Chapter 30
Terrence Clay: Would you like to go out for dinner on Friday?
Chase: Are you finally asking me on a date?
Pepper: I think he is.
Sunny: Either that or he’s having a stroke.
Pepper: Mr. Clay, do you smell burnt toast???
Terrence Clay: Why would I smell burnt toast?
Sunny: It can be a sign of a stroke.
Chase: Sudden personality changes can be an early symptom of dementia, too. Maybe we should get him checked?
Pepper: Probably for the best.
Terrence Clay: Will you people stop misdiagnosing me like I’m not here and answer the question?
Pepper: I’m game.
Chase: I’ll be the one sitting by the bar in a red dress with a rose in my hair.
PEPPER
“We can’t just let ourselves in,” Chase hisses, peering through the foliage at the house bathed in afternoon sunshine.
“It’s not breaking and entering if the door is hanging off.”
He looks at me like I’ve just offered him the last bite of pizza after I’ve already chewed it. “We really need to work on this whole law-breaking thing of yours.”
I roll my lips inward, and look back at the blue painted door that hangs limply from its hinges, exposing a slither of the brown leather couch in the living room. He’s kind of got a point.
I’m finally accepting that something has irreversibly changed between us, and whilst that scares the hell out of me, I’ve got far bigger fish to fry right now.
The man crouched beside me is magnetic, drawing every part of myself that I usually like to hide in dark, dusty corners out into the light.
And boy does he look good while he does it, all curated suits and perfectly wind-tousled hair—I’ve gone and landed myself a freaking cover boy for GQ.
“What if we’re just two citizens concerned for our neighbors’ health? He could have been kidnapped!” I cast a hand in the direction of the busted hinge.
Chase sighs, dipping his face into his hand and pressing into his eyes. “I can’t believe you’ve got me sitting in a fucking bush.”
I grin, because he does look ridiculous trying to hide behind fern plants that quite frankly aren’t large enough to conceal him. “Come on!”
“Fine, but don’t come moaning to me when we both end up slapped into jail.” He stands, offering me his hand.
I take it without hesitation, something that six weeks ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of, and allow him to pull me up. He opens his mouth, but I cut across him, not wanting to hear the same thought roll off his own tongue.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a changed woman, let’s go.” I stomp through the fern, feeling the feathery prongs whip my legs.
“No, seriously—”
“Can we just focus on the job, please?” I flip a piece of stray hair out of my face and start making my way up the overgrown path to the back door.
The front of the house had been unassuming, a one-bedroom ground floor overlooking narrow streets filled with brick row houses, splashes of yellow and red bricks mixed together.
It was only when we managed to sneak into the row of narrow backyards that we discovered the open door.
It’s unkempt, with patchy grass and a rose bush that has grown wild from years of being untended, some of the vines as thick as my wrist.
“Yes ma’am, as you wish,” Chase drawls from behind in a manner that I just know will be accompanied by a salute.
I’m about to throw a smart reply over my shoulder, or at least try to conjure one up, when the sight before me stops me in my tracks.
Weeds spill over the mat that sits by the back door, which is littered with cigarette ends and an empty plant pot filled with rainwater.
But what really shocks me is the state of the living room inside.
Although sparsely furnished, dining chairs are upended near the poky yellow kitchen back toward the front of the house, and a dresser has every drawer removed, clothes and letters strewn across the navy carpet.
“Holy shit, maybe he actually did get kidnapped?” Chase appears at my back, peering over my shoulder so that his delicious scent wraps around me.
Bert Lancaster works for a company called Everlune Securities, an external contractor hired by Dev Ops Inc. to secure his New York-based plants. We can’t find anything even remotely sus about the New Jersey-based firm, except for an unpaid tax bill from three years ago.
I take another look at the mess, searching for signs of a struggle. “I don’t think so, nothing is broken, it’s more like…” I step inside and look at the walls, devoid of any photos, but with some squares left behind that haven’t been bleached by the sun streaming in through the window.
