Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Noah
My work cell rings as I grab it off the charger. Fresh shower, post-workout high—I was just heading out for lunch.
“Noah Bennett.”
“Hey Noah, it’s Quinn. Do you have a minute?”
“Fire away.”
“Hudson asked me to call.” There’s something in her tone that doesn’t sit right. “A background check on you just hit the system.”
“Is that right?”
“Can you think of any reason? I mean, are you applying for other jobs or—”
My half-chuckle cuts her off. “No, Quinn.” I’m smiling, not that she can see. “I’ve been with KOAN for a hot minute. I’ll give it at least a year.”
“Well, we’re looking into it.”
I rub the back of my head, thinking through the ramifications. “Anything pulled on Gabriel?”
“No. Just you. We tracked the request to a private investigator.”
“What’s this PI’s specialty?” I pose the question but I’m pretty sure I know the answer—local PIs are mostly hired by spouses who suspect cheating, but a paranoid spouse worried about a man living in his ex-wife’s home with their daughter might do the same.
“He’s been in business for fifteen years. Doubles as a bounty hunter.”
“What’re you thinking?”
“We’re looking into it. We don’t think it’s anyone fearing Alicia—mainly because we don’t think anyone of that caliber would hire this guy—but if this is just intel gathering, they might.”
“But they didn’t look into Gabriel.”
“Exactly. And he’s been at her office every day. That’s why Hudson wanted me to call you—get your thoughts.”
“My gut says it might be her ex-husband.”
“Huh. Because you’re living in the house?”
“It’s a theory.”
“Is he the jealous type?”
I think back to my one interaction with Richard. He didn’t look pleased to see me, but I read it as concern that Alicia had gotten herself into a situation that might endanger their daughter.
“I don’t have a reliable read on that.”
“Understood. Well, we’ll get the information on who hired him soon enough.” I don’t ask how she plans on doing that as I imagine her methods might not be entirely legal. “Eyes open.”
“Copy that.”
The call continues with polite small talk—me asking if everything’s okay down there and her confirming I’m still doing alright up here. When the call ends, I text Gabriel.
Me: You want lunch?
He spends a lot of his time in the lobby of Alicia’s offices. Sure, some days he’s following her all over DC and even Manhattan, but for the most part, he’s stuck on a dull routine.
He responds in the affirmative and I get his order.
Forty-five minutes later, I’m in the parking lot of Alicia’s DC office, sitting on a bench that faces the office building’s entrance, eating a burger.
“You really think her ex hired a PI?” Gabriel wipes ketchup from the corner of his mouth and angles himself on the bench like he’s studying me to see what he can read in my reaction.
“It’s possible.”
“You, but not me. Because you’re in the house?” Gabriel leans back on the bench, sunglasses reflecting the street. Always scanning. The man doesn’t stop gathering intel, even over a burger.
“Well, has he seen you?”
“That day at the station,” he says. “They were both running hot—shock, guilt, protective instinct. Hard to see past that.” What he’s saying is Richard didn’t seem to notice him.
“You think he’s jealous?” Now that Quinn’s put the idea in my head, I can’t shake the question.
“I’d say he still cares. Enough to hire a PI…” He pauses and swipes his lips again with a balled-up napkin. “Something going on with you two?”
I sniff and scratch at my jaw.
“I mean…if there is, would he know?” Gabe clarifies.
“No.” What’s happened between Alicia and me has been on the down low. But… “We went out to dinner last Friday.”
“Dinner like a date?”
“Her daughter was at a sleepover. I’ll have to ask Quinn when the report was pulled. If it hit after Friday, that narrows it.”
I rub the back of my neck. KOAN isn’t military, but they still expect discipline—and this crosses some invisible line. We’re informal and don’t push employee manuals, but there is a code of conduct and expectations. My choices are looking unwise.
“It’s worth asking Quinn,” Gabe says nonchalantly.
