I’m On Your Porch
I’M ON YOUR PORCH
MORGAN
After a few hours of restless sleep, Morgan decided sitting around and waiting was not going to work for her. She left Shadow snoring on the bed, got up, got dressed, and pulled up the county assessor’s website while sipping coffee and nibbling a protein bar.
It took about four minutes to discover Patrick Callaghan’s address. Another four to grab her jacket, her backpack, keys, and be on the road.
Yes, it was early.
Yes, she was planning to show up on his doorstep unannounced.
Presumptuous?
Again, yes.
So she went a few blocks out of her way and picked up coffee and donuts. That seemed like the kind of thing a decent person would do.
The Victorian sat back from the road at the end of a gravel drive, bigger and older than she'd pictured. It was a work in progress, with none of the polished restoration of his parents’ house.
White paint was going gray at the eaves.
A deep covered porch ran the length of the front face, the railings showing fresh-scraped wood in patches where someone had been working the old paint off.
Framed by old trees and iron fencing, it wasn’t unattractive. On the contrary, the place had a stately elegance that she found instantly appealing.
It was only when she saw other vehicles that she realized she hadn’t taken into consideration the possibility that Patrick didn’t live alone. She almost turned around and drove somewhere else to wait for his text.
Almost.
She parked along the street and walked the driveway, her soft footfalls inaudible over the chirping of birds and the chattering of squirrels. The drapes and curtains were drawn, with no sign of activity within.
Showing up unannounced was one thing. Banging on the door this early was something else entirely. As anxious as she was to hear what Patrick had found, she still had some manners.
Climbing the porch steps, she zeroed in on an Adirondack chair at one end facing the drive. She set the box of donuts on one wide arm, her coffee on the other, and sat down. It was a nice property. Private. Wider than the surrounding ones. The grass was mown, the bushes trimmed.
She checked her phone. Nothing from Patrick yet.
She was glad she’d opted for the insulated cups; the morning air was crisp.
The front door opened.
The man who came out wasn't Patrick. He was close to Patrick's height but broader—the build of someone who worked manual labor and did it seriously.
Tanned, even this late in the season. Blond hair gone a little long at the collar.
He had a tool belt over one shoulder and a travel mug in his opposite hand, and he stopped cold when he registered her in the chair.
She looked back at him steadily.
He scanned the drive, presumably looking for a car and finding none. Then back to her. The expression on his face was not hostile but guarded.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Patrick.”
A beat. “Does he know that?”
She considered the question and its implications. “Not yet.”
Something moved across his face. She wondered how often he’d had to deal with women showing up unannounced, and what their behavior had been like compared to hers.
She could see him running it. Young woman waiting on the porch with a to-go pack of coffee and donuts. Not rattled. Not cow-eyed. Just patiently waiting.
She let him work it out.
He descended two steps, shifted the tool belt, and looked at her with a directness she respected even if it was mildly skeptical. “I’m Garrett.”
“Morgan.”
He set his mug on the railing and looked at her with frank, reassessing attention. “The MDI from Philly.”
“That’s me.”
The last of the wariness dropped. “He’s up. Give him a few minutes.” He started down the steps, then paused and looked back. “You can wait inside, if you like.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
He looked like he wanted to protest—probably had the same innate small town chivalry instinct Patrick had—then thought better of it. Nodding, he loaded the tool belt into the massive F350, got in, and drove out.
A few minutes later, a dog appeared around the corner of the house from the direction of the back yard.
Large, dark-coated, with the loose-limbed authority of an animal entirely at home on this property.
He made his way up the porch steps without hurry, crossed to her chair, and put his nose into her palm.
She scratched behind his ears. He leaned into it and closed his eyes.
“Wow. You’re easy,” she told him.
He tilted his head so she could reach the other side.
She’d been working on his chin for a few minutes when something registered in the edge of her vision that made her go still. A presence.
She looked up.
A man with dark hair and dark eyes was at the far end of the porch, one shoulder against the post, arms loose, a mug in his right hand. He was in the shadow of the eave, still in a way that few living things were.
