70. Garrett
Chapter Seventy
GARRETT
T he question of whether Emma would be forced to sleep in the apartment where she was attacked became moot when George came home. She coaxed his wife into taking a sedative and marched her out the front door and into her and Rainer’s apartment.
“I put her over there,” Rainer gestured to the largest spare bedroom when Garrett came in. He was carrying a sleeping Stella over his shoulder.
“Thanks,” he said, laying his baby girl next to Emma on the California King.
Stella cuddled instinctively against her mother’s body.
Their daughter had been so worn out by her day out at the zoo that she hadn’t noticed the tense atmosphere of all the adults around her. She thought they were having a fun sleepover at George’s house.
As for why her mother was too tired to greet her, she just thought Emma had another one of her headaches. He promised they’d all sleep in one big bed, with Mom in the middle, which more than made up for any disappointment.
Garrett watched them for a long time before leaving them curled up next to each other. He would join them shortly. But first, he had business to attend to .
He walked back to their place. In the space of a few short hours, the penthouse had been converted into a makeshift Auric headquarters.
At least half a dozen of their soldiers were scattered across the living room, a few on the phone, working their local contacts while others were on military-grade laptops doing God knows what.
Ian had arrived while he was over at Rainer’s. His best friend was here too, while George and a few men watched over his sleeping family.
The pair were getting a debrief from Elias.
Elias was still furious with himself for letting Fletcher get away. Garrett was frustrated about that too, but he was angrier at himself.
Fletcher had been a huge part of his life since high school. He’d followed Garrett to college, seeking him out again after they went to different business schools. Garrett had built a billion-dollar business with him.
And all this time he’d been a fucking snake in the grass. He’d stabbed Garrett in the back, a wound so old he hadn’t even felt it for years.
If Emma hadn’t come back into his life, he would have never known.
And thanks to him, Fletcher had plenty of fuck you money. Enough to disappear and make a life anywhere in the world.
Hell, the asshole might even get plastic surgery . That’s what Garrett would do in his shoes.
He paused halfway through the living room, stopping at the recliner where Toya Almari was typing away on a laptop so hard it was like she was trying to punch through the keyboard.
“Thank you for coming,” he told the former intelligence operative in a voice like sandpaper.
Toya looked up at him, her expression fierce. “You and your girl don’t have to worry. I’ve got this .”
Nodding, he went to the bar, shaking his head when Rainer offered him a drink.
Neither Elias nor Ian had drinks either. The three of them wanted to be ready when they finally ran Fletcher to ground.
“His place is empty, nothing in his safe,” Ian reported. “Some of his clothes are gone but both his cars are there. The ex-girlfriend hasn’t heard from him in weeks.”
“He wouldn’t get into a vehicle we could trace that easily,” Elias muttered, his hand kneading something—one of Stella’s toys, the squishy kind that were multiplying like gremlins in her room.
Elias was using it as a stress ball.
“How long has he been planning it?” Rainer said, narrowing his eyes. “Running away, that is?”
He paused when all eyes trained on him. “On some level, he’s been waiting for this shoe to drop ever since you told him about the phone.”
Elias ran a hand over his dark hair. “I wonder what the hell is on it.”
Garrett had a few guesses, but he refused to speculate. It would just make him rage out, and right now, this icy plane of thought was better. Letting yourself run too hot was how mistakes were made.
Murder should always be committed in cold blood.
“He did have a plan,” Garrett acknowledged, thinking back to Fletcher’s behavior over the past few months. “The moment Emma came back into my life, he must have realized he was on borrowed time.”
Ian made a rough sound in his throat. “He must have been shitting a brick.”
“Yeah. Till I gave the piece of shit the perfect excuse to have me drive Emma away—all that idiocy about her being a corporate spy.”
He stilled, the ice in his veins growing even colder. “He had to have known about her amnesia. He knew the whole fucking time.”
“Shit,” Rainer muttered, his tone of surprise indicating this hadn’t occurred to him.
“He thought he was safe,” Elias said after a short sharp silence. “Years passed without any cops beating down his door. He must have kept tabs on the sheriff’s investigation, enough to know it hadn’t gone anywhere.”
“He had no way of knowing Emma wouldn’t recover her memory once she saw him again,” Rainer pointed out. “Why didn’t he bolt then? Why stay and risk discovery?”
“And leave his comfy life and all the money that came from working with Garrett?” Elias scoffed. He threw him a knowing look. “You carried that bastard for years. Without your wheeling and dealing, he would have been a mid-level accountant at some no-name law firm or worse.”
