“His family did,” Trace muttered from across the room.
“Yes. His grandfather started it, his father continued the business and expanded it and eventually George opened a branch out in Denver.”
“Long way from home,” Trace said under his breath.
“I now know why,” she confessed.
“Why?” the very handsome man leaning against the wall to her right asked. He’d been introduced as Brick. Weird name, but that wasn’t her business.
“To be out from under his father’s thumb. So he could do things in a way... He could do things his father wouldn’t be aware of.”
“He was crooked,” the man sitting at the table and chewing on a toothpick, stated. Steel. Another odd name, though that one could conceivably be a last name.
“Not at first. At least, I don’t think so. I think it started as bad deals and investments gone wrong. Then things began to avalanche.”
“So, you’re sayin’ he was a good guy?” the man introduced as Ryder asked. She detected a very slight southern accent and he wore a baseball cap low over his eyes, hiding them.
“He was.” Another sharp noise came from the doorway. Ellie ignored it and continued, “Or I thought he was. I’m not sure what happened. Why he changed.”
Mercy stated in an icy tone, “Green and greed will do it to you.”
And that was true.
“’But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition,’” the man called Hunter recited.
She wasn’t a religious person, but she recognized the quote. “I can attest to that,” Ellie whispered. “Just when you think you know someone well, you find out you don’t know them at all.”
“Ain’t that the fucking truth.”
Ellie lifted her eyes to Trace. Now his were trying to burn a hole right through her. Maybe contacting him was a bad idea. She should’ve found someone else.
But it was too late. She was here. And she was running out of time.
“I’m not sure why he kept getting into bad deal after bad deal.” Apparently, George didn’t have the same business sense as his father or grandfather.
Trace, who’d been leaning with one shoulder against the door frame, now straightened. “He had money.”
“He did.” Until he spent it all. On what? Ellie didn’t know. He loved to live large, impress people. But even so...
“So, the family money dried up.”
Ellie nodded at Trace’s words. “Not only his trust fund, but everything dried up and became a bottomless pit he couldn’t climb his way out of.”
“But you stayed with him.” Those words held a sharp edge. And glancing around the room, she realized she wasn’t the only one who heard it.
“He was good at covering it for a while. When I started getting suspicious, he began to blame me, saying I had expensive tastes. I didn’t. I never cared about his money. I never cared about things like boats, jewelry or vacation homes. I wanted to settle down and raise a family.”
A sharp intake of breath had her pause.
Her words made Walker want to shake the shit out of her. He wanted to give her all of that. She didn’t let him. “Then why were you with him?”
“Is that what you thought of me? I was only with him for his money? He was kind, handsome, well-spoken and I thought responsible. You knew him, Trace.”
Fuck, she needed to stop calling him that.
And yes, for fuck’s sake, he knew McMaster. They all grew up in the same town. Of course, he knew the fucker. Who the hell didn’t know the goddamn McMasters? The McMasters who lived in the largest home in town, who drove the most expensive cars and sent their spoiled son to private school because the public school wasn’t good enough.
“You didn’t know he was broke?” Brick sounded suspicious of her. He wasn’t the only one.
“No, not at first.”
Walker needed to get her back on track so they could get the fuck out of that room. “How much does he owe? I assume that’s why you’re here. You’re in a jam because your hubby owes a boatload of scratch. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
Of course, he was.
“I don’t know the true extent of how many people he owes. But I gave the person who contacted me everything I could, and that debt still remains at 1.3 million.”
The room froze, went dead silent. Not one person breathed until Diesel barked out a loud, “Fuck!”
D said what they were all thinking.
One.
Point.
Three.
Fucking.
Million.
Jesus fuck.
He covered his shock by asking, “And you need my... our help because...”
“They want the money.”
No shit.
“I don’t have it.”
Apparently.
“I have nothing, Trace. I have absolutely nothing left.”
“Get your fucking husband to pay it. He’s the one who got himself in that fucking jam.”
Her tone was flat when she admitted, “I can’t.”
“He disappear on you?” Steel asked.
“He’s... He’s dead. They killed him.”
Ice slithered through Walker’s veins. When she said that, Walker didn’t miss everyone in that room go on high alert, every muscle tense.
“They gave me thirty days to pay the balance. But now time is running out and I only have fifteen hundred dollars to my name. This is even after I sold our home, the Lake Tahoe house, our cars, his boat...”
Lake Tahoe house. Boat. For fuck’s sake. “Did you sell his fucking golf clubs, too?”
A flush rose up her neck into her cheeks. “Yes, I’ve sold everything. All I have left is my pride and I’m willing to sell that, too.”
“By coming to me,” Walker murmured.
“By coming to you.”
“Go to his family.” None of this was his problem. This was the McMasters’ problem. Ellie had decided to tie her star to them, now she had to deal with the fallout.
“I did. But they disowned him. I found out his father had bailed him out a couple of times, but he eventually put his foot down. He wants... wanted nothing to do with George after that. Now, they want nothing to do with me.”
