Chapter Eleven
Sawyer
Several things needed to happen.
First, I needed Riya occupied. Quite frankly, even just knowing she was sitting up in my place all day and night, touching my shit, naked in my shower, touching herself in my guest bed—yeah, it was problematic.
I could barely focus on any cases for longer than ten minutes before an image of her would pop into my head.
At least knowing she was over at Barrett’s would make it less possible for me to say ‘fuck it’ to work, storm upstairs, and take her standing up against the kitchen counter, bent over the arm of the couch, buried deep in her throat in the bathroom, watching her fuck me hard and fast, her perfect tits bouncing as she rode me.
“Fuck,” I growled, taking off down the stairs, knowing she was a couple of minutes behind me still.
Barrett didn’t particularly want a secretary or maid or whatever the fuck Riya would end up being over there. But I needed her safe, and while Barrett hadn’t had the extensive training that me or Brock had, he was sharp and had good reflexes.
So she would be over at his tiny office, hip-deep in spilled coffee, old files, and heaps of bullshit.
And I would be able to get some shit done.
Including looking into Michael Robinson.
Quite frankly, he was the shadiest of the bunch.
None of the others were any kind of threat, but the fact that he had done something like lying to his wife about some conference and then stayed with Riya for a couple of weeks—yeah, that wasn’t shit normal guys did.
It was high risk. He was bound to be found out by one or both women. Sane guys didn’t risk two good women.
But first, I wanted to drag my ass back to the clinic and talk to some of the other employees. The way Maryanne acted didn’t sit right with me. And it just so happened that it was her day off.
I drove over and parked, getting out, and greeting Ginny again, asking if anyone else was around to talk to.
“Ah, sure. Tammy and Jake are here.”
“And Tammy and Jake are…”
“Oh, Dr. Tammy Watson and Jake Shelton. Jake is a tech. Just let me see if they’re free,” she offered, going down the hall.
“Hey,” I said, nodding my head at the middle-aged, scraggly-haired janitor as he passed, making a mental note to talk to him if I got nothing out of the doctor and the tech.
Sometimes if the professionals were of no help, the blue-collar guys were where to go.
People didn’t think to watch what they said in front of the maids or janitors or delivery guys. They were a wealth of inside secrets.
“Mr. Anderson,” Ginny’s sweet voice called, and I turned and followed her down the hall. “Dr. Watson is free,” she said, holding an arm out.
Dr. Watson was a relatively young, attractive blonde woman with sharp, catlike features and piercing light gray eyes.
She had her hands tucked into her white doctor jacket, making her look almost nervous.
“Mr. Anderson,” she said, taking my hand and shaking it hard.
“I hear you have some questions for me.”
“Yes,” I said, taking the steel rolling stool she gestured toward as she took one stationary one. “About Riya Sweeney.”
“Oh,” she said, looking almost a little disappointed. “Well, I don’t know how much help I will be about that.”
“Why not?”
“She seemed really sweet and competent. Everyone raved about her. But I was brought in, oh, I don’t know… a week before she, ah, left. I was Dr. Robinson’s replacement.”
Bing-fucking-o.
Riya left out a pretty huge key detail in that story. And it was too important, too prominent a factor in the relationship for it to have simply slipped her mind. She deliberately left it out.
I didn’t like that shit.
And we would be having words about it.
“Oh, really? Where did the other doctor go?”
“Oh, um…” she said, squinting a little like she was trying to remember.
“Pennsylvania,” the janitor said, taking the bag out of one of the waste baskets. “To work things out with his wife.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Dr. Watson said, nodding. “Sorry, I told you I wouldn’t be much help. If you want to wait for Jake, he’s just in with a client…”
“Actually, Dr. Watson, you’ve given me all I need. Thank you,” I said, shaking her hand. “You too,” I said to the janitor, who nodded at me.
It didn’t exactly narrow it down a whole fuckuva lot.
If we had a bunch of Michael Robinsons in New Jersey, then there was bound to be a bunch of them in Pennsylvania as well.
But that being said, knowing he was a doctor and that he had worked at the clinic, it was plenty for Barrett to use to dig.
He would break into their records if need be, find his social, track him down through the DMV, and give me an address.
On that note, I shot a text to Barrett about the new job for him and reminded him to not be a dick to Riya, that she was dealing with some shit. Besides, I didn’t need her already icy when I got home to confront her about the massive omission in her story.
Maybe, in her defense, she thought this Mike guy wasn’t capable of doing something to her.
But if she thought that, she grossly underestimated how shitty jilted men could be.
The fact of the matter was, a third of all women who are murdered in the United States are murdered by their partners or ex-partners.
That was a huge number of innocent women who did nothing but love someone.
And it was an equal number of seemingly normal men who blew their fucking tops over small shit.
You could never play down what angry or upset men were capable of.
“She’s touching everything,” he answered the phone on a frustrated growl.
“Yeah, that’s her job,” I said, smiling at the fact that she was driving him a little nuts.
“And she told me to quit my bitching and let her shred my research notes.”
“You mean the completely useless research notes that have already made it into the permanent files and are actually just garbage?”
“You’re loving this,” he accused, and he knew he was right.
“Yeah, I am.”
“You could have put her to work for you.”
“Marg would fill her head with shit she doesn’t need to know, and you know it. Besides, you can’t keep meeting clients in that hellhole. Did you get my text?”
“Yeah, I’m on it. No. No. Not that,” he said, and I could hear him grabbing for papers, which made one of his endless used coffee cups fall and shatter.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Riya’s frustrated voice groaned. “I thought your brother was impossible. But you take the freaking cake.”
I smiled at that, liking that I maybe tried her nerves.
“I’m on it, Sawyer. But I am sending her home at five on the dot so I can focus.”
“Whatever you got to do,” I agreed, knowing I would be there waiting for her.
We had some shit to discuss.