DJ pulled the truck around the back of his house, into the detached garage. He wanted a hot shower, a decent meal, and a nap, in that order.
Forcing himself to climb from the cab, he retrieved the guitar case that held his rifle from the floorboard, then removed the electrician signs from the doors and the license plate from the holder and stuck them in his backpack. Pulling the garage door down, he made sure it was locked.
His regular printer would be fine to make a new magnetic sign, but he’d use his 3D printer to produce a license plate that could fool cops with even the sharpest eyes. His 3D printer had been dirt cheap, and even if it hadn’t been, he considered it a necessary business expense. Staying one step in front of the cops really was too easy with the right technology.
Again, Kowalski had taught him well, guiding him to buy the best tech for the best price. Printing his boss’s fake plates had been one of his first jobs when he’d joined up with Kowalski’s crew. Now he could do it for himself practically in his sleep.
But first he had to actually get some sleep. He’d thought he was mostly recovered from getting shot, but taking the stairs up to that roof and down again had left him fatigued.
“Johnny!” a trembly voice called out.
DJ bit back a curse. Damn meddling woman. He wished he’d bought a house farther out in the country. That woman next door was the nosiest gossip.
He glanced at her over the fence between their properties. “Mrs. Ellis.”
Minnie Ellis was about seventy-five years old and resembled a prune. She was a pain in his ass, but she made amazing pies and she liked to bake for him, so he made nice.
“It’s been a while since we’ve seen you,” she said, concerned. “I was worried.”
He’d been away for more than a month, courtesy of Mercy Callahan’s friends. “I had a family thing. I’m so sorry. I should have told you. But everything’s fine now.”
Like hell he would have told her anything.
“Your grass is getting high,” she noted. “You want my grandson to mow it for you?”
“Maybe when I go out of town again.” Mrs. Ellis thought he was a traveling electronics salesman and that the boxes she’d seen him bringing into his house were filled with inventory.
In reality, the boxes in his basement were filled with vacuum-packed weed, none from Eden. DJ had learned to diversify. He rented the house next door and a third house in the next neighborhood, both converted into grow houses. Tons of dirt covered the old 1970s linoleum and he’d added another set of fuses on both houses to carry the current for the grow lamps inside.
He grew a lot more pot this way than Eden ever had, and the profits belonged solely to him. But he’d still earned only a pittance compared to what Pastor controlled in Eden’s offshore bank accounts. And a good chunk of the revenue he earned from the grow houses was due back to the man who’d given him a start-up loan.
Kowalski had taught DJ more than Pastor ever had. DJ usually spent time in Eden during the week, venturing down the mountain to tend his plants the rest of the time. He’d learned to pad the estimates for how long his trips would take so that he could spend more time away from the compound than was required. He’d started out taking only the weekends, but was able to sell Pastor on the need for more time to sell Eden’s illegal products—the drugs they’d grown since he’d arrived at the compound when he was four years old.
He’d argued that allowing him more time away enabled Pastor to continue sending just one person from the compound each week, which kept their secrets safer.
He also shopped for supplies and sold Eden’s completely legit handmade goods, claiming that he had to travel far away to keep from raising any suspicion. In reality, he shopped and sold the legit stuff wherever the hell he wanted, used cash, and no one was the wiser. But his precautions—and the money he brought in—made Pastor happy and in return, Pastor would eventually make him very rich.
Until then, he cared for his plants, turned the harvest over to Kowalski, and deposited his cut of the proceeds into a bank account of his own.
“You look tired, dear,” Mrs. Ellis said. “I’ve got chicken soup that will fix what ails you.”
“Thank you, but I’ve got dinner plans.” Pizza sounded amazing. “You have a good evening.”
“Thank you, dear.” The top of her head disappeared abruptly as she climbed down from whatever stool she’d gotten up on to see over the fence. She was only four foot nine. Still, he didn’t want her angry with him. She was the de facto neighborhood watch queen, and had he known that, he would have bought a house literally anywhere else.
“Wait!” Her head reappeared. “There’s been someone in your house for the past few weeks. He said he was your friend and was watering your plants. He had a key and nothing seemed amiss when I checked, so I didn’t make a fuss.” Her lip curled in a pout. “I could have watered your plants. You didn’t have to ask someone else.”
DJ knew that Kowalski had been in and out of his place. Since Kowalski was his direct boss, it was his right. In a way it was Kowalski’s house, since he’d footed the start-up costs.
