“I’ll call and let them know. Then we’ll go find some breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Her face was pale, but there was a touch of color on her cheeks as our eyes met. Then she stood and crossed the room again, curling up in a chair with her back to me. Anything I might have said at that point was probably useless, so I didn’t say anything at all. I just walked away, slipping out the door to make my call.
What else could I do?
Chapter 16
At the Compound
Kipling was out in the back, walking the trails that ran from the main house, around the operatives’ cottages, to the tree dotted space that ran to the back of the vast property. He liked to be physically active when he was nervous. And he was very nervous this morning. Elliott hadn’t called yet. He thought the man would call first thing, so he’d been up and waiting since before dawn, but the call hadn’t come. He couldn’t imagine what was keeping him. Maybe the woman couldn’t decide if she wanted to turn on her husband. Or maybe Alvarez and his people had already caught up with them. He wasn’t sure what to think, but he hated when an operation didn’t go the way he thought it should.
So he walked.
He was just crossing an open meadow, far enough from the cottages that he could barely hear the workmen doing the renovations on Ingram’s cottage, when his phone finally rang.
“Elliott?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Sorry. We had a long night.”
Kipling paused, his eyes scanning the horizon by habit. “Where are you?”
“Nolanville. We’re at a motel on Main Street. It’s big and pink and garish. You shouldn’t be able to miss it.”
“Okay.” And now came the question he’d been thinking about all night, wondering how it would go, either way. Gray Wolf really didn’t need a pissed off Mafioso after them, but working with the local police and giving them the evidence they wanted was a good thing. It could mean cooperation down the road when Gray Wolf might really need it. “Will she testify?”
“Yes.”
Kipling closed his eyes. “Alright. I’ll be there in an hour or so.”
He disconnected the call and ran back up to the house, catching David just as he was coming downstairs.
“Ricki’s not feeling well today.”
“I heard from Elliott.”
David’s eyes brightened. “Yeah? Is he safe?”
Kipling appreciated the concern in David’s voice. “He’s good. He’s in Nolanville.”
David frowned. “Never heard of it.”
“Me either. Let’s hope Google Maps has.”
David crossed his arms over his chest and regarded Kipling with a long, curious look. “So, is she going to testify?”
“Yeah. So you should probably call that detective and have his people ready to talk to her. We’ll have to arrange for them to come to us.”
“That’s probably the safest way of doing things.” He led the way to his office, stepping behind his desk to pull up something on his computer. He gestured for Kipling to join him, pointing to something on one of the many monitors. “He’s been sitting out there since yesterday. I guess he thinks we’re too stupid to have security on our own compound.”
Kipling studied the dark sedan that contained a single man, a Latino wearing a dark suit and mirrored sunglasses.
“Or that we only have one entrance and exit.”
“What do you want me to do?”
David gestured to another monitor. “I think he’s the only one out there, so you should be safe leaving through the side gate. And you can probably bring them back here the same way.”
“And then we have the cops come interview her here?”
“Why not? This is as safe a place as any. And Tierney has criminal law experience, so she can sit in, make sure Mrs. Alvarez’s rights aren’t trampled on.”
“Perfect.”
Only it couldn’t be that easy. Kipling was turning to leave when Annie, the office manager, came rushing in.
“We’ve got a problem.”
“What now?” David asked, glancing toward the ceiling, almost as if he could see his wife through the plaster and wood. That made Kipling wonder just how ill Ricki was.
But it wasn’t about Ricki.
“Knox went over to the Waters Institute to check on Mrs. Alvarez’s brother, like you asked?”
“Yes?”
“He’s not there. The receptionist said Mr. Alvarez removed him from the facility last night.”
Chapter 17
Brooks
My back was stiff, my body sore from the beating I’d taken yesterday. There were no obvious signs on the outside, but I knew Elliott’s colleagues all knew about it and they were watching me oddly. I felt like a bug under a microscope or something.
Not that they were being unkind. They were some of the nicest people I’d ever met. The one named Knox brought me clothes to change into, a pair of jeans that almost fit and a concert tee with the Beatles splashed across the front. It was nice, wearing clean clothes. And the one named Tierney—such a unique, beautiful name!—sat with me for nearly an hour, explaining what my rights were before we went into the room with the cops. She was a lawyer, she said, representing me because she worked for Gray Wolf and David Grayson asked her to.
But Elliott was nowhere to be seen. He disappeared as soon as we arrived at the compound, not even bothering to say anything to me. The entire drive here, he sat in the back and refused to speak unless the driver—Kipling—happened to ask him a question. I glanced at him a few times and each time he was staring out the window.
Tierney led the way into the conference room, gesturing for me to take a seat on the far side of the table. She sat beside me, placing a yellow legal pad in front of her that was covered in notes she’d made while we talked. I crossed my arms over my chest, my leg over my knee. She smiled, touching my shoulder gently.
“It’ll be over before you know it.”