Assholes. McMaster’s son left Ellie spinning in the wind and the old bastard wouldn’t even help her.
“Did they know you didn’t have anything to do with it?”
“They didn’t care. And I don’t know what George told his father. But they never liked me, anyway. They only tolerated me to an extent.”
That got Walker’s attention. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t come from the same ‘caliber’ of bloodlines as they did. I wasn’t good enough for George, even though George loved me and told them that. And...”
Fuck, did he even want to know the rest? “And?”
“And I didn’t give them grandchildren.”
A sharp pain shot through Walker’s temple. He pushed off the door frame and took a step deeper into the room. “You don’t need me, Ellie. You need a bank.”
Her wide green eyes hit him, and he felt that to his very toes. “No one will loan me that kind of money. No one would loan George that kind of money, that’s what got him into this mess in the first place.”
“No. Greed and living way above his means got him into that mess,” Hunter said behind her.
If that’s what it was. He might have been doing questionable business deals that Ellie didn’t know about for a very long time. Deals like that, when they’ve gone wrong could go very wrong. And then a man can get desperate, making even sketchier deals to try to pull himself clear from the last one. And then it snowballed...
“Said they snuffed him. Who the fuck are ‘they?’” Diesel finally spoke up, not looking any kind of happy about this whole situation. Not that he ever looked happy. Walker guessed the only time the man was happy was when he was holding
his baby girls or fucking his ol’ lady, making the next one.
Walker’s gaze flicked from his boss back to Ellie as she answered, “I don’t know.”
“But they contacted you.” Brick took the words right out of Walker’s mouth.
“Yes. From a blocked number. They must have gotten mine from George’s phone.”
“They call or text?” Walker asked.
“Both. They called to demand payment, tell me how long I had before they did to me what they did to George if I couldn’t pay them. They said they’d be in touch closer to the time, but now they’re texting me every day with a countdown.”
“What’d they do to your husband?”
Walker ground his molars at Steel calling McMaster Ellie’s husband. And, fuck him, Steel’s eyes were on him when he did it. He wore a slight smirk after seeing Walker’s reaction.
But his smirk was quickly wiped away when Ellie took out her phone, pulled up a picture and slid it across the table to him.
“Fuck,” Steel grumbled. He swiped through a few photos, his gaze slid around the room, then held the phone out. Diesel snagged it next, said nothing as he flipped through the photos, then handed it off to Ryder.
Ryder grimaced as he looked at the phone before handing it to Hunter.
Eventually it ended up in Walker’s hands. He set his jaw and looked at it.
Jesus fucking Christ.
The photos were bad enough to bring bile up on any normal human being. And he wondered how Ellie could even stomach looking at them. Especially since she not only had been married to the man but loved him.
His eyes lifted from the phone and landed on her.
Right now, she was pretty fucking calm. She could be wailing, shaking, breaking down. She wasn’t.
This shit was way more serious than Walker could have ever guessed. But she was holding herself together. She was a lot stronger than he remembered her being. Had she lost that softness he’d loved so much? Was the Ellie he knew all those years ago gone?
Walker went back to the pictures and pulled up the metadata on one of them. They were dated only a little over three weeks earlier.
She lost her husband less than a month ago. She should be more upset about it than she was.
“You don’t seem to be the grieving widow, Ellie,” Walker said, watching her carefully.
Her chin lifted. Just slightly. Enough for him to catch it. And he also caught the straightening of her spine.
Oh yeah. His soft, sweet Ellie was fucking gone.
That motherfucker McMaster did that to her. Stole that from him.
Too bad the bastard was already fucking dead.
“Once I got wind of the dark path he was traveling, how he was bleeding our accounts dry and wouldn’t explain why, I left. He was not the man I knew. He was not the man I wanted to remain with.”
His nostrils flared. Hell, Walker was no longer the man Ellie knew, either.
They had all changed.
Steel, his dark eyes glued to Walker, asked, “How long ago was that?”
“About a year and a half ago.”
“Then how’d you sell all his shit to pay back some of the debt?” Mercy asked, his eyes narrowed.
“Our divorce wasn’t final since he was fighting it. We were separated, but legally still married.”
Mercy posed the next question, one probably all of them wanted an answer to. “How’d you sell shit so quickly?”
“George was already in the process of selling everything. And I had already signed off on anything owned jointly just to get myself free. He had brokers getting the paperwork ready for the houses and the boat. The cars I took to the nearest dealership.”
“Where’d the money go?” Mercy asked.
“I had the brokers deposit it all into an account number they provided.”
From behind her, Hunter asked, “An account in the Caymans?”
Ellie shook her head. “I have no idea. I was hoping they would extend the time I had to get the rest, but they didn’t. Not that it mattered, I have no idea how to get the remainder, anyway.”
“So, why the fuck you here? We’re not a fuckin’ bank or a fuckin’ charity,” Diesel barked.
“I don’t know what to do and I was warned not to get the police involved,” Ellie whispered, her bottom lip trembling. Proving his soft, sweet Ellie was in there somewhere. Maybe McMotherfucker hadn’t destroyed her totally.