“He’s my cousin, ma’am. Family.” He shrugged. “You know how it is.” He waited for her to climb down from the step stool, then jolted when her words sank in. “Hold on a moment. What do you mean, when you ‘checked’?”
“I looked in your windows, silly boy. How else was I to check? I don’t have a key.”
And she never would. DJ managed a smile. “Thank you, ma’am. It’s a relief to know I have good neighbors.”
“Who should have a key,” the old woman pushed.
“I’ll try to remember.” Over my dead body. Because if she did have a key, she’d snoop, she’d report, and his dead body would be all that was left of him when Kowalski found out.
He rounded the house, unlocking the front door with one of only two keys to exist.
“She’s a peach,” Kowalski said sarcastically from his seat in front of the television. Middle-aged, white, and nondescript, he’d been the gang’s local front man for quite some time. His appearance was wholly unremarkable, and he had a masterful ability to blend in to any crowd. “I don’t know how you’ve managed not to kill her.”
Schooling his expression against the surprise of finding Kowalski here—and why hadn’t Mrs. Ellis warned him about that?—DJ closed the door and twisted the dead bolts. “It’s a constant trial,” he said dryly. “Where’s your car?”
“Not your concern,” Kowalski said mildly.
DJ wanted to swear. Kowalski was exactly like Pastor—both wore a mask to hide any annoyance they might feel. The trouble was that the annoyance could become explosive rage in the blink of an eye without warning.
Kowalski was more dangerous than Pastor, though. Pastor didn’t have any other muscle now that Ephraim was dead. The old man had no one to take DJ out. Kowalski, however, carried a gun wherever he went. DJ thought the man even slept with it. And DJ knew full well that Kowalski would have no qualms about snuffing him out like a candle. There were plenty of other guys out there who’d jump at the opportunity to make the kind of cash Kowalski offered.
Like DJ’s predecessor, who now lived at the bottom of a lake outside Oroville. Dumping him there had been DJ’s first test of loyalty. The threat of joining the dead man was always present.
So DJ bit his tongue, stowing his irritation at seeing Kowalski sprawled on his sofa. “I wasn’t expecting you,” he said instead. “I don’t have any food to offer you.”
Kowalski tipped the foot he rested on the coffee table, motioning to a pizza box. “I saved you a slice.”
Sitting in the chair adjacent to the sofa, DJ dumped his backpack and the guitar case on the floor and pulled the box to him. “Thanks, but I’ll need more than a slice. I’m starving.”
Kowalski tilted his head, making no secret of the fact that he was assessing DJ’s physical condition. There was nothing sexual about his perusal. It was one hundred percent business with Kowalski. He was assessing the strength and fitness of one of his many minions.
DJ was getting tired of being a minion. “Well?” he asked around a mouthful of pizza. “What’s the verdict?”
“You look like shit,” Kowalski said baldly. “You should have called me when you got shot.”
“I did,” DJ said, sounding petulant. “I told you I’d be laid up for a while.”
Kowalski’s brows lowered in a warning frown. “I meant right after you’d gotten yourself shot. Not days later, once that ‘healer’ of yours had gotten you in her clutches.”
“I wasn’t thinking straight,” DJ admitted.
Because revealing the existence of Sister Coleen had been a mistake. DJ hadn’t given her name, but he’d called her their “healer” when he’d phoned Kowalski to tell him that he’d been shot. He hadn’t wanted Kowalski to know he was hurt—weakest member of the pack gets eaten first—but he’d had no choice. When he’d regained consciousness, he’d been on a pallet in the back of the box truck, bumping over the mountain roads, surrounded by packing crates, alone and burning with fever from his wounds. He’d been with it enough to know this might be his only opportunity to talk to Kowalski without Pastor or one of the others overhearing.
But the fever had loosened his tongue, giving Kowalski glimpses into the community that the man hadn’t had before. Because Eden itself was a liability and DJ wasn’t about to give the Chicos any ammunition against him. He needed them to stay out of Eden, because that fifty million was his, goddammit. He wasn’t going to share it.
At least his satellite phone couldn’t be tracked, so Kowalski still didn’t know where the community was hiding. That sat phone had saved him, though. If he hadn’t informed Kowalski of his injury and probable recovery time, he would have been declared AWOL and shot on sight when he resurfaced.
Which could be why Kowalski sat in his living room right now, he realized, a shiver running down his back. Of all the people in his life, only Kowalski truly scared him.
“No, you weren’t thinking straight,” Kowalski agreed, his tone still mild. “I’ll forgive it this time, but only because you regularly reported in.”
