perimeter. If Forrester shows up, he’ll attempt to talk him into giving himself up.”
It was worth a try, Brent supposed. And Alec McKenna had been around long enough to know not to let down his guard.
“I’ll let McKenna know you’ve arrived,” Harris said.
Brent closed his cell phone and turned to Claire. She hadn’t spoken since they’d reached the city and was hugging her arms to her body even though it wasn’t cold in the car.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “The surveillance team hasn’t seen any sign of Forrester.”
She nodded, but her arms remained locked across her torso.
He cupped her shoulder with his palm, drew her gaze to meet his. “If he shows his face, you have me and two other agents to protect you. But it’s more likely he’s gone to ground miles from here.” He didn’t know if that was true—all he knew was that he felt compelled to ease Claire’s tension.
“I hope you’re right,” she said. “Leaving town may force him to postpone going after the person on the tape.”
He checked his gun just in case he was wrong. “Let’s go.”
They didn’t encounter Alec McKenna on their way to the back of the house, but Brent hadn’t expected to. The agent would be focused on watching out for Forrester, and their presence couldn’t act as a distraction.
At the house, Brent picked the lock on the front door, then he and Claire ventured inside. The main level consisted of a galley-style kitchen and an L-shaped living-room-and-dining-room area. A quick search through the stacks of opened mail on the coffee table revealed utility bills and junk mail, certainly nothing of interest. He checked the garage next. Empty. Wordlessly, he motioned for Claire to proceed to the second floor.
“What a mess,” Claire murmured, advancing into the room at the top of the stairs.
The space, which had been set up as a home office, overflowed with books, magazines and loose papers. Suddenly, he was glad Gene had made him bring Claire along. Two people could search through this pigsty faster than one.
The office door slid shut.
Claire crossed the room to reopen it. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Try the stack of paper next to the bookcase,” he said, his attention caught by the framed photo of Forrester on the desk. Sporting a wide smile, the agent stood next to a shiny classic Trans Am.
The door closed again due to the sloped floor, and this time Claire gave up and left it that way.
Opening the top drawer of the desk, Brent leafed through its contents which included an address book and six months’ worth of bank statements. He flipped to the most current one. No immediate red flags. All the deposits and withdrawals appeared to be of reasonable magnitude. Setting the statement aside, he turned to the next one.
Paper rustled in the vicinity of the bookcase. Claire let out a sigh.
“Find anything interesting?” he asked.
“Only if car specifications and parts catalogues float your boat. Forrester mentioned in one of our sessions that classic cars were his hobby, but it looks more like an obsession.”
Brent moved on to the bottom drawer where he found a nearly empty briefcase and a stack of credit-card receipts. It would take hours to review all the receipts, and he didn’t want to spend that much time here.
He placed the address book, credit-card receipts and bank statements inside the briefcase, then added the photo from the desk.
“It’s getting stuffy in here,” she murmured, moving past him.
She unlocked the room’s solitary window, then tugged on the handles without success.
“The house is old. It’s probably been painted shut,” he commented.
She headed for the closed door as he added more items to the briefcase.
A sudden cry jolted him like an electrical charge.
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