“That would require a subpoena, which would make it an official Phoenix matter. With paperwork.”
“So until Eric coughs up the password, we’re stuck.”
“Yes. Stuck.”
He fiddled with the camera for a few more minutes, then examined the rest of the shop, including the crawlspace. Working methodically from a checklist, he inspected the closet in Dexter’s office, the gun safe, the light fixtures. He checked the telephone for bugs twice, even though I assured him I hadn’t even gotten service yet. He ran his finger along the door jambs and took copious notes.
I contributed by unwrapping my broom and staying out of his way. Garrity was right—Trey could spot eleven different ways to break into a place without even trying hard. He was fascinating to watch, like a cat burglar in action.
He declined my offer of coffee, preferring his ever-present bottle of Pellegrino. I made a huge pot anyway, dark as road tar. While it perked, he explained the system.
“It’s a hybrid,” he said, “hard-wired except for the security camera. Door and window contacts in place, as well as glassbreak detectors and one motion sensor over there.” He pointed toward the safe. “No surveillance devices. But I did find the control panel in the closet upstairs, the key pad behind the front door.”
“That little gray plastic box thingie? I thought that was part of the air conditioning.”
He shook his head. “That’s how you control the system. One touch arm and disarm, one touch perimeter. It shows you which devices are engaged, which are not.”
“What’s engaged right now?”
“Nothing. The window was, but it was deactivated after the break-in.”
“Can I change any of this?”
“I can—I have the installer code. And then I can create a user code for you.”
I could have hugged him. “I owe you for this, Trey. Big time.”
He shut his briefcase. “You owe me nothing.”
“I do too. You’re my hero.”
He busied himself at the keypad and didn’t say another word. But I thought I saw a twitch at the left corner of his mouth.
While he worked, I poured myself a cup of coffee and opened three packages of sugar into it. Every now and then, I’d glimpse the holster under his jacket and remember, this is a man whose hands are lethal weapons and here I am, all alone with him. At night. In a deserted shop full of guns and ammo. And yet I felt comfortable with him, cozy even. At that moment, I trusted him more than my own brother.
I hopped up cross-legged on the counter. “If I asked you a hard question, would you tell the truth?”
“It depends.”
“Do you think Eric’s involved in Eliza’s death?”
Trey tapped a number sequence into the keypad. “He has a solid alibi.”
“Not for the murder per se, just…involved.”
“He’s certainly involved—he knew Eliza, he planned on meeting her. The evidence suggests she was killed while trying to talk to him. That doesn’t make him guilty of any wrongdoing, however.”
“Was Eliza pregnant?”
He looked up abruptly. “What?”
“Pregnant. I’m stretching here.”
“I haven’t seen the official report. According to what Ryan and Vance told me, however, the evidence indicates drug use, but no mention of pregnancy.”
“That’s what Janie told me too.” I rummaged under the counter and found a half-eaten box of chocolate chip cookies. “What about her bank account, the deposits, the money in the shoe box? Any idea where that was coming from?”
“No.”
“I can’t figure it out either. I mean, you look at the money and her history with Bulldog, and it looks like she’d decided to start selling drugs.”
“An acceptable hypothesis.”
I dipped a cookie into my coffee. “But that doesn’t explain her involvement with my brother. He’s a lot of things, but drug dealer isn’t one. Or drug taker for that matter.”
Trey didn’t reply. He pressed numbers and examined the lights that lit up in response, over and over, like he was practicing a magic trick.
I dusted cookie crumbs from my hands. “I’m guessing she was blackmailing somebody. But who’s done something blackmailable?”
Trey frowned. “Blackmailable?”
“It’s a sort-of-real word, stay with me here. And what about Dylan? We know that his SUV was at Phoenix on Thursday morning—you saw it—the same day the security cameras got busted up. And we know he was following us on Saturday, and that he showed up at the press conference yesterday, but we have no clue what he was up to.”
“We have a small clue.” He closed the keypad cover. “You’re on his blog now.”
“What!”
“Look and see.”
I bounced off the counter and over to Dexter’s computer. A few keystrokes later and there I was, framed by the Ferrari’s passenger side window, looking like a slightly frowzy movie star. I recognized the shot—it had been taken on Saturday, the day Dylan followed us.
I stared at the image, sunglassed and remote. “I swear, no matter what I find out, it just confuses me more.”
“This is a complicated case.”
I looked across the room at him. Even under low wattage, his eyes were distractingly gorgeous. But the expression there was utterly professional, patient and polite and unwavering. He’d been nothing but above-board with me every step of the way, this man who opened doors, who said “please” and “thank you.” This man who had driven all the way up to Kennesaw as a favor for me, a woman he barely knew, because it was the decent thing to do.
And then I remembered all the times I’d snooped in his desk, eavesdropped on his conversations, quizzed Garrity about his personal life or accused him of being a liar and held him at sword point…
A guilty knot congealed in my gut. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything. For disrupting your class. For yelling at you. For making a complicated situation even more complicated.” I exited Dylan’s blog. “Did Garrity tell you about the target with my picture in the middle?”