I’ll forgive it this time. The words stung even as they relieved DJ. He didn’t want to be beholden to anyone for anything, but he was in with Kowalski up to his eyeballs.
Regular reporting was nonnegotiable, and for this reason, the sat phone was a godsend. Pastor only knew about the cell phones, which operated off Wi-Fi generated by Eden’s satellite dish. The sat phone, which connected directly to an orbiting satellite, had become DJ’s only link to the outside world, because Pastor couldn’t be allowed online for any reason right now. There was too much media coverage of Mercy and Gideon. So far they weren’t mentioning Eden, but Ephraim had murdered too many people for the Feds to completely hide his killing spree from the general public. Mercy and Gideon had been news for weeks.
DJ closed the now-empty pizza box and frowned. He must have been tired because, like Mrs. Ellis’s words, Kowalski’s had just sunk in.
“How did you know what Mrs. Ellis said to me? We were in the backyard.”
Kowalski hit a few buttons on the TV remote, bringing up a camera feed. Of the rooms of this house, his backyard, and the basement—which was empty of the boxes he’d left there.
That the pot was gone—and with it, his cut—was infuriating, but not all that surprising. That Kowalski had cameras was a greater concern.
“How long have the cameras been here?” DJ asked.
“I had them installed before you bought the place.” Kowalski cranked up the volume on one of the frames, picking up Mrs. Ellis’s voice from the backyard. “I get audio, too. This mic is mounted on Mrs. Ellis’s side of the fence. She worries me.”
“If I kill her, the cops will come snooping,” DJ said, anticipating Kowalski’s next order.
“Find a way so that they don’t snoop. She’s seventy-five, for fuck’s sake. Make it look like she died in her sleep.”
“I can do that.”
“Have you done it before?” Kowalski pressed.
“Yes. Once.” To his own father, as a matter of fact.
No one in Eden had questioned his father’s death, when they should have. Waylon Belmont had died in his own bed, two days after returning to Eden with a sobbing, repentant Rhoda, along with the remains of a young man whom he’d claimed was Gideon Reynolds.
Gideon had deserved to die. He’d murdered Edward McPhearson, who was not a good man. Actually a really bad man, but Gideon had killed him.
Waylon had also deserved to die, and DJ hadn’t even known the full extent of his father’s betrayal. Now that he did, he wished he could kill Waylon all over again.
Or, at least, that he’d made his father’s death more painful.
“How did you do it before?” Kowalski asked, yanking DJ from the pain of the memory.
“Pillow. Looked like a heart attack.” He smiled, picturing the look on Waylon’s face as he’d struggled to breathe. Mine was the last face he saw. That Waylon knew who had killed him had been important to DJ then.
That Mrs. Ellis would know who killed her wasn’t important at all. He hadn’t killed anyone so up close and personal in a while, but he imagined it’d be like riding a bike.
Kowalski dug in his pocket, producing a syringe and a small vial, placing them on the coffee table. “If you’re gonna do it that way, go with the injection. MEs can detect pillow smothering. This’ll make it look like a heart attack because it will be a heart attack.” He pressed the TV remote again and a different set of camera feeds appeared.
Mrs. Ellis was sitting in an easy chair, speaking on a phone with an honest-to-God cord. “He’s weird,” she was saying. “So antisocial. Never smiles, never talks to me unless I talk first.” She paused, listening, winding the curly cord around one finger. “Well, he’s handsome enough, I guess. Gives me the willies, though.” She shuddered. “He’s only here part of the time. I wonder what he gets up to when he’s not here.” Another pause. “Of course I asked! He says he’s a traveling salesman. I bet a lot of serial killers say that.” Her face hardened with resolve. “There is something odd about that man and I’m going to find out what.”
Fucking hell. Several things occurred to DJ, in no particular order:
Kowalski had cameras inside the woman’s house. He’ll know when I’ve killed her.
This is a damn test.
Mrs. Ellis is talking about me. And it was dark outside her window, but the sun hadn’t set yet. It was barely one in the afternoon.
“Wait.” DJ held up a hand. “Is this prerecorded video?”
Kowalski hit the pause button and the screen froze. “It is. This conversation happened last night. She was peeking in your windows this morning.”
“What about whoever she was talking to? That phone she’s using is ancient. It won’t have caller ID.”
“She has a cordless phone in the kitchen. It will.”
“What about the cameras? Once she’s dead, her family will be all over the house. They’ll see the cameras.”
“They’re the size of a pencil eraser. You’re good with your hands. Cover them up.”
“Fine.” DJ waved at the syringe and vial. “You knew you were going to tell me to kill her.”
