Chapter 16
When I arrived home, I decided the best way to avoid (a) my still conflicted feelings about losing Wallace, and (b) dissolving into a puddle of fear the ghost would come knocking, was to keep digging into the moms. But only after I’d closed all the curtains, triple-checked the door was locked, and stationed the baseball bat I’d insisted on taking from Bray’s closet near me on the couch.
My rideshare driver surely had questions as to why a hobbling, one-shoed woman with a tattered wooden bat had climbed into his car, but he had the decency not to ask.
I propped up my foot with more ice and stationed my loaner laptop on a pillow on my lap.
The DSA always gave me one when a case called for it.
Same as my loaner phone, it was equipped with basic accounts, apps, a Wi-Fi connection.
All the things one would need for run-of-the-mill internet use.
Plus a little back door I’d learned how to engineer that granted me access to off-limits places on the web.
I started with a generic search for Montrose, hoping I might get lucky.
It yielded listings for local apartment complexes with the name, a residential street, and flights to the local area from a city in Colorado called Montrose.
They could all have been leads or all been nothing.
Without breaking into Melanie’s office to look for more information, it would be hard to say.
After a few hours of rabbit holes, I decided to take a more direct approach.
I’d worked a case several years ago with a fellow CI who lived in the darkest corners of the web.
She’d since paid her dues to the DSA and rejoined civilian life but had told me where to find her if I ever needed a hand.
A dog-grooming message board was about the most innocuous place I could think of, I had to give her that.
I logged into and searched for @yorkiedork123.
I didn’t even know her real name, but I knew I could trust the person behind the cute little Yorkie profile picture.
I’d chosen the name @muttmama because, should the day ever come when I could own a dog, I wasn’t about to pay for a fancy breed when there were plenty of rescues out there in need of adoption.
I opened the General Tips message board and typed.
@muttmama: My pooch stepped in a mysterious sticky substance, and I can’t get it off his paws. Any tips? I feel like @yorkiedork123 always knows what to do. Thanks!
I waited approximately two minutes before she responded. I could only imagine what kind of notification system she had set up to keep her looped into all the corners where she hid.
@yorkiedork123: I have the perfect solution! I will DM you the recipe.
“Perfect,” I said aloud. Surely someone somewhere could access every DM sent on the platform, so it didn’t matter if we kept sensitive information off the main threads.
But the only way to get into a DM conversation was to invite someone from a main thread.
Alas, I had to come up with a believable story about dog grooming every time I wanted to talk to @yorkiedork123 privately.
A little window popped up in the corner of my screen.
@yorkiedork123: Muttmama! It’s been a while. What’s up?
@muttmama: Hey. Do you know anything about a company or person named Montrose that might be tied to a smuggling operation?
@yorkiedork123: Hmm. Location?
@muttmama: Bay Area, California. Specifically a neighborhood called Del Rio, in the South Bay.
@yorkiedork123: Hold please.
I held, by staring at the TV, where I’d left a series of rom-com movies quietly playing while I searched the web. After the scene in the alley, I’d been grinding my teeth and couldn’t bear to watch anything with even a hint of tension or a jump scare in sight.
My laptop pinged with a new message.
@yorkiedork123: Looks like the name of a black-market supplier. They run all sorts of things: arms, drugs, counterfeit designer goods.
@muttmama: Baby products?
@yorkiedork123: Weirdly, yes.
“Shit,” I said out loud, still a little stunned any of this was real. I did quick math to think back to what I’d overheard Melanie say on the phone that day. Whatever had happened to get them in trouble happened three weeks ago.
@muttmama: Any chance you see record of a deal or delivery from three weeks ago?
She disappeared for a few minutes again, and I imagined her clacking away at a keyboard in front of a wall of computer screens. I had no idea what information she was accessing or who she might be talking to.
@yorkiedork123: Nothing specific, but apparently there’s been chatter about a seized shipment.
My mind kicked into high gear, thinking of other smuggling cases I’d worked.
A seized shipment of smuggled goods usually meant someone didn’t get paid because the goods were never sold.
If whatever was in that shipment was valuable enough for Melanie to put a lien on her house, whoever they owed money to was probably pretty upset.
