The Second Son

by Martin Jay Weiss

  “We can start by finding out more about the guy from Hounddog,” Ethan said. “Is there someone there you can talk to about him?”

  “It’s my first week, for Christ’s sake—”

  Ethan pressed. “Someone who knows what’s really going on in that place?”

  “Yeah…” Jack hesitated, and then told Ethan, “there’s someone I can talk to—”

  “Today? On a Sunday?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  “Great. Thank you. I’m going to take a drive to Palo Alto, visit Rufus Wall’s wife, find out what she knows—or thinks—happened to her husband.”

  Jack said, “The police would have notified her about the possibility of her husband going over a cliff by now, don’t you think? She might be a wreck.”

  Ethan grabbed his car keys and headed for the door. “Unless she’s in on it.”

  —

  Jack left Hounddog, got into his car, and drove out of the parking lot, still completely unaware of the dark van following him. Once on the road, he called the Hounddog that knew the most, the top dog himself.

  Sean McQueen picked up on the first ring. “I was just thinking about you,” he said.

  “We need to talk,” Jack told him. “Are you busy?”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Sean chuckled. “Cold feet so soon?”

  “Nothing like that,” Jack assured him. “I’m coming from Hounddog. I need to ask you about an employee.”

  “Who?”

  “We probably shouldn’t have this conversation on the phone. Can I come over?”

  “Now you’re really scaring me,” Sean said. “You think your phone is tapped or something?”

  “Or yours…I don’t know—”

  “I have a phone that can detect a trace,” he said. “I’ll call you right back on a secured line.”

  At thirty-five, Sean McQueen was one of the most envied entrepreneurs in the valley, and he had his share of enemies as well. He had a reputation for building companies and selling them off as soon as they were overvalued, moving them around like a master chess player, always a few steps ahead, always unpredictable. He also stayed out of the limelight, kept his personal life private, which all added to his mystery and earned him the title “Wizard of Silicon.” Truth was, he had invested in his share of now-bankrupt companies, but because he was always operating from “behind the curtain,” few people knew he was involved by the time he dumped those dogs.

  Players and pundits in the valley were always skeptical because he didn’t run with the wolves, didn’t gossip, and didn’t keep his companies porous. His absence from big tech events and the fact that he was handsome, flamboyant, and wicked smart made him a target of speculation for everything from his motives to his sexuality.

  Jack’s phone rang seconds later.

  “Talk to me,” Sean said. “This line’s safe.”

  “What can you tell me about Rufus Wall?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Why did he leave Hounddog?”

  “He had another opportunity he wanted to pursue. He didn’t tell me what it was, but he gave notice a few months ago. That’s why I had time to find you—”

  “I found you,” Jack reminded him.

  Sean laughed. “You know what I mean. Why are you asking about him?”

  Jack told him, “He married Brooke yesterday. Brooke Shaw.”

  “I thought she was seeing your brother—”

  “So did he.”

  “—Can’t be the same Rufus Wall,” Sean said, “Our Rufus Wall was already married and you can’t get a divorce in California that fast—”

  “He used the name and social of some vagrant from the sticks,” Jack explained. “A man named Benjamin Carver… Hold on, I’ll send you a pic to confirm that it’s the same dude.”

  Jack texted the wedding photo.

  “That’s him,” Sean confirmed. “That’s definitely Rufus. I guess he did leave to pursue another interest. How’s your brother dealing with this?”

  “He’s worried about her.”

  “I get that, it is worrisome,” Sean agreed. “I like to think I hire well and I always thought Rufus Wall was a really good guy. He was a model employee. He was smart and people liked him.”

  Jack asked, “Can you access his Hounddog file from your house?”

  “I can access anything from my perch. Why do you think I come to the office so rarely?”

  “Because you can,” Jack said. “I want to hack into his company phone record and email history.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I can,” Jack said.

  Sean laughed.

  Jack explained, “His correspondences will tell me where he’s been, who he’s talked to, and hopefully where he’s going. I have to help my brother find out if Brooke is safe or not.”

  After a beat, Sean said, “If anyone finds out that I let you into his personal file to do that—”

  “They won’t.”

  “Promise me no one will ever know.”

  “I promise,” Jack assured him. “I know how to keep a secret.”

  Sean smiled and sighed, “I can’t argue with that.”

  CHAPTER 19

  With the Tesla fully charged, Ethan set his Stalker app to guide him to Rufus Wall’s Palo Alto address and headed out to see the wife Rufus had left behind.

  Once Ethan was on the freeway, he called Bailey to check in. Bailey picked up before the phone rang, as if he were waiting for the call, “So what happened?” Bailey buzzed. “Did you crash the wedding?”

  “I was a day late,” Ethan told him. “They’ve done the deed and are long gone.”

  “Damn.”

