by Tina Whittle
“I had nothing to do with this,” I said.
“With what?”
I stood aside. He stopped in the threshold, cocked his head.
“It’s here,” he said. “Very good.”
And then he went inside as if there wasn’t a grotesque turquoise cactus next to his coffee table. I followed him, incredulous.
“You were expecting this?”
He placed his briefcase on his desk, unknotted his tie. “I told you I would take care of the situation.”
“Yes, but I didn’t expect you to have the situation delivered.”
“It was the only way I could keep it secure.”
He had a plastic bag over his arm from a place called Menswear Incorporated. He draped it over the sofa and circled the cactus with hawkish intensity. Suddenly he paused, then pointed.
“There.”
I followed his finger and saw a ragged hole barely bigger than a pencil eraser. He pulled a penlight from his pocket and directed the beam around the marking. Then he marched right to his desk and rummaged around until he found a small ruler and a yellow notepad. He brought these back to the cactus, dropped into a crouch.
“Well?” I said.
“It’s a bullet entry.”
“No exit?”
“Highly improbable. This cactus appears to be solid wood, at least eighteen inches in diameter.”
He slapped the ruler up next to the hole, measured it twice. Scribbled that into the notebook propped on his knee.
I peered closer. “What are you doing?”
“A field estimate on the angle of impact. Arcsine of width divided by length.”
He was speaking in trigonometry again. I didn’t bother asking for a translation because I understood the thing that mattered: we had before us the evidence that Nick Talbot was telling the truth, that he wasn’t delusional, that on Friday night someone had stood at the edge of his property and fired a bullet at him. Up until this moment, criminal wrongdoing had been hypothetical. Now it was real, tangible, and evidential.
Trey went to his desk and retrieved the camera. He handed me the ruler. “Would you hold this next to the entry, not touching it?”
I did as he asked while he knelt at the base of the cactus and snapped a series of close-up photographs.
“The cops are not going to approve of your chain of evidence,” I said.
“Since we’re not law enforcement, chain of evidence won’t officially start until the investigation moves to active status.”
He moved in for a close-up while I held the ruler in place. That was when I finally noticed the rest of the apartment. A spanking new file cabinet stood next to his desk, which supported a mountain range of folders. On the wall above that was a giant whiteboard covered in circle maps and hierarchy trees, dry erase marker lines connecting theories and suspects. He’d mounted corkboards on both sides of that and stuck notes, photos, and newspaper clippings all over every square inch.
In the middle of the information overflow was a photograph of Jessica Talbot, her mouth open in laughter, her eyes mischievous. It was the same candid shot I’d seen in newspaper articles, nothing like the staged images from the magazine covers. I remembered Trey’s crime scene sketch, her vivaciousness reduced to a two-dimensional outline. A body. But not here. Here she was the star she’d always wanted to be, the epicenter.
“Omigod,” I said. “I spend one night away, and you create a lair.”
Trey stayed focused on his math, his lips moving silently as he worked the equations. I was perplexed. We’d found a key piece of evidence. This was the moment when he typically planted his feet, folded his arms, and demanded that somebody call 911. But not now. Now he was the sole monarch of his very own investigative kingdom.
“What are you going to do if Finn drops the case? Because she doesn’t serve justice, she serves the Talbots. And the Talbots serve themselves.” I turned to face him. “Have you even told her about this one-man CSI operation you’ve got going on?”
He didn’t look up from his notebook. “You can put down the ruler.”
I stared. “This is your plan? Hide the evidence up here so that if Finn decides to sweep this investigation under the rug, you can move it forward despite her?”
He kept scribbling in the notebook. “Not hiding. Securing. And Finn knows I have this.”
“So if she wants it, you’ll hand it right over?”
He remained absorbed in his calculations.
“Right. Exactly what I suspected. And what about Keesha? She asked you to keep those files a secret.”
He looked up at that. “I have. And I will. But I can use them as a starting point.”
“For what?”
“For finding out who fired this bullet.”
“And you’re willing to break every rule to do that.”
He stood. “Not every rule.”
“Trey. Listen to me—”
“I am listening.” He put his hands on his hips. “However, you are hardly one to criticize. You kept Martinez’s phone, which you hacked. Then you downloaded all the data into your own personal computer.”
I pointed. “You mean that data you have up on the corkboard? The data I don’t recall giving you permission to access?”
He didn’t even blink. “You left it on my desk.”
“Near your desk. In my tote bag.”
A light shrug. “Your open tote bag. On my desk.”
“Barely touching your desk.”
“In my apartment.”
I crossed my arms. “So that’s how you’re going to play this?”
He crossed his too. “I assumed that since you told me the information was in there that I was free to access it. My apologies if that wasn’t the case.”
