Gray Wolf Security: Back Home

by Glenna Sinclair

  There was something like a soft laugh that floated over the miles between me and my mom. I could almost imagine her, sitting at her kitchen table in Illinois, staring out the window at the soybean fields, with tears in her eyes. I couldn’t remember a time since that night so long ago that there weren’t tears in her eyes. She’d had to adjust her expectations for her only child over and over again after that night. It was harder than it should have been. Harder than anyone could have imagined.

  She’d had enough tragedy in her life after my dad died, and to drag her into the aftermath of what happened that night was a cruel thing. If I could take that night back for any reason, it would be to protect her from the aftermath.

  “Call Millard. Maybe the two of you could check out another new restaurant tonight.”

  “You sound so different,” she said softly. “Maybe leaving the Navy was the best thing for you.”

  She’d argued with me when I told her that was what I’d wanted to do. She hadn’t known I’d joined in the first place until it was time for me to board the bus to boot camp. She’d screamed and cried at the time until Dr. Paine managed to convince her that the discipline of the military would actually be good for me. Not that that was the reason I chose it. I enlisted because I needed to stop seeing the tears in her eyes every day, and the idea of learning how to use a weapon was irresistible.

  I’d seen a film on the Navy SEALs and I wanted to be like them. I wanted to be an unmovable force with unmatchable defense skills. Unfortunately, no one bothered to inform me that women weren’t allowed to apply for the SEALs until after I tried.

  As it turned out, the discipline—the strict routine and adherence to rules—was good for me. It made me feel safe for the first time in years. And I did learn to be an unmovable force, just not the way I’d anticipated.

  I had a life and it was so much more than I’d ever believed I could achieve. Now I just wanted to prove that to my mom.

  “I love you, Mom,” I said softly. “Please stop worrying about me.”

  “I will always worry about you, Erin. You’re my daughter.”

  I inclined my head slightly even though I knew she couldn’t see me. I’d just pulled my car into the narrow driveway of my house, the same house my mom had searched long and hard to help me find. She understood my criteria, understood what it was I needed in order to feel safe. She was the only one I could trust with the search, but from then on, I knew I had to start doing things on my own.

  “I’ll talk to you in a few days. Please, go have some fun.”

  “Thanks, Mom. You too.”

  I hung up, my fingers automatically moving to the app installed on my phone that would allow me to check the inside of the house without having to leave the safety of my locked car. Once I was satisfied that all was well, I let myself in through the side door to the kitchen, my eyes quickly moving around the room to be sure everything was where it belonged. I walked the rooms—four rooms total, each set in perfect order—looking for even the tiniest thing out of place. Comforted by the fact that nothing, not even the fine particles of sand intentionally left on the windowsills, was disturbed, I began to relax. The doors were locked and the security system was engaged. There was no reason to be frightened.

  I quickly changed into a pair of baggy sweats and an old sweater, jacking up the air conditioning before I settled in the office chair in front of my desk. I hadn’t forgotten about the card Stephen gave me, but this was the first opportunity I’d had to do anything about it.

  I Googled the name Boone first. Not much came up—a couple of social media accounts, a few businesses that seemed unrelated. It was too generic a name. I studied the card, the handwriting on the back and the expensive embossed words on the front. I pulled up the website for the law firm and looked through the pages lauding the accomplishments of the various lawyers working under their partnership. None of them listed a woman named Walker, so I dug deeper. I hacked into their human resources files.

  Amazing what a girl could learn in the Navy.

  The thing was, I couldn’t find any information on a woman named Walker working for this particular law firm, even in the past. In fact, I couldn’t find a single female attorney who fit the general description of Stephen’s wife. Most of the female attorneys at the law firm were either in their fifties or sixties, or they were fresh out of law school. There were plenty of thirty-something women working as secretaries, paralegals, and office managers at the firm, one who even had a passing resemblance to the picture I’d been given in the case file of Mrs. Walker. But the woman herself did not appear to be an employee of the law firm.

  What the hell was going on here?

  I poked around the website a while longer, looking for anything that might give me some insight into what was happening here. I sat back in my chair and sighed, accepting that there was nothing helpful on the website.

  I looked at the card again. The name written on the back of it didn’t give me much. Boone. Was it a last name? A first name? Was it even a name? And the date underneath could have been a birth date, a death date, a monumental moment in someone’s life. I had no idea, but I could guess.

  I logged in to the Los Angeles Police Department’s website using credentials that were randomly generated with a program I’d gotten from a friend while I was still in the Navy. It could be used to access almost any secure system I might want to check out. It came in handy when I wanted to snoop around to get information on people. Or if some guy who kissed like an angel handed me a strange business card with unspecified information on the back.

  Once in the system, I accessed arrest records. I didn’t have high expectations, but a match came up almost immediately.

  Francis Jackson Boone. Born January 5, 1984. Arrested four times since 2010 on various charges including fraud, theft, and forgery. However, the charges were consistently dropped, most commonly because the victim refused to testify against him.

