Chapter 25
RJ
Now that I have access to the whole Westerhouse network, it seems less important to reach out to Mattie. Especially now that Clara has a phone.
Clara’s been careful with her texts, but it seemed safe to pass on her parents’ current address after she asked—a one-bedroom apartment closer to her mom’s brother, but much farther from her dad’s work.
That woman makes my blood boil. I’m glad she’s not in Clara’s life anymore. I’m still not sold on her dad either. How much of what made Clara vulnerable to the likes of Bryce could he have prevented if he’d just looked at his wife a little closer?
Clara left their house believing she wasn’t good enough as herself. And Bryce took that and twisted it, breaking her farther. At least now she’s found herself, no thanks to the people in her life before all this.
Despite the feeling of futility, when my Saturday alarm goes off this week, I message Mattie, feeling responsible for the girl, the same as I do my own sisters.
She responds almost immediately.
Hiya stalker!
After the last few weeks of stilted texts, it’s clear she’s in a good mood today.
If I were to stalk anyone, it wouldn’t be you. It’d be Clara. 100%
Ha. Way to take a girl down a peg, big-brother-in-law-guy.
I’m not marrying Trips.
But you’d marry Clara given half a chance, and she’s marrying my brother, so I figure that’s close enough.
You’re crazy, girl.
Want your update, or are you going to keep insulting me?
Hit me.
With pleasure. Only you’re not here, so I guess I’ll have to appease my violent tendencies with a saber and give you information instead.
…I’m waiting
Clara and my dad keep having closed-door meetings.
Trips gets let out more often than before, so he must have paid whatever price Father decided he owed.
Wedding planning sounds boring as all hell—Father has already insinuated that he has some men he wants me to meet at the event.
Which, yuck. Oh, and we’re going back to the orchestra tonight. Yay.
What would it be like to be a normal teenager?
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Trust me.
I’d rather find out for myself.
Signing out. Boyfriend’s here. I won’t be back until after Thanksgiving.
Got it. Stay safe.
Ditto.
I can’t help but smile as I click out of the conversation, Trips’ little sister making me chuckle in a way her brother never could. I’m pulling up the tracking data on Bryce when there’s a knock on my door.
Walker marches in, a thick packet of paper in his gloved hands. “I’m done. The last few are a little rushed, but I figure that sells it. Either way, I’m free to help you with internet stalking or to get better at safecracking, whatever we need.”
The rush of words isn’t like him, so I spin in my chair, looking him over.
There are streaks of gray paint down his arms, a splash of crimson by his temple, and a seriousness about him I’m not used to seeing. “Are you okay?”
“I’m ready to get this done. I’m sick of waiting, and I sure as shit don’t want to go home in a few days for Thanksgiving, even though I know I’m going to go no matter what.
Also, I’m tracking down another OB willing to sell a shot for the right amount.
That’s a ticking clock we don’t need, and with Trips trusting his guard, I feel pretty good about getting it to her.
A good contingency we can use for once.”
“Do you want another project?”
“That’s why I knocked.”
This curt, work-focused Walker is uncomfortable, but as it’s what we need, I guess I can’t judge.
“We have a chance to meet with them tonight. But we need a way for them to sneak your work into the house. It’ll be a lot easier for them to bring sheaves of paper into that place than for one of us to do it during the wedding. Thoughts?”
His face screws up. “I have some, but I think we should go to Black and get Jansen in on this. It’s more his skill set than ours.”
It’s not what I want to do—the need to tie up loose ends with Trips’ brother and Bryce screams at me louder every day, but Walker’s right. The best problem solver on the team is halfway across the city, so the three of us are going to have to figure this out ourselves.
When we head out, the clouds are dark enough that it’s almost night; the wind cuts between the houses like it’s seeking someone’s death. Our tail has gotten lazier the longer he’s been around, and after a quick conversation with Walker, I dash back to the house and up to Trips’ safe.
There’s hardly any cash in there, but a diamond engagement ring worth more than many mortgages is just as useful. We don’t want the heat from pawning it. But putting that heat on someone else could be to our benefit.