She regarded him. He regarded her. The dog shifted against her knee, demanding more scritches.
“Have you been standing there the whole time?” she asked.
He raised his mug in a minimal acknowledgment. His expression was calm. Not unfriendly.
He didn’t offer his name. She didn’t offer hers. Her phone buzzed.
Patrick: Leaving in 10. You up?
Morgan: Yes. I’m on your porch
Footsteps sounded from inside, crossing the floor toward the front of the house, and then the door opened.
Patrick stood in the doorway in a dark henley with his phone in his hand. The expression on his face when he found her in his Adirondack chair with his housemate’s dog on her knee was… well, kind of cute, actually.
“How did you know where I live?” he started.
She smiled.
The corner of his mouth moved. “County assessor?”
“Yes. I brought coffee and donuts.” She lifted the carryout box to show him.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know. If you don’t want them, I think this guy might.” She looked down at the dog. Funny, she’d never considered herself a dog person before, but she’d befriended two of them since arriving in Pine Ridge.
“No doubt,” Patrick said. “Bruno’s got a sweet tooth.”
“Is he yours?”
“Wade’s,” Patrick said. “But he tolerates all of us.”
So the dark shadow guy was Wade. Morgan looked back to the post, only to find no one there.
“Would you like to come inside? Or maybe you’d prefer to go somewhere else?”
“Here is fine, as long as you’re okay with it.”
“I’m okay with it. Fair warning though—it’s not as nice as my parents’.”
She stood, the dog stepping aside with dignified patience. “Not many places are.”
He smiled. “That’s kind of you to say. It was my great-grandmother’s place, and restoring it was important to my mother.”
Morgan waved at the house. “Like mother like son?”
“Newer places just don’t have the same character.”
She agreed with him.
He held the door open for her and waved her into the small foyer.
Even in the midst of renovation, Morgan could see the appeal of the place.
High ceilings, wide-plank floors, a staircase with a turned banister, and the kind of proportions that new construction didn’t have.
More importantly, it looked as if the work they were doing was more about restoration than replacement.
The plaster walls were being patched and repainted above the wainscoting, the hardwood floors and trim stripped back and refinished, brass hardware that looked original.
She turned in the entry to get a better look at the leaded glass fanlight above the door and found Wade behind her, moving silently toward the back of the house. It should have been creepy. It wasn’t.
“It’s a work in progress,” Patrick said almost apologetically.
“I can see that. Are you doing all the work yourself?”
“Me and the other guys who live here. My cousins Declan and Garrett. Wade.”
“Looks like you know what you’re doing.”
“Garrett does. He’s been working construction and renos with his dad for years. The rest of us just do what he says.”
Morgan didn’t believe that for a moment.
She followed him into the kitchen. It was the room that had gotten the most attention—and the most use.
A long table ran the length of one wall, substantial and scarred, ringed by mismatched chairs.
Mugs on hooks, an industrial sized coffee maker, a dry-erase board behind the door with a column of entries written by several hands.
She couldn’t completely hide her smile as she took in the takeout containers and boxes of cereal lining the counters.
“Tell me you live with a bunch of guys without telling me you live with a bunch of guys,” she said drily.
“You didn’t strike me as the type of woman who subscribed to gender stereotypes.”
“And I thought you’d be… neater.”
He laughed. “Touché. Please, sit.”
She did, putting the coffees and the donuts on the surprisingly clean table. Patrick took the chair at the corner of the table rather than across from her. Close enough that it felt more like a collaboration than a briefing. That was what they were doing, right? Collaborating?
She removed the plug from the coffee lid and took a sip, glad it was still hot.
The dog—Bruno—had followed them in and settled under the table with his chin on her foot.
“You didn’t have to drive all the way down here. I would have come to you,” Patrick said.
“I know. I didn’t want to wait.” She looked at him, taking in his damp hair, freshly shaven jaw, and tired eyes. “Looks like you didn’t sleep much either.”
“No.”
He reached into the jacket draped over the adjacent chair and produced a folded sheet of paper. He smoothed it on the table between them. “Without further ado.”
