Accidental Roots The Series Volume 1: an mm romantic suspense box set

by Elle Keaton

“The upside is we can get a team out here in the next few hours, while it’s still dark, to go over the scene before Potts knows we are on to him. Sterling…” Adam’s voice lowered, became kind, a transformation Weir had seen before, yet it always surprised him. “You know Potts. Tell us about him.”

  “I don’t know him that well,” Sterling muttered.

  “You know him better than the rest of us here. Give us some history. Somewhere we can start with this guy. How are you connected?”

  Sterling barked out a bitter laugh. Weir didn’t like the look on his face. “History. We have history. For starters, he outed me to my family when I was fourteen, which led to them throwing me out of the house. Don’t feel sorry for me; it was a long time ago, and I’m not the only one it’s ever happened to.” They were holding hands again. Weir squeezed the hand curved around his own.

  “I’ve had as little to do with him as possible since then. Don’t know what he does for a living. We don’t run in the same social circles; he doesn’t come into my bar. Because, ‘faggot.’” He paused, thinking. The car stayed quiet, no one wanting to interrupt. Weir could hear the ever-present wind blowing through the trees, early birds beginning to wake and sing their morning songs. “A few years ago there was some kind of scandal with his name attached to it. I know he’s divorced now. You may need to ask the local historian—and by that I mean Ed Schultz. There’s not a lot in this town gets past him.”

  Adam was quiet for a moment before speaking. Even in the dark, Weir could see the wheels turning. “All right, you two head back to the house.”

  Weir didn’t argue, but Sterling sputtered with outrage, letting go of his hand and twisting further around to glare at Adam.

  “Don’t argue with me. This is dangerous. I don’t need to be worrying about you”—he pointed to Sterling—“going off half-cocked, or”—pointing at Weir—“Ace here fucking up his leg or arm again because he’s trying to keep you from doing something stupid.”

  “Fine,” Sterling growled after a moment, “but I’m not happy about it.”

  “Good thing I don’t give a fuck what you’re happy about right now.”

  For crying out loud. Vacation didn’t seem to have mellowed Adam out a bit.

  “You.” Adam pointed to Weir again. “Do some research, do your computer thing. Figure out everything you can on Darren Potts. Ferreira and I will take this part from here.”

  Best-laid plans and all, was what Weir was thinking hours later. The only sleep they’d had was before Adam and Micah had surprised them on the couch. He smiled at the memory. No sleep and far too much coffee since they’d returned. He’d tried to make Sterling sleep, or at least rest, but that was not happening. Weir instead shamelessly played up how much his leg and arm ached in order to make sure Sterling didn’t run off to play cowboy.

  It had backfired magnificently. Sterling kept asking did he need anything, was he thirsty, hungry, hot, cold, tired, stiff? Weir was seriously considering knocking him unconscious with the crutch Sterling had brought out from the bedroom and insisted he use.

  Darren Potts was a piece of work, that was certain. Getting his personal information had been child’s play, something Weir could have done in his early teens. The guy had debts, some legitimate: mortgage, car payment, credit cards. Plus others that were less simple to define. Cash advances on all five of his credit cards in the last few months, with interest rates that were outrageous and compounded daily. His credit score was somewhere around 400. No legit bank would lend him money anymore.

  He spent most of his time at the casino south of town, gambling. Besides the outstanding debt to Charlie Herb, modern-day loan shark, the state was after him for back child support. Yet he was shoving everything into the slot machines. Slots took credit cards these days, which made it easier to drain the account, and Potts was there every day. Except he hadn’t been for the past week, according to his debit card.

  In the meantime, his kid (Weir would love to have someone explain to him why any woman would let this guy close to her private parts) was suffering.

  Money dribbled into his accounts from a variety of sources. As far as Weir could see, he hadn’t had a regular paycheck for several years. Jobs were odd and infrequent. The most recent W-2 Weir found was issued by Northern Star, a Canadian fishing company. He dug around in the Skagit Tribune archives for a record of the story Sterling had remembered.