“He did.”
“Did he tell you it wasn’t the first time?”
Trey nodded. “He thinks someone is threatening you.”
“Or trying to scare me, I don’t know which.”
“Why would someone do that?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. But I’d say it’s because I’m getting close to something somebody doesn’t want me close to. And if it continues, I’m going to start packing heat, even if the state of Georgia says I have to do it openly.”
I expected an argument, but didn’t get one. Trey looked thoughtful, but then went back to his legal pad without a word. I moved closer.
“Does it really work? What you were showing that woman in class?”
“I wouldn’t teach it if it didn’t.”
“Could you show me how? Until that carry permit comes through…”
He made one final mark and stuck the pen behind his ear. “Of course.”
***
And that was how I ended up in a chokehold, with Trey standing behind me, one arm looped around my neck. I had my fingers deep in his forearm, but it was like tugging at a steel bar. My brain ratcheted into panic mode.
It’s just Trey, I told myself, he’s not really trying to throttle you. But my body was having none of it. My body knew he’d killed before.
“Damn it,” I hissed. “This wouldn’t happen if I had a gun!”
“Turn your head into the crook of my elbow so you can breathe. Lower your hips so that I’m off balance.”
I did as he said. But I was still breathing hard and fast, every muscle tensed for fight or flight. Even my teeth were clenched.
Trey’s mouth was right at my ear, his voice calm. “I’m using your resistance against you, see? If you relax, you take away some of my power. Stop fighting so har
d. Go loose.”
My body rebelled, but when I did as he said, I felt the shift in his stance. Suddenly, he was struggling to support me.
“See, there’s leverage now. You can drop and roll, drop and get your weapon, drop and…stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Are you expecting anyone?”
I heard it then—the slam of a car door, the crunch of footsteps on gravel. Then silence.
Before I could react, Trey yanked me across the room and practically threw me behind the counter. “Get down. Stay there.”
“What are you doing?”
“Quiet.”
He moved beside the door, back flat against the wall, his gun held right below his belt. I hadn’t even seen him get it out. Then he hit the overheads, plunging the shop into darkness.
That’s when it became real, when the dark descended. Light-headed with fear, I crouched on the freshly swept floor. Time slowed, every second bright with adrenalin, amplified. I searched the floor for a weapon and my hands closed on the broom handle. Great. I was going to die in a room full of guns with a freaking broom in my hand.
And then I heard a familiar voice. “Tai? What’s happening? Open up!”
Trey switched on the light and opened the door. Eric stood on my doorstep, a vision of moral outrage in navy slacks and baby blue dress shirt.
“What the hell’s going on here?” he demanded.
Chapter 28
I marched up to him, broom in hand. “You don’t get to show up at…whatever time it is.”
“Nine forty-seven,” Trey supplied.
“Yeah, nine forty-seven, with no warning—no call, no text, no nothing—and demand that I tell you what the hell is going on!”
Eric took off his glasses and stuck them on top of his head. “I own this place as much as you do. And I did text you!”
“You said you were coming back to Atlanta—you didn’t say anything about driving up to Kennesaw.”
“I thought you’d be at the house. Only when I get there, the guest room is empty and your stuff is gone. So I check the Ritz, and they tell me you checked out. This was my next guess.”
Eric shut the door behind himself. He looked just like his usual J. Crew self, and he wasn’t at all tan. I’d expected him to be tan.
“I’m not pleased about this,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here this late at night.”
I waved my broom at him. “Now you decide to be concerned? You vanish for five days—”
“I didn’t vanish.”
“—leaving me with a murder in my lap and the police breathing down the back of my neck. You sic Phoenix on me, only you don’t see fit to tell me. You install a security camera—which you also don’t tell me about and which I only discover because somebody took a brick to it.”
“A what?”
“A brick.” I pointed. “Why do you think the front window’s boarded up?”
He glanced at what used to be the window. “Oh my god, what happened?”
Trey moved forward. Now that the threat was over, he’d tucked the H& back in its holster. “Now that you’re here, we can find out.”
***
We gathered around Dexter’s desk. Eric sat. He pulled up the log-in screen and typed his password. The archived footage was grainy, but after fiddling with the resolution, it cleared. Unfortunately all it showed was a sweatshirt-hooded figure, wrapped in shadow. Thick, hunched, brick in hand. Blurry face covered, hidden in the dark.
“Two-eleven am,” Trey said.
It didn’t show whoever it was slipping the threatening target under the door. That must have come afterward.
Eric slumped back in his seat. “This is news to me.”
“What, you weren’t checking things out with your little spy set-up?”
At least he had the decency to look chagrined. “I was going to tell you when I got back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when you installed it?”
“Think about it. If I’d said, hey, let me get you a bodyguard, or hey, let me install this security system, you would have done what you always do—argue.”