“You’ll know if someone read into the dinner and you sparked something—I mean, it could just be…
” He reaches for a fry and I can tell he’s thinking.
“Nah. If it was just concern for his daughter, he’d ask Alicia for backgrounds on the men in her detail. He wouldn’t go behind her back.”
“Might not be him,” I say. “Remember the back of her Rivian. It was ajar.”
We both look at Alicia’s car, parked in her reserved spot.
“You know, I’ve thought about that, and it’s possible she accidentally pushed a button on the key fob to open the rear and didn’t realize it.”
“No.” I point to the back. “See how it’s split. The key fob can automatically pop the top window, but the bottom gate requires a manual open.”
“It was ajar too?”
“Slightly. Like maybe someone closed it quickly and didn’t stick around to double-check it closed.”
I ball up my burger wrapper and throw it in the bag, then stroll over to Alicia’s vehicle, rubbing a hand over the body.
It’s all locked up, but I’m remembering how I found the back before.
No, someone opened it. If Alicia tried to drive with it ajar, she would’ve seen the red light on the dashboard.
Now if she did get out, open it, fail to close it properly, and just didn’t remember accessing the rear… But this is Alicia we’re talking about, and that’s unlikely.
On a whim, I squat and peer at the undercarriage. It’s dark and I can see through to the curb.
“It’s a nice car,” Gabriel says, joining me. He studies it with me, pulling out his phone and flicking on the light feature. “Crazy to think it runs on a computer. No engine.”
“Right?”
“That tire looks like it’s low on air.” Gabe pushes up and goes around to the passenger side rear wheel and pushes against the tire. “Treads low too.”
I study the four tires noticing how the one tire does look like it’s showing more wear.
“Wait. Come here.”
I join Gabe by the tire and kneel. Following the stream of light from his phone I see a black plastic box attached to the metal frame.
Gabe reaches for it and I stop him. “We touch it and someone’s going to know we’re onto them.”
“It’s a GPS tracker,” he says, stating the obvious.
“Which means someone is definitely monitoring Alicia.” There have been times I’ve thought protective detail was overkill, but now… “Someone’s studying her schedule.”
I pull out my phone and dial Quinn, setting the phone to speaker. She answers on the first ring. “Quinn. I’m with Gabriel. We located a GPS tracker on Alicia’s vehicle.”
“And we found the invoice and payment to the PI. Paid in Bitcoin.”
“So someone doesn’t want to be found.”
“Yep. They also gave a fake name, but that’s not surprising. The Bitcoin—someone’s definitely taking precautions to not be found.”
“And it’s a fake name because you couldn’t find it in the system?”
“Ryan Reynolds,” she says.
“Guess he moonlights between Marvel gigs,” I mutter, stepping back and away from the car. From this angle, the GPS tracker isn’t visible. “Any chance you can trace ownership of the tracker that’s on her car?”
“I’d likely need to loop in law enforcement. We could determine the carrier, but then we’d need access to cell records. Is there any defining information on it?”
Gabriel crouches, studies it without touching.
“It’s attached by a magnet. You see the scrape on the mount?
Whoever placed it wasn’t new at this—he checked the magnetic hold after attaching.
But it’s consumer-grade hardware. Someone who knows enough to hide a tracker, not enough to spoof the signal. ”
Gabriel snaps a pic, and rises.
“We’re going to leave it on,” I say since Quinn can’t see what Gabriel’s doing.
Gabriel meets my gaze—silent agreement. Sometimes bait’s useful.
“Copy,” Quinn says. “Let me check and see what resources we have. Maybe I can find a way to trace the source of the tracker. I’ll update Hudson, but I expect he’ll want to assign extra resources.”
Richard hiring a PI is one thing. A GPS tracker and Bitcoin payments is something else entirely.
I pocket the phone. The afternoon passes humming with traffic, but every sound feels sharper now.
Someone’s been watching her. Studying her patterns, her routines, her car.
While I’ve been focused on keeping her close, someone else has been doing the same thing.