Chapter 23 Tallus
Tallus
Iwoke when Diem slipped from bed in the pre-dawn, making his usual escape to the gym.
I considered my pledge to start exercising and quickly dismissed it.
People said a lot of things they didn’t mean at the height of anxiety, and I was much happier embracing laziness.
Echo barely stirred, and I shuffled closer to cuddle with her since my wall of heat had abandoned me.
Diem fumbled around, dressing in the dark, and paused before creeping from the bedroom. “Are you awake?”
“Define awake.”
He approached and sat on the edge of the bed, petting Echo once before resting his hand on my hip. “I gave Darcy your leftover pain pills from last year. I couldn’t stand the whining anymore. If he wakes before I’m back—”
I snorted. “It’s Saturday, and he’s practically a teenager, D. He won’t.”
Diem chuckled. “Yeah. I guess. I’ll fill his script while I’m out. God knows, he won’t have the money to pay for it. Do you want me to put coffee on before I go?”
“Nah, I’ll get it.”
He didn’t leave, but he didn’t speak for a long time, either.
I couldn’t see well enough in the dark to analyze his expression, but I got the feeling he was working up to something.
Diem would never be a masterful wordsmith, but his days of grunting like a caveman had been left in the past. He communicated, but he did it at his own pace, in his own time.
“I have that meeting later this morning.”
“I remember.”
“I might take him with me.”
“You can’t force an addict to get clean, Diem. It has to be on them.”
He exhaled heavily but didn’t respond, staring intently at the bedcovers. He knew I was right. “I can see where he’s headed, but no amount of warning will help.”
“Not likely.” I shifted and freed a hand from beneath the covers, resting it on Diem’s thigh. “A positive role model might.”
Another soft laugh. “Oh yeah? Where can I find one of those?”
“Ha, ha.”
“You’ll be okay with him?”
“It’s one hour, Guns. What could possibly go wrong?”
“Fuck.” He bent to kiss me, and I tasted his grin. “Why do you tempt fate?”
“Life is boring otherwise. Trust me. I can handle his punk ass.”
“Now I am worried.”
I bumbled from bed when the front door announced Diem’s departure.
After a pitstop in the bathroom, I staggered to the kitchen and prepared coffee.
Rummaging through the cupboards and drawers, I located the jar of peanut butter and a spoon.
I wasn’t ready for breakfast, but I needed a hit.
Two heaping scoops later, I was satiated.
Old habits died hard, but Diem wasn’t around to bitch, so whatever.
He had cigarettes, and I had peanut butter.
At least my addiction didn’t come with gruesome images on a warning label.
With a hot mug of java—dressed with heavy cream and way too much sugar—and the office laptop, I sat in the dark at the kitchen table. God forbid I wake the house guest. The last thing I needed before I was properly caffeinated was a bratty child whining in my ear.
Although I suspected an entire parade of bagpipers could march through the apartment while setting off fireworks and Darcy wouldn’t stir. Oh, to be young and without responsibilities again. I missed those days. Adulting sucked.
Refreshed and mostly awake, it was time to delve deeper into Mr. Lukyan Andrich and see what I could find.
The previous night, I’d uncovered surface details, using perfectly legal avenues for acquiring information.
Darcy’s sudden reappearance had halted my progress.
With Diem at the gym and Darcy in dreamland, I had a couple of uninterrupted hours to pry into the millionaire’s life and see what I could find.
The downfall with official police work was that they were bound by rigid procedures and strict protocols, and therefore operated much more slowly than private investigators.
Technically, we were required to follow strict rules as well and not do anything illegal.
Mostly, we obeyed. On occasion, we crossed lines.
Diem hated law enforcement, and I had a deviant streak a mile wide that meant I was easily swayed to the dark side.
As for Lukyan Andrich, I wasn’t ready to get my feet dirty yet by doing things I shouldn’t, but the option was on the table if the straight and narrow proved to be unhelpful. If we wanted to nail this guy, it would be easier to present official evidence to the police when the time came.
