Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Rush burst through the garage door. "Archer," he said, his face serious. "We need you."
Archer's face went blank. "Is this important?" he growled.
Rush gave a nod.
"Stay here," Archer said to Tatum.
She was already on edge, and this made her want to grind her teeth. She wasn't helpless. She didn't need all this fuss. She just wanted to go to her apartment.
Archer walked over to Rush. They whispered for a moment, and then Archer glanced at her. She couldn't tell if that glance meant they were talking about her or something else entirely.
For fuck's sake, she said to herself.
A moment later, Archer returned to stand in front of her. "I need to deal with something."
"Great. I'm just gonna—"
"No. I need you to stay here."
"I'm sorry, what?" Tatum demanded.
"I need you to stay here. We've been over this. You're not safe walking out there by yourself. Just wait here. It'll only take an hour or two, tops."
She stared at him. She wanted to argue that he was being ridiculous, but she also knew there was no way Archer was going to give in. She had a distinct feeling that Archer Gray did not give in about anything.
So instead, she glared, huffed, and nodded. "Fine."
She was too pissed off to stay still and too annoyed at being told what to do to actually listen.
She didn't need any more overbearing, condescending people in her life.
She already had two. Her dad was usually pretty good, but even he could pull it on occasion, and Bunny was unparalleled when it came to overbearing.
She didn't need Archer Gray pulling that as well.
The cab stopped in front of her building. She paid the driver and went straight in. It wasn't until she was standing in front of her door that she hesitated.
Her anger had carried her this far, but now she was worried.
Not that she thought someone was in there, because logically they'd already trashed the place.
Why would they come back? Even if they hadn't found what they were looking for, they had to assume from the damage they'd done that it wasn't there in the first place.
They didn't know about her safe room. Obviously. If they had, she'd be dead.
That thought gave her pause.
Still. She was okay. That hadn't happened. And now all of her information was in there. She wanted to work. She needed to work. Not to mention, the damage done was not going to clean itself.
She squared her shoulders, unlocked the door, braced herself, and walked inside.
And stopped dead in her tracks.
Everything was just as she'd left it before the gala. The kitchen, the living room, all of it. Exactly as it had been before it was destroyed. As if the destruction had never happened at all.
She kicked off her shoes and walked into the living room.
The carpets had been cleaned. The ruined furniture had been replaced. Even her pictures that had been smashed to pieces were rehung on the walls, frames whole again. She went down the hallway toward the bedroom.
Again, the typical orderliness of her private space had been restored to exactly as she'd had it.
Her books were back on the shelf, and she could tell by the spines of some that they'd simply been replaced outright. The whole room was exactly as it had been before she’d left for the gala.
Nothing out of place. No dirt. Nothing. If anything, it was cleaner.
She went into her closet. Every piece of clothing had been hung up. Some items still had tags, new pieces to replace what had been destroyed.
Whose idea was this? Archer. He’d said Ryker was going to take care of it, but she'd had no idea the extent of what they'd discussed. This was extraordinary.
Standing in her closet, relief washed over her, followed immediately by remorse.
Archer had just been trying to take care of her, and she'd snarled at him and willfully gone against his wishes.
Not that she was beholden to his wishes, but damn, the man had her best interests at heart.
He'd made sure all of this happened. Ryker might have done the work, but it was Archer who put it together.
Archer had directed him to make it happen.
Archer, who knew exactly how hard this was going to be for her and had done everything he could to lessen the stress.
She blinked back tears she hadn't expected.
Nobody had ever put this much effort into taking care of her. Not anyone. Certainly not her parents. None of the men she'd ever dated, that was for sure. She wasn't even dating Archer, although she just might after this.
That thought hit her like a physical thing, warm and unsettling all at once.
And then, because apparently her brain had decided she hadn't suffered enough this morning, an image arrived uninvited.
Archer. Those rolled-up sleeves she'd noticed earlier.