  Ethan filled Bailey in on everything from the church in Napa to how Jack ran the wedding picture through the Hounddog system and learned that Benjamin Carver is former Hounddog employee Rufus Wall.

  Bailey didn’t seem surprised. “The onion’s starting to unravel,” Bailey said. “How’s Jack doing?”

  “He moved into a place that looks like a brothel,” Ethan said with a laugh. “I’m telling you, the place had red-velvet-draped windows, clashing dark-colored walls, faux-gold molding trim, and he thinks it’s all awesome.”

  Bailey said, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

  Ethan thought about how proud Jack was to show him his new digs. “It was good for him to move on. He needed something that was just his.”

  “I’m sorry to see him go,” Bailey added, “but you two were going to kill each other if he stayed.”

  “Was it that obvious?”

  “It was a fast descent from the moment we started Stalker. You two never agree on anything anymore.”

  “I guess people change.”

  Bailey said, “People don’t change, they reveal themselves.”

  “That’s good, Bailey.” Ethan paused to think about that. “Is that another Oscar Wilde quote?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know where I stole that gem.”

  “Has any of your deep insight and wit come up with anything on Brooke?”

  “Not a thing. But we do know that we’re not the only ones who have been looking for her,” Bailey told him. “Emily found a Stalker account from London that uploaded old pictures of Brooke the day we launched our Face Match Mode—”

  “That feature could be used to find missing people,” Ethan said, realizing, “even people that have changed their names.”

  “Exactly,” Bailey agreed. “And now this person from London knows she’s using the name Brooke Shaw.”

  “How?”

  “When Brooke got a driver’s license and filed for the wedding license,” Bailey explained, “her photo went into public record databases, right? That’s how we learned
she was getting married. This Stalker account got the same match.”

  “Who is he?” Ethan asked. “What’s the name on the account?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t even know if it’s a ‘he’ or a ‘she’ or a ‘they.’ The account is blocked. Whoever set it up used all our privacy options.”

  “But they had to use a name to get an account—”

  “C. G.”

  “C. G.?”

  “The letters ‘C’ and ‘G.’”

  Ethan tried to remember if Brooke had ever mentioned anyone with those initials.

  Bailey said, “That’s all we have, Gov. CG from London. No idea who it is or why they’re looking for her.”

  “We could bypass the security block,” Ethan said. “We have the ability to get this person’s details and contact them—”

  “You know that’s against our client agreement.”

  “Not to mention against the law,” Ethan added. “But it’s looking more and more like she’s in trouble and we don’t have grounds to go to the cops. We have to do whatever it takes.”

  Ethan heard Emily laugh in the background. “Glad to hear you say that, Gov,” Bailey said, “because we already took the ‘whatever-it-takes’ liberty.” Emily grabbed the phone and told Ethan, “There wasn’t a phone number or address. But I found the credit card number used to set up the account.”

  Ethan said, “We can’t do anything with a credit card number—”

  “Unless we hack it,” she said.

  Ethan took a deep breath. “So you hacked it?”

  “You just said we have to do whatever it takes.”

  Ethan sighed. “Who is it, Emily? Tell me.”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “The credit card is under a family trust, filed under a tax ID number. That’s as far as I got.”

  “There has to be an address. The mail for the trust must be sent somewhere.”

  “The mail goes to a house, but the house is owned by the trust, and the trust is in probate. Dead end.”

  “Where’s the house?”

  “Four-four-zero-eight Kings Road. I looked it up on Nethousprices.com—England’s version of Zillow. It’s not on the market but it’s worth three-point-three million pounds. Not too shabby, right?”

  “I told you she was hiding something from her past,” Bailey said as he grabbed the phone back. “Kings Road is in Kensington, by the way.”

  Ethan remembered Bailey telling him that Brooke had an unmistakable Kensington accent. “I really need you to keep on this,” Ethan said. “We have to find out who CG is. At the very least, it’ll tell us why she’s running.”

  “There are a lot of people in Kensington with those initials.”

  “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy.”

  Bailey said, “So you’re okay with this ‘whatever-it-takes’ tact?”

  They were all well aware of the criticism their site drew about privacy issues. Brooke had often made Ethan promise to be painstakingly careful about crossing the line. But now he felt that he had no choice. It was a means to an end. “I’ll take full responsibility if there are consequences,” he told Bailey. “This is about helping someone we care about, who we think is in danger.”

  “That’s quite noble,” Bailey teased. “I’m glad that you didn’t say you were asking us to break the laws just to help you get your girl back.”

  Of course, that was what Ethan wanted more than anything, but he told Bailey, “I just want to make sure she’s safe.”

  They hung up and Ethan accelerated, thinking about Emily’s theory and Bailey’s comments about not knowing the details of Brooke’s past. After a few miles, his mind wandered back to a day when he and Brooke had gone to Rustic Canyon, a popular hiking trail on the Westside of LA. He recalled a conversation they’d had when they reached the top of the trail.