  Reading through the information, it didn’t take much imagination to wonder why his victims never testified. Each was a woman in her late forties, early fifties. Each was widowed or divorced. Each was wealthy.

  Francis Jackson Boone was a gigolo.

  I pulled up pictures and profiles on each of the women, and checked out their social media. During the time period in which these specific crimes supposedly took place, there were pictures on Facebook and Instagram of the women with a man clearly much younger. And really hot.

  I knew the man in all those photographs. I knew the man in the arrest photographs, too.

  They were all of Stephen Walker.

  I sat back and stared at the computer screen, at the array of photographs I’d pulled up. The scenario was pretty clear. He’d swoop into one of these women’s lives, romance them with a charm they’d likely never experienced before, and took them for every penny he could get his hands on. And when he disappeared from their lives with money in hand, a well-meaning relative or friend would swear out a complaint against him in hopes of recovering some of the money. But the women, ashamed to have been manipulated so perfectly, refused to admit to their humiliation in court.

  It was the perfect plan.

  Despicable. Ugly. Cruel. But perfect.

  I couldn’t help but think of my own mother, widowed for twenty-five years. How vulnerable might she be to such a man? What might someone like him convince her to give up? This seemed almost worse than assault. At least with an assault, the victim would see it coming.

  But what scam was he playing here?

  I opened the file Jules had given me and studied the thin intake sheet that was the only thing it contained. There weren’t many details. Normally a client would be thoroughly vetted before we took a case, but this was more of a favor than it was a case. All we really had was the woman’s name, her address, and the name of the law firm. There was a picture of Stephen—or Boone or whatever he called himself—but not one of her. Just her age and a vague physical description.

  Was this guy scammin
g the lawyer? But if he was, why couldn’t I find her at the law firm? Was she scamming him back? Were they both in on this? If so, what was the point?

  What the hell was going on here?

  Chapter 7

  Boone

  I could see her through the windows. I could almost guess the moment she put two and two together, when she realized I wasn’t who she’d thought I was. A sense of dread settled over me as she sat back in her chair. I was normally good at keeping emotion out of a scam, but this time was different. Had they thought showing me the information they’d dug up about this woman would make it easier for me to manipulate her? If so, they knew absolutely nothing about me.

  She was chewing the inside of her cheek, a habit I’d noticed that night in the bar. A nervous habit. What was she thinking as she stared at that computer screen? Was I just a puzzle she was trying to solve? Or was there a little disappointment in that nervous action?

  Why did I care so much what she thought?

  I crossed my arms over my chest, watching as she pushed away from the desk and got up, pacing the room. What she did next was important. If she called Joss Matthews…if she went to Jules Tenney, all was lost. But if she kept it to herself, if she chose to handle this alone, that would tell me what I needed to know. That would allow me to attempt to save us both.

  They shouldn’t have shown me that information on her.

  Chapter 8

  Erin

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Jules looked up at me from behind the reception desk, her eyes dark with exhaustion. This job was clearly so much more than she’d anticipated it would be.

  “You’re supposed to be at the Matthews’!”

  “I’m on my way. I just had a question—”

  “You and Shaw are sharing girl duty today. Tony’s got Carrington.”

  “I thought Tony stayed the night with them.”

  “He did, but he insisted he’s up to double duty. And everyone else is out on a case.”

  I nodded, leaning my arms on the front of her counter. “That question?”

  Jules looked up again, the phone receiver in her hand like she’d been about to make a phone call. “What question?”

  “My question.”

  “What is it?” she asked, clearly eager to end this conversation and work on the impossibly long list of tasks for the day.

  “I was wondering about that lawyer on my case, Jenna Walker?”

  “What about her?”

  “There wasn’t much information in the case file about her.”

  “No. I didn’t have the investigators do background because it was a favor. Joss apparently promised her she’d help her out if she ever needed anything.”

  “Did you check her story with Joss?”

  “No, I recognized the name of the law firm. I knew Joss had done a lot of work with them.”

  “But did you call over there, make sure this woman worked for them?”

  Jules’ eyes narrowed. “Why? Is there something wrong?”

  I shook my head, careful not to break eye contact. I didn’t want to make Jules suspicious, but I needed to know these things.

  “Why are you asking about it now?”

  “I was just wondering how she responded to the video that was captured.”

  Jules shrugged. “I don’t know. I sent it to the PO box she gave me and I never heard anything.”

  “What about payment?”

  “We didn’t accept payment for the job. I told you, it was a favor.”

  I mulled over my conversation with Jules on my way to the Matthews’. Jules hadn’t taken any of the normal steps that should be taken before a case is accepted. Hell, most of those steps took place before Joss was even informed of the new case. It was a precaution, the reason why Gray Wolf had never been publicly embarrassed by some fraud perpetrated on them by someone posing as a client. The scammers were weeded out long before the case was even considered.

