Colton Nursery Hideout

by Dana Nussio

  “This had better be good, Travis.” She glanced from him to Tatiana and then to the table that had a thin film of snow on it.

  “It is.” He gestured toward the bench.

  “It’s been a while,” Ellie said to Tatiana while pulling the tighteners on her hood to close it around her face. “I’m sorry the circumstances aren’t great.”

  “I appreciate that. But thanks for coming all the way out here.”

  Ellie watched her for several seconds, her blue eyes narrowing. “I get the idea that you and I think I’m here for different reasons.”

  Then she pinned Travis with a look. “Am I right?”

  “Someone is threatening my new co-CEO,” he said. “Through email. And we need your help.”

  Instead of answering, Ellie started away from the table and gestured for them to follow. “Well, if you think I’m working out here in the cold, then you don’t know me at all.”

  Chapter 10

  “So, this is what stakeouts are like?” Travis patted the crate he sat on in the van’s cargo area. Then he gestured to Ellie and Tatiana in the captain’s seats. Though he tried to joke about it, he hated sitting back there, watching, when he should have been doing something.

  Ellie glanced up from Tatiana’s laptop and frowned. “As a matter of fact, they aren’t. We put way more thought into them than this. If nothing else, you could have given me a heads-up about what I would be walking into here.”

  “I wasn’t sure you would still come,” he said.

  She shrugged, neither confirming nor denying his claim. “You’re lucky this van has Wi-Fi, or we would be forced to operate from the hot spot on my phone.”

  As Ellie scrolled through the list in his co-CEO’s email box for what had to be the fifth time, Tatiana shivered visibly in the driver’s seat. Her coat, plus the van’s heater, which she’d turned on at regular intervals, weren’t keeping her warm. No matter what she’d tried to tell him earlier, she wasn’t okay. That he couldn’t do a damn thing about it frustrated him even more.

  Ellie paused her message search and reached into her coat pocket to withdraw a pad of miniature sticky notes. She stuck one over the laptop’s camera and went back to work. “That should be covered up whenever it’s not in use. Webcams are easy to hack.”

  “Do you think that’s what happened?” Travis asked.

  “Anything’s possible.”

  Ellie clicked on the message from “Friends of Tatiana Davison” again, and Tatiana startled when it opened, as though it came as a surprise.

  Travis gripped his hands together to keep from reaching out to her. “What’s your best guess about where it came from?” he asked Ellie instead.

  “I don’t guess,” she said without looking up. “I follow trails of electronic clues that lead me to more complete answers.”

  Tatiana turned in the seat to face them both. “Is that what Travis told you to convince you to meet us? That you would be getting answers?”

  Ellie pushed out her bottom lip and blew a breath that ruffled her bangs. “He said that Tatiana Davison was with him, and she was ready to talk, though she would only speak to me.”

  Tatiana’s gaze flicked to him then, and she nodded, as if acknowledging that on part of that statement, he’d told her the truth. What would it take to get her to trust him? He waited for her to look away before turning back to the other woman.

  “And, like I said, she is here with me. I was surprised you bought the rest. I mean, you might have known each other in high school, but you weren’t best friends or anything, so why would she insist that she talk to you?”

  “I let my curiosity get the best of me. I’m also not so magnanimous that I wouldn’t accept the credit for taking down a—” Ellie stopped and jerked her head to look at Tatiana. “I mean, closing an open case.”

  Travis leaned forward into the wide area between the seats. “Sorry I brought you here under false pretenses. But we needed your help, and we couldn’t march into the GGPD with everyone watching. Besides, I don’t think we should file a police report.”

  Instead of answering him, Ellie focused on Tatiana. “You’re sure you don’t have more you want to share about your father?”

  Tatiana shook her head. “As I told all the officers, I don’t know anything. I was as surprised as anybody to learn that he was in New York.”

