Page 23 of Mission: Possible

"What?" I sighed as I looked at Solomon who was watching me with some amusement. "Family dinner, tomorrow," I told him.

"We'll be there," said Solomon.

"Your mom says it's a pasta party. We can all bring a pasta, sauce, or a side dish, but we have to text her what we decide to bring so we don't have too much of one thing. I'm making garlic baguettes."

"Good to know; I look forward to the food, at least."

Alice laughed since she was quite familiar with the chaos of family dinners, especially when my mother was in a whirl about my latest calamity.

"How is Austen? And Sophie?" I asked.

"No change for Sophie. She continues to be stable, which is good, I guess, but I know we all are wishing for better news. Austen hasn't left her side. One of his friends brought him a change of clothes and some food to eat. He said he didn't want to go home but he really must. He needs some rest. He has to trust us to do our job."

"I know how he feels. He's probably afraid to leave her side," I said, thinking back to when Solomon was rendered comatose following an attack. I was terrified to leave him but I also desperately needed to track down his attacker and find out the reason why he was targeted. That sense of purpose stopped me from falling apart. I was in a unique position now: my sense of empathy clashed with my sense of duty. Yet who was I to tell a heartsick man to leave his wife's bedside, especially given his suspicions? His suspicions were now also mine.

"I feel for him, I really do, but he needs to stay strong. He said you went to his house after you spoke. Do you think he's paranoid? Or could there be any truth to it?" asked Alice.

"I think I should come over and talk to Austen." I checked my watch as I glanced at Solomon, who was listening. He nodded. I was okay to leave. "I'll be with you inside twenty minutes," I told her.

"Should I let Austen know you're coming?"

"Sure. He's probably been waiting for me to call anyway." We said our goodbyes and I palmed my phone. "I hate to run during such a big dilemma," I told Solomon.

"It's not such a big dilemma. Just a question of: do we take the case given our suspicions or not?"

"Are you any further ahead in arriving at a decision?"

"Than I was five minutes ago? No, but I think we should talk about it again. I'd like to give Charlie an answer today since time is of the essence."

"He'll want to hire another firm if we decline."

"Private investigators are not in great supply around Montgomery, and his case is pretty complex. He'll have to travel to Boston and find a firm there that's willing. However, that's not what I meant in terms of time."

"Oh?"

"It's more a question of how fast the missing item is either sold or transported from Montgomery. The trail gets colder the longer we contemplate our decision whether or not to take the case. The robbers are hours ahead of us."

"Then I will leave you to contemplate it while I check in on my other prospective client." I reached up and kissed Solomon quickly and discreetly, given we were at our place of work, before hightailing it out of there. Taking Solomon's car, I made a mental note to go car shopping soon so I didn't have to rely on his car, or rides, or the office pool cars, although I was pleased to see Solomon had arranged for the one I borrowed to be returned to its space after I left it near the bank.

By the time I reached Sophie Takahashi's hospital room, I was running late. Alice waved to me before tending to an elderly patient in the next room and I smiled and waved at her. Knocking on the glass door, I entered, indicating for Austen to sit back in his seat as he began to stand.

"I'm sorry I didn't call you yesterday," I told him.

"I heard you ran into some trouble."

"Alice told you?"

Austen smiled. "Just now. It's all anyone can talk about here. I have to admit, the heist took my mind off this for a couple of hours. Manny told me you took a look around my house but didn't stay long. Did everything appear normal to you?"

"Manny is correct. I only inspected the area where your wife fell, including the stairs, landing area, and the balustrade but I found an anomaly that puzzled me."

"An anomaly?"

"You mentioned seeing blood on the stairs but when I checked them out, there was none."

"I'm sure I saw it. I told you when I checked, the blood was gone. Was I mistaken?" Austen frowned. "Could it have been something else?"

"No, I don't think you were mistaken. Like I said, there wasn't any blood on the staircase but I caught the smell of bleach. Someone cleaned the stairs recently but didn't do such a fabulous job. Manny confirmed that neither he nor his crew would clean the stairs at this stage of construction so I think someone else had to have done it."