I laughed. “Way to be humble.”
She shrugged, pulling away from me to stand up. “I do what I can. I’ll get Hayden for you.”
“Don’t let him bother you, kid. He’s just a flirt.”
“I know.”
But I knew she had a thing for him. I wanted to intervene, to tell Hayden to be a little nicer to her, but the last time I encouraged a man to ask her out, she panicked and ended up ruining the whole thing. So I kept my mouth shut and hoped the two of them would get over themselves and get things going in the right direction.
She left, and I settled back behind my desk, the lab report spread out in front of me. Rat poison. The woman had put enough rat poison in the peanut butter filling to kill a horse. Two horses, maybe. It was a lot of poison. This woman clearly wanted that poor little girl dead.
What kind of person poisons a ten-year-old kid?
“You wanted me, boss?”
Hayden had this charming way of making people feel like they were the sole focus of his attention. Even though I knew he’d flirted with every girl in the building, even though I knew he and Sam had something special building between them, for a second he caught me off guard and made my heart twitter a little in the center of my chest.
“We need to go to Quinn Smith’s house and ruin her day.”
He straightened. “Yeah? What’s going on?”
“We know who her stalker is.”
***
Cole was sitting in his car in front of Quinn’s house when we pulled up. It was Saturday, so he wasn’t on duty today. But I thought it would be best if he was there when I told Quinn what was going on.
“It’s the neighbor?”
I nodded. “I’ve called the local prosecutor. He’s sending over a couple of investigators with a warrant to search the woman’s house.”
“Not the cops?”
“Don’t want to alert her with a lot of fanfare.”
Cole looked up at the house. “What about Olivia?”
“We’ll let Quinn make the call, but I think it might be a good idea if we get her out of here for a few hours. That’s why I called you. You have a rapport with her.”
The three of us—me, Cole, and Hayden—walked up to the front of the house. Vincent yanked the door open, an impressive sight as he dominated the entire doorway.
“What’s going on?”
I held up the report in its file folder. I could see understanding come into his eyes. He glanced over his shoulder, and we could hear laughter coming from the back of the house. I sensed his hesitation. I glanced at Cole, but he wouldn’t meet my eye.
Something was going on here.
Vincent stepped back and let us into the house.
“Olivia! Cole’s here to see you!”
He shot Cole a grateful glance, just as Olivia came running down the long hallway from the back of the house. Quinn followed at a slower pace, a warm, if weary, smile on her face.
“What’s going on?”
“I came to hang out with my friend here,” Cole said, lifting Olivia into his arms. “You want to take me upstairs so we can play with your dolls, kiddo?”
“Sure!”
Olivia didn’t even seem to notice Hayden or me, but Quinn was eyeing us both. Her eyes narrowed as she studied first our faces and then the file folder in my hand.
“Why don’t we go to the kitchen,” Vincent suggested, leading the way like he owned the place. I noticed him slide his hand into Quinn’s as we passed, and that made me wonder what was going on here. Was my asset getting a little too close to his target?
We settled around the small kitchen table and Quinn poured everyone a cup of vanilla coffee. Hayden seemed to enjoy his, taking big gulps of the hot liquid as he walked around the room, checking out the décor, the windows, and the French doors my security team had put in last week. He looked casual, but I recognized the calculated glances, the tension in his shoulders, and the alertness to his eyes. He was checking the place for vulnerabilities.
“We got the lab results on the piece of chocolate cake Vincent sent to the lab,” I began, opening the file folder. “There was a lot of arsenic in the peanut butter filling in the center of the cake.”
Quinn immediately shook her head. “That’s not possible.”
“Only in the filling?” Vincent asked.
I nodded. “Is that significant?”
He glanced at Quinn, but she was still shaking her head as she leaned back, her hand pressed to her mouth.
“Quinn’s allergic to peanuts. This neighbor, Beth, she knew that.”
“There was trace amounts in the cake itself, but not enough to kill anyone.” I studied Quinn. “She didn’t want to hurt you.”
“But she wanted to kill my child.”
Quinn stood and began pacing the room, her hands buried in the front pockets of her shorts. I couldn’t blame her, really. I think I would have been just as incensed if I were her.
“Now we know who it is though,” Vincent said, his tone carefully measured. “That means we can take her down.”
“I invited this woman into my life. I let her pick my kid up at school and spend hours alone with her here in this house. I told her things about myself; I trusted her. I don’t trust easily.”
“She’s obviously obsessed with you,” I said, watching Vincent’s face as he watched Quinn. He clearly wanted to go to her, to talk her down. But he was hesitating, and that told me more than I wanted to know. He was involved with her, maybe even sleeping with her. That was not good.
“Why? And what about all the notes? The destruction of my studio? How did she even know who I was? And why would she attack my studio? Why send those pictures of Olivia? Why break in here?”
“The escalation was probably because she saw Vincent here and she thought you had a boyfriend.”
Vincent shook his head. “She introduced me as her cousin.”
My eyebrows rose.
“I didn’t want Olivia to know,” Quinn explained. “But we ended up having to tell her anyway when Cole started showing up.”
