Chapter 52
Rhodes
The guy Chloe had brought was a real dick, but I’d fixed him by telling him we buried the rest of her boyfriends behind the apple trees.
He looked like he didn’t believe me for a hot minute until I slid up my pant leg to show the knife sheathed there.
It wasn’t practical to carry a gun on the property, but a knife was a handy weapon.
I could disembowel someone in no time. Once you had kids, you had to be careful about stashing weapons just anywhere.
It was a downside to parenting, but safety first.
By the time things were winding down enough for me to slip away to my office, the sun was starting to slide low, and the small groups that were left were relaxing in Adirondack chairs, having quiet conversations.
Kissing Sage, I whispered into her hair. “I’m going to head in for a work call. You good on your own for a minute? Maggie says she’ll watch Opal. I won’t be long.”
“I’ll be fine.” She leaned against me for a minute before she moved off, stopping to chat with people as she went, her red hair loose in the light breeze.
She looked beautiful in her cute little short overalls.
I couldn’t wait to take those off later, like a present.
They made me wish I could tell everyone to get the fuck out, but with the influx of people here, that was hard to do.
I jerked my chin to Wade to join me.
As soon as we were in the office and the door shut behind us, Wade collapsed into an armchair. Parrish and Ryatt were already in the chat waiting for us. I’d give them shit for being in my office in Redhawk, but I didn’t have it in me.
“Talk.” I dropped into a chair, suddenly frustrated by the company on the property and this situation with the stalker. Ellis was down in the yard, keeping an eye on things. Between the gate and the massive property, one person wasn’t enough.
“We completed the deeper dive on Cedric per your orders. That’s not even his name. It was just a shell profile. Ryatt found the digital trail.” Parrish leaned forward in his chair, his wrestler’s build making his shoulders bunch.
“When we first ran him, he looked clean because he’d made a synthetic identity.
It was good. Really fucking good actually.
” Ryatt whistled, adjusting his glasses.
“Everything looked perfect. All his socials go all the way back to high school. A natural evolution of life, with a few interspersed in there that make it look like a few poor judgment calls.”
“Synthetic identity?” Wade asked, wrinkling his nose. “Fake, you mean?”
“These are harder to find because they’re made of real pieces of an identity and parts that are made up,” Ryatt explained. “Street names, one or two places where someone worked. That sort of thing.”
“It’s like a Franken-identity.” Parrish looked pleased with himself. “On the surface, you don’t find a ripple. The person has socials, pays taxes, might have a good job, and they’ll even hold up under a deeper dive because parts are real. But under it all, it’s fake.”
Wade’s jaw clenched. “Are you sure Cedric’s the stalker?”
“Positive.” Parrish waved a hand. “There’s a trail that gets clearer the more you follow it.
There are socials that follow Sage’s shop before he moved here, and that’s not that big of a deal.
But there are comments from him, another person named Cedric, and Rick Eton.
It’s the same man. The thing is …” Parrish paused, hesitating, but I could tell he’d found something. “Rick Eton? He’s the son of Mike Eton.”
“Jesus. So, he’s the son of the guy who killed Sage’s parents?” Wade rubbed a hand over his face. “He got a job at her shop?”
The level of commitment this guy had gone to was staggering, and my stomach churned at the thought of him even thinking about her, let alone creeping into her life.
“He had all the access he needed. Sage wouldn’t have connected the fake name, but she wouldn’t have recognized his real one. The father died in prison,” Ryatt finished.
“Is this a revenge situation? I’m just struggling to connect to the why.” Wade was frowning, his brows pinched together.
“There’s some indication that his father took him along on some home invasions. When they busted his pops, they connected him to some other crimes. Some were just in-and-out robberies, but a few of them mentioned an accomplice. Someone small enough to be a child.”
Wade and I were stunned for a moment by the information and its implications, but I knew it was possible. Cedric, aka Rick, could have been there that night her parents were murdered.
“There are some really concerning posts, though.” Ryatt pulled up a screen, and I peered at it.
“Jesus Christ.” He’d pasted a few of what must have been some of the highlights.
“He was deep in the hole on some purity shit all under the Rick persona. I’m not really sure what we’re looking at here, but the guy is a wacko. You’ve met him, right?” he asked Wade.
“Yeah, you’d never guess,” Wade said, shaking his head.
This was dark stuff, but if he was drawn to Sage because she symbolized innocence or because he thought she was pure, and then I ruined that image with our relationship … Well, that was a problem.
“The timeline all matches with the escalation. Maybe he was satisfied working with her. He’d have been triggered eventually when she dated seriously.”
Wade looked like he was going to explode, but I didn’t feel any better. “So this fucking psycho has been in town for years, but just what … freaked out when she started dating this yahoo?” He sounded like he was choking on the thought.
“Hate to say it, but yeah.” Parrish winced.
“Shit.” My hands clenched on my thighs.
“Timeline all matches. The first flower bouquet after you showed up, and then everything escalated after that.” Ryatt nodded.
“It’s all pretty clear that he has some twisted-up shit going on. We dove a little deep on some of the sites he was on. There are all sorts of purification shit on there. It’s gross as fuck.”
The idea that he’d not only had access to Sage all this time but could have killed her or done any number of things to her sent ice through my veins.
In the years we’d been in the military, we’d had some rough missions, but the brass decided the targets.
One of the things you got used to was orders.
Maybe you didn’t like it, but it was what you signed up for.
When we got out, the guys and I had built Redhawk with the idea that we’d make our own choices about the jobs we took.
Every ticket we punched, or asswipe we protected, was as clean as we could make them.
Maybe some of them weren’t squeaky, but my conscience was clear.
Did I kill people? Sure, but only the bad ones.
Was I going to kill this Rick mother-fuckerr? Absolutely.
“Well, I’m going after him tonight.” Just as Wade opened his mouth, my phone buzzed with a security alert. “There’s motion detected at the back gate.” The cameras showed a figure sliding through the now-darkened gate, and the figure’s gait and build matched Cedric/Rick.
Grabbing the radio, I turned it on. “Ellis, head to the back. We’ve got company.”
“Copy.”
This hadn’t been a controlled party, and I’d let it get sloppy. That was on me. If Cedric were as smart as I thought he was, he’d have slipped in through the front when everyone else arrived. The gate had been open, but entering through the back was dumb.
Downstairs, Maggie and Opal were still sitting at the table coloring, and I stopped just long enough to tell her to go upstairs and lock themselves in the playroom.
She’d taken one look at our faces and hadn’t hesitated, cooing to Opal as she scooped up the kitten and hurried her up the stairs, pulling Phiny along with them.
“Do you see her?” Wade asked as we exited the main floor.
There was no sign of Sage among the small cluster of people still hanging around the empty tables on the grass. Frantically, I scoured the groups of people looking for those red curls. “No.”
“Boss. The greenhouse. Sage is there.” Ellis’ voice came through the walkie in bursts and huffs like he was running.
Wade and I were already moving, weaving through the people still hanging out and chatting.
We’d just started running across the lawn toward the first greenhouse, lit up like a snowglobe, when the sound of shots rang out like firecrackers, so loud that we both stutter-stepped before picking up the pace.
Holy fuck.