She leaned forward, anticipation a tangible thing, read the name at the top, and frowned. Anthony Varro.
“Does the name mean anything to you?”
Morgan shook her head. After a slew of dead ends and forum threads and a face without an identity, someone had put a name on the man she’d found on a steel table in Pine Ridge. She read the rest of it carefully: address, employment history, prior record. She read it twice.
“The address,” she said.
“It’s a mail drop. Commercial service out of Trenton.” Patrick leaned forward, forearms on the table. “The street address looks real until you look it up.”
“Let me guess. The consulting firm is a shell?”
He nodded. “Minimal web presence, no clients listed, and the phone number isn’t attached to a legitimate operation.” He paused. “The prior record is one count of disorderly conduct from eleven years ago, reduced to a fine.”
“Just enough to look plausible.”
He beamed at her. “Exactly.”
She sat back. She’d seen this kind of paperwork before—not often, but enough to see it for what it was.
In her four years as an MDI, she’d worked cases that occasionally brushed up against organized crime, and she’d learned to recognize a probable constructed identity.
They followed a similar pattern: the mail drop, the shell company, the one minor charge that made the background check feel plausible.
Her mother’s family had more than a few toes dipped into that pond.
This had the hallmarks of all of that.
“Everything points to this guy being hired muscle. The kind who does low- to mid-level operational work.” She looked at the fabricated name above the fabricated history. “He wasn’t here by accident.”
“No.”
“And whatever he was here for connects to Philadelphia. To my case. To me.”
“That’s what it looks like,” he agreed, watching her closely, waiting for her to explain why hired muscle from Philadelphia would have followed her to Pine Ridge.
As if she knew.
The kitchen was quiet, the only sound the tick of the clock on the wall.
The real question was, assuming Varro was exactly what he appeared to be, who killed him? And why? Because whoever took him out was a real pro.
That was even more disconcerting than the not-coincidence that put Varro in Pine Ridge.
She picked up her coffee.
“You didn’t post any of this to the forum,” she said.
He shook his head. “I wanted to talk to you first.”
Warmth settled behind her ribcage. It might seem like a small thing in the grand scheme of things.
He could have posted the Varro identity the same way Halcyon had posted the crime scene photograph, and the forum would have done what the forum did—worked it fast, in parallel, with a dozen angles she couldn’t cover alone.
That would have been reasonable. Expected.
That would have been completely in line with how DeepTrace operated.
He hadn’t.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
He held her gaze for a moment—just long enough to register that she meant it, not so long that it became awkward, then bit into a chocolate glazed. “So. What do you want to do with it?”
She considered this. Silently appreciated that he was giving her the choice.
“Post it to the forum,” she said finally. “If there’s anything to find, they will.”
“And you?” he asked carefully, concern and something that looked like protectiveness dancing in his eyes. “Are you okay?”
“For the moment,” she replied. “I’m not seeing the big picture though, and it’s frustrating. Too many missing pieces.”
“Maybe you’re looking at it too closely. Maybe you need to take a step back and let your mind work it out. Shower theory, and all that.”
Her lips quirked. “Shower theory?”
“Yes. You know, you rack your brain trying to figure something out. Then, when you’re standing under the water not thinking about anything in particular, the answer comes to you.”
“Are you seriously telling me to go take a shower right now?” she asked, genuinely amused.
“No. I’m saying that maybe we should do something else to get your mind off of this for a little while.”
The fact that he’d said “we” and not “you” wasn’t lost on her.
The dog—Bruno—had migrated from under the table to beside her chair, done with subtle hints, now shamelessly making a plea for a donut.
“He likes you,” Patrick said.
“I suspect he likes anyone who gives him donuts.”
“No,” he said. “He really doesn’t. It’s you.”
Flushing slightly, she looked down at Bruno, who met her gaze evenly as if to say, He’s right.
She was thinking how to respond to that when Patrick’s phone buzzed on the table.
Patrick looked down at the screen. “It’s from my uncle.”