“Yep. You really should have had the cameras installed the first time she pushed you for information. Little old ladies often get ignored, but they are fonts of knowledge. All it takes is her telling the wrong person that you’re weird and antisocial and people will start to wonder.”
The man spoke truth. “I’ll do it today, but I’m going to eat first. She won’t go to sleep for a while yet.” He pulled his own cell phone out. “Want some more pizza?”
Kowalski stood, stretching until bones creaked and joints popped. “No, I have to get going. My son has a recital after school. He’s amazing, but I have to sit through the rest of those little brats and it makes me cranky. So I’ll be looking for good news tomorrow.”
He walked to the door to the basement, turning back to look at DJ. “By the way, where are the fifteen kilos of coke I gave you to distribute? I reviewed the accounts this week and realized that money never came in.”
Shit. He should have known this was coming. “This is my first time out of the compound since I got shot.”
“So you have it with you?”
DJ knew exactly where it was. It was stored in a box labeled Smithy Tools in the cave farthest from the main entrance. “No. It would have raised questions if I’d hauled it out.” The truth was that he hadn’t been able to lift the boxes that had been stacked atop it. His arm was still useless. He’d barely managed to get his rifle off that rooftop this morning.
Kowalski’s smile thinned. “Figure out how to ‘haul it out.’ That’s my money. I’ve been very patient during your recovery. In the meantime, I want a full report on the old lady. I also want to see a hearse outside her house, taking her body straight to a funeral home.”
Translation: Make it look like a natural death or else.
DJ nodded tightly. “What about my pot? I couldn’t help but notice my basement is empty.”
“I ‘hauled it out’ the day you called me to tell me you were out of commission for a few weeks. I’ve been tending the plants in your grow houses, too. They’re ready for harvest.”
Translation: Get busy or else.
He disappeared into the stairwell to the basement and a moment later, DJ heard the muffled sound of a door closing. His house had a walkout basement, and that was the way Kowalski generally came and went. It let out on the side of the house opposite Mrs. Ellis, so she wouldn’t see him.
DJ rubbed his temples. Food, then sleep. He also needed to make a few new license plates and signs for the truck. He figured he’d been caught on surveillance at the office building that morning. His own face wasn’t as important as the identifiers on the vehicle he was using.
Mercy and Gideon had likely described him to law enforcement, and if they hadn’t, Amos Terrill had. But nobody knew where Eden was, so he’d been safe there. Would be again once Mercy and Gideon were dead.
His vehicle was another story, though. That was more easily tracked. If they were able to identify his vehicle through street and toll cameras, he wouldn’t be safe anywhere.
Still, Kowalski was the more immediate threat. He’d be pissed off if he found out that DJ’s face and fingerprints were known to the FBI. He’d decide that DJ’s usefulness was over and . . . well, that would be bad. So he wouldn’t get caught. It was that simple.
He called in an order for pizza delivery, then went back to his home office and powered up the 3D printer. Using an “unauthorized” searchable database of vehicle registrations, he found the list of license plate numbers that belonged to trucks most closely matching his. None of the vehicles with these plates had been reported stolen, so no cops would be looking for them. He typed the next number on the list into the template he’d developed and set it to print.
The resulting plate would be indistinguishable from an actual California DMV-issued plate.
Technology was so cool.
ROCKLIN, CALIFORNIA
WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 1:05 P.M.
“Well, hell,” Croft muttered as Tom drove them from the Sokolovs’ house to his duplex in Rocklin. It was a tidy two-story, split down the middle into two separate units. They shared the garage and the backyard. He’d bought it after his first visit with the real estate agent partly because it would allow him to live close to the field office. But mostly because Liza had loved the backyard and a duplex allowed him to keep her close without stomping on her privacy.
She could come and go as she pleased. An image of Mike the Groper flitted across his mind and he wanted to snarl. But he didn’t, because she could also date as she pleased.
I don’t own her, he told himself firmly.
But you could. The sly whisper was barely a blip of a thought but was enough to steal his breath. No. God, no. He’d never own her. He’d never own anyone. His own father had tried to own his mother, using violence to get his own way.
No, not his father. The man named Rob Winters was his sperm donor only, and when he’d died in prison, Tom had been so damn glad. Max Hunter was his father in every way that counted. A good man never owned anyone.
Max Hunter was the kind of man Tom had always aspired to be.
Thinking of Max sent a pang of homesickness straight to Tom’s heart. I need to call home.
“Hey, Hunter.” Croft reached across the console to snap her fingers next to his face.