“It’s more like someone packed some stuff and left in a hurry,” Chase finishes from behind me.
“Yeah! How did you know I was going to say that?” I whirl around and see him crouched again, examining dusty footprints in the dried mud—which presumably was once grass—closest to the house.
“There is a set of footprints leading up to the house, and then away, but the ones leading away are deeper, like the person was carrying something heavy.” He twists his head and stands, moving to examine the door, picking up the broken and dangling bolt.
“He knew it was deadlocked from the inside, and presumably he didn’t want to be seen…
which means someone might have been watching the front and waiting for him. ”
I lift my eyebrows in surprise. I’ll admit, I never would have noticed that, and I’m the one he’s supposedly brought in for my investigation skills.
“What?” He notices my attention.
“That big brain of yours is pretty damn sexy, Walker,” I admit, watching his mouth quirk into a crooked smile.
He offers me a smug little bow, and places a swift peck on my lips as he blows past into the house, having to duck to not hit his head on the light fitting.
“No wife, no kids, no savings…no debts.” He reels off the things we know about the security guard, more to himself than anything as he cases the edges of the room, pausing to inspect items every now and then.
He peers into an empty dresser drawer that has a sweater caught in the metal handle, trailing down to the floor.
“And no sense to take evidence with him.”
I narrow my eyes on the small scrap of paper he plucks from the bottom of the drawer, quickly covering the distance between us so that I can read it with him.
“June twenty-third, Hunts Point, eleven-thirty p.m.,” I murmur, reeling off the text that I can make out. There was more, but whatever part of paper existed for it to scrawl onto before it was ripped apart is nowhere to be seen. “Hunts Point?”
“It’s a food distribution center in the Bronx.” Chase lifts his burnt whiskey-colored gaze to mine, but it’s far away as he ticks it over in his head.
“That’s tonight, we have to go!” I take the note from him, reading it again as if I can glean some deeper meaning from the words.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he starts pensively. “This is all becoming a bit too cloak and dagger for my liking.”
My lips pop open, goggling at him. “You can’t pull the plug now, we’ve come so far!”
“Pepper.” He runs a hand through his dark hair and tugs on it softly. “We don’t know who these people are, and I don’t want you in harm’s way in the middle of the night in the ass end of some packing district.”
“Why? Because I’m a woman?” I fold my arms and grit my teeth.
He scoffs, letting out a small, exasperated laugh. “No, Sherlock, because I care about you.”
“Oh.” The single syllable drops from my mouth stupidly, puncturing my bravado from moments ago like a pin to a balloon.
The corner of his lip twitches again, his eyes glittering like a night sky. “It’s also really hard to take you seriously with twigs in your hair.”
“What?” My hand leaps to my head and he laughs, taking hold of my shoulders and twisting me so that I can see in the slim mirror that hangs above the back of the couch.
My breath stutters a little, taken back to that earth-shattering moment when he stood behind me earlier today, both of us looking in a different mirror, with a very different outcome.
One that still has me quietly spinning my wheels because I’m equal parts embarrassed by being so vulnerable, and proud for claiming back that part of myself.
The smashed and ugly thing that lives inside my chest feels a little less sharp because of it, like someone sanded down the edges.
All of that is swiftly sucked away when I see the large piece of fern sticking out of my hair. “Why didn’t you tell me?!”
He throws his eyes to the ceiling and laughs in despair, looking beyond done with my shit. “I tried! You never listen!”
Do you know what? He kind of has a point there, too.
***
“Did you really need to pick a hiding space that is so cramped?” I hiss, shifting my weight as my left leg goes numb.
“Perhaps it was strategic?” His fingers curl around my hips and drag me back into him.
Despite my discomfort, a spark of electricity zips up my spine at his suggestive tone.
“I’m pretty sure these days you could find an easier way to feel me up, Wolf Boy.” I draw my thin zip-up jacket tighter around myself and wish it was a coat instead.