“She must have seen through the lie,” Hayden suggested. “People like that, they’re very suspicious of the people in the lives of their obsession. She probably would have assumed you were lying even if you weren’t.”
He came back into the room and set his coffee mug on the counter. “Is that her house next door?” he asked, jamming a thumb over his shoulder.
Quinn glanced at the windows on the far side of the living room. “Yeah.”
“Her upstairs windows look right down into this room. And probably the rooms right above this one.”
Quinn nodded. “She told me she could look into my living room from her bedroom when we moved in. But it’s never been an issue.”
“Are you sure?”
A soft chuckle that held no humor slipped from her lips. “Right now, I’m not even sure I know my own name.”
The doorbell rang. Quinn stiffened.
“It’s probably the prosecutor’s people,” Hayden announced. “I’ll let them in.”
“Prosecutor?”
“We called the prosecutor instead of the police. I figured we would get more cooperation that way. And we wouldn’t tip off Ms. Harrington with a bunch of police cars in front of the house.”
Quinn nodded, reaching up to press her fingers under her ponytail not unlike the way I did when I was stressed.
She was pretty in a delicate, innocent sort of way. When she told me what she did for a living on our first meeting, I was shocked. She didn’t look like a porn star—not that I knew what the average porn star looked like. She was a natural blond, her hair much lighter than mine, with green eyes that were intensely green, intensely emotional. She carried her emotions in her eyes in the same way Luke told me I did in my shoulders. And she was seriously pissed right now.
That was good. Anger would get her much further than fear.
Hayden came back in the room with three gentlemen in suits. One of them handed
me the warrant he carried for the house next door.
“Okay, Quinn,” I said, standing up. “Go upstairs with your daughter and Cole. We’re going to go serve this warrant and see if we can’t end this nightmare for you today.”
She met my gaze, then inclined her head.
“Thank you, Megan.”
I rubbed her arm lightly. “I promised you when you first came to see me that we’d end this for you. That’s what we’re going to do.”
She nodded, her eyes moving to Vincent. He’d stood, too, his arms crossed over his massive chest, his face an unreadable mask. But his eyes didn’t move from her face.
Trouble. I was going to have do something about this. But not now. Now we had an obsessive stalker to put in jail.
Chapter 16
Vincent
I pulled my weapon and followed Hayden out to the alley behind Quinn’s house, watching as he checked over the fence of the neighbor’s yard for any sign of life.
“She’s nice to look at.”
“Who?”
“Quinn.”
I had to be careful to control my expression. The last thing I needed right now was for Megan to find out I was involved with my first client. She’d probably fire me if she found out. Fire me and send me packing out of Houston.
“Is it true that she’s a porn star?” Hayden asked, as he tested the handle on the neighbor’s gate. “I heard a rumor around the office. Everyone envies you, getting to hang out on the set of a porn movie, day in and day out.”
“It’s not as fun as you’d think. It’s actually kind of boring. Lots of down time.”
“Yeah? What about the actual filming? I mean, they don’t stop in the middle of that, do they?”
“No. But they call out direction the whole time. It’s sort of distracting.”
Hayden chuckled. “Yeah. But it must have been quite an experience.”
“Not really.”
I must have let some of the anger that was building in my chest slip out because he shot me a quick look, but then he pulled open the gate and moved out of the way.
“Clear the side yard.”
We moved quietly and carefully through the backyard. There was junk piled up—old rotting furniture and twisted pieces of metal I couldn’t quite identify. I stepped around it, working my way up to the back of the house. Beth’s house wasn’t quite as nice as Quinn’s. It hadn’t been remodeled in years, and the paint was peeling off the wooden boards on this side of the house. The back door was closed, the windows all down. There was no sign of life back here.
Megan opened the screen door outside the kitchen.
“She’s gone. There’s no sign of life in here.”
I was a little surprised to see the gun in her hand. I knew that Megan was in the Marines, too, but I hadn’t seen the telltale evidence of a gun on her when she was at Quinn’s. She held it at her side-a 9mm—pressed against her thigh.
I went inside and was immediately hit by the acrid stench of fire. The kitchen sink—this massive white sink—was darkened by soot.
“We think she was trying to get rid of evidence.” Megan snapped a finger against the old coffee pot. “Still hot.”
“She saw us next door and ran,” Hayden guessed.
“Apparently. We found a few fragments of a letter in the sink. The prosecutor’s investigators already bagged them. But you should see what we found upstairs.”
She led the way to the front of the house. This house wasn’t as large as Quinn’s, but the layout was similar. We walked upstairs and were immediately aware that most of the activity was happening in the back bedroom directly across from the stairs.
I slid my gun into my holster as I followed Megan and Hayden inside. Hayden whistled, swiveling his head as he tried to take it all in.
“Fucking looney bin,” he said.
The room was completely covered in images of Quinn. Some were clearly candid photos, taken in Quinn’s house. But most of them were from a distance, pictures that must have been taken with a telephoto lens through the window. A few had Olivia in them. And then there were quite a few that must have been taken from the television screen, nude pictures of Quinn’s body, her face covered by a mask or hidden by a well-placed pillow or blanket.