Garrett pressed his fingers to his temples. The pressure had stopped building, but he still felt the edges of his brain pushing against the inside of his skull.
And then something else occurred to him, making it snap.
“Did he know about Stella?” he rasped, his heart beating wildly out of control. “Did that fucker know Emma had my baby and not tell me ?”
The atmosphere in the room chilled even further as the men exchanged grim looks.
How had Fletcher looked him in the face every damn day at work all the while with that knowledge boiling in the back of his brain? How had the guilt not eaten him alive?
Garrett didn’t wait for an answer. He marched into his office and unlocked the bottom desk drawer.
He sat down in his leather chair and pulled out his gun safe. With swift, precise motions, he took out his Glock and began to break it down, methodically cleaning the individual components.
His friends followed him into the office. Ian took one look at him readying his weapon and closed the door behind him.
“Whoa, slow down.” Rainer was turning green. “You don’t know if any of that is true. You said it yourself—the only people who knew Emma had your baby were Mariana and that scuzzy ex of hers.”
Garrett took a deep breath, setting down the shammy he was using.
Rainer bent to flatten his hand on the desk. “I don’t think Fletcher even knew about you and Emma. You didn’t tell anyone .”
Garrett didn’t need that dagger to the heart at this particular moment. It wasn’t as if it didn’t already have its own designated space there, like a custom- made sheath.
Still hurt pulling it in and out though.
Ian cleared his throat. “I hate to give that fucker the benefit of the doubt, but I agree with Rainer. Fletcher is too much of a coward to hide something that huge from you. He wouldn’t have the balls.”
The others agreed, but Garrett resumed polishing, reassembling the gun with the speed and precision Mason, the Auric team leader, had taught him.
Rainer stared at him like he was a bomb about to go off. “No matter what he knew and when he knew it, Emma wouldn’t want you going to jail for killing Fletcher.”
“Like we would let him get caught,” Elias muttered with a snort.
Garrett met his eyes, a silent thank you passing between them. Ian looked grim, but he didn’t protest.
Rainer, meanwhile, was predictably worried. He yanked at the collar of his shirt like he wasn’t getting enough air.
Elias rolled his shoulders, his neck red as a brick. “I’m gonna get a refill,” he announced, waving his crystal glass before leaving them alone.
“Don’t mind him,” Ian said when his cousin disappeared. “This whole thing, seeing Fletcher attack Emma, brought back some shit he’d rather forget.”
Rainer nodded, but his expression grew speculative.
Garrett knew what Ian was getting at, but he kept his mouth shut. As far as he was concerned, Elias was more than entitled to his secrets.
Their fourth returned with a double in hand. “Given all these revelations, I think you need to call your bank like yesterday. I wouldn’t put it past Fletcher to raid the corporate accounts.”
Garrett raised a brow. “He doesn’t need to. He has enough of his own money.”
“A lot is never enough for some people,” Elias pointed out. “This is the end of the line for him. He’ll go for the nuclear option.”
A few phone calls proved Elias right.
Fletcher had embezzled money from Next Chapter. Ten million dollars directly from the payroll and expenditure accounts .
The first chunk of money had been taken the day after he married Emma—within hours of Garrett calling to give him the news.
He calculated the full amount stolen. All the air left his lungs.
Yes, Garrett was a billionaire. But that was on paper, the wealth tied to his business. Moving all the pieces he needed to keep these accounts solvent was going to keep him busy for hours. Possibly days when he should be out looking for the bastard.
He was the closer that brought in the big business, but Fletcher was the one who dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s. And his partner had been smarter than he’d given him credit for.
Garrett looked forward to shoving some of those t’s down the bastard’s throat. He just had to find some sharp enough.
This could have been worse. Had Fletcher started earlier, or had he been a little bolder, he could have entirely wrecked Next Chapter. As it was, Garrett was scrambling to meet his commitments.
“The embezzlement is not bad news,” Ian told him the next day.
Bleary-eyed from spending most of the night at his computer, he eyeballed his friend. “How do you figure that?”
“This amount of money is like a spotlight to someone like Toya who can follow no matter where he goes. We’ll trace his personal accounts too. They’re already tagged. Trust me, there’s no hole deep enough for him to hide in.”
That might have been true, but Fletcher had been his partner for the better part of the decade. Garrett was the one who knew him best—what cars he liked to drive, his addiction to hair growth elixirs, his favorite meals…
His lips parted, the memory of a whitewashed building and red-tiled awning suddenly clear in his head. “There’s a place across the border we have to check.”