Tom startled, his hands clenching on the steering wheel until he realized she’d been trying to get his attention for at least a minute.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “My mind was wandering.”
“I’ll bet it was,” Croft said dryly. “I’ve been saying your name for a whole hour.”
He laughed. “We’ve only been driving for five minutes.”
“Fine. So maybe I exaggerated a little.”
Tom shook his head good-naturedly. “So what did you find out?”
“The food truck with Belmont’s license plates still has them. They are standard DMV issue. You were right about Belmont making a copy.”
“Not a shock,” Tom murmured. “The sign was a fake, too. ‘Adam and Eve’s Plumbing’ is just an Eden pun.”
Croft made a face. “And a bad one at that. The bastard is cocky, isn’t he?”
“He’s operated under the radar for his whole life. Never had to worry about consequences. But he will,” Tom vowed.
“Your mouth to God’s ears.” Croft was quiet for a moment, studying her phone. “You’re going to trace Cameron Cook’s e-mail this afternoon?”
“I’m going to try. I’m assuming they’re using a VPN and proxy servers, which makes it more complicated. Amos saw a satellite dish at the last Eden settlement, right before he escaped with Abigail, so that adds additional network parameters I have to take into account. But if I can dig through the layers of proxy servers, I’ll be able to find their IP address, which—as long as their computer is connected—will give me their actual location even if Hayley Gibbs isn’t able to e-mail Cameron again.”
Croft’s brows lifted. “I’m surprised that Amos knew what a satellite dish was. He’d been in Eden from the beginning, right?”
“Yes, he joined a few months after the community was founded by Pastor. But there were personal satellite dishes back then, mostly in rural areas for TV reception.”
“Amos was so young back then,” she said sadly. “He lost a huge portion of his adult life.”
“Also his family legacy. He sold the land he’d inherited and donated the proceeds to Pastor’s church. It was a sizable chunk of change. Just one of many donations that Eden’s grown into a buttload of cash.”
“Fifty million bucks,” Croft said softly. “But why does DJ need to kill Mercy Callahan? I mean, if he doesn’t want to share the cash, why not simply kill Pastor to get the money?”
“Good question. We do know that DJ tried to kill Mercy once before, but failed.”
“When her mother smuggled her out of Eden. DJ killed her mother.”
Tom nodded. “Right. But we assumed that DJ thought Mercy was dead, or he would have come looking for her years ago to keep her from spilling the beans about Eden. If Pastor finds out that Mercy isn’t dead . . .” He shrugged.
“Then DJ has a lot of explaining to do and Pastor might punish him somehow.”
“From what we know of Eden, punishments are severe, especially for betrayal. It’s likely DJ would be killed and the congregation told that he’d met with an accident. Either way, it’s unlikely he’d get any of the fifty million.”
“No wonder Belmont wants Mercy dead. That’s a lot to lose.”
“Yeah,” Tom said grimly, once again thinking of Liza in the monster’s sights. “This morning Molina asked if Belmont might be dead. I’ve wished it a thousand times in the month since he disappeared, but I didn’t think we’d be that lucky.”
Croft hesitated. “It was Gideon’s girlfriend who shot Belmont, wasn’t it?”
Tom nodded. “One of the shots, yes. Daisy Dawson is a sharpshooter. She climbed a tree to get the shot.” He glanced at his trainer. “Why?”
“Because he probably has a grudge against her, too,” Croft said. “Did you tell Gideon?”
“Nope.” He feigned innocence. “I told Molina that I wouldn’t feed them information.”
Croft snorted. “You didn’t have to tell Gideon. Rafe Sokolov has already filled him in.”
Tom grinned. “But I didn’t tell Gideon.”
She was quiet for a few beats. “I think I like you, Hunter.”
“I’m glad,” he said sincerely. “I’d hate to be stuck with someone who doesn’t. Tell me about the tattoo on Belmont’s back. Which gang is it?”
“It’s a gang out of San Fran called Zhonghua Yanjingshe, which translates to ‘Chinese Cobra.’ It was originally managed by one of the crime syndicates in mainland China, but a few years ago the gang was hit hard by the Bureau. The syndicate had purchased about a hundred houses in Northern California and turned them into grow houses. If you want more info, ask Rodriguez. He was part of the task force that took them out. They seized over four hundred pounds of pot, plus cash and weapons. Grow houses are still a problem around here, but it’s not as organized as it was.”
“I read about that when I knew I was coming to Sacramento,” Tom said, slowing to stop at a red light. “Folks think that illegal pot isn’t a thing in California anymore because it’s legal to buy, but the product seized by the task force was going to states where it’s still illegal.”