Except this time, they were coming off. The button-down shirt sliding from his shoulders, revealing all that lean muscle and scarred skin she'd only glimpsed.
His hands, rough and capable, reaching for her.
Heat flooded her face.
Jesus, Tatum. Get it together.
But she couldn't shake it. The way he moved. The way he looked at her, like she mattered, like he'd burn the world down to keep her safe.
That path of thinking was dangerous.
More dangerous than whoever had trashed her apartment. Because wanting Archer Gray meant letting him in. Trusting him. And trust was the one thing she couldn't afford to indulge in right now.
She took a shaky breath and turned away from the closet, trying to focus on anything else. His words came back to her. He was protecting her because she was a board member. That was it. Plain and simple. He needed her vote to keep Austin Davis in check. That's what this was about.
Frankly, it stung to think it. But it was fair. And it helped restore balance to her perspective.
She went back into the kitchen, made herself a coffee, noting that even the ground coffee had been replaced with a superior brand. Once it was brewed, she headed into her private room. She sat down in her chair and started reviewing her notes.
Two hours later, she looked up. Her coffee was cold, and so was she. She needed a sweater. The AC was cranked higher than she normally kept it, probably because they'd touched up some of the walls. A faint smell of fresh paint lingered in the air.
She left her room and went out to the kitchen.
"Tatum."
Screaming, she jumped and dropped her mug on the floor.
"Josh, what the hell are you doing in my apartment?" she growled.
Archer had known she was going to run the moment she’d agreed to stay put.
He'd seen it in the set of her jaw, the way her eyes went just slightly flat, the particular quality of stillness that preceded someone doing exactly what they'd just agreed not to do.
He'd seen it a thousand times in a thousand different people across a career built on reading rooms and assessing people, and Tatum Wellington was, if nothing else, completely transparent when she was angry.
So he hadn't been surprised when security flagged her leaving the building twenty minutes after he'd walked away with Rush.
He'd been irritated, yes. Worried, certainly.
But not surprised. Flynn O'Connor had checked in that she’d gone directly to her apartment, but it irked him that he had to have her followed.
The urge to follow her, to be sure she was safe, was equally irritating.
"You okay?" Rush asked.
Archer swung his gaze over to his security specialist. "Why do you ask?"
"You look pissed."
Archer bit back a sigh. "No. Just disappointed." He shifted gears mentally. "Are the cops finished with North's apartment?"
Rush shook his head. "A friend is doing me a favor."
"Nice to have friends," Archer commented as the SUV pulled to the curb outside Richard North's building.
He and Rush exited the vehicle and made their way up to the dead man's condo. Ryker met them just outside the door. A uniformed officer stood sentry, and Archer nodded to him. The man gave a curt nod in return and fixed his eyes on some spot in the middle distance.
Rush opened the door, and the three of them entered, closing it behind them.
"Is that your friend?" Archer asked, gesturing toward the door.
"Nah. He's just the uniform on door duty. He'll keep his mouth shut. His ass will be on the line for letting us in, so he's not going to rock the boat. My friend knows we're not stupid enough to mess with the crime scene."
Archer gave a curt nod and moved into the space. He came to a stop beside the coffee table in the living room and turned to study the staircase. “What happened to our camera?”
“Collected. And we’re processing it. We think it might have picked up North’s fall, but we’ll see. We had it angled to take in the living room, not the staircase specifically.”
Archer nodded. “What do we know?”
"Our prevailing theory," Ryker started, "is that North left his cell on the coffee table and came down to get it in the middle of the night, still drunk, slipped and fell."
Archer grunted. "Do we believe that?"
Ryker shook his head. "We do not. There were no missed calls on his phone until after eight a.m. No missed texts either. So there was no reason for him to come downstairs in the middle of the night for his phone."
"Could he have woken up and realized it was down here and just decided to get it?" Rush asked. They both stared at him, and with a snort, he held up his hands. "Just playing devil's advocate."