He was actually correct—I had intended that—but I wasn’t about to admit that now. I exhaled, felt the breath run right out of me in a slow trickle. And then I took another breath, one that filled not only my lungs but a dark contracted space deep inside. The space that held the thing I was really worried about.
“Trey? You do remember what happened the last time you got over-invested?”
He winced, and his voice softened. “I remember. And I’m sorry. I know how difficult that was for you.”
“You don’t need to apologize. But you do need to be aware.”
“I am. That’s the difference between now and last time. I know the warning signs now and how to ameliorate any…”
“Complications?”
“No. It starts with a D.”
“Decompensation.”
Trey nodded, crisply. “Yes. That. I don’t want to decompensate again. So I’m paying attention. And I have you to point out any warning signs I might miss.” He gave me a serious look. “Not that you’re responsible for maintaining my psychological stability. I’m responsible. Not you. That’s not what I meant. I simply meant…you know.”
I could feel the full force of his attention on me. It was one of his greatest tricks, this ability to envelope another person in his personal radar. In bed, it was positively intoxicating. But in other circumstances—say, an interrogation—it felt very much like being fried by a laser beam. He was doing the trick now. Everything around me was fading into the background, and I could feel his gaze, tactile.
“I know,” I said. “And you’re right, you do have me. One hundred percent.”
He looked profoundly relieved. “Thank you.”
He got back to work. While he continued his measurements, I examined his gathered evidence—Jessica’s murder was the central crux of his concern. He had constructed timelines for every person of interest, including himself. His timeline was black with red cross-hatches, each marked by an alphanumeric identifier linking it to a piece of information on one of the many maps, also color coded, though I had no idea what the various sh
ades signified. But Trey did. That info was humming through his brain along with every other data point in front of him.
The photo he’d chosen to represent himself was the one I’d seen at the gym, an older one that I would have bet my last dollar had been taken around the time of the murder. Trey was nothing if not chronological. I peered closer at the intricate lines radiating and connecting.
“You got lucky back then,” I said. “Your dash cam and GPS alibied you for Jessica’s murder. And you got lucky now because I can alibi you for the shooting Friday night. But you know who doesn’t have an alibi for Friday?” I tapped another line, this one purple. “Addison.”
“She has no motive either.”
“We’ll see about that. I had a very interesting conversation with Portia that implied otherwise.”
“Portia? When did you talk to her?”
“She came to see me this afternoon. Waved an unloaded LeMat around, then tried to bribe me to hunt for next season’s script.”
Trey straightened. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. She implied that Addison’s interest in Nick involved both love and money. Also, she’s onto us. I’m not sure how quiet she’ll keep things, but I suspect we can count on her discretion if we play nice with her.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means…I don’t know what it means. Portia is the wildest of the wild cards.”
Trey nodded, thinking, thumb pressed against his lower lip. I looked at his photograph pinned to the corkboard, then back at the man himself, and something went ping in my brain. A connection I hadn’t caught before.
I couldn’t fight the grin. “In other news, I just got one step closer to figuring out why you got fired.”
“You did?”
“I did.”
“Interesting.” He slipped me this look. “You could, of course, find out right now.”
I bit my lip and shook my head. “Nope. Tempting though it is.”
He smiled then, one of his real smiles, and I realized that I shouldn’t have worried. He was in no danger of decompensation. He was thriving on this…whatever it was we were doing. He sighed extravagantly and headed for the bedroom, shrugging off his jacket as he did.
“Let me know if you change your mind,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-five
It was still dark outside when I woke to the whirr of the treadmill, so I pulled the covers over my head and lazed back into sleep. Almost an hour later, I heard the sounds of packing, so I pushed back the duvet and squinted into the first dull light.
Trey stood at the foot of the bed. He was dressed in one of his Armani suits, the bargain basement coat and jacket still in their garment bag. He disappeared into the closet, and I heard the rustle of plastic, the scrape of hangers.
I dragged myself upright, yawned and stretched. “I guess I won’t see you until around seven.”
“Probably not.”
“And then what?”
“Tonight is mainly investigative. Most of the information we gather will turn out to be unnecessary, but that’s impossible to determine at the onset. So the challenge today will be getting as much intel as we can. And then tomorrow you and I meet with Finn and start finding the connections.”
“What about the bullet?”
“What about it?”
“Doesn’t that change the plan?”
“No. Not our part in it.”
He sat at the foot of the bed and put on his black Brioni lace-ups. They were Italian calfskin leather, hand-stitched, with a dab of grip tape on the sole in case he had to sprint and a paper clip inside the heel in case he needed to pick a pair of handcuffs.
“Those are not down-market shoes,” I said.
He tied the laces with a snap. “I know. But I didn’t have time to break in a more appropriate pair.”
I examined his new suit behind the plastic. The fabric was black and serviceable, but didn’t have the drape and hang of his Italian couture. The tie on top of the precisely folded socks and underwear was also new, and polyester.