  Five years ago, Northern Star had been permanently banned from the US for illegally harvesting shellfish. Weir had researched them and another, larger, company when he first took the geoduck case, but he hadn’t been able to find a link between then and now. Except here was Darren Potts, who used to work for them, desperate for money and obviously willing to go the extra mile to get it. Had he seen Potts’s name before? In Krystad’s notes?

  He was lost in thought, trying to figure out the links between an old poaching job big enough that biologists and Fish and Wildlife had noticed, gambling debts, Darren Potts, and Raven, when Sterling’s voice startled him out of his thoughts.

  “All right, that’s enough. You’ve been staring at that thing for four hours.”

  He had? He looked at the clock. He had. Dragging his hand down his face, he tried to loosen up his stiff neck. He had kinks all over; his body snapped and popped as he stretched.

  “Adam called. You need to call him back.” Sterling was literally vibrating with tension.

  Picking up his cell phone, he saw that he had missed a very recent call. He’d been so far down the Darren Potts rabbit hole he hadn’t heard it ring.

  Adam picked up immediately.

  “I’ve got the call on speaker, pretend Sterling isn’t listening.”

  “Yeah, all right. Potts has gone to ground. No one has come in or out since we’ve been here. Been on the line with Stephen Bailey to set up a money drop.” There was a big sigh on the other end of the line. “Fuck, Sterling, your dad is an asshole. I had to encourage him to cooperate. This is his own kid!”

  “Family ties have never been strong for my dad. Not if it costs money or his precious reputation.”

  “Sending your sister to ‘boarding school’ would cost a bundle.”

  “True, but he thinks that is money well spent. If she returns not gay, he sees that as a win.”

  “I don’t see how this has gone from forced conversion to kidnapping. It’s so random,” Weir interjected. Ludicrous was what he thought. If this were a movie he would be asking for his money back right about now.

  Sterling began to pace around the living room. “The whole situation is surreal.”

  “We should look up the GSA mob again. Maybe they know something but don’t realize it.” Weir tapped his laptop to keep it from going to sleep. Where were Raven and Pony? The cell-phone trace had only shown that Raven’s phone hadn’t left Skagit before the battery was drained or it had been turned off.

  “Potts is not smart. We were in high school together, remember?” Clearly, Sterling was off on his own tangent. He had a point, though.

  Adam’s tinny voice blasted out of the phone speakers. “Focus. Jesus fucking Christ, the two of you need to focus, focus, focus, and what the fucking hell is the GSA mob?”

  Weir was focusing. He was following the money trail. One of the first lessons in any investigation: who would have the most to gain? He’d been monitoring Potts’s bank account, which had updated seconds ago and now showed a pending debit from the casino forty miles south.

  Twenty-Three

  Sterling was not remotely amused that Adam and Weir had united in their insistence that he stay far away from the casino and let Adam and Sammy do their jobs. The fact that Weir was still staring at his laptop screen instead of distracting him—and the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about all the ways Weir could distract him—only added to his irritation.

  “Sterling?” Weir’s voice sounded… cautious. “Why were you at the bank the other day?”

  He sighed, sweeping aside his irritation for the moment.
He wasn’t the point right now. “I’m buying—was trying to buy—the bar. It was supposed to be a done deal, but they sent me away with my tail between my legs. Then my fucking tire was slashed. It’s been a bad week.”

  “Don’t be angry…”

  Cue anger. It surged through him hot and fast, molten glass sliding down his spine. “What?” He went to peer over Weir’s shoulder, but he had no idea what he was looking at.

  “The bar is doing well?”

  “Yeah. Great, really. Even though I’ve been away, the guys are handling it. It’s all bank.”

  “So, um, why is there no money?”

  “What?” he asked stupidly. “There’s plenty of money. Even if there wasn’t, I still have most of the principal from the trust my grandparents left. In fact, it’s part of the collateral for the bar.”

  Weir spun his laptop around so Sterling had a better view. He sat heavily on the kitchen chair, not trusting his legs.

  There was no money.