“Exactly. Homeowners who rent their houses continue to worry about grow houses. Renters look legit, some even show up with a prop family, then they trash the house, fill it with dirt, and grow weed until they’re caught. By then, they’re usually in the wind, and the homeowner is left with a ruined house.”
“I’m glad I know my renter,” Tom said lightly, turning left when the light changed.
Croft chuckled. “I guess so. Liza doesn’t seem the type to grow illegal weed.”
“I’d be shocked if she’s ever even tried it.”
Croft shot him an incredulous look. “Hunter. She was asking Irina for cannabis tea when we walked into the Sokolovs’ kitchen today.”
Oh. “That’s true, but I’m sure that was a onetime thing. Not that there would be anything wrong with her drinking Irina’s tea, especially now that she’s in between her job and school.”
“Or maybe you don’t know her as well as you think,” Croft suggested softly.
Tom’s head swiveled to stare at her. “What?”
“How long have you known her?”
He refocused on the road. “Seven years.”
“But most of that time she was in the military, wasn’t she?”
Tom shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “We e-mailed and Skyped at least once a week, whenever she could get screen time.” Until I met Tory. Then he’d forgotten about their calls, too wrapped up in Tory to pay attention to anyone else. And after Tory had died, he’d been too wrapped up in his grief. He’d left Liza with no one to talk to. God, I’m an asshole.
Maybe that’s why she’s upset with me. She certainly has a right to be.
Croft sighed. “All I’m saying is that you seem convinced that you know her. Maybe she’s changed.” She shifted in her seat, seeming as uncomfortable with this tangent as Tom was. “Anyway, the gang was hurt in the raids, but not destroyed. The management structure has changed, though.”
Tom was simultaneously grateful to Croft for getting them back on track and tempted to ask her what she saw in Liza that had driven her comments. Something was wrong with his friend, but he was either too close or too thick to see what everyone else did.
“Changed how?” he asked, pushing worries about Liza aside for the moment. “Like an internal shake-up, or someone came in from the outside?”
“Both. The gang has become more local, with fewer international ties. The letters tattooed on DJ’s back are part of the original name. Now they call themselves the Chicos.”
“Meaning ‘boys’? They jumped languages?”
“No. It’s short for Chinese Cobras. I guess there were too many gangs called the Cobras, so they got creative. The ‘chai’ became ‘chee.’ It was probably easier for them to say.”
“Yeah. And because ‘chai-co’ sounds stupid.”
“Truth.” Croft smiled at the sight of two kids playing in a neighbor’s front yard. “This is a nice neighborhood.”
“It is. I see those kids sometimes when I jog. They’re very sweet. They did a lemonade stand last month to raise money for a sick classmate.”
Croft turned her smile his direction. “Did you buy any?”
“Of course.” He chuckled. “It was awful. They added ten times more sugar than they should have. But they looked so hopeful, so I drank it and bought more. Which I poured out as soon as I got around the corner. I was worried about a sugar coma, but Liza assured me I’d be fine.”
Croft was quiet for so long that he glanced over, only to see her shaking her head. “We don’t know a lot about the Chicos’ current management, but it’s thought that lower-tiered workers rose up through the ranks. Not a coup, really. More that they filled a power vacuum when the old bosses were arrested and deported.”
“And DJ Belmont is one of theirs?” he asked.
“That’s what I’m going to find out while you’re tracing Cameron Cook’s e-mail. It would help if I had a photo of Belmont. Can you send me a still from the video once you get it from Mr. Gray at the office building?”
“He sent it already. It’s in my inbox. I’ll forward it to you as soon as I check on—”
He slowed in front of his house, frowning at the Jeep sitting in his driveway. He’d seen it before—the night before, when Mike the Groper had brought her home. From their date.
“She’s got company?” Croft asked casually.
Tom swallowed the growl that rose from his chest a split second before Croft would have heard it. Keep it together, Hunter. Liza is a grown woman and can see who she wants to. But it felt wrong. Really wrong. “It would appear so.” He pulled behind the Jeep and put their Bureau SUV into park, leaving the engine running. “I’ll just be a moment.”
Not waiting to hear Croft’s reply, he jogged up the front walk. But when he’d gotten to Liza’s front door, he hesitated. What if she was . . . busy?
The very thought made his gut hurt, but he needed to know that she was okay, so he lifted his fist to knock.
The door opened before his knuckles hit, startling him into taking a step back. Then a very deep breath, because Mike the Groper stood there, smiling congenially.
