38. Holden
THIRTY-EIGHT
HOLDEN
Sunday at Pinecrest Country Club smells like fresh-cut grass and entitlement. I guess that’s the kind of snooty smell a six-figure membership fee gets you.
I’m in navy chinos, a white polo, and loafers without socks—I fucking hate it when people don’t wear socks, but I’m trying to blend in.
Knox is in khakis and a button-down that looks like he dislocated a shoulder to get into.
Anyone watching us would clock him for the ex-military he is, but the people who come to Pinecrest are the kind who employ people like him, which means they’ll assume he’s on someone’s payroll.
Which makes him the kind of person they’ll glance at but ignore. Knox is invisible by being too visible.
I’ve already toured the gym and mapped the locker room from the door—Italian tile, frosted-glass shower stalls, a signature scent piped through around the clock.
Knox took a seat in the restaurant and has been there ever since, scoping out Hudson.
Our target finished his round of golf at 11:03. The guy’s fit in the polished way money buys. His sandy hair is going silver at the temples. He’s wearing a white polo, pressed khakis, and a smarmy smile.
He golfed with a heavier guy in his fifties who we’ll run later, but now they’re at the clubhouse bar, drinking single malts and laughing about something I can’t hear.
I’ve been nursing a club soda at the far end of the same bar for twenty minutes.
This is the part I’m good at. The hunt.
My phone buzzes.
Knox:
Milo’s here.
I look up.
What the actual fuck?
Milo strides through the bar’s side entrance from the direction of the staff corridor, wearing a forest-green polo with HARDEN HARDWARE stitched in white over the chest, and a matching baseball cap.
He’s carrying a clipboard and a roll of bracket hardware.
There’s a man in chef’s whites walking with him, animated, gesturing toward the kitchen.
I don’t react.
Knox materializes at my elbow. “Told you not to tell him.”
“I didn’t expect him to rock up.”
“Man can’t help himself.”
We watch Milo across the room. He glances over. I half expect him to wave like an excited child, but he manages to rein that in. He does grin like an idiot, though.
“What’s he delivering?” Knox asks when Milo turns back to the guy he’s with.
“No fucking clue.”
“His chaos is a problem.”
“Yep.”
We both settle in, our gazes moving back to our target. Hudson laughs at something his companion said. The sound carries, pulling a few glances their way. They ignore it, men who have no concept of boundaries.
Fucker.
I drink my club soda and order an eye-wateringly expensive brunch.
Good thing Odin’s paying.
The companion gets up to use the bathroom. Hudson takes out his phone and starts scrolling. He’s alone at the table for the first time since they sat down.
The clubhouse door opens and Tyler Kavanagh walks in. He’s in pressed khakis and a tucked polo, the same prickish uniform as every other man in the room. He fits in.
He scans the bar. He sees Hudson and strolls over.
Well, that’s interesting.
Davis’s best friend, the guy who’s made it clear he thinks Sage has something to do with his buddy disappearing, just walked into a private country club and made a beeline for a man we’re planning to murder for being a serial predator.
Two known assholes greeting each other like they have business together.
Could be nothing. Money has small circles. Pinecrest membership is invitation-only. It’s possible Tyler’s family is connected here and the two of them know each other socially.
But my gut is doing what it always does when two pieces I didn’t know connected suddenly connect. Click.
He doesn’t sit. Hudson looks up, smiles—wide, genial, the smile of a man who likes being asked for things—and gestures at the empty chair. Tyler doesn’t sit there. He pulls out a different chair, sitting at an angle. Like he’s only briefly staying.
I can’t hear them.
Knox shifts beside me. He’s pretending to read the wine list now. His back is to Tyler but his face is angled toward the mirror behind the bottles, which means he can see the entire table and their faces.
“What’s the read?” I ask, knowing he can read lips.
“Kavanagh’s asking for a favor. Hudson’s humoring him.”
“Money?”
Knox shakes his head. “Information. I caught the word ‘find.’ Then ‘her.’”
“Her?” My stomach drops.
Knox nods, eyes still on the mirror. “Can’t tell if he means Sage. But.”
But.
“Has he mentioned Brock?”
Knox shakes his head. “Maybe. It’s hard to read through a mirror.”
We don’t say it out loud, but if “her” is about Sage, it’s more than we can afford.
The companion comes back from the bathroom, and Tyler stands up, shakes Hudson’s hand, clapping him on the shoulder.
It’s the universal gesture of we’ll talk later.
He starts walking back across the bar toward the front entrance.