“You’re acting like Dad.”
“And you’re acting like a child.”
That tripped my switch. “Don’t you dare—”
But Trey cut me off. “I’m sorry. I have to go now.”
In the heat of the argument, I’d forgotten he was in the room. Eric looked as abashed as I felt. He stood up and shook hands with Trey. “I appreciate your keeping an eye on her for me.”
Trey shook his head. “That’s not why I was here.” Then he looked at me. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
I smiled. “No, you’ve done plenty. Thanks for coming.”
“You’re welcome. The access codes are beside the cash register.” He slipped his yellow pads into his briefcase and left without looking back. I soon heard the Ferrari rip into the gravel and roar into the street. Zero to speed limit in two point seven seconds.
Eric looked at me. He shoved his glasses further into his dirty-blonde cowlicks. And then he got that patient “this is for the best” look. “Tai, there’s some things you need to know about Trey.”
“Like the fact that he cared enough to come out here tonight and help me undo what you did?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Screw complicated, Eric, I’m more interested in the things you haven’t told me.”
Now he looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on! It’s the question everybody’s been asking.” My voice shook despite my efforts to control it. “Were you involved with Eliza Compton?”
He exhaled slowly. “Don’t you think the police checked me out? And don’t you think they’d have pulled me in for questioning ASAP if they’d found anything? I barely knew the girl.”
“You knew her enough to change your plans to meet with her—secretly, out of the office—and then lie about it.”
“She needed help.”
“Which had nothing to do with the fact that she was a young, attractive woman?”
He made noise of disgust. “Oh, please. She was alone and desperate and scared.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know! But I do know that I had nothing to do with it! And you should know that, too!”
Tears blurred my vision, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
“You could have explained that to me instead of leaving me to deal with all this crap by myself!”
“What did you want me to do, turn around and come back here?”
“That’s exactly what I wanted you to do!”
Eric waved me off. Under the bleak fluorescence, he looked washed out and utterly alien. Not even familiar, much less my own flesh and blood.
“I didn’t have time,” he said. “This workshop wasn’t something I could abandon just because some girl I barely knew died across the street from my house. Life goes on, Tai. The grown-ups go with it.”
It was all I could do not to fling cold coffee on him. “You don’t get to lecture me about being a grown-up, not after what I went through with Mom.”
“What do you want, a medal?”
“I want you to take some responsibility!”
He laughed, a grating nasty sound. “That’s rich, coming from you. You’ve never stayed in one place for more than a year, never had a relationship for more than six months. Face it—even when she was dying, Mom was the one taking care of you. And now I’m the one stuck taking care of you.”
“I can take care of myself!”
“You can’t even keep a job!”
“I have a job, thank you very much!”
He dug one hand into the hair on his forehead. “Are you insane? You’re an arms merchant for a bunch of rednecks. There’s a goddamn rebel flag hanging on the wall! Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is to me?”
“You work for a company full of
gun-toting corporate tools, and you have the gall to be embarrassed by Uncle Dexter? Like rich people with guns are cool and poor people with guns are trashy and dangerous?”
“One of those trashy dangerous people killed a girl five days ago! Have you forgotten?”
“Of course I haven’t, you idiot, but all you do is lecture me about being an embarrassment and then go back to pretending that Eliza’s death doesn’t affect you!”
He wasn’t listening, was just ticking off on his fingers. “I gave you a bed under my roof, I tried to get you a decent job, I—”
“I don’t need your bed, or your roof, or your goddamn decent job!”
“Where else do you have to go?”
“Here.”
He got steely quiet. “There’s a killer out there, Tai.”
“Lucky for me I got a whole bunch of guns.”
“You don’t even know how to shoot.”
If I’d had a gun in hand, I might have shot him just to prove the point. “You don’t know anything, big brother.”
I threw him out. I was trembling, and my chest felt hollow and crumpled. Despite my best efforts, the tears came hard and fast, blurring the lights into hazy globs. I lit up a cigarette. Then I blew my nose and double-checked the deadbolts. Then I engaged every device I saw on the keypad, including the motion detector. And then I got a .38 revolver from the safe and filled it with bullets. Dexter had a pull-out sofa in his office. It was brown velour and smelled like gun oil and stale popcorn, but it was the bed I had made, and for better or worse, I was going to lie in it.
***
The gun didn’t help. Neither did the security system. I stayed awake most of the night, all the lights on, dozing in fits and starts. Which is why I was fully awake when my cell phone rang at six in the morning.
It was Janie. “They found Bulldog.”
“They did! Where?”
“Meth lab in Smyrna. Son of a bitch got himself blown up last night. You feel like driving me out there so I can ID the bastard?”
Chapter 29
Gravel crunched beneath the tires as we pulled into the storage facility, past the barrier that kept out the news crews but far away from the smoking heap at the end of the driveway. The security zone, Garrity had informed me.
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