“Tom! We didn’t expect you.”
“I . . .” I what? Didn’t expect to see you, either? “I’d like to speak with Liza for a moment.”
Mike leaned forward, his brows crunching. “She’s resting,” he whispered. “I put her to bed when she got home. She looked a little shocky to me. I think this morning’s close call shook her more than she wanted to admit. But I’m sure she’ll be fine. I’ll tell her you stopped by.” He started to close the door.
She told you what happened?
No. No way. That wasn’t possible. Liza knew the Eden investigation was under wraps. He shoved his foot over the threshold just in time to stop the door.
“It’s official business.” Which was mostly a lie, but at this point, he didn’t care. “I need to talk to her myself.” He shouldered the front door open, Mike too surprised to give him any resistance. “I know my way around.”
Mike opened his mouth to argue, then snapped it closed. “Fine. I’ll wait down here.”
Yeah, buddy. You do that.
Tom took the stairs two at a time, slowing when he reached the hall upstairs. He’d helped her move in, so he knew where her bedroom was. He’d even been in it a few times, when she had woken screaming from a nightmare that she wouldn’t discuss, no matter how many times he’d asked.
That Mike the Groper had been here, too, even if only to tuck Liza safely into bed . . . Well, he didn’t like it. At all.
He started to knock on her door, then stilled. He could hear her, and she was crying. Still.
Goddammit. He felt horrible, made worse because he didn’t know what to apologize for. Carefully he knocked.
“I’m fine, Mike,” he heard her say. “I already told you that. You can go home now.”
That made Tom stand up straighter, and the tension released its grip on his chest. “It’s me, Liza. Can I come in?”
Silence met his ears. Complete and suffocating.
“Liza?” He rested his forehead on the door, suddenly weary. “Please?”
She huffed out a breath. “Suit yourself.”
He opened the door enough to make sure that she was decent before entering the room. A smile tugged at his lips at the sight of Pebbles curled up against Liza’s back, her head on the spare pillow. Pebbles lifted her head enough to see that it was him, then slumped back down with a doggy sigh.
Liza was curled up as well, facing the window. She’d pulled the shade down, casting the room into semidarkness. “You can tell Irina that I’m fine. I know she told you to check on me.”
Tom frowned, not sure what to say to that. If he acknowledged the statement, it made him look like he hadn’t cared enough to check himself. But it was true, so he couldn’t deny it, either.
Instead he took a step forward, then another, until his knees were up against the mattress. “Why did you run from me?” he asked instead, because that was really what he wanted to know.
“Why did you come here?”
Her voice was hoarse, her nose stuffy. And he didn’t know how to help her.
“I was worried today.” He wasn’t certain where the words came from, but once he’d said them, he realized this was where things had started to go wrong. “Not about Mercy and Abigail, because I knew you’d have shielded them with your own body if the bullets started flying. I knew they’d be fine.” A teensy exaggeration, but he figured no one would fault him. “I was worried about you. I was on that roof, Liza. I saw what that gunman would have seen, looking through that glass door. He would have seen you, wouldn’t he?”
Another long silence, then, “Yeah. Probably.”
Now she sounded small and vulnerable. He took a chance and rounded the bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress near her knees. He stared at his hands. In the past he would have gathered her in his arms for a reassuring hug, but right now that seemed like a colossally poor idea.
Her hair covered her face and he gently pushed it aside so that he could see her features. She was beautiful, but she always had been, from the moment he’d laid eyes on her when she’d only been seventeen. She’s not seventeen anymore. She really, really wasn’t.
He shoved the thought aside because it felt so wrong. She was his friend. “Why did you run from me? What did I do?”
Her eyes remained tightly closed. “Nothing,” she said in a tone that meant he’d done something. He hadn’t been born yesterday. He knew that women usually meant “something” when they said “nothing.” He also knew that pushing her was a bad plan.
But not pushing hadn’t worked, either. “Something’s been bothering you,” he murmured, stroking her hair.
For a moment she seemed to relax into his hand, but then she lurched back several inches, putting her out of his reach. “I’m all right,” she said through clenched teeth. “Why did you come here?”
Tom recoiled as if she’d slapped him. She’d never pulled away from his touch. Not ever. His brain stalled and no words would come. “What did I do?” he whispered.
