She finally spoke. “Why?”
He tented his fingers thoughtfully with his elbows resting on the polished desktop as if he were considering her single-word question. But she knew he was considering just how much to tell her. His eyes were dark as night, a contrast to his snow-white hair and meticulously trimmed beard. “Ah, that’s a good question,” he said, hedging for some reason.
“Mr. Bishop, you’ve dealt with the Sutton Agency enough to know that privacy and discretion are part and parcel of our service. Nothing you tell me will go any further.”
He shrugged his massive shoulders and sank back in his chair. “Of course. I expect no less,” he said.
“Why did your son leave?”
“I thought it was a middle-age crisis of some sort.” He smiled slightly, a strained expression. “Not that thirty-eight is middle aged. Then I thought he might be having a breakdown. Maybe gone over the edge.” The man stood abruptly, rising to his full, imposing height, and she could have sworn she felt the air ripple around her from his movement. “But he’s not crazy, Ms. Carter, he’s just damn stubborn. Too damn stubborn.”
She waited as he walked to the windows behind him and faced the city twenty floors below. When he didn’t speak again, she finally said, “You don’t know why he left?”
The shoulders shrugged again sharply. “A difference of opinion on how to do business. Nothing new for us.” He spoke without turning. “We’ve always clashed, but in the end, we’ve always managed to make our business relationship work.”
The two of them had made Bishop International a force to be reckoned with in the financial world. When he didn’t speak again for several minutes, she knew she wasn’t going to get more on the “whys” of his son leaving. Even though she’d been working as a private investigator for less than a year, Lauren knew when she was hitting a concrete wall, when the client wasn’t about to disclose personal information.
She took a notebook and pen out of her purse and got to the point of the meeting. “What do you want from the Sutton Agency exactly, Mr. Bishop?”
“Find him.”
“That’s it?”
He turned back to her, studying her intently for several moments before he said, “No.”
“Then what else do you want us to do?”
“As an employee of Sutton, I want you to find my son, and I want him to come back here, willingly.”
“Okay,” she said.
He gripped the back of his chair, pressing his long fingers into the plush leather. “I’m going to offer you something that’s just between the two of us, and no one else. Agreed?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, so I can hardly agree to it.”
He let go of the chair and came around to where she was and sat on the edge of his desk. She had no doubt every move he made was well thought out for maximum effect on the person he was facing. She was tall for a woman at five-nine, but still shorter than he was by half a foot, and he outweighed her hundred and twenty-five pounds by a lot. Now he was looking down at her intently, and it was all she could do to stay seated and not stand to minimize his advantage.
“He’s a barracuda.” That’s what Vern Sutton, her boss at the Sutton Agency, had told her when she’d been assigned to this job. “The man is tough as nails and gets what he wants. He doesn’t care how he does it, either.” The agency had done a number of background checks for D. R. Bishop over the years, on employees, business associates and even personal acquaintances. But they had never handled a missing person’s case for them.
D.R. had personally called the agency this time, said he needed to locate a missing person, and he’d asked for her specifically to be on the case. He hadn’t given Vern a reason, and Vern hadn’t asked. He also hadn’t told Vern the missing person was his own son.
“Why don’t you just explain things to me, and then I can make a decision? No matter how this turns out, it will be kept confidential,” she finally said when she couldn’t stand the silence between them any longer. “But I can’t make any decision until I know what’s involved.”
“That sounds doable,” he said. “I want you to find Duncan. See where he’s gone, and what he’s doing. Meet him, interact with him and figure out a way to get him back here of his own accord. Then we’ll have a deal between the two of us, an incentive if you’d like.”
She wasn’t going to play a guessing game with him. “Why don’t you just tell me what you’re talking about?”
He nodded faintly as if she’d passed some test. “If you can get my son to come back here willingly, I’ll of course pay the agency’s bill, but I’ll make another payment that will go directly to you. A bonus. From me, to you.”
“Just for getting him back here?”
“Yes, and how you do it is up to you. Just do it.”
“And the payment?” she asked, cutting to the chase.
He named a figure that was not only outrageous, but, incredibly, it was the sum total of the tuition payments she’d need to finish law school, almost to the penny. She simply sat and stared at D. R. Bishop as she realized that he’d obviously had her investigated before he ever approached Vern about her services. He knew what she needed and why she was working at the agency. He’d looked over the operatives and found the most needy one.
“So, could you use the money?” he asked evenly.
She wanted to say, “You know I can,” but settled for, “Of course, who couldn’t?”
“Then it’s yours, if you deliver.”
“Mr. Bishop, what happens if your son won’t come back?”
The older man actually frowned, as though he’d never considered that option. “Then I pay your boss and you get your usual cut. End of deal,” he said abruptly.
God, she hated people like him. People who had to be in control, who had to have power, and people who wielded that power as easily as they breathed. His son was probably the mirror image of the man, brought up in his likeness. Duncan Bishop had probably walked out because they couldn’t agree on how to destroy someone or something. Knife, gun or poison. She just bet the father chose a knife so he could destroy “up close and personal,” while the son wanted the gun to get things over with quickly.
She finally stood to face him. “Just get him to come back to L.A.?”
“He comes back and you can get your law degree.”
He didn’t care that she knew he’d had her investigated. “That’s an interesting offer,” she said.
“If you do this successfully, maybe when you pass the California bar exam, there’ll be a place for you around here.”
She didn’t try to stop the smile that came at his words. He’d obviously just looked into her financial needs and didn’t know what she was going to law school for. “That sounds enticing, sir, and I appreciate the thought, but I’m going to specialize in criminal law.”
The old man burst into a guffaw of laughter. “Damn, maybe we could use you anyway,” he said.
“You never know,” she murmured.
He turned from her to go around and drop back down onto his leather chair. He reached for a box that had been on the desk since she arrived. “Here’s everything you’ll need to know about Duncan. His connections, relationships, interests, his business background, pictures.”
“How about credit cards?”
“Helen made a list for you and it’s in there.”
“Money?”