  Whoever that woman was, she’d known the chaos that would descend on our office with Joss out of town. She’d counted on it.

  Who was this woman and what did she think she could gain by having us perform this one small operation? Was she trying to connect Gray Wolf to a gigolo? Was she trying to trivialize what we do at Gray Wolf in some way? Was she after someone who worked at Gray Wolf? Did it have something to do with me?

  It was the last thought that frightened me the most. What if this was somehow connected to me? Could she be someone connected to the men who’d…was she connected to my past?

  And what about Stephen Walker? Or Boone or whatever his name was? What part did he play in all of this?

  It made so little sense to me that I knew I had to be missing something—but what?

  ***

  McKelty shot me a dirty look as I followed her through the mall. Clearly the girl did not get the concept of a bodyguard. But, out of respect for who her mother was, I slowed my pace and even stopped several yards back when she and her friends stopped to do a little window shopping. And when they ducked into an ice cream parlor, I took a seat in the courtyard. I was fourteen once. I got it.

  But that didn’t mean I took my eyes off of her or of any of the people near her. The threat against her family was so unpredictable that I had no idea where trouble might come from. For that reason, I was vigilant in my observation.

  It must be nice to be so young and carefree. I watched as the girls teased each other, as they elbowed one another and watched boys moving in and out of the shops around them. I remembered being that carefree. Julia, Missy, and I…we didn’t have a big city mall to hang out in, but we caused plenty of trouble ourselves outside the A&P and the bowling alley.

  All teens were pretty much the same.

  I often thought of my childhood friends. I knew Julia had gotten married and had a couple of kids. Missy was a doctor now, working out of the big medical center in Springfield. She specialized in trauma. I often wondered if that had anything to do with what happened to me all those years ago. A little selfish to assume it did, I supposed, but that sort of thing often had quite a wide wave of influence. Maybe I was just hoping that was why she’d made her choices because then something positive might have come out of that night.

  McKelty and her friends settled in a booth inside the ice cream shop just out of my sight. I got up and moved to another bench, one where I could see her clearly. As I settled down, someone dropped a piece of paper on top of the table behind which I was sitting. I glanced around, but didn’t see anyone. Actually, I saw a lot of people, but no one with paper in their hands. Must be an advertisement or—

  I picked the paper up and my heart stopped and the world around me blurred into nothingness.

  Missing Girl Found Days After Disappearance in Corn Field.

  It was an article dated early October of 2004 from the Springfield, Illinois State-Journal Register.

  I’d never seen this article, but I knew exactly what it referred to. I knew because it was about me.

  I jumped out of my chair, snatching the paper up and crushing it in my fist. I tossed it away and stormed into the ice cream shop.

  “McKelty, we need to go!”

  She glanced at me, small spots of anger on her cheeks. But she must have seen something in my expression because she didn’t argue.

  “Can I take my ice cream?”

  “Yes. Let’s go.”

  I took her arm as she joined me near the door. She tried to pull away, but I wasn’t letting her go. My eyes darted around the mall as we headed to the nearest exit, hunting for anyone suspicious, anyone who might mean us harm. There were a few men by one of the video game stores who looked like they were up to no good, but none of them even glanced at us. No one else seemed to be observing us, either, but one could never be completely sure.

  I walked quickly, practically dragging McKelty behind me. She complained, her voice nothing more than white noise to me. I shoved her into the Gray Wolf issued SUV in the parking lot and slid behin
d the wheel, my hands shaking as I turned on the ignition and sped out of the lot.

  Someone knew about my history. Someone knew enough about me to be able to find that article.

  Was it a threat? If so, who was it against—me or McKelty?

  Until I knew for sure, I had to get her to safety. I couldn’t take any chances.

  No one seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary when I dropped her off at the house. McKelty herself helped by acting like the teenager she was. She marched up the stairs, refusing to speak to anyone, even her younger sister. I made my report quickly and left, needing to get to the safety of my own home. Cars exchanged, I drove at a higher rate of speed than usual, arriving outside my house in record time. I let myself in, forgetting for the first time to check the alarm system’s cameras on my phone before walking in.

  Was that mistake subconscious? Had I somehow known what would be waiting for me inside?

  He was in the kitchen, casually leaning against the counter.

  Already spooked by what happened at the mall, I charged at him blindly, not even taking the second necessary to assess the situation and recognize who he was. I landed a solid fist in his belly before he could react, a scream of defiance slipping from my throat as I followed that with a solid kick to his ankle.

  I didn’t care who he was. I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  Chapter 9

  Boone

  I caught her wrist, pain flaring through my ankle as she kicked at me. I didn’t want to hurt her, so I just pushed her back, but that gave her the space necessary to take a few easy punches at my abdomen. She was an efficient fighter, taking only the shots she knew would land with some sort of impact. That gave me something of an edge because I had time to figure out where the next blow was coming from, but since I was reluctant to hit her, the extra time wasn’t really as valuable as it could have been in different circumstances.