Chapter 22
The worst part about Malone’s departure was the conversation it forced me to have with myself.
He’s abandoned you.
No, he hadn’t abandoned me. He’d gotten an emergency call for work, similar to my situation the first time around. Truth be told, I’d had less reason to leave him than he’d had to leave me. Probably. Hard to know since I didn’t know the particulars.
Well, he’ll be done with you the minute he actually has sex with you. That’s what men do.
If that were the case, he would’ve done just as he pleased with no concern about how things went for me. He had walked away with a raging boner because he cared enough to want the experience to be good for me too.
Mind you, the idea of his sliding my thong to the side and—
Cold shower, Stella. You need a cold shower.
The shower ended up being hot; I ended up thinking those fond thoughts.
Afterward, sleep came more easily to me than I would’ve anticipated, but I still jerked awake every few hours and looked outside for his car. By seven, I groggily decided I’d better get something productive done since my final project for my Legal Research class was due on Monday.
I worked on that project, then did background checks on potential teachers for a private school. Working that job along with another added four hundred or so more dollars to the tally.
I’d moved on to looking through my assorted databases for any hint to Blake Malone’s whereabouts when I finally heard someone out in the breezeway.
I jumped up so quickly that the cat yelped. I opened the door and sagged with relief at the sight of him.
“Malone!”
When he turned around, he was on his phone, his eyes inscrutable behind the aviators.
But something seemed . . . off.
“I can’t talk now,” he said before turning back to his door.
He’s already done with you.
My brain told my inner child to have a seat and then brought some reason to my would-be pity party.
Slightly different aviators. Black suit, not navy. Ridiculously expensive shoes. Hair hanging over the collar of his suit in an odd way. His beard was more neatly trimmed than the day before. A glint of sunlight dancing on a watch worth more than my car.
He wasn’t my Malone.
Based on the resemblance and the fact that he had a key to the apartment, I could only surmise I’d found the elusive Blake.
I texted Trista first, wishing I had the papers in hand because I’d serve him then and there.
Unfortunately for me, I needed to get those from her lawyer’s office, and I hadn’t done so because I’d been busy avoiding Malone, then even busier not avoiding Malone.
Either way you looked at this situation, I needed to get my act together.
If I had a GPS tracking device, I’d be sorely tempted to put it on whatever vehicle he was driving, illegal or not.
Brené Brown gamboled along beside me as I paced, unsure of whether I should break up whatever was going on in the apartment across the way. Was he doing something to Malone’s computer setup? Was he desperate enough to hurt me if I tried to stop him?
Even worse, I didn’t have Malone’s phone number. I’d been about sixty seconds away from knowing him biblically, but I couldn’t text or call him.
Well, you can.
With the information I had, I could learn a lot about Malone, including that pesky Social Security number I didn’t really need. I hadn’t researched him because I didn’t have “permissible purpose.”
But surely he would want to know about this?
I was in the process of pulling up Malone’s number when I heard the apartment door slam.
I’d missed the opportunity to stop Blake.
If I were smooth, I’d have plants on my patio that I could pretend to water while actually checking to see which vehicle Blake got into.
Note to self: Get a fern. Those things always need misting.
Screw it.
I went outside anyway. What did I care if Blake thought I was nosy? For all he knew I was looking for his cousin, and I was eventually getting paid to be nosy about him.
He zipped through the parking lot in a Hyundai Sonata, and I studied the license plate, chanting it until I got back into the apartment and could write it down before plugging it into one of my databases.
“Dammit.” Vehicle registration showed the vehicle belonged to one of the umpteen rental car agencies at the Atlanta airport. I turned my attention to my Malone and typed in his information.
He had more than one phone number.
Of course he did.
After trial and error and leaving messages with who knew whom, I called each number enough times that Malone eventually picked up. “Who is this?”
“Malone, it’s me.”
“Stark?”
“Yeah, listen. Your cousin was just here in a black Hyundai Sonata, license plate Delta Charlie Foxtrot eighty-seven fourteen, rented through Hertz at the Atlanta airport.”
“Did he take anything?”
“I don’t know. I was debating whether or not to break in, but he left before I decided. He was in and out. Appeared to have a key.”
More creative cursing. “Wait. You can break into my apartment?”
“In multiple ways. Do you have a rod in the slider of your patio door?”
“Noooo.”
“Oh, good. That’s the easiest.”
Five minutes later, I’d hopped the barrier to Malone’s patio and used a flathead screwdriver to pop open his patio door. Once inside, I made a beeline for the spare bedroom.
“He’s taken the tower,” I said.
Malone cursed. “Did he take any hard drives?”
“What hard drives? I don’t see any.”
“That answers that question. I guess you’d better check my bedroom, too,” Malone was saying when I saw the walls.
At my gasp, the first thing Malone said was, “Are you okay, Stark?”
Ink and pencil streaked down the walls. It looked as though Blake had started with the bottle of peppermint essential oil and water that I’d left behind but then decided that wasn’t fast enough.
I could deduce, based on the puddles on the floor and an empty pot, that Blake had repeatedly filled the pot with water and then thrown its contents at the wall.
And at the closet. The sticky notes now lay on the ground in mushy piles.
“He erased all your work,” I said.
“He what?”
“He threw water on the walls. It’s all gone.”
As much as I hated math, my heart ached for Malone. Countless hours had gone into whatever the hell he was doing with all those numbers.
Malone sighed. “And that’s why I usually keep everything on my computer. Cloud backup. Encryption.”
“So you have a backup?”
He snorted. “Don’t you worry, Stark. I have backups for my backups. I even have pictures of the walls, so that’s not as big a loss as you think. I won’t be reinventing the wheel.”
“Backups for your backups, huh?”
“Yep.”
“That’s sexy,” I said, my voice finding a new lower register.
“You got a thing for nerds, huh?” he answered with a lower voice of his own.
“Just one in particular.”
He groaned. “You are absolutely killing me, because I can’t come home to finish what we started. It’s a shitshow.”
“I figured,” I said with a sigh. “Anything else you need me to look for?”
“In my bedroom . . .” he started.
I walked out of the guest room and into the main bedroom.
“Okay.”
“In the closet . . .”
“Yeah?”
“There’s a shoebox on the upper shelf—”
“There are a lot of shoeboxes on the upper shelf. I think you have more shoes than I do.”
“Doubt it. Look for one that has ‘Jarvis’ on the bottom right corner.”
I eyed the twelve boxes until I found the pair with the appropriate style name. “Got it.”
“Take that box with you and keep it safe, will ya?”
“Only for you, Malone. Anything else?”
“No. Wait. Didn’t you install one of those doorbell cameras?”
“Sure did.” I bit my lip to keep from adding that I’d done so specifically to get pictures of him.
“Fabulous. Do you have any footage of Blake breaking in?”
“Probably.” Which was thanks to setting up the camera to capture Malone’s door in the first place, but he didn’t need to know that. “But it doesn’t look like breaking in.”
“Doesn’t matter. Please save it. I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”
His words sent a shiver down my back. “Anything else?”
“Keep thinking fondly of me,” he said, his voice rough. “Because I could be gone a few hours or a few days. Either way, I know I’ll be back in time for the benefit on June twenty-seventh, so find something pretty to wear, please and thank you.”
“I can do that. Underwear optional, of course.”
He groaned.
“Why don’t you think fondly of me, Malone, just like I thought fondly of you earlier.”
He made a strangled noise on the other end of the line, and I hung up before he could answer.