He doesn’t see me. Doesn’t see Knox. But he doesn’t leave immediately either.
He stops at a high-top near the window, setting his drink down to pull out his phone.
He’s three-quarters turned away from us, thumbs working, eyes on the screen.
That’s when Milo loops back through.
He’s done with the chef and heading for the front entrance when he sees us at the bar.
“Quick question,” he says, sliding up between me and Knox like we’re old acquaintances. “Is there a tip jar at this bar, or is that gauche? Never clear on the etiquette where the membership fee could buy a house.”
“Milo,” I warn, my voice low.
“What?”
I tilt my chin. He follows my gaze. Tyler at the high-top, three-quarters turned away, thumbs working.
Milo goes still. “Shit. I know that guy.” He shifts, moving so Knox partially obscures Tyler’s view of him. “That’s Tyler, Sage’s roommate’s boyfriend. He saw me with Sage. If he sees me here, the cover’s blown.” He tugs his cap down to shade his eyes. “What is he doing here?”
“Met with Hudson,” Knox supplies.
Milo’s eyebrows go up. “Really?”
We all turn our attention to Tyler on his phone. He types. Pauses. He types again. His thumbs come off the screen, and he picks up his drink to take a sip.
Milo’s pocket buzzes.
We all stare at it.
“Could be coincidence,” Milo says.
“Could be.”
Tyler is still standing at the high-top. He picks up his phone again. He types something else. Sends.
Milo’s pocket buzzes a second time.
“Coincidence twice?” Knox says.
Milo finally pulls the phone out of his pocket, holding it tilted so we can both see the screen.
The text bubble at the top reads STEPHEN.
Stephen
I know you’re seeing these.
Call me or I’ll start escalating, and you know what that means.
“Stephen,” I say, mostly to myself.
Milo glances at me. “Yeah. Same Stephen we’ve been talking about for weeks. Why are we saying his name like that?”
“Because I just realized I’ve been filing him as background noise when I should be looking at him as a problem.” I keep my voice low. “I think he might be the ‘friend’ pushing Davis’s parents on the missing person case.”
Milo lets out a breath. “I definitely see him as a problem. He’s been needy as fuck this whole time—no respect for Brock’s boundaries.”
Knox quirks a brow. “The dead guy has boundaries?”
“Obviously. We can’t sell the story he’s alive if he doesn’t. And as far as Stephen is concerned, Brock has texted him several times asking for space to get his head straight, and the fucker won’t let up.”
Knox makes a low noise, like he’s cursing internally but can’t be bothered to use actual words.
“In the last week alone,” Milo continues, “he’s called from three different numbers and now he’s texting every few minutes.
Only reason he hasn’t shown up in Santa Cruz is a 5 a.m. text fight Thursday where I talked him down.
Friday he threatened to ‘start looking for answers himself.’” He scrolls his phone, jaw tight.
“I know you said wait. He was pissing me off.” His eyes lift to mine.
“And?”
He shrugs. “Fucking nothing. Guy’s a ghost.”
I watch Tyler drain the rest of his drink.
He isn’t watching the room, but the set of his shoulders says he’s waiting for something.
After a decade on the job, you get a sense for the way people manage time in their bodies: the difference between a man who’s bored, a man who’s nervous, and a man who’s been told to go somewhere and wait.
“Stephen’s a codename?” I ask, looking up. Tyler has set his phone down. Another member, an older woman who looks like she spends her days on a tanning bed, has approached and they’re chatting.
“That’s my working theory,” Milo says, eyes trained on Tyler. “This guy’s top of my candidate list at the moment. He’s been making the most noise about Brock leaving. And he just sent two texts.”
Knox frowns. “Reply to him. Test it.”
“Ugh,” Milo whines. “Texting Stephen gives me anxiety. He’s such a bitch.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter, snatching his phone and opening the thread. “I’ll do it.”
My thumbs fly over the screen.
Brock:
Go find someone else’s dick to suck. Mine’s unavailable.
I hit send and hand the phone back to Milo.
“Whoa. Harsh,” he says, looking at the message.
“It’s the truth.”
We watch Tyler for a full thirty seconds. He doesn’t check the phone again, but he does follow the older woman outside.
“Hmm. That doesn’t really prove anything,” Milo says as they disappear through the doors.
A waitress approaches to clear away my empty glass. “Anything else, gentlemen?”
Milo straightens, making a show of pulling a card from his pocket to hand it to me. “Of course. If you need anything, please call. I’m here to help.”
“We’re fine, thanks,” I say, taking the card and tucking it in my pocket.