But if a shipment of baby goods had been seized in one of the local ports, wouldn’t it have crossed Bray’s radar? At least I hoped he’d set up alerts for such a thing.
Something was still missing. But this was way more to go off than I expected.
@muttmama: Thank you. This is very helpful.
@yorkiedork123: Sure thing. Anything else?
@muttmama: Any hits on Dwayne Johnson?
@yorkiedork123: Still MIA. You’ll be the first to know if I hear anything.
I sighed in completely expected disappointment.
I’d asked her to keep her ear to the digital dark web ground, in case any chatter about the diamond cropped up; maybe it had been found, maybe it had been sold.
So far, no luck. We’d dubbed it Dwayne Johnson in a stealth nod to the Rock.
The nickname used to make me smile, back when I had hope of her helping to find it, but now it fell flat.
@yorkiedork123: Anything else? Need any actual dog grooming tips?
@muttmama: Ha, if only. Still flying sans canine, unfortunately.
@yorkiedork123: Your day will come, girl.
The reality that having a dog was a remote chance, if not impossibility, slapped me in the face once more, but I didn’t feel the need to darken her day with my sorrow.
@muttmama: ? See you next time, Yorkiedork.
@yorkiedork123: Happy trails, Muttmama.
I closed my laptop and sighed. I lifted my phone to text Bray an update right when the doorbell rang.
Evening had fallen, and I couldn’t imagine who was calling.
I instantly tensed and reached for the bat.
My heart rate shot through the roof as I paused the movie still playing on TV.
With one hand on my phone and one on my makeshift weapon, I rose to stand and managed to remind myself the people wanting to kill me would not ring the doorbell.
They would bust down the door or shatter a window.
I hobbled across the living room using the bat as a small crutch.
I held my breath as I leaned close to the slit in my curtains to peek out the window.
Bray’s patrol still sat down the street in an unmarked car, which miraculously blended in.
I’d half expected him to send a black van with DSA blazing in yellow print.
Instead, he’d sent a man in a nondescript SUV.
I could see him in the driver’s seat sitting up and looking my way with interest. Given he hadn’t left the vehicle or otherwise flipped on a siren and floored it to my driveway to intervene, I had to assume whoever was on the porch didn’t look like a threat from his vantage point.
I angled my body for as good a look as I could get of my doorstep, and saw a pale blue skirt fluttering in the breeze.
I exhaled with an ounce of relief.
When I worked up the courage to look out the peephole, I saw none other than Melanie Browning holding a casserole.
I quickly recomposed myself and leaned the bat out of sight. I opened the door with a smile. “Melanie! What a surprise,” I greeted.
Melanie’s pretty face froze on a discerning expression I couldn’t identify before it split into a warm smile.
She wore an effortless A-line dress, which looked right for skipping through the countryside and braiding bracelets out of wildflowers with her children.
The golden-hour light seemed to set her aglow from within.
She was the perfect picture of domestic tranquility.
The urge to blurt How much money do you owe Montrose and why? danced on my tongue.
“Lauren, honey, how are you doing?” she asked with a sympathetic lilt.
I mentally stumbled over how Melanie could know about my injury. I’d slipped inside as quickly as I could when my rideshare dropped me off, and even if she had been watching, was baking a casserole over a twisted ankle really the going rate in Del Rio?
She clucked her tongue and softly shook her head. “I’m sorry. Of course this is hard on you. I trust you got our flowers yesterday?”
And then it clicked.
“Oh!” I said, suddenly remembering the moms thought my uncle had passed away and I was holed up in my apartment mourning. The casserole—which smelled delicious—made sense. Flowers, food: things people gave to other people when someone died. Our house had been buried in both when my mother died.
I gave my head a small, discreet shake to bring my senses back online. I was off my game to have forgotten my cover story. What had done it? The blast from the past, surely. But also, maybe …
I shook away the mental image of Bray carrying me up the stairs, the way he’d laid me on the couch and taken care of me. For every on-screen kiss I’d watched that afternoon, I’d wondered anew what his lips felt like.
I had to stop thinking about him because, obviously, it was messing with my mind.
“Right, thank you,” I told Melanie. “This is so kind of you.”