away, Amanda turned to the servers gawking at the scene from the doorway. “Get back to work! We have a full restaurant tonight. We’re not going to let David down.”
A few minutes later she planted herself in a bathroom stall. Amanda had tried to hide it, but she doubted she’d been successful: she was shuddering from the confrontation. Her mind was spinning. She agreed that something had been off about David, but she couldn’t make any sense of it. Where had he been?