Taking a Chance Chapter 6
"Taking a Chance"
"Ras-Alman," Joe whispered again, not aware that he had already said the name just a moment before. His hands shook badly enough that he had to set both the amethyst and the photo back down onto the desk before he dropped them and he fell back, hard, into the seat behind him and closed his eyes.
The face of his arch-nemesis rose before him, handsome, regal and cunningly cruel as well. Responsible for so much hurt, and for the deaths of so many, Joe felt his fingers itching to go around the man's neck, to rid him of the life he didn't deserve to live!
Joe rubbed a hand over his face and inhaled, sharply, trying to erase the vision with those simple actions and, when he blinked his eyes a few times, Ras-Alman's face disappeared, replaced by Nancy's.
"Joe, are you all right?" Nancy asked. "Talk to me, Joe."
"I'm fine, just fine," Joe gasped. "I'm really fine."
Joe shuddered though, and rocked back and forth, a chill creeping slowly up his back. He sprang to his feet, agitated, and paced back and forth, fighting back the chills and other emotions he fought back everyday since Frank's death two years before.
"Sorry," he apologized to Nancy. "It's just every time I hear or say that name, I see him. I can see the dreams I've had about him, where he's taunting me about Frank's death. I can hear him in my mind, telling me that he killed Frank and there's nothing I can do about it."
Another chill caused Joe's shoulders to shake again but he managed to fight it down and calm as well.
"Does she look like the girl you knew?" he motioned to the wedding announcement on the computer monitor. "Does Diana Patrelli look like Miriam Ras-Alman?"
Nancy sat down in the chair beside the computer again and stared at the picture, studying it intently. Finally, she nodded.
"I hadn't thought about it before, but she does. You have to remember I didn't talk to her for more than a minute and I was looking at the necklace, not the face."
Nancy paused and touched the computer monitor again, peering intently at the man in the picture.
"I really think we need to find them," Nancy said to Joe. "Both of them. We have enough circumstantial evidence now to make some pretty solid conclusions and I think we should do our best to track them down."
Joe nodded his agreement. "Let's start with that people search that you wanted to run," he suggested.
Nancy agreed and began tapping into the computer, calling up a program from her father's database that would allow her into a special program. She typed in the names she needed and used them to locate "James and Diana Fleming" and "James Fleming and Diana Patrelli."
Without their current social security numbers the search wasn't as precise as she would have liked but the report did log the address for a James and Diana Fleming located in St. Charles, Missouri.
"That's a suburb of St. Louis, I think," Nancy said.
"Here, I have a map," Joe said. He pulled out an atlas he had seen in Mr. Drew's books and spread it out over the table. What he found agreed with Nancy's guess – St. Charles was a western suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, located on the western side of the Missouri river.
"Do we just head there now?" Nancy asked. Joe saw a hint of anxiety in her eyes – and hope as well.
Joe thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. "No," he said. "We have to bring proof with us. Proof that this man is Frank, if it's true. Proof that the woman is Miriam Alman would help as well. Do you think that's her real name?"
Nancy shook her head. "I don't know. We'll find out, though. One way or another."
Joe smiled at her and stood. "I'm going to call my dad," he said. "And tell him what we've found out so far. I can trust him not to have a complete breakdown when I tell him all this stuff. I'll have him send me Frank's fingerprint records along with his passport and a few other personal pictures we have of him."
Nancy said nothing for a moment and Joe, when he looked at her, saw her chewing on her lower lip.
"What?" he asked.
"What if he's undercover?" Nancy asked.
Joe blinked his eyes a few times and shook his head, hard.
"Undercover? Without telling me about it? Going so far as to marry this woman and stuff like that? Why?"
Nancy shrugged. "He could be deep undercover. Maybe he's working for the Network."
"There's no way," Joe said. "Ras-Alman knows him. If he's married to Ras-Alman's daughter, it's because there's something wrong. Amnesia or something like that."
"I don't know, Joe," Nancy said. "What if he's faking it? You know he can do stuff like that, especially if he wants revenge for Callie's death."
Joe sighed and fidgeted with a pen for a few seconds before he sat up. "No," he said. "I think there's more to it than that. I honestly think, even if he were deep undercover, he would find out some way to tell me. I don't know what the issue is right now, but I'm going to find out what it is. Now are you going with me or not?"
Nancy smiled and nodded. "I'm in."
"Good," Joe said and he pulled his cell phone from his pocket to call home.
"Dad, this is Joe," he said. "Look, something's come up. You won't believe what we've found out…"