“Yes, well, you don’t know Juan Teran Maximillian Alvarez the way I do.”
“But I know that the Austin Police Department will do all they can to keep you safe. And, in the meantime, you are perfectly safe here at Gray Wolf.”
“Have you worked here long? Do you know these people well?”
She shook her head. “I’ve only worked here about a month, but I was a client of Gray Wolf a month or two before that.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “I was getting threats from a client and they provided bodyguard services for me. Not only that, but they figured out who was behind the threats and helped me make it stop.”
“And then offered you a job?”
She laughed a little. “Something like that.” She studied my face a moment. “I actually became involved with the operative who was working my case. I think that has a lot to do with why they offered me the job.”
I looked down at my hands, played with my fingernails, my thoughts returning to Elliott. “Does that happen often?” I asked her. “That the operative falls for his client?”
“No, not as often as you might think. But it does happen.”
I just nodded, wondering where Elliott was, if we were really involved or if what had happened between us was already over. It was my own fault. I was the one who forced him into a corner, who threw myself at him, demanding that he have sex with me before Juan came home and everything returned to normal. What did I really expect to have happened? Did I really believe that he would fall head over heels for me and we’d run off together, live happily ever after? Even as naïve as I was, I knew that was just a fairy tale.
But a girl could still hope, right?
The door opened and I looked up, hoping it was Elliott joining the proceedings. It wasn’t. It was three men I’d never seen before in my life. The short, slight man leading the pack came over to perch against the table next to me.
“Mrs. Alvarez? I’m Detective Aaron Snider. I’ll
be running this interview.”
“It’s nice to meet you.”
“And this is Detective John Davis. And David Grayson, the owner of Gray Wolf Security.”
I forced a smile, nodding at each man as he was introduced.
“I just wanted to take a moment and explain to you what’s going to happen here. We’re going to ask you a few questions about your husband, and we’ll ask that you answer to the best of your knowledge. If you don’t know an answer, simply state that.” He smiled. “It’s not a test. Just a conversation. But we will be recording everything that happens here today.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve already explained the procedure to her,” Tierney said.
Snider nodded. “Good. We’ll get started, then.”
Snider moved to the other side of the table to sit beside the other detective while Mr. Grayson took a seat at the back of the room, clearly just acting as an observer. Tierney had told me that he would likely be present. Snider set a digital recorder in the center of the table and cleared his throat.
“Ready?”
I nodded.
He turned on the machine. “Interview with Brooks Holliday Alvarez at Gray Wolf Security’s facility on Grayson Road in Austin, Texas. Present are myself, Detective Aaron Snider, Detective John Davis, David Grayson—owner of Gray Wolf—and Tierney Michaels—acting council for Mrs. Alvarez.”
“Could you not call me that?” I suddenly asked.
“What?”
“Could you not call me Mrs. Alvarez? Just Brooks would be great.”
Snider’s eyebrows rose slightly, but he nodded. “Okay. Brooks, are you ready?”
“I am.”
And I was. I was so ready to tell the world everything I knew about Juan Teran Maximillian Alvarez. There was power in the truth, and I wanted as much power as I could generate right now. It was all I had.
Power over the truth and Jimmy.
Chapter 18
Elliott
It seemed like I was always pacing outside closed doors when it came to Brooks. I stood in the hallway outside the conference room, wondering what the hell was going on inside, what she was telling them, and if it was enough to take that bastard down. I wanted to be in there with her even if it was just to hold her hand, but David had made it clear that my presence wasn’t wanted. So I contended myself with pacing outside, hoping she was holding up okay and that everything was working out the way it was supposed to.
I hated this; I hated feeling as if I was out of control. Control was an important thing to a man, important to a man who had military training. In basic, they taught that a soldier had to always be aware of what was happening around him, had to always be able to anticipate his enemy’s next move. Brooks wasn’t my enemy, but it had been so much easier when I thought I knew who she was and what to expect from her. The moment I met her, I knew she was a liar. A cheat. I knew she was trouble. But then she undressed in front of me and then we were lying in the grass and she was so soft and pretty and she smelled so good! And then she was telling me she was a virgin and she wanted to lose it before Juan came back and I couldn’t think straight.
Everything was so much easier when I thought I knew who she was. But now? Now things were so blurred that I had no clue. Was it possible that I was wrong, that not everyone is a liar and a cheat? Was it possible I’d stumbled across the one honest woman in the world?
Wouldn’t that be just my luck, that I finally found a good girl, but then ruined it with my own jaded sense of the world?
Kipling came around the corner as I continued to pace, his expression unreadable, as usual. I could never tell if the man was happy or sad, angry or content. He always seemed to be in the same frame of mind: nonchalance.
“Elliott. I’ve been looking for you.”
“Well, you’ve found me.”
He stopped across from me, leaning back against the wall with his hands caught behind his back. He studied me for a minute and I felt like he was taking measure of me. I wondered if I met his expectations.