  “I had to try.” Ellie shrugged and then glanced over her shoulder at Travis. “Why wouldn’t you want to file a report? You need a record of this. Anyway, I’m not a free technology service. I work for the city.”

  Then her gaze narrowed. “Wait. Are you just trying to keep your company out of the newspapers? It’s a little late for that.”

  “Yeah. Everyone keeps reminding me,” he said, frowning. “But it’s not that I’m trying to avoid publicity. Well, at least not for the reason you probably think. And the guy—at least I’m guessing it’s a guy—hasn’t technically committed a crime yet. I just need to know who he is, so I can stop him.”

  “Planning a little vigilante justice?”

  Ellie looked back and forth between Travis and Tatiana. He braced himself to be asked why he would break the law for her. How was he supposed to answer that? Was he sure himself?

  “Well, don’t,” Ellie said instead. “Also, you’re wrong about no crime being committed. Stalking is a crime. If this vaguely threatening message is the beginning of that pattern, there needs to be a report on it. I’m not even a police officer, and I know that.

  “And another thing—we already have a possible copycat murderer. What if it’s someone else wanting to get in on the act? Even in Grave Gulch, we have our share of kooks who might like fifteen minutes of fame.”

  He shook his head though what she’d said unnerved him. “Those things aren’t connected. Anyway, we’ve had reporters camped out on our parking lot for days. Maybe not as many now, since that third body was discovered. But we can’t give reporters another story to follow involving Colton Plastics. That might make it easier for him to blend in if he’s hanging outside the building.”

  “You think it could be a reporter?” Ellie asked.

  “I’m not ruling out anybody.”

  “I hate to tell you this, but the guy might already be blending in if he’s inside your building.” She pointed to the screen. “Look here. He knew you were wearing blue.”

  Travis’s whole body tightened, so he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. Tatiana’s reaction was more obvious as she pulled her coat closer around her neck as if to hide her blue blouse.

  “We know.” If only he could have kept the exasperation out of his voice. “That’s why we need you to figure out who sent that message and only share that information with us. At least for now. We have to know if one of our employees sent it.”

  Tatiana hadn’t said anything for so long that it startled him when she spoke up again.

  “I haven’t gotten weird vibes from any of the male employees I’ve met so far, but there really hasn’t been time.”

  “No one’s asked you out?” Ellie wanted to know.

  “Hardly.” Tatiana cleared her throat.

  “It’s only my third day. I haven’t even been alone with any of them. Other than Travis’s admin.”

  He wished he could tell her to slow down, but that would have made her nervousness more noticeable. She was walking a fine line between truth and lies and stepping off a few times into gray areas that threatened to blacken. No one had asked her out, but someone had proposed. And she hadn’t spent any time alone with male CP employees, but she’d spent intimate hours with one executive, who was also now her roommate.

  “What about when you first interviewed?”

  Travis shifted his head to the side so Ellie couldn’t see his grin. Tatiana must have gotten wise and answered that one with a head shake. But he couldn’t linger on the memorie
s of their night together, that sweet blur of moments they’d agreed to forget.

  “I just worry we might be overreacting to what could have been a prank on the new CP exec,” she said.

  “Did you find it funny?” he asked before he could stop himself.

  “No, but—”

  “Neither did I.” He straightened and crossed his arms. “If we find out that it was one of our employees, I think you’ll agree that it’s time for him to move on.”

  “I do.”

  Finally, he turned back to Ellie, finding her watching them so closely that he shifted on the crate. “So, what steps do we take next?”

  “What I should do is tell you to either file a report or I won’t help you,” Ellie said. “You’re the chief of police’s brother, for God’s sake. You want me to go behind my boss’s back.”

  “We’re not asking you to commit a felony. Just to track the source of an email so that we know whether we just have a prankster with a lousy sense of humor or a creep who might be coming after my co-CEO.”

  “We have to find out for sure,” Tatiana added.