I began with legitimate investigative measures. I had learned perfectly lawful means of acquiring dirt on people through in-depth internet searches, the kind most police officers didn’t have the time or patience to perform.
All kinds of tips and tricks existed when it came to searching the net: learning how to blend the right combination of keywords to get quick results; effectively skimming a document to pick out the right details; uploading images and performing backward searches; familiarizing oneself with landmarks and noting particulars that were often overlooked.
My cousin had taught me the art of inputting certain exclusion code words into searches that filtered out unnecessary or unwanted details.
I divided my hunting expeditions into a few categories. Personal, including friends and family. Professional. Financial. Background, including schools and hobbies. And skeletons. Everyone had at least one skeleton in their closet.
Nothing uploaded to the internet ever truly vanished, and Lukyan Andrich was going to learn the hard way that he’d fucked with the wrong people.
If this man suffered from athlete’s foot as a teenager, I was going to find out about it.
If he cheated on his college girlfriend, had a secret male lover, or streaked naked down the streets of Rome, I would know.
Although men in his age bracket tended to be less active on social media, his close friends and family members would provide valuable access points. There was always a way.
I didn’t need a warrant to do my financial investigation, and I got results as accurately as the police with their official documents.
The internet set me up with a nice, neat timeline.
Newspaper articles had already told me Lukyan was a millionaire, that he owned a company, and invested in property.
I knew he lived a middle-income life not that long ago, having made his fortune recently.
It was time to fill in the blanks.
A public court record from 1995 told me he’d filed for bankruptcy. I was not a math whiz, but seeing as he graduated with a business degree from York University in 1994, I suspected it was a slimy way of clearing his student loans.
The man had four luxury cars to his name, not one worth less than a hundred thousand dollars.
The new girlfriend was worthy of a centerfold in Penthouse magazine and looked like she’d had enough plastic surgery to officially qualify as recyclable.
He bought a house for seven million dollars three years ago and owned a forty-foot trawler that was currently sitting in dry storage at a marina I wasn’t familiar with.
In the summer, he rented a slip in a lakeside area that seemed to be considered prime property. I knew nothing about boats.
Lukyan vacationed at tropical beach destinations every winter, liked expensive wines I could only dream of affording, shopped at stores where a single piece of clothing was worth more than I made in a month, played competitive golf and racquetball at a country club, and did a year of flight training at a local aviation school.
I found no evidence of a pilot’s license.
He frequented a fancy fitness center with saunas and towel boys who delivered a selection of bottled waters and electrolyte drinks on demand. When I tried to envision Diem in that sort of establishment, I snorted and slapped a hand over my mouth, glancing at Darcy to be sure I hadn’t disturbed him.
“Not even if hell froze over,” I muttered, making notes on the pad of paper beside me.
Pouring through Lukyan’s life, I concluded that he was a man who thought his shit didn’t stink. His wealth had gone to his head. It made me want to tear him down even more.
By the time Diem returned, sweaty and flush from a heavy workout, the sky was lightening, I had four pages of notes and a vague plan for the day.
Darcy hadn’t moved.
Echo greeted Diem at the door, tail wagging like he’d been gone for decades and not two hours. He poured himself a tall glass of water and sat across from me, radiating heat like a furnace.
“You smell sweaty.”
“I’ll shower in a minute.”
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing. In fact, it’s an aphrodisiac, and I wish you hadn’t adopted Holden Caulfield over there, or we could have had sex right here on the kitchen table.”
“Holden who?”
“Catcher in the Rye wasn’t forced down your throat in high school?”
“Maybe. I don’t remember.”
“Doesn’t matter. The point is, no sweaty sex for you until you start making wiser decisions.”
I loved seeing humor and love blossom in Diem’s eyes.
“Any progress?” He motioned to the laptop.
“Tons. I have a full profile on Mr. Lukyan Andrich and a shit ton of suspicions.”
Diem nursed his glass of water while I caught him up.