  Weir clicked rapidly through his banking details, as well as the main account for the bar. Fuck, there was barely enough to cover the upcoming payroll. Sterling had him back out of the account and reenter his information to make sure. His fingers curled into tight fists, fingernails digging painfully into his palms. The money he had been saving for years, even the college fund he had barely touched, was drained. Gone.

  Stephen had to be responsible; no one else had access or knowledge.

  Sterling had lived in absolute shitholes to save money, ate only ramen or beans and rice for months, for years. For fuck’s sake, he wore all black because it was cheaper and easier to have all his clothing match. Sterling’s stomach, already sensitive from the stress of the past few days, was ready to revolt.

  He didn’t have to think hard about where it had gone. Or to figure out that this had something to do with why Darren Potts had shown up demanding two million dollars in ransom.

  His fucking father had stolen his life. Again.

  This explained the weirdness at the bank the other day.

  “That fucker.” He wanted to punch something, someone. Someone named Stephen Bailey who was the biggest motherfucker—who had not only betrayed him as a parent but now, now he was stealing his very soul. Fuck that. He spun in a slow circle, looking for something, anything to punch, pent-up anger roiling at the tips of his fingers, just waiting for a spark to release it.

  A hand landed gently on the back of his neck. Weir was standing next to him. God, he hadn’t even been aware of him moving. Weir squeezed, hard enough to get Sterling’s attention, before relaxing his grip and dropping his hand to Sterling’s waist. “This, this is why I’m here. Why Adam and I are here. This is what we are really fucking good at, okay? Let us do this.” Weir turned so they were chest to chest. “I need a few minutes. I’m going to do something Adam will be pissed about, so I gotta do it before he gets here.”

  “Do what?”

  Neither one of them had noticed Micah standing in the kitchen doorway. He’d wisely locked himself away most of the morning, steering clear of Sterling’s volatile mood.

  They must have had identical guilty looks on their faces when they spun around at the sound of his voice. Weir stumbled, off-balance on his weak leg, and Sterling caught him. Weir flailed a little before relaxing against him. “Nothing.” His voice was so innocent not even an idiot like Potts would fall for it.

  “Fine. I’m going back upstairs, but not without coffee.”

  Weir hustled back to the kitchen table, turning his laptop around so it wasn’t visible to anyone not sitting next to him. The keyboard started clicking madly, and Sterling knew he was lost to them for the moment. Christ, his eyes practically glazed over.

  “So,” Micah said while he expertly frothed milk, “you guys?”

  Sterling groaned.

  “There is no ‘us guys.’ It’s just,” he waved a futile hand, “just something that happened.”

  “Huh.” The steaming milk reached the magic temperature where it pierced the sound barrier. Micah pulled it away from the steam wand, swirling it a bit before loading up the shots of espresso. Sterling watched with fascination. Micah had coffee making down to an art. It was almost as good as watching the sushi guys at the grocery store.

  First the shot went into the mug, then the steamed milk, and Micah performed a fancy move at the end before handing the cup over to Sterling.

  “Here, this one’s yours.” He smirked.

  Sterling looked down at the mug. Micah had managed to artfully draw a heart in the foam, smack on the top of his drink.

  Without comment, Micah put together his own latte and disappeared back upstairs, leaving Sterling staring at the heart, wondering what the hell was happening to his life.

  “Ha!” Weir declared. “Got it.”

  Sterling put the offending coffee aside and went to sit by Weir. “Got what?”

  “The money. I think.” Weir scratched his cheek. “Well, part of it, anyway.”

  Sterling still had no idea what he was looking at. It seemed like just line after line of numbers. Code?

  Weir squinted at the screen. “Soooo, your dad.”

  Sterling growled, deep in his chest.

  “Okay, gotcha, Stephen is way overcommitted. He’s got money going out that he doesn’t have. A lot of money. That gruesome house, for one thing. Also several business loans, and a lot of cash has disappeared recently.” He clicked around some more, screens flashing by at a ridiculous speed. “I can’t say exactly where your money has gone; they did something tricky with it. It disappeared somewhere in the fucking Caymans. I’m telling you, if I ever visit there, I am going to seriously fuck up their shit. Fucking international banking regulations.” He trailed off as something caught his attention.