Her face fell and she pursed her lips the same way she had in the Sokolovs’ laundry room, like she was holding her emotions in tight check. Finally, she opened her eyes and gave him such a sad smile that his heart hurt. “Nothing, Tom. You didn’t do anything wrong. Now, if there’s nothing else, you need to go.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. He started to rise, then sat back down. “Mike the—” He barely stopped himself from saying the Groper. “The guy downstairs,” he improvised. “He said you were shocky from your ordeal this morning.”
Her jaw tightened. “I told him that I’d nearly hit a kid on a bike.”
“I knew you hadn’t told him anything important. He took me by surprise, that’s all.”
“You and me both,” she muttered.
The aching of his heart lessened, just a bit. “You didn’t call him?”
She rolled her eyes before closing them. “No. He was here when I got back and I told him to go home, but he’s a nurse, too. He wouldn’t leave until he’d taken care of me.”
I should have been taking care of you.
The thought was as clear as the blue sky beyond her closed window shades, and it stunned him into a moment of silence. Then his brain caught up and he cleared his throat. “The shooter was DJ Belmont. We saw his face on the surveillance tape.”
“What a shock,” she muttered sarcastically. “I figured that this morning, without fancy tech.”
He nearly smiled at her snark, but the gravity of the situation kept him sober. “So did I, but I have to prove my theories with evidence. He may have seen you. You could be in danger.”
Her expression didn’t change. “And?”
He wanted to force her to open her eyes so that he could truly see her. But he kept his hands on his thighs and his voice steady. “And you need to take appropriate precautions. You shouldn’t go running off alone. Anywhere. With anyone.” He added that last sentence with Mike the Groper in mind. “Not until we catch him.”
She opened one eye. “If I run off with someone, then I’m not running off alone.”
He wanted to snarl at her. She wasn’t taking him seriously. “You know what I mean.”
“Fine, Tom. I’ll be careful. I won’t even walk Pebbles without an escort.”
“A cop escort,” he insisted. Which eliminated Mike the Groper.
“Fine.” She closed her eye and tugged at the blankets. “I’m going to nap now. You can see yourself out. Tell Mike that I just need some quiet and that I’ll be okay by tomorrow.”
Tom stood uncertainly. “What happens tomorrow?”
Her lips thinned, her expression changing to one of determination. “We’re going out to dinner. Do I need a bodyguard?”
He stood silently, words failing him once again. He watched her swallow, then brace herself before opening her eyes. She stared up at him, brown eyes full of challenge. “Do I need a bodyguard?” she repeated. “Or should I cancel on him? I will if you tell me to.”
Cancel, dammit. Cancel.
But that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.
Neither is Mike the Groper!
But he knew what he needed to say. “Don’t cancel. But don’t leave the house until I can ask Agent Raeburn how we can handle your protection.”
She visibly flinched. “All right,” she murmured. “I look forward to hearing from your boss. If I don’t hear by tomorrow morning, I’ll call him myself.”
It was his turn to flinch. She’d not-so-subtly bypass him, going straight to Raeburn for information. “All right.” He turned to go, but paused, hand on the doorknob, when she called his name. “Yes?”
“Tell Mike that I’ll be down in a few minutes and that I’ll make him supper.”
He nodded once, then left without looking back. Passing her message on to Mike the Groper was harder than he thought it would be, especially when the man became smugly pleased.
“I hadn’t planned to go anywhere,” Mike said. “Don’t worry. She’s safe with me.”
Tom managed not to slam the front door on his way out. He did, however, slam the SUV door when he got in.
Croft shot him a look. He glared back at her, daring her to ask him anything. “She’s fine,” he snapped. “She’s got someone with her for now. I’ll ask Raeburn for a protection detail.”
“He won’t agree,” Croft said very carefully. “She’s not the primary target and he’s down a man with Mercy’s protection detail. Just preparing you.”
“Then I’ll set up drive-bys.” Or I’ll hire someone to guard her. Until then, he’d watch over her himself. Whatever he did, she’d be safe. “I’ll take you back to the field office now.”
“And where will you be?”
“My home computer setup is better than the piece of shit machine they gave me.” He gritted his teeth. “Is there a problem with me working from home?”
“Not at all. I’m going to talk to my tattoo artist friend about the Chicos design.”
Immediately Tom was contrite. “Is it safe? Should I go with you?”
One of Croft’s brows lifted in warning. “I graduated Quantico when you were still in middle school. I think I’m capable of taking care of myself.”
Face flaming, Tom put the SUV in reverse and backed out of his driveway. “I’m sorry.”
She patted his arm. “It’s okay. You’re a little raw today. I get it. Thanks for offering to have my back. I’d prefer you use your time to track that e-mail, though.”
“Will do.”
