Chapter 17
Seventeen
Present Day
Mo drove in silence for five minutes.
Meredith wasn’t asleep. She just wasn’t talking.
That was okay. He could wait.
Five more minutes passed before the dam broke.
“Are you going to explain why you plan to spend the night at Bronwyn’s again?” she asked. “Or are you going to leave me in suspense?”
Mo considered leaving her in suspense, but he was too tired to mess with her. “After what happened in the last six hours, do you think she should stay alone?”
“Do you plan to answer every question with a question?”
“Do you?”
She huffed, then leaned toward him. “You’re in big trouble, bro.”
Didn’t he know it.
“I don’t disagree that she needs someone around, but there has to be more.”
“Why do you say that?” Mo asked.
“Because if it was just about keeping her safe, you could move her into Cal’s tiny house. Or into my house with me. I would think that would be your first choice. So, why stay at her place?”
“I had time to think while sitting there last night. This morning. Whenever. And I remembered something that’s come up a few times in my work.”
Meredith looked at her watch. “You’re going to need to give me the fast version.”
“Bronwyn has hired me. Sort of. But not really. There’s no contract. And as CEO of The Haven she can’t enter into a contract with me without making it clear to everyone there that I’m working on the systems.”
“Which we don’t want to do. At least, not yet.” Meredith twisted in her seat to face him. “Why is the contract important?”
“Because one thing The Haven prides itself on is the privacy and security of its guests and their personal information. Even though I would never do anything with that data, if I remove it from the premises, even if it’s later proven that I did it for the benefit of The Haven, the board could use it to force her out. ”
“How?”
“It could be considered a breach of her contract. I’ll confirm it this afternoon when I look.
This isn’t about whether or not she would do anything inappropriate with the data, or even if I would.
This is about the letter of the law or, in this case, the letter of the contract.
If she’s in breach, they could remove her.
I won’t save her job for her to lose it over a technicality. ”
“So what’s the solution?”
“The solution is for me to use only computers that are the property of The Haven and that are located on-site. I can duplicate her hard drive in her office, then work from her laptop in her home.”
“Would that be sufficient?”
“I think so.”
Meredith was quiet for a few moments, then she squeezed his arm. “Is it possible you’re making this up so you have an excuse to stay with her?”
Yes? No? He had no idea. No. Definitely not. “Does it matter?”
Meredith sighed. “I don’t guess it does.”
“The alternative is to see if she can come up with a reason for me to work from her office. But, given the current climate, I don’t think that’s wise. Not yet.”
“I agree.”
“So you’ll explain it to her?” Mo asked.
“No.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I’m tired of playing the go-between. Talk to her yourself.”
“You know I can’t.” The words were gritted out. “I’m not the problem here.”
“I’m not sure I’d go that far.” Meredith made a sound in the back of her throat that was disturbingly growl-like. “Fine. I’ll talk to her. But, Mo—”
“The ball’s in her court. It’s her move. I’ve opened the door. I’ve cleared the decks. If you can think of a way to describe it, I’ve done it.”
“I wonder what her problem is?”
“She’s scared.” Mo hadn’t realized that truth until he said it out loud. But with the verbalization came a sense of rightness. Before he could elaborate, Meredith’s phone rang, and she answered it on speaker.
“Hey, babe.” Gray’s voice came through loud and clear.
Mo pretended to gag.
Meredith took the phone off speaker and put it to her ear. “Yeah. Almost to the office.” A pause. “I have a change of clothes.” Another pause. “Okay. See you soon.” A longer pause. And then a breathy, “I love you too.”
She placed her phone in her lap. “I won’t apologize for telling my fiancé I love him.”
“Could you be less gross about it?”
“Nope.”
He parked in front of her dental office, where Gray was waiting by the front door. “See you in a little while.”
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Love you too.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
She climbed down from the Jeep and closed the door. She took two steps before he called out, “I love you too.”
She turned and beamed at him. “I know you do.” She blew him a kiss and then squealed when Gray pulled her into his arms.
She was laughing when Mo drove away.
He was so thankful for the women in his life who loved him and whom he loved in return. But somehow, platonic sibling love left him feeling more hollow than he’d been in a long time.
He shook himself from his melancholy thoughts and called Cal to fill him in on his new plans.
