Chapter 7
Grayson
The blaring sound of my cell phone ringing made me want to shoot something, and I came close to doing so the fourth time it rang.
“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled, rolling over and snatching it off the hotel nightstand. When my eyes landed on the caller’s name, I contemplated my career choices.
Jake Murphy Calling.
I put the device to my ear. “This better be good; it’s four in the damn morning,” I barked, sitting up on an elbow, my back aching from the workout I’d put myself through only hours before. I was a night owl, always had been, only going to sleep after midnight, sometimes later. I could survive on four to five hours of sleep. That was my normal, but anything less than that made me want to kill a son of a bitch.
“You think I don’t know that?” Jake clipped. “Got a hit on Hale.”
Suddenly, the amount of sleep I got tonight no longer mattered.
I’d been in Portland for over a week, doing everything in my power to find this woman.
She was smart, but I knew at some point, she would slip up.
There was a certain level of skill you had to have to be in my line of work. My team and I were the best for a reason. This was a big country, with millions of people, thousands of cities to hide in, but eventually, I would find her. I’d been doing this for years and, like clockwork, I managed to track down all targets assigned to me within a week.
Never once had my team failed.
If we had, we wouldn’t be able to charge so fucking much.
This week, for some reason, seemed longer than the last. I couldn’t pinpoint why, and it was reason number forty-seven thousand why I couldn’t wait to get this shit over with and put Carrie Hale behind me for good.
When I’d landed in Portland, Jake updated me on how much money Hale was in possession of.
A little over two million.
He was able to hack into her hidden bank account and, aside from the few thousand dollars she’d taken out right when she arrived in Portland, there were no other charges to her account. Like I said, she was fucking smart for using cash majority of the time.
“Talk to me,” I ordered, sitting up and flipping on the lamp.
“She was pulled over a week ago. Basic traffic stop,” Jake explained.
“A week ago?” I parroted. A whole fucking week?
He grunted. “Outside of Astoria, Oregon. Guess those boys in blue are a little slow to put things in the system up there. She’s driving a used sedan recently purchased at a used car lot in Portland. From there, she drove up and got pulled over by a sheriff.”
“Name,” I demanded, reaching for my laptop.
“Sheriff Michael Humbly.”
I didn’t respond and put his name into our system, pulling him up so I could see for myself.
Michael Humbly, aged twenty-seven, married with two children, born and raised in Astoria.
“I’ll let you know if I find anything else. There is a pending charge on her account, but I can’t see it yet,” Jake explained. “Whatever it is, it was a large amount of money.”
“She’s settling down,” I murmured as I pulled up the town of Astoria.
It was a coastal town just a short drive from my location. Small, but a good place to hide from your past.
“Inform the guys. I’m heading out,” I told him before hanging up the phone.
I stood, the laptop balancing on my forearm as I walked over to the small desk to set it down. I pulled on a pair of cargo’s and a black thermal before dialing my next call. Putting the phone on speaker, I checked my gun and loaded a bullet into the chamber as the phone rang.
“Jones,” Jeremy greeted, not sounding the slightest bit cheerful.
“Got a hit on Hale,” I informed him, strapping the gun to my hip before pulling out my set of blades.
“Where?”
“A little town up north. She hasn’t left Oregon.”
He was quiet for a moment and I heard a door softly close. “How can you be sure?”
I inspected my blades, something I always did before moving locations. “She’s smart. She has mainly been sticking with cash. She pulled a large sum out here in Portland to purchase a car and was pulled over outside Astoria.”
“She bought a car?” Jeremy asked, a hint of surprise in his tone.
“Looks like it. A used sedan from a local car lot. My boy pulled the report, and she wasn’t given a ticket,” I assured him. “You said Chief Harrison gave Hale her wallet and laptop, yes?”
“Yes, because we were trying to do everything to get her to talk. Before she left, she hadn’t spoken a word since the day they arrested her father,” he explained.
I knew all of this. I’d read it in her file. On that note, I twisted my torso to double check the thick file was where I left it two hours ago: on the right side of the bed, her picture laying on top. The moonlight seeped in through the cheap motel blinds, drifting over her soft smile and bright curls.
My jaw tightened.
The woman in that photo and the one from the security video were two different people. That soft smile she wore was fake, the sharpness in her cheekbones from a lack of food, the bags under eyes, poorly hidden by makeup, from a lack of sleep. To everyone else, that was good photo of the woman, but to a man like me, it was just proof of life.
Carrie Hale didn’t know what true happiness was. Her friends couldn’t see that, but I hoped when I had her back in St. Louis, she would be able to find it.
“I’ll have her back to you by the end of the week,” I said, turning back to face the desk, my eyes dropping to the phone.
“Don’t hurt her,” Jeremy warned, his voice hard.