I rush back down the stairs, tapping on the window of the car that’s been dogging us for a month. The guy seems annoyed as he rolls the window down, Walker stepping up to take the lead, his smile so sharp it could cut.
“Hi there. Have you found anything interesting about us yet?”
The guy smiles back. “Sorry, man, but I’m on retainer. And the guy’s paying good money.”
“He wants us to lead you to a guy with long blond hair, right?”
The PI nods. “Yup. So far, you’ve disappeared on me often enough that I know you’re probably visiting the guy, but you’re both surprisingly slippery. Where’d you learn that?”
“The blond guy. So, how much are you getting paid for this gig?”
“A fat buck.”
“And if we paid you?”
“You’d have to have deep pockets to beat what I’m getting.”
I shift my weight, and the guy looks at me. “You think you can buy me?”
It takes more effort than I’d like, but I say what I need to say. “We’re not asking you to stop watching us. What we are saying is that if we gave you a little incentive, if we signaled we didn’t want you to follow, would you leave us be for a while?”
“How much are we talking?”
“How much would it take?” Walker asks.
“Listen, kids. I don’t even know why I’m out here, following you lot and looking for a blond guy. And frankly, I don’t care. What I know is that the guy who hired me has the kind of muscle that makes a man think twice about crossing him.”
Walker and I share a look, and I take a moment to figure out what tactic might work.
Thinking like Clara would, like she taught us, I stare at the man.
Overweight, with trash littering his car.
As he practically lives in it right now, that makes sense.
Nothing we can use there. It’s not until he rubs his nose that I see a detail we can use.
“How long have you been divorced?” I ask, noting the unusually thin ring finger he’s sporting.
He jolts, my stare coupled with my question making the guy nervous. “Long enough for it to hurt less. Long enough for me to forgive her for doing what she had to do.”
I take a risk. “The blond guy, he went to visit his girlfriend. In secret. Mr. Westerhouse doesn’t approve of the two of them.”
“So, what? He wants me to find him. Who cares?”
Walker takes over, figuring out where I’m going with this. “You’re right about the kind of muscle, money, and power that Westerhouse has. He plans to make an example of the blond guy. We’re keeping him safe, so when his girl finally gets free, he’ll be there, in one piece, for her.”
“You’re not making me want to cross the guy.”
“You wouldn’t be. You’d just be sneezing at opportune moments.
” Walker’s smile turns hard, and I know that whatever he says next is going to push the guy to a decision.
“And you’d get paid for the mistake. Otherwise, we can make you fail completely.
You’ve seen what we can do when we’re trying to have you not follow us.
Trust me when I say we can make your life much worse. And possibly much shorter.”
“You think you’re scary, kid?”
He shakes his head. “We’re not. But Westerhouse is, and I know he doesn’t like failure. In fact, I know that at that house, failure can be terminal.”
We wait as the PI thinks it over. “How much for these opportune sneezes?”
I pull out the ring, the diamond dim in the gathering storm.
He scoffs. “How the hell do I know that’s worth anything?”
“Because we got it from Westerhouse.”
He shakes his head. “So it’s useless to me.”
Walker steps in, figuring it out for me. “I’m sure you’ve got somebody who you wouldn’t mind risking a rough go to pawn this. And this thing is worth a shit ton. Even splitting the cash, you’ll be making out.”
He stares at the ring, then holds out a hand. I drop it into it, and he takes a key, scratching along the diamond to test it. Of course, it stays as smooth as ever.
“Fine.” The man tucks the gaudy landmine into the front pocket of his jacket. “Pleasure doing business. I take it you’d like me to sneeze now?”
“Yup, and if we come out and tug an ear, we’d love it if you sneeze again. Otherwise, feel free to follow us around and take all the boring pictures you’d like.”
The man huffs out a laugh. “I think I’m getting the better end of this deal. Westerhouse can’t be that bad.”
“If you believe that, you should probably do deeper research into your clients,” I mumble as Walker and I step away.
Black is much closer when we don’t have to double back every two blocks, and after a couple of misdirections, just in case, it looks like the guy is keeping his word.
