“Wait, he said he would hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Him personally?”
“Well, he said Eaglelinx would, I guess. What does it matter? He’s using you. It’s all been a lie. A front.”
“Oh, that’s not true,” said Felicity.
“Felicity, I was just talking to him. He admitted everything.”
“Did he say that he wasn’t into me?”
I furrowed my brow. “Well, no, he actually made it a point to not say that, but he also said that Eaglelinx made him approach you.”
“Well, that makes sense,” she said. “Now, it all makes sense.” She let out a little breath.
“What are you talking about?” I was confused. She sounded relieved, but that didn’t make any sense, because she shouldn’t be relieved. She should be angry and devastated.
“Scott came on so strong,” she said. “He was insistent that we see each other, that we go out, that we were together. He was adamant that we needed to be in a relationship and that I needed to leave Jensen. And that’s just not Scott. I know him, and the whole reason we never got together in the first place was that neither of us was able to really go after it. He’s too easygoing, and so am I. So, if he had some reason to do it, that would explain why he was insistent. That’s always bothered me.”
“Felicity—”
“And I told you he was hiding something, didn’t I? And I knew it was bothering him. It made him worried. So, this isn’t something he wanted to do. I bet he apologized to you, didn’t he? This has probably been ripping him apart.”
“Felicity, you’re being ridiculous. He betrayed you.”
“No,” she said. “He… look, Penny, if this was me, if I told you that I’d been working for Eaglelinx all along, what would you think?”
“You would never do that,” I said.
“Exactly, so if I did?”
“I don’t know. Does this matter? I think you’re so obsessed with this guy that you can’t see the truth even when it’s staring you right in the face, and I feel like maybe you need to find someone else to watch Asia and get your butt over here, because—”
“They’ve got something on him,” she said. “They’re holding something over his head. There’s no other reason for him to behave this way. You know it and so do I.”
“I don’t know that,” I said. But when I thought back over the conversation, he had said something about not having a choice.
“Penny, we need to protect him. We need to find out what it is that they’re doing and help him out. He’s on our side, I swear.”
I bit down on my lip. “Can you just consider the possibility that you’re being naive about him?”
“No,” she said. “And if it was Lachlan, you wouldn’t either.”
I considered. “I don’t know. Lachlan has done some weird things.” I briefly flashed on him being high of some strange combination of drugs back when we were undercover with the Bryant clan. That had partly been the blood bond, but it hadn’t been entirely that. There were layers to Lachlan. Things deep inside that I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about.
“But you love him no matter what,” she said.
I hesitated.
“You know I’m right,” she said.
I sighed. “I guess so.”
“There’s a reason Scott did this. Let me find out what it is. I’ll get back to you, okay?”
* * *
“Wow,” said Lachlan. “I can’t believe he’s been spying on us all this time.”
“Well, neither can I,” I said. “But apparently, that’s what’s up. And I don’t know what to think about what Felicity’s saying, but it seems clear to me that he’s not a person we can trust.”
“I don’t know,” said Lachlan. “We have first-hand experience with the depths to which Eaglelinx will sink. They killed people and made it look like it was a serial killer. They’re willing to do whatever it takes. They could very well be threatening him.”
“I still think it’s weird that she reacted that way,” I muttered.
“When it comes to you and Felicity’s boyfriends, I don’t think you’re ever going to find one you like,” he said. “You’re too protective of her.”
“So, you think we should trust this guy? Protect him, the way Felicity wants us to?”
“I think we should keep an open mind and hear him out. If his excuses don’t check out, then we cut him off. But if he’s an innocent victim, I think we have to protect him. That’s kind of what we do.”
“He’s a two-faced liar,” I said. “He’s not innocent.”
Lachlan shrugged. “Maybe there’s more to the story.”
“Maybe,” I sighed. I scuffed my toe against the floor.
Lachlan’s cell phone rang. He picked it up. “Flint here.” He paused. “Yes, that’s me. Detective Lachlan Flint. Can I help you?…Wait a second, slow down, Ms. Stanley. What happened?… Well, all right, sure, we can come see you if that’s what you want…. Yeah, give us twenty minutes or so.” He hung up the phone.
“Paloma?” I said.
“Yup,” said Lachlan. “She has something important to talk to us about, and she doesn’t want to do it on the phone. She said that it was morning for her, even if it was the end of the day for us, and that there was no way she could work into our normal business hours, even if it was inconvenient for us. She said our job was to protect and serve, and that included protecting and serving gargoyles.”
“Okay,” I said. “So, we’re going to see her?”
He nodded. “Is Connor here tonight to night nanny?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll see if Vivica can watch Wyatt.”
* * *
“Thank you for coming,” said Paloma at the door to her family’s house. “Come on in.”
We came into the house. It was a converted duplex, large enough to accommodate a big family. We barely got a peek inside the foyer, however, before Paloma ushered us up the steps. “We can talk in my room.”
We followed her.
Paloma didn’t have just a bedroom, but two rooms connected by a doorway. One appeared to be a bedroom, but the other was a small sitting room complete with a couch, an easy chair and a television. There was also a desk against one wall with a computer on it. The wall next to the desk was full of file cabinets.
