Jewell didn’t respond, beginning to walk through the door.
“Quick question. Shade said you’re friends with Arin, the owner of the lab, which is why he asked you to be at the meeting.”
“Yes. So?”
“Do you know the woman who was kidnapped?”
Puzzled by why he wanted to know, she paused and turned around. “I met Elizabeth a few times. Why?”
Rory took out his cell phone to place it on the charger on the nightstand. “Can you tell me what you know about her?” He didn’t look at her as he unzipped his suitcase.
Releasing her hold on the knob, she turned to face him fully. Why did he have to ask her to do the one thing she couldn’t refuse?
Reaper had been a captive for over nine years, and she hadn’t been able to do a damn thing for him. If anything could spare Elizabeth even one more day of being held hostage, she would dance with a devil if she had to. Rory may be a self-confessed gigolo, but a devil he wasn’t. Compared to The Last Riders, he would be putty in her hand.
Jewell closed the door and leaned back against it. “Where do you want me to start?”
Chapter Seven
“How did you meet her?”
Rory sat down on the end of the bed to scrutinize Jewell. Her behavior fascinated him, and that didn’t happen often. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been interested in a woman, unless it profited him.
“I met Elizabeth when she went to work for Arin at the lab. Arin introduced her as she was working. I remember she was so tiny. I’m at least four or five inches taller than her. She was friendly and asked how long I was staying in Ohio.” Jewell jerked herself off the doorjamb to begin moving aimlessly around the room. “She told me about a Chinese restaurant I should try before I came back here. She seemed like a really sweet person. I was glad Arin had hired her.”
“Why?”
Jewell’s face went introspective as she stopped walking. “I can’t explain why I felt that way. Arin had told me that Elizabeth had just graduated college. She kept thanking Arin for hiring her, and the week I was there, she worked late each night. I think she was trying to prove to Arin that she had made the right choice in hiring her.
“When I came back to Kentucky, I asked about her, and Arin told me she had made Elizabeth her assistant. Arin blames herself that Elizabeth was kidnapped, because the reason Elizabeth was taken was them working so closely together.”
“If they hadn’t taken Elizabeth, they would have taken someone else,” Rory surmised.
“Arin knows that, but it doesn’t lessen her guilt.”
“Arin and Elizabeth had grown close working together?”
“Very. Arin gave her a raise before the six months’ evaluation, like she did with her other employees.”
“Did Arin say why she did that?”
“Elizabeth was living with two other roommates, and one of them was bad at not locking the doors and was always late on paying her part of the rent. Arin gave her the raise after she had come into work one morning, upset because the roommate had let her boyfriend stay the night, and he had come into the bathroom while she was showering. That afternoon, Arin helped her find an apartment close to work and paid the deposit and the first month’s rent. Arin said, when she dropped her off at her old apartment, she was excited to start boxing up her things. Arin promised her that she and Hennessy would be there in the morning to help her move into the new apartment. When they arrived in the morning, her roommates said she had received a phone call and had rushed out and didn’t come back. Arin immediately called the police after she tried to call Arin and she didn’t answer or respond to her texts.
“Hennessy checked her room and said it looked like Elizabeth had started packing—there was a half-full box, and a suitcase had been packed.”
“When did the kidnappers first make contact with Arin?”
“Not for a week.” Jewell bit her lip with worry.
“I wonder why the delay. I’m surprised the kidnappers didn’t contact her immediately.”
“Arin and Hennessy believe it’s because they thought Elizabeth was working on the vaccine, and they tried to get what she knew about it from her. When they found out she wasn’t working on the vaccine with Arin, the kidnappers came up with another plan.”
“What were she and Arin working on?”
“A treatment that could restore hair loss.”
“Damn. She’s lucky to still be alive. Can you imagine kidnapping someone to steal cutting-edge technology, only to find out she’s working on hair loss?”
“Hennessy doesn’t think she told them. He believes she’s feeding them wrong formulas with just enough information to keep herself valuable.”
“That makes sense. Once they do find out she’s useless to them, her life won’t be worth a dime to them, which makes it even more urgent to find her.”