Chapter 14
I hardly slept last night knowing that Delilah was just next door. I welcomed the sunrise when it came and didn’t stick around to see her again.
Today, I recalibrate.
Our Monarch Hills office is empty. Sunlight cuts through the glass, catching on dust motes. Enzo and Ava are meeting with their engagement party planner this morning and then going for a ride, so I should have the place to myself most of the day.
It’s nice to see my twin taking more time for life, for love.
Santi, who also works here regularly, should be with the horses for at least another thirty minutes or more.
Good. I need to catch up with David and the privacy is helpful. I would have rather done all of this with him, face to face in the San Francisco office but now I can’t leave Delilah here on her own. To her own devices.
Keeping her here is a paradox.
It was the fastest way to contain her– and the worst place to put her. Now the problem isn’t across the city. It’s in my house. In my space. Looking like sin in those jeans with her frilly, cute dog at my heel.
Touching her...
I wasn’t as in control as I should have been. I can still feel her racing pulse under my thumb and the way my own rose to match it.
That can’t happen again. I can’t let myself linger on a woman like her.
Even if she hasn’t come here to destroy me, even if that locket eventually reveals the truth, she’s from a world I can never touch again.
To let myself get any closer than we have to for the sake of this charade woudl be foolish.
I force my focus back to what my new fake girlfriend has done to my life.
On one hand, I have full surveillance. On the other, I’ve lied to my family. Since I haven’t brought a woman home since high school, Dad is probably already planning the wedding in his head. And I handed him the story myself.
I know they’ll get over it when we “break up,” when I get out of this damn problem once and for all… but how the hell am I going to do that? The fact that Delilah knows about my past makes it possible for her to hold it against me for as long as she likes.
The thought settles in my throat, heavy as a stone.
One thing at a time.
Last night, after grabbing her car and things, I let her think I put some tracker on her phone when really I know fuck all about doing something like that. At least the laptop I left her can be traced. The guards know to contact me if she tries to leave.
I need to call David. I asked him for no email communication, calls only.
Taking my cell off my desk, I tap on David’s contact and call him.
“Morning, Rio,” he answers.
“Morning. Where’re we at?” I get straight to business, but then, people are used to that from me.
“Right,” David’s keyboard taps in the distance, “the plate that was swapped onto the vehicle at the airport—I tied it to the registered owner through multiple datasets.”
“And?”
“Joseph Rourke. He works at a paint and body shop in Sacramento.”
Sacramento. Home of Iron Covenant.
“Anything else?” I hope like hell there’s more to connect the dots.
David’s been on this for over a week now. I offloaded his other assignments a few days ago. I need to close this loop.
“I wanted to see if Rourke also owns a Jeep. I only got so far with the typical routes and wondered if you could give me insurance clearance?”
As part of the financial crime initiatives we’ve done, we have clearance with most major insurance companies in the US. But additional clearance means new flags in the system that Enzo might see.
Still.
The locket. The way Delilah’s fingers trembled around it. It wasn’t her leverage. She didn’t hold it like something she planned to use against me or like bait.
She clung to it with desperation.
If I have to consider she’s using me somehow, I also have to consider she’s telling me the truth. One thing I’ve learned from my brother in years of working at GhostEye, is that being skeptical and suspicious can protect you, but it rarely solves the case on its own.
You have to explore all angles.
If she’s telling the truth about the women, if she really found that locket in her dad’s personal space, she risked a lot to find it and take it. Then, she risked trespassing just to show me.
I could have called the police, had her removed, questioned, and locked up.
She knew that when she came here.
I stare out through the glass at the pastures, thoroughbreds scattered across the fields, heads down, grazing like nothing in the world has shifted. I see a simple life I haven’t had since I was eighteen.
I drum my fingers on the desk. David traced the plate back to Sacramento. It tracks that the women would be there. If this is a play—Delilah’s, Luther’s, or both— those women would still end up there.
“Rio?” David prompts.
I shift back, grounding myself against the back of my leather desk chair. “Send me the body shop name.”
He does. I pull it up on my PC.
Not much comes up apart from the state registry. No website. No reviews. No images.
A paint and body shop without a digital presence doesn’t stay open long these days.
This one isn’t built for customers.
That tracks for an MC. I’ll need to get more on Joseph Rourke.
“If I open insurance access, how fast can you confirm?” I ask.
“A couple of hours. Maybe a day if it’s clean.”
It won’t be clean. It never is.
I scrub my hand down my face, weighing my options.
Just then, footsteps sound in the hallway, and Santi pushes through the door, cowboy boots clicking on the hardwood floor.
“Working?” He says half to himself and half to me, “Funny way to spend time when you have a woman under your roof.”
He sits on his desk chair, though he’s only perched, so maybe he’ll shove off soon.
I thought I’d have the place to myself. At least it’s a brother who, more or less, doesn’t give a crap about anything that doesn’t have to do with Kat, his boys or the horses.
I stare back at my screen, not that there’s anything to consider on it. My thoughts drift back to Enzo. One flag in the system, a new clearance, and he’ll eventually see it.
And when he does, he’ll ask questions I don’t want to answer.
My gaze drifts back to the window. The land. The quiet. Everything that matters.
Just beyond the green hill is my house, where Delilah is… doing what?
She risked a lot to get here.
And I don’t know why.
I know there’s something at stake for her that involves finding these women. She needs them to get something. I just don’t know what.
“So what do you think?” David’s question interrupts my thoughts.
This isn’t something I can ignore. If these women were taken, and I do nothing, that’s on me. “I’ll get temporary clearance sorted. Twenty-four hours.”
I dart a furtive glance at Santi who, as suspected, isn’t listening in on my call. Thank God. If any of the other boys were here, they’d ask about the temporary clearance.
Temporary isn’t how I usually roll. I wait. I plan. I commit. Nothing about clearance is temporary anyway. Twenty-four hours is enough time for the wrong person to do damage. Not that David’s that guy.
That I know of.
We haven’t dished out trust this easily at GhostEye in the past and it makes me realize what a tightrope I’m on right now, taking a punt on David.
That’s why I can’t have him run an image search on the locket photo. Not yet. And anyway, despite knowing I should work on facts alone, my bones spoke to me last night when she pulled out that locket. There was a plea in her green eyes. Truth.
That’s something I need to get under control. I don’t know how she’s affecting me this way, but there’s no doubt this beautiful vixen cast a momentary spell over me last night because I believed her.
“Thanks for that,” David sounds satisfied. “I’m on it.”
“Talk later.” I hang up, open the system, and set to authorizing the clearance, each box I tick pushing this further than I can take back.
I’m deep in focus when Santi pulls me out.
“Hey. You okay?” He asks.
No.
“Too much coffee,” I answer, annoyed that this problem showed up enough on my surface for him to ask.
I’ve always thought I was better than the rest at hiding unease. But if I know my family well enough to read theirs, maybe they can read mine, too.
Thankfully, he doesn’t push because everyone knows that asking me a question twice won’t change my answer, but he does squint one eye at me as if he knows caffeine isn’t my problem this morning.
I finish signing off on access online and sit back in my chair.
The flag is up. I need answers before Enzo sees it.
Twenty-four hours. That’s all I get.
Time to get answers from David… and the truth out of her.