  —

  He asked her, “Do you ever miss London?”

  “I miss some things,” she said as she sat down on a rock and looked out at the view of the ocean.

  “You don’t talk about it much.”

  “I think people dwell too much on their pasts, things you can’t change, and if you’re trying to have a future with someone, really, what’s the point?”

  “Some people think it’s important to know everything about the person you plan on having a future with.”

  “The devil’s in the details,” she joked. “I’ll bet every girl you’ve ever dated wanted to know every nitty-gritty particular of every other girl you had been with. Am I right?”

  Ethan laughed. “Pretty much.”

  “Did you like it? Did it do any good?”

  “Nope.”

  “And really,” she concluded, “what’s the point? We’re here now. This moment is all there really is, all that matters. And I don’t want to ruin it.”

  “Neither do I,” he agreed.

  She kissed him long and hard.

  “I never met anyone like you in my entire life,” he told her as they pulled apart. “I only want you to share whatever you want me to know.”

  —

  After that, he had stopped asking questions about her past. Now he had to find out the truth about her, the hard way.

  CHAPTER 20

  What made Brooke run?

  Ethan couldn’t imagine who or what could cause such fear that she had to change her name and marry someone else who was also using a false identity. Had she done something so horrible that she couldn’t go to the police for help? Had her past been so wrought with secrets and demons that she couldn’t even tell the man who loved her what had happened? He needed to know, and, he imagined, so did Mrs. Wall.

  Ethan arrived at the Walls’ home just after five. He drove up a long driveway leading to a bloated McMansion, an overscaled faux-Greek revival fortress with six bedrooms, seven baths, and a synthetic lawn they put in when the California drought got serious.

  With prices in the area pushing $2,000 a square foot—thanks to the tech boom—Rufus Wall had to be an exceptional programmer, making bank.

  So what made Rufus run?

  Sarah Wall was waiting for Ethan at the front door. She greeted him with a welcoming smile. “You didn’t mention on the phone that you were so tall, dark, and handsome.”

  “I guess I left out the most important details,” Ethan joked.

  She invited him inside and told him to take a seat on the couch in her living room while she prepared refreshments. She didn’t seem too broken up so Ethan figured that the Big Sur police hadn’t told her that they were looking for her husband at the bottom of the sea, or she just didn’t care.

  She reeked trophy wife—overly bejeweled, unduly Botoxed, and dressed incongruously; her fake Double D’s defied gravity heading north of her halter top, her skinny Zobha stretch pants squeezing her enviable tight ass, where most of her day was spent (in yoga, not on her ass).

  A few minutes later she emerged from the kitchen with two full martini glasses. “You said that you worked with my husband at Hounddog,” she began, “but you didn’t tell me your name.”

  “Jack…Jack Stone,” Ethan lied.

  If she were to follow up after he left, at least his brother was a real employee there, and if she were to meet him at a later time, she would just think that he had shaved his beard. The twins had done the bait and switch many, many times and both knew the deal: whenever approached by someone about something that made no sense, just play along.

  “I’ve already had a few,” she confessed, “so excuse me if I’m a little loopy. Under these circumstances, I’ve decided to start happy hour a little early.”

  Something told Ethan that she started happy hour early every day. “It’s understandable,” Ethan agreed, “considering your husband has been gone now, for what, a week?”

  “Has it been a week already?” she said
as if her husband had just been late for dinner.

  “Did he tell you why he was going out of town?”

  She shook her head. “Just that he had business in New York.”

  “He told you that he was going to New York?”

  Sarah glared at him over her martini glass. “I explained all this to the police. And I’m sure you didn’t drive all the way out here to ask me things they already know. I’m assuming you’re here to tell me something you couldn’t tell me on the phone. So let’s get this over with.”

  Ethan looked back blankly.

  She prodded, “Did they find him?”

  Ethan realized that she thought he was there to tell her that her husband was officially dead, and she definitely didn’t look too distraught.

  “No,” Ethan told her, “that’s not why I’m here—”

  “Hounddog sent you to confiscate his computer?”

  “Just as a precaution.” Ethan went along, figuring he could search for any communications between Brooke and Rufus. “Just until he returns.”

  “He always takes his laptop with him. We have a family computer upstairs but there’s nothing on it from Hounddog.”

  “May I take a look upstairs, just to be sure?”

  “Not unless you’re a cop and you have a warrant.”

  She was grinning, as if this were fun. He told her, “I’m not a cop.”

  “I worked for Lehman Brothers when they went down,” she explained. “I know my rights.”

  Ethan wondered if she was the reason the Walls could afford the Palo Alto McMansion. “Do you work for another investment firm now?”

  “I don’t work anymore,” she said with a chuckle, as if work itself was beneath her.