Jansen’s thrilled to see us, practically dancing as he shows us all the work he’s done on the place, and I have to admit it’s not bad.
The kitchen is bright and clean, the cabinets sanded down and stained a warm tan color.
The stairs have no holes in them, and as far as I can see, the walls don’t have any holes either.
They’re not painted yet, but it’s an improvement.
“Where’s Emma?” Walker asks after the tour, pulling out drinks for us from his bag, a kettle already warming on the still disgusting stove for Jansen.
“She’s at work.”
“Is that smart?” I ask.
Jansen pushes himself onto the kitchen island, sitting cross-legged.
“She scoped it out, and it looked safe. They’re happy to have her back.
She’s been texting once an hour to check in the whole shift, and so far, nobody seems to be looking for her there.
So unless something changes, she should be fine.
With what Clara said, they don’t even know her full name. ”
I take one of the folding chairs, opening my Mountain Dew. “There was sound in that video feed. But you’re right. We only called her Emma, and who knows how many Emmas there are at the U.”
Walker’s kombucha sits unopened in his hand. “Let us know if that changes, though. If we let something happen to Emma, I’m not sure Clara would forgive us.”
“She would,” Jansen says. Then he adds what we all know. “Eventually.”
“Anyway, we’re here with a different problem,” I say.
Jansen leans forward, his attention locking on. “A problem that takes a thief?”
“Maybe,” Walker says, finally claiming one of the other chairs. “We need to get my drawings to Clara and Trips. Without the guards or his family seeing.”
“When?”
I take another sip. “Hopefully tonight. They’ll be at the orchestra.”
“Could we plant them in the car?”
Walker opens the kombucha, still not drinking. “We could, but how would they get them into the house?”
Silence meets this issue. “What about just bringing them to the house?” Jansen asks.
Walker scoffs. “You want to break in again? How’d that go the last time?”
Jansen leans back, staring at the ceiling. “It was going fine until somebody tried to shoot Clara. You’d have done the same thing.”
“I never would have been there to begin with,” Walker snipes, and I realize for the first time the weight he’s been bearing on our behalf. He’s run out of rope. I promised I’d be a better teammate, and I’m not doing my part.
I cut in. “Hey. Focus, you two. Could you get in and out clean, Jay? They’ve got tight security, we can’t mess with the cameras yet, and we can’t get close enough to see possible gaps. Especially not before tonight.”
Jansen flops onto his back, stretched along the top of the counter in a way that would make both Walker and Trips cringe. “Probably not,” he says.
I glance at our artist, and he’s carefully avoiding looking at the whole-ass human spread across a food prep area.
Focusing back on our problem, I have to admit I’m not much help. I know a dozen ways to get information in and out of secure networks, but I’ve got exactly zero ideas about how to get a fat pile of paper into a secure building.
Jansen pops up, his grin bright as his eyes droop. “Their coats!” he proclaims, assuming we’ve followed the same path he has.
Walker and I just stare at him, uncertain of what he’s going to say next.
“We can sew the papers into the lining of their coats.”
I’m blinking at him, still trying to catch up when Walker laughs. “Dude, that’s genius. They’ll leave their coats at the coat check for the whole performance. That would give us a ton of time to stitch them in.”
Jansen hops from the counter, grabbing a pen and writing notes on the wall, which, weird, but it’ll be painted over anyway, so I guess it’s safe. “So, we’ll need thread and needles. What else?”
“A seam ripper,” I say, thinking back to my mom grumbling every time I outgrew my church clothes a week after she bought them, ripping out the seams and restitching them a little bigger, to buy time before we needed to go shopping again.
“Okay. Anything else?”
“How do they get them out?” Walker asks.
“Two seam rippers,” I say. “One for each of them. Divide the papers, double the chances of some drawings getting where they need to be.”
“Nice!” Jansen says, dancing around the card table. “This will work. Can we all go to the orchestra? I want to see Clara again.”
Walker and I share a look. “I don’t see why not. I’ll send her a message so she knows we’re coming. But don’t get your hopes up. We might not actually get to talk to her. That’ll depend on their ability to break free from the rest of the family.”