The pictures that were drawing the most attention from the men in the room, and the ones that I desperately wanted to tear down, were hardcore pictures of a much younger Quinn with various men. Her face was clearly visible in these.
Everywhere. They were everywhere.
“Look at this,” Megan said, pointing the tip of a pencil at one photograph.
“Gladly,” Hayden said, coming up behind her.
I’d never wanted to punch someone so badly in all my life.
“There’s a mark on her leg here. Do you see it?”
Megan pointed her pen to another picture and then another. I recognized the mark she was pointing to. It was obscured a little in the photographs, maybe from the way the pictures were taken or by body makeup that was supposed to cover it. But I knew it. It was a tattoo Quinn had high on her inner thigh.
“Do you suppose that’s how she put two and two together?”
Hayden tore one of the pictures from the wall, a picture from Quinn’s early days in the industry, and studied it a minute.
“It’s a tattoo.”
“How did Quinn and Ms. Harrington meet?”
“I don’t know,” I said, working hard to keep my voice respectful. “She said something about meeting her the day she and Olivia moved into their house.”
“The letters began coming shortly after that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I bet she saw the tattoo on Quinn’s leg and put it together. Maybe she was already watching her movies. Maybe she’d even already put together that this actress”—she touched one of the shots showing Quinn’s face—“and Milly LeBouche were the same person.”
“Milly La Bush?”
I really didn’t like the tone of Hayden’s voice.
“Have a little respect,” Megan said, glancing at him over her shoulder. “She’s our client.”
“I was just admiring her sense of the ironic.”
Megan shook her head, her attention moving back to the pictures. “It’s pretty obvious she was obsessed with her.”
“We have a stack of DVDs over here,” one of the investigators called.
Megan walked over there and began looking through the titles. She glanced at me, a touch of sympathy in her eyes.
“It looks like she owned every movie Quinn made. There are a few here that don’t appear to have her in them, but not many.”
I was done. I was ready to get out of there. But something compelled me to go to the window on the west side of the house. I looked down and…fuck me! I could see right into the living room and kitchen of Quinn’s house. And the window over Olivia’s bed. I could see her now, playing on the floor with Cole. But that wasn’t the worst of it. There was a window in Quinn’s bathroom. I could see her bathtub, her toilet, even the shower wall. From this spot, Beth could watch Quinn through almost her entire daily routine.
“You should go back,” Megan said softly as she came to stand beside me. “We’ll be over in a while to figure out what our next step should be.”
I nodded.
“You did good, Vincent,” she said as I turned to go. “You caught this when the rest of us were looking in a completely different direction.”
“Yeah, well, I should have figured it out earlier. Might have saved her some unnecessary anguish.”
“You did the job you were hired to do. That’s all that matters.”
But it didn’t feel that way.
I let Sydney down. I didn’t stop her from getting behind the wheel of my truck. I didn’t correct that turn quickly enough. She died on my watch and that was my burden to bear. But Quinn…I felt like I missed what was right under my nose. All this time and I did nothing to stop that woman from spying on her and Olivia. On her and me.
<
br /> I walked out of the house and crossed to Quinn’s, aware that some of their neighbors had become aware of what was happening and were standing on their front porches. They watched as I crossed the lawns and headed up to Quinn’s front door. It made me feel like I had when the local press came out to cover my arrest and trial in Sydney’s death.
“Hey!”
I turned, ready to brush off whoever was calling to me, but it was a little old woman who was wobbling on the cane she held in front of her.
“Can I help you?”
“You’re Quinn’s boyfriend, right?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and studied her for a long minute. “What can I do for you, Mrs….?”
“Miss Holland. I live over on the other side here.”
“Nice to meet you.”
She raised her chin a little, looking at me along the bridge of her nose. “What’s going on? Why are they searching Beth’s house?”
“That’s a private matter, Miss Holland.”
“The prosecutor’s office doesn’t send investigators on private matters. What’s going on?”
I stepped back just slightly, my opinion of this woman quickly changing.
“Do you know where Beth Harrington might be?”
“She left about an hour ago. In a real hurry, too.”
“Does she have any family in this area? Somewhere she’d go?”
“No. Her parents died several years ago. I thought she might move on once they were gone, but she stayed on. I don’t think she had anywhere else to go.”
“She lived with her parents here?”
“Yes. For years and years. They were elderly and needed her help taking care of them. Poor girl. She could have had a good life, but she gave it all up for them.”
“But she has no other family?”
“No.” The old woman took a step toward me. “Now I answered your questions, you answer mine. What’s going on over there?”
“We just need to find Ms. Harrington. That’s all.”
“That’s not all. Did she do something to Quinn or that precious little girl?”
“No. Not yet.”
“I saw the police over here last week. I was afraid Beth had finally gone and done something.”
I frowned. “You think Beth is out to hurt Quinn?”
VINCENT (Dragon Security Book 2) Page 13