Twenty minutes later, he was at his desk. It was time to do a deeper dive into William Pierce.
He hadn’t shared what he knew about the man before because he’d been undecided about what he should or shouldn’t say.
He was sure William would assume Mo had somehow hacked into his finances, but the truth was that the tidbit of information he had on William had come about the old-fashioned way.
He’d seen him, followed him, and documented what he saw.
Last winter, Mo had watched as William Pierce sat at a hotel bar with a much younger woman, who was not his wife, and after several drinks, the two headed up to a room.
He had no proof that anything inappropriate had happened. He didn’t know who the woman was or why William had met her there. His dig at the man when they met at The Haven this morning had been a risk, but based on William’s reaction, he was guilty of something.
And Mo was about to find out what.
It didn’t take long, and as had happened far too many times in the past, he wished he hadn’t.
The woman was the daughter of another resort manager, which begged the question, Was it a sordid affair? Business espionage on his part or hers or both? Something else entirely?
Mo hadn’t found anything conclusive when Meredith called him at lunchtime. Her last patient of the day had a stomach bug and had cancelled, so she was headed back to The Haven earlier than planned.
“I’ll be there by one.”
“Great. See you then.”
He grabbed a protein shake, took a five-minute cold shower, dressed, and was parked outside Bronwyn’s office at 12:55 p.m. He sat in his Jeep and waited for Meredith. There was no point in going inside. It wasn’t like Bronwyn would talk to him.
And he didn’t blame her. Not with listening devices in the office. Now wasn’t the time.
But soon. She was going to cave soon.
Meredith arrived two minutes later, and they walked inside together.
“Mr. Quinn. Dr. Quinn.” Bronwyn’s assistant, June, gave them a cheery smile. “Ms. Pierce mentioned that you were coming by this afternoon. She’s in a meeting at the moment. Could I bring you some water? Coffee? Tea?”
“No, thank you.” Mo smiled at her, then took a seat on the small sofa. Meredith joined him. They didn’t speak, but Mo knew what his sister was thinking.
Bronwyn hadn’t had a meeting on her calendar. She was supposed to be with Landry all morning.
So who was in her office now?
The answer came ten minutes later. The office door opened and out walked a curvy brunette who spent so much time in the spotlight that even someone as intentionally out of touch as Mo recognized her.
“Darling, you’re the best. The absolute best.” She and Bronwyn did that hug-and-kiss thing where they kissed the air on either side of their faces. He’d never understood the point of it.
Bronwyn’s smile was . . . off. On the one hand, Mo was sure she genuinely liked the woman who sashayed by him. On the other hand, she wasn’t happy that this person had been in her office.
Bronwyn waved them in and closed the door behind her. She pulled out her phone. “Excuse me for a moment. I need to send this and then we can start talking.”
Meredith didn’t miss a beat. “Mo, why don’t you help me move a few of these pictures? I told Beep we’d paint some swatches on the walls where we can cover them easily.”
Mo removed several photographs before reaching the frame he most wanted out of the room. “Where should we put this one?”
Meredith made quite a show of hemming and hawing before she said, “I think we should stack all of them in the conference room. That way, we won’t risk knocking anything over.”
The story was flimsy, but Meredith had a reputation for being a force of nature. She’d decided the police station needed to be redone and had it finished in less than a month. It was town lore, so no one would find this suspicious. At least, he hoped they wouldn’t.
He and Meredith took the framed prints and photos to the conference room.
When they returned to the office, it took Meredith less than thirty seconds to devise a reason to remove a lamp that held one of the listening devices. The other two would be harder to clear out, given that one was on a bookshelf and the other under Bronwyn’s desk. But they’d find a way.
For now, Mo sat down at the computer and did what he needed to do to clone the hard drive while Meredith and Bronwyn chatted about paint colors, the power outage, how the guests had reacted this morning, and the surprising news that one of them thought Bronwyn should offer an unplugged experience—tent camping, not glamping.
Mo kept one ear on their conversation while he searched the computer system for hidden files and malware.
It took him almost thirty minutes to be satisfied that he had everything he needed.
By then, the new paint color had been chosen, and plans had been made to remove everything from the office because Meredith had walked around the room a few times and said, “Bronwyn, don’t hate me, but what’s under this carpet? ”
It turned out to be a hardwood floor.