“I used to use this room to take care of Uncle Beckett’s business,” said Paloma. She gestured to the couch. “Have a seat.”
Lachlan and I sat down.
She perched on the easy chair across from us. “He’s gone now, but I’m still taking care of his affairs as best I can. It seems, even though he’s dead, that there are so many things that still need to be taken care of.”
“Yeah, I’d imagine that’s the case,” I said.
She studied her hands. “In some ways, I have to admit that I’m glad of it, because I like keeping busy. If I didn’t have anything to do at all, I might get sort of overwhelmed by the sadness of it all.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I miss him so much.”
I shot a glance at Lachlan. Should I comfort her? I was pretty sure she didn’t like me very much. Maybe Lachlan should say something.
But Lachlan just waited.
She took a handkerchief out of her pocket and dabbed at her eyes.
I didn’t know if I’d ever seen someone use an actual handkerchief before. Strange.
“On the phone, you said something had gone wrong,” Lachlan said.
“Oh, right.” She put her hands in her lap, still clutching the handkerchief. “Well, it’s really worrisome. I, uh, looked at a balance for Uncle Beckett’s account, and there’s a significant amount of money missing.”
“What do you mean, missing?”
“I mean, I helped with his financials, and there’s a lot of money gone. I called the bank. Of course, they’re closed.” Her nostrils flared. “They’re only open one night a week, and it was yesterday. All I have to go on is that supposedly there’s a check that he wrote, but I ca
n’t even see who it’s written to.”
“You can’t?” I said.
“No, I don’t have access to all his accounts. Only the business ones. This is a personal account. I can only see the balance. And I can tell you that it’s wrong by a significant amount,” said Paloma.
“All right, well, we’ll do what we can to check into it,” said Lachlan.
“I don’t know if it’s related to his murder,” she said, stretching the handkerchief between her hands and then balling it up, “but I thought that I should let you know about it. Maybe it could help?”
“How large a sum of money are we talking about here?” said Lachlan. “Is this the kind of sum that a person might kill over?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s not enough to buy a house or live on for a year or anything, but it’s still significant.”
“Okay,” said Lachlan. “Well, we’ll look into it.”
“How are you going to do that?” she said.
“We’ll get the bank to release information about the check first thing in the morning,” said Lachlan. “And we appreciate you telling us all about this. It could definitely be important. We all want the same thing here. We want to find who killed your uncle.”
“Good,” she said. “Because what was done to him was horrible.” She started to cry again, and she lifted the handkerchief.
Now, I could read that there was a name monogrammed on the bottom corner. “Gilbert?” I said aloud.
She dropped the handkerchief into her lap, closing her hand around it. “What?”
I sat back, leaning into the couch, thinking hard. I knew that name in connection with Beckett Stanley. What was it?
Paloma got up and went over to the door. “Well, that’s all I wanted to—”
“Gilbert is the name of the mage who owned your gargoyle clan, isn’t it?” I said. “Um, is that handkerchief something that was taken away when you were liberated—maybe it’s a symbol of freedom for you?”
Paloma stuffed the handkerchief into her pocket. “No, it’s nothing to do with that. I don’t even know where I got it.” She opened the door. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”
* * *
“Okay, I probably shouldn’t have said that,” I said to Lachlan. “I shouldn’t have brought up the fact that her family was owned. That’s utterly disgusting to even think about, and I just spit that out at her. That’s why she was upset. It has to be.”
“She was acting weird about the handkerchief, though,” said Lachlan. “Who uses handkerchiefs, anyway?”
“Well… that’s why I brought it up. I thought maybe it was old and it was sort of a badge of their liberty, you know? If they could take something that belonged to the people that oppressed them and blow snot on it, I feel like that would be pretty appropriate, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” said Lachlan.
“But it wasn’t my place to bring it up,” I said.
“She said it didn’t have anything to do with that,” said Lachlan. “And she wanted to hide it. It’s something else. She’s got a different connection to the Gilberts.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “That can’t be. She wouldn’t dare be involved with them. She couldn’t.”
Lachlan shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s all connected. Maybe this missing money is part of it. I don’t like it, and I’m suspicious.”
“Could the Gilbert family have anything to do with Beckett’s death?” I said.
“Well, maybe they’re pissed about gargoyle emancipation,” he said. “Maybe they carry a grudge against him, and they’ve been biding their time, waiting for him to be vulnerable so that they could make their strike.”
“They hired Sierra!” I said.
“More likely they’re working with Paloma,” he said. “That handkerchief ties her to them. She didn’t want us to see it, and she didn’t want us to know.”
“Why are you so insistent that Sierra isn’t guilty?” I said.
“I’m not,” said Lachlan. “It’s only that the evidence is currently pointing to Paloma, and that’s what we should be looking at.”
I glared at him. “Whatever.”
He sighed. “You know what? I am dead dog tired. You tired?”
I smiled wanly. “I’m always tired.”