Ryker nodded. "Fair. And I guess it's a possibility.
But the reality is that North had tied one on with his buddies.
Drowning their sorrows about going to jail.
He came home and went upstairs, dumped his clothes on the floor, and crashed.
Knowing North, I can't see him waking up at two a.m. after a night of drinking and thinking he should go get his phone.
More likely, he passed out rather than fell asleep, and something woke him up. Something made him come downstairs."
"That sounds more likely," Rush agreed. "But if it wasn't the phone, what did he come down for?"
Archer stared at the staircase. "Do we know the time of death?"
"Somewhere between one and four a.m. They're doing the autopsy now," Ryker said.
"Do we know what he looked like when he was found?" Archer asked, glancing around the room.
Ryker pulled a manila envelope from his jacket pocket and passed it across. "I have friends too," he said with a slight smile at Rush.
Archer opened the envelope and slid the photographs out.
Richard North had not been an attractive man in life and was even less so in death.
The photographs were high-resolution, clinical in the way crime scene images always were, indifferent to dignity.
North lay crumpled at the base of the marble staircase in a posture that no living body could have held, one arm folded beneath him at an angle that made Archer's jaw tighten, one leg twisted outward, his considerable bulk collapsed against the bottom step like something discarded rather than fallen.
The marble staircase was coldly white and unforgiving, and had done considerable damage on the way down.
The large gash on the back of his head was no doubt the cause of death.
His face was turned partially toward the camera.
The jowls that had always made him look vaguely aggrieved in life were slack now, pulling his features downward into an expression that was neither peaceful nor pained, but simply absent.
A cut above his left eyebrow had bled and dried dark against his skin.
One eye was slightly open, catching the light in a way that was deeply wrong. His mouth hung loose.
Whatever Richard North had been in life, and the list was not flattering, he had not deserved to end up like this. Alone at the bottom of a staircase, staged to look like the consequence of his own excess.
Someone had been very tidy about it. A fact that bothered Archer most.
"This wasn't an accident. I'm sure the police will realize that as soon as the autopsy is complete."
"What do you see?" Rush asked.
Archer slid the photographs back into the envelope. "The way he is positioned and the fact that there's a large dent in his skull but only a smallish cut above his eye suggest he hit the back of his head first. He was facing away from the stairs and went down backward."
Ryker frowned. "He could have been on his way back up?"
"But he left his cell on the coffee table. Would he come down to get it and then forget it and go back up again?" Archer shook his head. "Highly unlikely."
"Maybe he came down for something else?" Rush suggested.
Archer went up the stairs carefully, avoiding where the crime scene crew had done their work. At the top, he studied the landing. "If I were going to kill him, I would do it here."
Rush and Ryker came up behind him.
"Make it seem like an accident," Rush supplied.
Archer nodded. "I would stand over there." He pointed to the corner of the landing that would be in shadow at night. He moved over and crouched down.
There was a hair on the marble. Longish. Blond.
Now that was interesting.
His cell went off. He glanced at the screen. Flynn. He straightened to his full height. "What is it?"
Flynn said, "Josh Kent just arrived at Ms. Wellington's building. Tatum's mother's assistant."
"Understood." Archer ended the call. What did Josh want with Tatum? Bunny had probably sent him. Tatum wouldn't be happy. It was time to go.
He turned to Ryker. "Get the autopsy report when it's completed and let me know as soon as they rule it a homicide. That will make the news, and we need to be prepared for the questions that follow from our members."
"Will do," Ryker said, following his boss back down the staircase. The three men exited the condo and minutes later hit the street.
Archer turned to Rush. "Check in with Cash and see how he's doing with the camera project. I have no doubt Davis and Fisher will be raising it again shortly. It's not going to go away."
"Got it," Rush said, pulling open the door to the SUV. "Are you coming back with us?"
Archer shook his head. "No. I have somewhere I need to be." He turned on his heel and headed down the sidewalk toward Tatum's apartment.