“Hurting women isn’t in my job description,” I assured him, my voice cold. “I’m clean and swift. Nothing more, nothing less.”
He was silent for another moment, and then I heard him sigh. “Don’t scare her either, okay? She has been through enough.”
“So I’ve gathered,” I deadpanned, putting the blades into my bag.
“Alright,” the Oasis leader muttered. “Thank you for the update.”
I hung up the phone because there was nothing more to say and got busy packing up the room. There wasn’t much, just two bags and my laptop. Once that was done, I set the bags by the door and folded back the sheets and comforter to the end of the bed, grabbed the room key, and headed out.
Once I was on the road, I sat back in the driver’s seat of the SUV I’d rented earlier this week and tried to ignore Hale’s file in the passenger seat.
When the sun finally rose, I pulled over for some food and a coffee. Inside the small gas station, there was an advertisement for a local Astoria restaurant called Margie’s. As I stared at the faded poster, my eyes on the smiling faces of the customers, I wondered if Hale had seen this same ad.
I wondered what made her pick Astoria.
That was just one of the many questions running through my mind about this woman.
Another question was she still non-verbal?
My gut twisted at the thought of not hearing her voice. “What the hell?” I muttered, looking away from the poster as my phone rang. I fished it from my pocket and put it to my ear as I headed back to the Tahoe.
“Grayson.”
“The money is from her father,” Hayes informed me without so much as a fucking hello.
My brows came together. “How do you know?”
“Jake has been monitoring her account, and I got curious.”
I grunted in agreement. That was a lot of money for someone to have, especially someone who’d never had a high paying job. “You trying to put Jake out of a job?” I asked.
“You trying to put Dominic out of a job by being a fucking jackass?” my right hand shot back.
My lips twitched, and for the first time in a fucking week, I felt normal. “What did you find?”
“Back in the early 2000s, before Mr. Gelling became mayor of St. Louis, he worked in finance,” he said, telling me something I already knew.
“Go on,” I said, getting into the vehicle and taking a sip of the black coffee. Tasted like shit, but I needed it if I was going to get through this day.
“We knew that, but what we didn’t know was the man invested into a lot of stock,” Hayes said. “He made millions, Gray.”
My jaw jumped as I pulled out of the gas station to get back on the road. In the distance, I could see dark, heavy storm clouds. Great. I hated driving in the fucking rain. “If he made millions, then why pursue a career in politics?” I asked.
“We can find out. That is, if you want me to.”
I knew what Hayes was offering. Of all the dark shit that came from Carrie Hale’s situation, this was the mystery on top. However, in a few days, it would no longer be our problem. “No, leave that to the FBI investigation.”
Hayes, being Hayes, thought nothing of it and moved on. “Anyways, he made a shit ton of money, invested it, and put some aside for Carrie. According to this court document, she didn’t have access to it until she was eighteen.”
That was interesting. An eighteen-year-old girl not touching her trust fund.
“What about her husband? Did he have access to this account?” I asked, curious.
“Negative. Once Carrie turned eighteen, she was the only one on the account. I doubt Robert even knew it existed.”
“What do we have on him?”
Hayes was quiet for a moment. “Not much. You want us to keep digging?”
Hale’s dead husband was none of my business. This was an extraction and drop off, nothing more. “No, don’t bother.” I changed the subject. “Jake tell you I’m on the move?” I asked.
“Yeah. You want us to move to Denver?” he asked.
“No, this will be over before you get your bags packed, fairy princess,” I said, reaching for my coffee again.
“Fuck you,” he shot back. Hayes packed the most out of all of us; even when he was in the military, he always carried more than necessary.
I shook my head, my lips twitching once more before I said, “What is everyone working on?”
“Dominic and Ash are heading up the coast to Boston…” Hayes began, telling me about the newest case, who was involved, and how much these people were willing to pay to find the rat in their company. When he was done, I’d hit the rain and got off the phone.
The last hour of the drive was filled with dreary clouds and by the time I got to Astoria, the worst of it had passed, the sun poking through as I pulled up to the police station.
When I got out of the Tahoe, the smell of the ocean hit me as the sound of seagulls hovered over me. The police station was small and outdated, but the town had to work with what they had. I took note of the three cruisers parked on the side of the building before heading inside.
The Astoria police station was something out of a seventies movie, with brown carpet, orange seats, and horrid hospital lighting. The wood polish on the front desk was chipping, and the older woman sitting behind the counter was reading the local newspaper.
I kept my eyes on her as I waited somewhat patiently for her to notice me. Her gray hair was pulled back into an elegant swoop, making her green sweater stand out more. It was nearly eighty degrees outside, and she was wearing something that belonged in a cheesy holiday film.