When the waitress moves on, Milo lets out a relieved breath. “That was close.”
Knox glares at him. “You need to leave.”
“Okay, grouchy pants,” Milo says, pocketing his cell. “I can tell when I’m not wanted.”
“You were never even invited,” I say, and Milo just grins and turns on his heel to leave.
Knox and I work through the brunch as cover. I pay the tab, leave a tip the bartender will remember as generous but not interesting, and walk out to the guest lot.
We head over to the Hardware store and find Milo restocking a shelf in aisle five.
“Okay, chaos demon, tell me you put eyes in the locker room,” I say without preamble.
He grins, all mischief. “Eyes in the locker room. Measurements. The name of every contractor who worked the renovation—three of them guys I went to high school with, one of them owes me money.” He shoves a roll of duct tape into the shelf.
“Also the head of facilities wants to be my best friend. He’s never had a Harden rep show up for a personal delivery. He called his wife about it.”
“Hudson’s locker?” I say, trying to wrangle Milo’s brain.
“Number forty-seven. It was the end of the second row, two from the showers, one from the sauna, three from the back exit. I have the floor plan in my phone. I’ll send it to Knox when I get my break.”
Milo’s chaos is a problem. It’s also why we now know more about Hudson’s locker room than his wife probably does.
The three of us stand in a tight little triangle, as people shop around us.
“Tyler’s circle is rotten,” Knox says, pretending to peruse the available tape options.
Milo’s brow lifts. “Tyler himself?”
Knox tilts his head. “Don’t know yet. But the men around him aren’t accidents.”
Three months ago, when Odin handed us Brock Davis in a file, I’d have agreed with the don’t know yet.
Brock was a known piece of shit. We’d cleared Tyler in passing on the original sweep because nothing flagged.
Plenty of monsters have unremarkable friends.
But standing here now, with what we saw at the country club—Tyler getting a private audience with a man on our kill list, his thumbs working a phone in time with Milo’s pocket buzzing—the pieces are clicking together louder than I want when it’s a guy who has access to Sage.
“He’s either the cleanest dirty guy I’ve ever come across,” I say, “or he’s worse than dirty and we haven’t seen it yet.”
“Could go either way,” Knox says.
“Yeah.”
“We watch him from now on.”
Knox nods.
“What about Sage?” Milo asks. “Should we tell her?”
“Has she said anything about Tyler being weird with her?” I ask Milo. “Threatening?”
Milo curls his lip. “He was there Tuesday night—at her place—acting like an ass. She said he’s been suspicious of her. Asking questions. Thinks he blames her for Brock leaving. But she didn’t say he was scaring her. Just said he was annoying.”
“Annoying isn’t dangerous.”
“Yet,” Knox mutters.
I glance around to make sure no one’s within listening distance. “Davis’s parents have been calling me almost every day this past week. The dad mostly. The mom’s started leaving messages.”
“Asking what?”
“Updates. Same questions on a loop—any news, who was the last person to see him, what about the girl he left the party with. They’re not letting it go.”
Knox grunts. “They won’t, until somebody gives them a reason to.”
“I’m going to need an official statement from Sage.
Soon. Just to put a pin in it. If I have her on record saying he ghosted her like he ghosted them, then at least it looks like I’m taking their concerns seriously.
If I don’t, the parents keep pushing and since they’re rich assholes, someone above me will take over and give them what they want. ”
Milo’s expression sharpens. “Or I could just shut the parents up directly.”
“How?”
“Voice clone. Five minutes of Brock’s Instagram clips through a model, and Brock calls Mom and Dad himself—he’s fine, he needs space, please stop acting like his leaving is a crime.” He shrugs. “Saves you an interview. Saves Sage from sitting across a desk from you, lying for her life.”
I think about it. It’s clean. Voice-clone calls have plausibility, especially to parents desperate for any contact. And it spares Sage the official police visit, which I don’t love putting her through.
“Both,” I say. “I’ll still need a statement from Sage for the file. But you make the call to the parents ASAP. If they hear from him, they back off and the case cools. Then her statement is just paperwork.”
Milo nods. “On it.”
“I need to get out of these clothes,” I say, already reaching for my car keys. “So I’m gonna head home and shower. Then I’ll go talk to Sage. Anything else?”
They both shake their heads.
“Good. I’ll see you later.”
I get in the Audi and sit for ten seconds with my hands on the wheel. As much as I need to talk to her about Tyler and that party, I know the real reason I’m going.
I’m tired of looking at her from a distance. I need to be near her.