I reached for the one around his neck, a black silk Ermenegildo Zegna. “You have a clip-on tie in your suitcase.”
He raised his chin and let me work, but he didn’t say anything.
“You only wear those if there’s a chance someone will try to strangle you.” I cinched the knot, smoothed it flat. “You’re expecting trouble, aren’t you?
I held out my hand. He dropped his cuff links into my palm and extended one wrist.
“I’m preparing for any eventuality,” he said. “As are you, I assume.”
He said this with a flick of his eyes toward the gun safe. His weapon would be staying put, but mine would be coming with me.
I straightened his lapels, smoothed the front of his jacket. “Yes. I’ll be prepared.”
“Good.” He held out his other wrist. “I am reasonably certain we won’t need such preparations, however. Finn has both visible and covert agents working the event. I reviewed their dossiers. Their qualifications are impeccable. In addition, there is the resort’s own security team.”
“Which you pronounced sub-par.”
“This is a different team. From Armstrong.”
One of Phoenix’s rivals. Trey had spoken of them in the past with respect. He’d explained to me once that there was no such thing as one hundred percent safe, that the best one could plan for was as safe as possible. I guessed that was the territory we were venturing into.
I followed him to the living room as he gathered the rest of his things, including a square black bag with a lightning bolt logo. He stopped at the threshold, his suit over his arm. “Finn said she’ll have you hooked into the audio surveillance system.”
“Yes. I’m meeting her at the shop later to pick up my equipment.”
“Good. I’ll have other precautions in place.”
I pointed to the new bag. “Like whatever that is.”
He gave me a tiny smile. “Yes.”
I stood on tiptoe and kissed him, kissed him good, and was rewarded with his hands on my waist. He left them there longer than a simple good-bye warranted, his thumbs resting on my hips. Finally, he took a deep breath and pulled away.
“One more thing.” He retrieved the keys to the Ferrari from his pocket. “Here. It doesn’t fit my cover.”
I took the keys, a little astounded but not about to argue, not one bit. “Are you gonna drive the Camaro?”
“No. I have a rental waiting. Something more in keeping with a security manager’s salary.”
I laughed. “You’re getting into this.”
He paused, thought about that. “Yes. I think I am.”
I closed the door behind him, listened to his footsteps and then the ding of the elevator. He was on his way. I leaned back against the door and pressed my hands against my stomach, trying to still the butterflies there. Why was I nervous? Trey was competent and ridiculously organized. He was stretching out of his comfort zone, yes, but dealing with the situation as professionally and analytically as he did any assignment.
And I wasn’t anxious about my own role in the case—sneaking around was second nature to me. I’d pretended to be twenty-one when I was sixteen, brazening my way into clubs with jacked-up cleavage and a bootleg ID, sending my parents into despair. My mother had been smooth as buffed ice, and my father—or the man I’d known as my father—had been gentle and quiet. I was none of those things. I was fire-tempered and rough around the edges. I was barely civilized.
The understanding came to me in a rush. It wasn’t anxiety, it was anticipation, because despite my better judgment, I loved hazard, thrived on risk.
I was just like Boone.
I remembered him from when I was little, with his salt-calloused hands and fisherman’s squint. When I was a teenager, he’d supplied me and
my friends with illicit liquor, sheening me with a kind of outlaw celebrity. He was larger than life, practically mythical, and I could not begin to imagine him and my mother, my society-driven, manners-obsessed, proper Methodist mother…
The butterflies morphed into bats, and I took a deep breath, massaged my diaphragm. I had Eleanor Randolph’s sturdy build and unruly hair, the parts of herself she’d tried hardest to change. Did we also share an attraction to the subversive and reckless? Had that been her gift to me, bequeathed in my blood and bones?
Yes. The answer was yes.
No wonder working this case felt as exhilarating as riding a wrecking ball. Every danger-loving gene in me was swinging wild and loose.
Chapter Thirty-six
That afternoon, Finn showed up at the shop in a flowered church dress, a matching handbag clutched in one hand and a backpack in the other. I could tell from the way she carried both that they were heavier than they ought to be, probably because they packed some firepower.
“I saw the Ferrari,” she said. “Trey left it for you?”
I locked up the register. “He did.”
“Smart move. That will definitely get them talking.” She dropped the backpack on the floor and started rummaging in it. “Did you manage to peel him out of the Armani?”
I grinned. “That is one of my particular talents.”
“Good.” She grinned back and held up a shopping bag. “Mind if I change?”
I pointed to the storage room. She went inside but didn’t close the door. Her voice was muffled. “Speaking of Trey, have you found out yet?”
“Found out what?”
“Why he got fired.”
I poured the last of the coffee into my travel mug. “Nope.”
“Damn. I was hoping you’d have done better than I did. Having some personal leverage and all.”