The only way I managed to convince Chase to come here was to let him choose our stakeout spot, and we had to canvas the dockside manufacturing bays surrounding tall, refrigerated buildings during the day.
Which is how we find ourselves wedged between a wall and a towering stack of empty wooden pallets.
“It was either this, or under the trucks, and considering it’s starting to rain, be glad that we aren’t lying on the floor,” he grumbles, pulling me in closer to his chest and curling over me so that the faint spattering of moisture doesn’t reach me.
If I weren’t so cold and bored, this might have been sweet—a chill breeze whips up from the dark, inky water in the bay, bringing with it an uncharacteristically cool atmosphere for summer.
“What’s the time?” I attempt to shift so that I can reach my phone in my pocket, but his hand clamps around my wrist to stop me from pulling out the screen that would effectively be a homing beacon at the exact same time as a set of headlights pulls into the loading bay forecourt.
“Wait,” Chase whispers, his warm breath tickling my ear.
Adrenaline spikes, my heart beating rapidly as the burgundy Camry parks just feet from us, turning off the engine and the lights. Little hazy glow holes still sit merrily in my vision where the headlights had been, burned into my sight from sitting in the dark for so long.
I blink rapidly, trying to clear them as a dark figure in the car steps out.
The dock is pitch black, with only the moon reflecting off the water to give some small light source.
It’s only because we’ve been here for so long that my eyes have adjusted and I can see it’s a man, based on his wide shoulders that face us.
Suddenly, my breathing feels uncomfortably loud in the silence that settles back over the loading bays, only the sound of a small rock grinding beneath the man’s shoe as he lifts something out of his pocket.
I cap my hand over my mouth just in case, and only realize once the soft amber glow flares that the man is lighting a smoke, swiftly followed by the unflattering smell of tobacco.
We stand there locked in silence for what feels like endless minutes, the man in front of the palettes becoming increasingly restless as he finishes his cigarette and chucks the cherry-red ember to the floor so hard it splits apart and sparks scatter over the cracked concrete.
He pulls out his phone, the blue glow illuminating the very edge of a side profile I can’t quite see, even if I lean to find a gap in the palette wood. He places it to his ear, and because it’s so silent and he’s so close, I can just about hear the vibration of the line ringing.
“Put me through to Evelyn Blackwood.”
I feel Chase turn to stone behind me, my own blood chilling.
Evelyn Blackwood…as in, his COO, Evelyn Blackwood?
I wish with everything in me that I could see Chase’s face, but even turning my head might cause me to brush against something and make a noise.
I can’t risk it, but I feel a dark energy rolling off him, crackling the air.
The man waits for a few seconds, then speaks again. “The security guard is a no show.”
Silence.
“I did, all day, he’s gone.” The thick accent is totally unfamiliar to me. Perhaps it’s West Coast, with a hint of something else muddled in.
More silence.
“I also find myself irritated with the little asshole,” the man grumbles, kicking a stone away from his shoe. “Okay, I’m coming now.” He lowers the phone, ends the call, and pulls open his car door.
I start to shift the moment the man gets inside and closes it, desperately trying to catch his license plate in the couple of seconds it takes for him to start the car and turn it the wrong way.
Strong hands clamp me in place, preventing me from getting into the right spot. “What are you doing? We need to follow him!”
“We’re not following him.” The voice is icy, icier than I’ve ever heard it, making me pause and try to turn.
He only lets me move so much, enough for me to catch a glimpse of a face that is utterly glacial.
“Chase, we have to follow him before he gets away.” Irritation boils up at the back of my throat, my urgency to act sharpening it into a pointed arrow and launching it his way. “What a waste of time this will have been otherwise!”
“I said no, Pepper,” he says with finality, gracing me with eye contact that shows glittering eyes of fury.
It stuns me enough that I wilt, my fight to follow the man waning and leaving behind a frustrated resignation that makes my scalp prickle.