When she finally noticed me, she jumped in her seat, putting her hand to her chest as the newspaper crumbled down onto the desk. “Oh, goodness,” she breathed.
I didn’t bother giving her a smile. “I’m here to see Sheriff Humbly,” I told her.
She looked me up and down, her eyes wide as they lingered on my scar. “Do you—do you have an appointment, sir?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
I sighed through my nose. “Is that a problem?”
“No, s-sir,” she stammered, leaning forward and picking up the office phone. I watched as her trembling fingers dialed 236 and held her eyes as she said, “There’s a man here to see you, Sheriff Humbly.” A short pause. “No, he doesn’t have an appointment.” Another pause. “Yes, sir.”
She hung up the phone and looked back up at me. “He’ll be right out. You’re more than welcome to take a seat.”
“I’ll stand,” I told her, turning to walk towards the wall, leaning my shoulder against it as I folded my arms over my chest. As I waited, I made sure to look at every single officer on duty, memorizing where their desks were, taking note of how they responded to my presence.
A few minutes later, Sheriff Humbly appeared. He was ten years younger than me and still had life in his brown eyes, so I was impressed when he cut the bullshit and held out his hand. “Sheriff Humbly, sir,” he greeted as I took his hand.
“Joseph Grayson,” I returned, shaking his hand once before he dropped it.
“How can I help you today Mr. Grayson?”
I got right to it. “Carrie Hale.”
Suddenly, his good boy, hometown charm melted, and I got a good look at the cop underneath. His eyes flashed as his jaw tightened. “What about her?”
“We can do this in your lobby, or we can discuss this in your office,” I offered, holding his questioning gaze.
He nodded once. “Follow me.”
I ignored the skeptical looks from his peers as we walked by the bullpen and made a right into his office. Law enforcement didn’t like me or what I did, mainly because I was better at their jobs most of the time.
Humbly walked around to his desk, gesturing to the two seats in front of it before bracing his hands on the wooden surface. I ignored his gesture and leaned back against the door. He didn’t seem to mind. “Now, what do you want with Carrie Hale?” he demanded to know.
“You’re a little young to have an office, aren’t you?”
He tensed. “I don’t see how my career advancement is any of your business, Mr. Grayson.”
I folded my arms back over my chest. “Just an observation.”
Humbly held my eyes for a moment before he shook his head, sighing. “Became an officer right out of high school and worked my way up. Now, I’m second in command.”
“Your wife, Sarah, must be proud.”
That got to him.
He slowly rose back up to his full height. “You have three seconds to tell me what you want with Carrie Hale, and you’re going to keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth, that clear?”
Suddenly, the urge to put a bullet in his skull faded.
“Sheriff Humbly, I’m the owner of Red Snake Investigations,” I informed him. “I’ve been hired to find Carrie Hale and escort her back to St. Louis.”
“St. Louis?”
I nodded once. “I understand that you pulled her over outside of town about a week ago. So, what I need from you is anything you have on her, and if you know where she is, to tell me where.”
The young man studied me for a long time. “I’m going to need some identification.”
Without a word, I pulled out my driver’s license, business card, and the contract signed by Jeremy Jones. I made my way to him and dropped them on his desk. I watched as he picked them up, reading over the contract, and I walked over to the bookcase that housed pictures of his children, his wife, and their dog. I also took note of the awards he’d earned from the town.
Michael Humbly was a good man, there was no denying that.
However, if he refused to cooperate, he would find out how easy it was for me to break good men.
When I turned back around to face him, I said, “As you can see, I am not here to cause trouble. I’m here on a job and nothing more.”
He looked up from the contract. “Who is Jeremy Jones?”
“He’s an old friend of Carrie’s. They grew up together.”
“Why does he want her back?” he asked. “Is she in danger?”
“No.”
“Does this have to do with her dead husband?”
So he did know her.
I lifted my chin. “She tell you about that to get out of her ticket?” I guessed.
His jaw hardened. “Carrie’s a good woman.”
“Never said she wasn’t.”
“Is there a bounty on her head?” he pressed.
“She’s a mark, Humbly. Jeremy Jones is paying me to bring her back,” I told him.
He looked away from me for a moment. “And when I tell you where she is, then what?”
“I escort her back home.”
“Just like that?”
I nodded. “Yeah, just like that.”
“And if she refuses?” he pressed.
Now my jaw was getting tight. “She won’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“She’ll want to go back home to her friends,” I assured him.
Was it the truth?
No. I knew in my gut the last place she wanted to be was in St. Louis, but Jeremy was paying me a good deal of money to bring her back.
“This is going to be the last time I ask this, Humbly, so make sure you’re paying attention,” I said, stepping closer to the desk and pulling out my gun. “Where is Carrie Hale?”