“Let’s just curl up in bed with a movie or something, okay? Try to turn off our heads for a bit? We’ve been through a lot with this Scott revelation and everything, and we could use a chance to relax.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds good.”
And then there was a knock on the door.
CHAPTER TEN
It was Felicity.
“Hey,” I said, ushering her inside. “You all right?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “Scott’s not. He’s freaking out right now.”
“As he should be,” I said.
Lachlan gave Felicity a hug. “Does he have some kind of explanation for what he’s been up to?”
“Well, yeah, I told you there was a reason for what he did.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “And?”
Felicity crossed the room and sat down on the couch. She gestured for us to sit down as well.
I sighed, but I complied. I went over and sat next to her.
Lachlan sat down on the recliner that was perpendicular to the couch. “Tell us everything, Felicity.”
“Well,” said Felicity, “you know that Scott knew Dan Parker, Vivica’s boyfriend, right?”
“Yeah, I remember that he was one of the people who came over to help Vivica move in. She said that Scott and Dan worked together, right?”
“Right,” said Felicity. “Well, after what happened with Dan, Scott was suspicious, because he knew about the eagleclaws. Dan had confided in him, and Scott thought that maybe something bad had happened to Dan. Scott was worried about himself, and he was thinking about quitting his work for Eaglelinx. But they’d put a tail on him, and they knew he’d come here to this hotel. When they found out about his connection to me, they wouldn’t let him go. They said that he had to keep working for them.”
“But he could have refused, right?” I said. “Why didn’t he say no?”
“Well, he tried. He said that he told them to go to hell, and he walked out of the office. They let him go, but when he got home, there was an email in his inbox full of pictures of Asia. They had followed her everywhere. There were pictures of her playing in the playground, pictures of her in her classroom, pictures of her at her mother’s house. Hell, Penny, he said there was a picture of her going into the bathroom.”
“What?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “The email didn’t say anything, but the message was clear. They could get to his daughter anytime, anywhere. And he couldn’t take that risk.”
I was quiet. Threatening children, huh? Was there no boundary Eaglelinx wouldn’t cross?
“That’s… bad,” said Lachlan.
“I know,” said Felicity. “I told him I didn’t blame him. I said that I understood. He was afraid that I was going to leave him. He said that I had every right to pack up my stuff and go after what he’d done to me, but I told him it wasn’t his fault.” She turned to me, eyes flashing. “Because it wasn’t.”
“And he still wants to be with you?” I said. “Because Eaglelinx made him get into that relationship with you.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love me,” she said. “I know that. I know him.”
I looked down at my fingers.
“What?” said Felicity.
“Nothing.” I sighed.
“Penny.” She gave me a look.
“No, seriously. You say that you and Scott are written in the stars, and I believe you know what you both feel.”
She eyed me. “Who are you, and what have you done with Penny?”
“Hey, I’m trying here.” I glared at her. “We believe Scott. The end.”
“Okay,” said Felicity.
“Good
enough for me,” said Lachlan.
“So,” said Felicity, “I told him he has to make a break from Eaglelinx. He can’t keep working for them anymore. It’s ripping him up inside, being part of that.”
“And Asia?” I said.
“Well, we can protect Asia, right?”
“I guess they could stay here,” I said. “We have empty suites now that we’re in the off-season. But you said something about her mother’s house? She goes there sometimes?”
“Um, yeah, she spends the whole summer there,” said Felicity. “And certain holidays. But she won’t be going back there until Christmas. Her mom lives down in Georgia.”
“Oh,” I said. “Wow.”
“Yeah, it’s a big crazy story,” said Felicity. “Scott says she basically ran away and they didn’t hear from her for a year. Anyway, then she got back in touch with him, and she was with some other guy in Georgia, and she was pregnant again with that guy’s kid, and suddenly she was interested in Asia again. I don’t understand that. I don’t get how parents could abandon their kids.”
I thought of Wyatt, my sweet little boy, and I didn’t get it either. But that wasn’t the salient point here. “So, you’re saying that Eaglelinx was following her before Scott refused. They had those photos all ready to go. Had been gathering them for weeks?”
“Months,” said Felicity.
In spite of myself, I shuddered. What if these people came after my family? I couldn’t allow that to happen. We had to stop them.
“Okay, then,” I said. “Well, it’s settled. Scott and Asia will stay here. And we’ll figure out some way to stop Eaglelinx once and for all. Because they can’t be allowed to do what they’re doing. They’re… they’re evil.”
* * *
The next morning, I left Wyatt with Lachlan while I ran down to the Flamingo to pick up a breakfast order to go. I didn’t do to-go breakfast orders all that often, because even though it was convenient, it meant wrangling Wyatt, and either leaving him with someone during busy morning time or bringing him with me. I’d done that before, just popped him in his baby carrier and walked down to the restaurant. I had to admit that he wasn’t as easy to fit in a baby carrier as he used to be, though. Back when he was tiny, it was perfect. He’d fall right asleep inside there, and I could get all kinds of things done. But these days, he mostly squirmed and grabbed for stuff.
Fire Brand (City of Dragons Book 6) Page 8