Fuck. That slight lip tremor would be the fucking death of him.
He shook off its effect. He needed to keep his head on straight.
Walker let his thoughts settle. He needed to get them off Ellie and onto her situation instead. This was serious shit.
These men, whoever they were, were no fucking joke. They wanted to do to Ellie what they did to McMaster. And what they did to McMaster was something Mercy could and would do.
It was that cold. That merciless.
“Where’d they find the body?” slipped from his lips before he could stop it.
Ellie, who’d been biting her lower lip, probably to keep it from trembling, released it. “I don’t know.”
“He hasn’t been found?” Walker shouldn’t be surprised. Whoever killed McMaster was a professional. Or at least hired professionals. This wasn’t some street corner thug.
She shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“No death certificate without a body,” he murmured.
“No body, he’ll be assumed missing, not dead,” Mercy stated.
Steel added, “Won’t be a widow until there’s a body.”
Mercy continued to no one in particular, “You saw those fucking pictures. There’s not going to be a body.”
Steel had his eyes on Walker when he said, “She’s going to have to wait years to be clear of him.”
“Most likely seven,” Brick said next to him, his eyes also on Walker.
“That fuckin’ sucks,” Ryder said. “She was tryin’ to get shot of him and now she can’t.”
They were talking as if Ellie wasn’t even there. Her husband of however many years was now simply reduced to a “body.” Probably not even that after they were done with him. Walker could only imagine.
“Once a-fuckin’-gain,” Diesel growled, “ain’t a fuckin’ bank or charity.”
Ellie turned her green eyes to D. “Can’t you just help me disappear? Then none of this would matter.”
“Going ghost would be the easiest solution,” Brick agreed.
A solution that was suddenly bothering the fuck out of Walker.
Ellie Cooke walked out of his life after he joined the Army. Now nineteen years later she had walked back in as Ellie McMaster. Was he willing to let her disappear again?
He studied her.
“I know I have no right to ask anything from you, Trace—”
He cut her off. “You’re right. You don’t. The name’s Walker, not Trace.” Trace disappeared the same day Ellie Cooke did.
“Sorry.”
That one word was heavy with more than just an apology about calling him the wrong name. It also held nineteen years’ worth of apologies.
But fuck if he would tell her it was “okay.” Because nothing was okay. Not what she did back then. Not her situation now.
And how he was feeling about her being there in Shadow Valley without a husband was definitely not fucking okay.
No, it was dangerous. For her. For him.
He couldn’t let this whole thing rattle him. Especially in front of his brothers. Or his boss.
“Ghosting her might not be the solution. Neutralizing the threat would be,” he said.
“This shit may be bigger than we can handle,” Brick warned.
“An’ the fuck if fifteen fucking hundred’s gonna cover it,” Diesel grumbled.
“We don’t know if it’s mafia, a cartel, or what... This could be a vast network of organized crime he got involved in. What they did to him was no amateur shit,” Mercy said.
Mercy should know.
“Sounds like a lotta motherfuckin’ hours to find out,” Diesel griped.
“Don’t mind helping on my down time,” Hunter offered.
“Me neither,” Ryder added.
“Yeah,” Brick said. “I need a good reason to blow the dust out of my MK-11.”
“Oh, you didn’t fuck it last night? Did you two have a spat?” Steel asked, then announced, “I’m in.”
Walker’s eyes hit Mercy’s silver ones. The taller man jerked his chin up ever so slightly.
Yeah, his brothers had his six.
“Fuck you all,” Diesel grunted.
That got grins all around the room. Until Walker asked Hunter, “What are we going to need to start the hunt?”
“You still got that account number?” Hunter asked Ellie.
She glanced back over her shoulder at him. “Yes, they texted it to me. It’s the same number they want me to deposit the rest of the money.”
“Will need that. Access to your husband’s business records, his personal accounts and your joint accounts. The names of any brokers he was working with. Probably good you never got divorced. It’ll make getting access easier.”
“Did he gamble? Have a drug problem?” Ryder asked.
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Side bitches?”
Ellie’s mouth dropped open at D’s question.
Steel stepped in quickly. “How ‘bout close friends, male or female, he’d confess his sins to?”
“I don’t know.”
“What the fuck do you know?” Diesel bellowed, making her wince.
Her head snapped up, her shoulders pulled back and her eyes narrowed. “I know whatever George was into, he kept me out of it. I never expected my marriage to deteriorate like it did.”
“Then why didn’t you have kids with him?” Walker asked quietly. “When things were good.”
Her green eyes widened when they landed on him, but she quickly hid her reaction.
“That’s what you wanted. That’s what you were chasing after. A family. Why didn’t you have it with him?”
Ellie sat stiffly in her chair, her fingers curled into fists on top of the table. Her throat worked a couple of times, but she said nothing.
When she finally did, her voice was thick, raw and full of pain. “Just help me disappear. I don’t need anything else from you.”
Guts & Glory: Walker (In the Shadows Security Book 4) Page 3