  The Cayman Islands? Money laundering? The fuck? Sterling knew he should be freaking out, was freaking out, but the sheer scope of it all was kind of taking the air out of his sails. And where the fuck was Raven?

  “I bet Raven and Pony are pawns in this whole thing,” Weir muttered, as if he was reading Sterling’s mind. “Maybe… hmmm… he’s kind of stealing from himself. He’s using Raven to steal money from himself. I think. After first stealing from you. Some of it goes to the fuckwad he recruited to do the deed, but he gets most of it back, right? And probably he’s thinking then he’ll disappear somewhere exotic. These guys have no imagination. Just once I’d like someone like him to choose somewhere like Akron or Fargo as a destination. We need to get a search warrant for, uh, their property. I mean, even someone as dumb as Darren Potts wouldn’t go to a casino when he had hostages to keep track of, right? He’d stash them somewhere safe?”

  The front door banged open, scaring the crap out of both of them. Their nerves were shot to hell. Weir slammed his laptop shut. Sterling moved to the kitchen doorway in time to watch Adam and Sammy tumble across the threshold, laughing like maniacs. Adam had a hold of Sammy’s shoulder, keeping him from face-planting on the living-room floor. Micah heard them too, appearing at the top of the stairs where he took in the situation with a shake of his head. Adam dropped onto the couch with a thud.

  “Did you see the look on his face?” Adam was wheezing, he was laughing so hard. “I have never felt like I was on that show, Cops, before. I guess, normally, the caliber of criminal we’re after has more than one brain cell to rub together.”

  Sammy was practically having a seizure. Sterling went back into the kitchen to pour him a glass of water. He handed Sammy the water while Adam wiped his eyes and tried to get himself under control.

  Micah let out a big sigh as he came down the stairs. He was smiling, though. “All right, you two, what happened? What’s so funny? Sterling’s been waiting on pins and needles for you to get back.”

  “Okay, yeah.” Adam took a big gulp of air. “I apologize, Sterling.”

  “So, Adam and I walk into the casino,” Sammy began. “We’d called ahead, security knew exactly who we were after. Hardly had to describe him, they�
�re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, slots.’ We get there and Potts is sitting at the far end of a long row of slot machines, sliding his credit card as often as he can. Adam must have been doing that thing where his presence precedes him, because we were about halfway down the aisle when Potts looks up and sees us coming. The guy didn’t hesitate, he knew we were there for him. He bolts out of the chair and runs the other direction. Adam and I look at each other—are we in a buddy-cop movie? Is there a hidden camera around?” Sammy chuckled, his eyes still damp from laughter.

  “Just then, one of the servers comes around the corner with a tray of drinks,” Adam said.

  They were all quiet for a moment, imaginations running wild. There was a brief pause. Then, “Wait, it gets better,” Sammy continued. “The drinks and tray explode everywhere. The server is at most five feet tall and probably weighs, like, a hundred pounds, but she’s been around the block. She is strong, fast, and mad as hell. Potts is trying to get around her, but she’s blocking his exit stage right, dancing back and forth like a prizefighter. Shrieking and swearing at him, telling him he’s going to pay, threatening to cut off his balls. Potts pushes her down and just runs. She’s like the Energizer bunny, though; pops right back up and takes off after him. Still screaming. Security is behind us, but Potts and the girl are way ahead.”

  Adam picked up the thread. “Potts heads toward an emergency exit; we can hear the server screaming at him across the casino floor. So we’re racing past the tables and crap, but not really worried about losing Potts. There’s some kind of water feature—we hear a big splash, and when we come around the corner he’s shoved the girl into it. Whoa, if she was mad before… Anyway, security grabbed her and got her out, but I think one of them has bruised balls.”

  “We get outside, and for about ten seconds we both worry we did lose him. The back of the building is pretty typical: huge trash containers, employee parking, stacks of empty pallets, fifty-gallon drums of cooking oil—or whatever it is they store in those things. We’re looking around, and then all of a sudden there’s this gurgle sound and Potts shoots up out of one of the trash containers… his face…” Sammy collapsed into giggles again.