“We have an issue that I thought you should know about.”
“What’s that?”
Kipling glanced toward the closed door of the conference room, then focused on me again. “David felt it would be better if we didn’t tell your friend, Mrs. Alvarez, about this until after her interview, but I thought you should know.”
That made a sense of dread suddenly wash over me. “Is something wrong? Alvarez’s men find us?”
“Oh, they’ve been parked outside the main gate since yesterday. Idiots never bothered to see if there was another entrance to the property.” Kipling waved that concern away. “No, this is about Mrs. Alvarez’s brother. I guess you mentioned him to Knox?”
I nodded. I’d spoken to Knox this morning and asked her to call over to the institute and make sure he was okay.
“What’s going on?”
“Alvarez has removed him from the institute.”
I shook my head. “Fuck! He’s using him as leverage.”
“That was our thought, too. That’s why David thought it best not to tell her until after the interview.”
“She never would have done it had she known.”
Kipling just inclined his head, showing he understood that.
“Do we know where he’s holding him? If he’s still alive?”
“We have no way of ascertaining that information.”
“Sure we do.” I marched past him, bursting into the main room and storming toward my desk, snatching up my laptop as I sat down. I opened it and ran through the files necessary to open the live feed on the security cameras in Alvarez’s house. “Whenever we take on a client who has his own security system, we tap into the video feeds so we can watch over the client.”
Kipling leaned close so that he could see the videos. “I didn’t think we were still tapped into Alvarez’s house.”
“The case hasn’t been official closed out. There was no reason to cut the feed.”
We cycled through the videos, viewing each room of Alvarez’s house where a camera was positioned. I hadn’t looked at them before—there was no reason since Brooks was in my line of sight almost the entire time I was in the house—so I hadn’t realized how many rooms of the house were under surveillance. It appeared that the only rooms that didn’t have cameras installed were Alvarez’s office and his personal bedroom.
When the cameras cycled to the sitting room of Brooks’ suite, we saw Jimmy, clearly agitated—he was pacing, hitting himself on his head over and over again—walking between the window and the loveseat. He was moving his mouth like he was talking, but there was no sound on the feed.
“We have to go get him.”
Kipling shook his head. “David ordered that we wait until after the interview, until after the cops find out if they have what they need to get a warrant.”
“We can’t just leave him there. Look at how agitated he is. He could hurt himself.”
“He’s not our client.”
“But Brooks is—and she’ll be horrified to find out we knew about this and did nothing.”
“Technically, Alvarez is the client.”
I touched the screen. “That man was in an accident. He has brain damage. The more agitated he gets, the more he sets back his progress. It’s very important to her that he do well with his treatment.”
“I understand her concern, Elliott. I just…if we were to attempt to get him out, it would be like walking right into the lion’s den. Alvarez wants you to come after him.”
“So we don’t knock on the front door.”
Kipling pulled up a chair and faced me. “Okay. I’m listening.”
“I was at that house for days. I know there’s a back gate, all the way in the back of the property that faces an empty lot behind it. That empty lot is not part of the gated community where Alvarez lives. There’s a patrol that goes through there regularly, but that’s the only security at the back of the property I saw beyond the perimeter alarm th
at signals the private security company that patrols there.”
“How do we get past the proximity alarm?”
I thought about it for a moment. “We set it off and wait for the patrol to come check it out. They’ll see that there’s nothing there and go back to their office to reset it. That’ll give us a good three-minute window to slip in.”
“How do we get out?”
“Set it off again. It takes them at least three minutes to get from one place to the next. By the time they got there, we’d be long gone.”
“But what about the people in the house? Wouldn’t they get suspicious for the alarm constantly going off?”
“They aren’t notified until after the alarm has been checked out. Besides,” I touched my finger to the computer screen, “there’s only one man in the house that I can see. And probably Alvarez and one or two more men in his office. I could easily avoid them.”
“We’ll need a distraction.”
“We?”
Kipling shrugged. “You can’t do this alone.”
I smiled, pleased that he was backing my play on this. “We’ll get Knox. She could ring the front gate, show a little cleavage. That would distract the one guard.”
“And Alvarez?”
“His office is at the front of the house. We’d come in through the back door and up the back stairs. He would never know we were there.”
“What about the security cameras?”
“Ricki.”
Kipling’s eyebrows rose.
“Ricki is a computer genius. She could cut into the feed, loop it, and send it back to Alvarez’s monitors. He’d never see us.”
“Is that possible with current technology?”
“It is for a genius hacker. We did it a couple of months ago on another case I was running, a stalker case where the stalker had installed spy cams in the client’s house. She hacked them so that we could go in and get the client out long before the stalker realized what was happening.”
“Smart.”
“I thought so.”
Kipling sat back, his eyes raised to the ceiling as he thought the plan over. “And what about the brother? What if he’s too agitated to control? What if he won’t leave quietly?”
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