Chapter 28 #3
Best thing to do in a situation like this was to behave normally.
Yeah, they got shot at, but everything was okay.
Best way to send that message was to get in Robin’s face about the ridiculousness of his tweezers question and to text back, In my back pocket with a shit-ton of question and exclamation marks, a questioning face emoji and a laughing face emoji.
“It’s not as weird a question as you might think,” Robin texted back and Sam read his reply aloud for Jules. “Your brows are always on fleek. I... don’t know what that means.”
Jules laughed as he, too, found the wig in the closet. “Just say thank you.” He took his phone out and quickly texted Robin back—still on that thread with Sam, which was a little weird because they were standing in the same room. I’m sure Jane has tweezers. We’ll be back there soon.
I don’t get why the men in the black SUV would shoot at you if they were waiting there, hoping to find Emily, Robin texted now, as if Jules’s reply had unleashed him. Why wouldn’t they just stay hidden and then follow you to see if you could lead them to her?
That’s a good question BW, Sam texted back as he followed Jules into Mick’s home studio. I can’t figure it out either.
What I *really* can’t figure out—damn, Robin could type fast—is what is up with Milt Junior? Wig-Milt. Mick. What are we calling him now?
A text from Jules swooshed into Sam’s phone—Let’s go with Mick—as he took a quick break from sifting through Wig-Milt’s desk drawers.
Yeah, Robin texted his agreement. Milt feels a little dead-name-y. So WTF is up with Mick?!
That appears to be the burning question of this entire case Sam texted back, although WTF did “on fleek” mean was now a close second.
Next time he encountered a mirror, he was going to have to look at his eyebrows.
It was possible he’d never really looked at them before.
He reached up to touch them—but the best he could do when it came to describing them was a check in the yes, he had them box.
Jules’s phone rang and he answered it, putting it on speaker as he continued to search Wig-Milt—Mick’s—desk.
It was, of course, Robin. “Is it okay if I call?” he asked, his verb tenses slightly off, since he had, in fact, already done just that. “I was gonna text to ask, but I figured...”
“You’re on speaker,” Jules told him.
“We’re at Mick’s house,” Sam said. “Very safe. Police out front.”
“That picture of Mick,” Robin said. “With Emily...?”
“I took a photo of it and sent it to him,” Jules told Sam. “He’s got such a good eye.”
“It’s definitely the same guy,” Robin said, “as those photos you showed me from Wednesday’s meeting.
No question. So... why did he hire you—and pay you all that money—to find Emily when he already knew exactly where she was?
” He didn’t wait for them to answer—he’d already figured out a possible reason.
“Because he had to—because he doesn’t want Harper to know that he’s close to Emily.
Harper calls him Milt, right? So Harper doesn’t even know about his name change, which seems..
. telling. As in Mick knows that Harper is at least some kind of a threat. ”
“That’s very astute,” Jules said. “Sam and I were theorizing, earlier, on whether or not Wig-Milt—Mick—was in on the fraud, you know, that resulted in the bodies we believe are in the garden.” Jules glanced over at Sam, who shrugged.
“Hey, I’m just gonna stand by, brows on fleek,” he said, “and let you and Boy Wonder figure this whole thing out. Tell me when it’s time to kick down a door.”
Jules laughed, which, yes Robin, Sam agreed, was a very nice sound.
Getting shot at had clearly done additional wonders for Jules’s disposition.
His eyes were brighter and he seemed even sharper and more Jules-like.
More purposeful and unstoppable. And yeah, okay, it was probably more about his inner-boy-scout needing both to rescue poor Emily and to make sure Robin and even Sam stayed safe than it was about the threat to his own life.
But it was another step forward into a future that didn’t hurt quite as much.
And that was a good thing.
“So, yes, Mick knows Emily,” Jules was saying, but when Robin started to interrupt, he made the correction himself.
“Mick is, in fact, Emily’s boyfriend. From that photo.
.. I agree. So he absolutely knows who she is, and most likely exactly why Dead Milt left his fortune to her—although it’s now become a bigger mystery for us.
Adding to that is the fact that Dead Milt apparently chose not to tell Harper—his longtime lawyer—that he was making Emily the beneficiary of his estate.
I called her, by the way. Emily. Left a message,” he added, telling Robin, “She had a stack of business cards in her kitchen—she’s a photographer.
I picked up her card right before the whole, you know, windows being shot out thing. ”
There was silence on the other end of the phone—long enough for Jules to ask, “You still there?”
“Yes,” Robin said crisply. “I am here. And I’m... stuck on that, too. The shooting at you thing, which is not a thing, it’s an assault with very deadly intent.” He took a deep breath and exhaled hard. “I can’t make that make sense, either.”
“There’s a lot to wonder about,” Sam said. “Unloading automatic weapons in a residential neighborhood, in the middle of the day? They didn’t even have a clean shot at both of us—Jules was already inside of the house. The odds of them hitting him were low. Ish.”
“So... was it a warning?” Robin asked.
“I don’t know,” Jules admitted. “The fact that the SUV circled the block...”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “Standard warning would’ve been shoot and flee. And just a few shots, not the total unleashing they delivered. Whoever they were, they wanted—at least a little bit—for us to be dead.”
“But they didn’t want it enough to give chase on foot,” Jules said.
“That we know of,” Sam pointed out.
“True,” Jules said, “Although a professional hit squad would’ve been waiting out back, for us to squirt.”
“Yup,” Sam agreed. “But these were not professionals. We did the right thing getting to cover, proceeding with caution—our splinters were not in vain—but I feel pretty certain that if they’d killed one of us, it would’ve been dumb luck.”
“Hmm,” Robin’s voice through the speaker of Jules’s phone was tight. “Death due to dumb luck is so much better than... Oh, wait. No. Nope. You’d still be just as dead. Although maybe they’d put an asterisk next to your name on your gravestone.”
Jules looked up from his search of the desk to meet Sam’s eyes.
“I got this,” Sam mouthed before saying, “We love you, too, Boy Wonder.” Because, really, love was at the foundation of Robin’s anxiety. “And I promise, I am always on my A-game when I’m with your guy.”
As he spoke, a text swooshed in, from that thread with Alyssa and Tom. Lys had sent the finalized list of the TS operatives heading north to assist them and...
“Decker, Lopez, Jenkins—both Mark and Lindsey—she’s former LAPD, so that’s a big bonus for us, and grumpy Dave,” Sam read aloud, because he knew that Robin would feel better at that news. “All coming to LA to assist. Glory alleluia.”
“That’s something of a dream team,” Jules said.
“Funny,” Robin said, “that’s what Cosmo called you and Sam.”
Another swoosh, and... “Dave just emailed us the report on Marina Santana and her family,” Sam reported, scrolling over to his email app and... “Well, shit, this would’ve been useful information a few days ago.” He looked up. “Emily Johnson, age twenty-seven, is Marina Santana’s daughter.”
“What?” Robin said. “That’s... No! Really? Whoa, that’s messed up.”
“You think?” Jules said. “It now begs the question, in this dark comedy of lying liars and hidden identities... Does Emily Johnson know that her boyfriend Mick O’Rourke is also Milt Junior, the man who killed her mother?” He didn’t wait for them to answer. “I’m gonna go with no.”