  “And remember,” he paused, waiting until Ellie met his gaze, “though she might be related to a fugitive, Tatiana is just a local resident now, one who hasn’t even been accused of a crime.”

  “I know.” Ellie brushed her hand through the air.

  “And, of course, we’ll pay you for your freelance work.”

  “Oh, no. I’m not taking your money. It’s enough of a conflict now, and I won’t make it worse by—”

  “Does that mean you’re going to help us?” Tatiana said, interrupting her.

  Ellie tucked her chin, defeated. “Fine. But I’ll need to take Tatiana’s work laptop.”

  “No problem.” Travis sneaked a few quick breaths, trying to slow his racing pulse. He was more relieved than he should have been that Ellie had agreed to help and too invested in Tatiana, who still could have been lying to them all. “I’ll have her use my backup, so we won’t make a big deal about hers being missing.”

  Ellie tucked the laptop under her arm. “Sounds good. Then I’ll figure out whether the email is internal or external and, possibly, if the sender breached the firewall protecting your company’s VPN.”

  She shot a glance at Tatiana. “That’s the virtual private network.”

  “I’m an engineer,” Tatiana said. “I know what that is.”

  Ellie shook her head. “I knew that.”

  Travis pointed to the computer. “You’ll also be looking at IP addresses, that is, if the guy wasn’t using a random IP generator, right?”

  Ellie frowned. “If you two know all this stuff, you don’t need me, so—”

  “No. No. You’re the expert,” Travis said. “We need you to find out everything you can about whoever sent this message.”

  “I will. But since this isn’t official police business, I won’t be working on it during my regular shifts. I’m working days. Don’t call me at work. Ever. And if we figure out who sent the message, you are not to take this matter into your own hands. You will turn it over to police.”

  Travis nodded more times than was necessary, but he couldn’t seem to stop. “Thanks. And thank Mick for us, too,” he said, referring to her longtime boyfriend, Mick Hanes. “We appreciate him sharing you during your off-work hours.”

  “We’re really grateful,” Tatiana chimed.

  “With as busy as his work has been lately, he’ll barely notice,” Ellie said with a shrug. “Good thing for you he’s as big a workaholic as I am.”

  With the computer still under her arm, Ellie opened the van door, stepped out and closed it behind her. After Tatiana slid from the driver’s seat to the passenger one, Travis opened the side door and climbed out. Ellie had just bent to tuck the laptop on the floor in her SUV’s passenger seat, but she turned back to him.

  “One more thing.”

  “What’s that?” He eyed her cautiously, certain that whatever was coming wouldn’t be good.

  “If I get in trouble with the chief for this, I’m taking you down with me.”

  * * *

  By late afternoon, Tatiana had made it to the bottom of the résumé pile, which was a feat, considering her pace had been tortoise slow. How could it not have been when she’d felt compelled to track down every random noise in her office and had catapulted out of her seat each time a ding on the borrowed laptop announced a new email?

  Her office windows had become an enemy as well. How was she supposed to work when she couldn’t shake the sense that someone was watching her?

  After one more look around the office, she read the final cover letter and résumé. That decision came easily for her, and she quickly placed them facedown on her no pile.

  The candidate’s qualifications looked fine, but something about the tone of the cover letter seemed odd to her. As if the woman had a chip on her shoulder. That wasn’t a vibe she needed in her office. Tatiana would already have to work harder than she’d ever expected to prove her worth at Colton Plastics without adding employees who brought negativity with them.

  “Sorry, Miss Oliver. I have enough problems of my own.”

  At a knock outside her office, Tatiana jumped again, this time whacking her knee on the underside of her desk. She yelped, and the door swung wide.

  “Are you okay?” Travis asked.

  She leaned forward in her chair and rubbed her sore knee. “I’m fine. Just a little jumpy this afternoon.”

  He wasn’t listening, though, as he stepped to the window, his hands fisted at his sides.

  “Guess I’m not alone in that.”

  He whirled to face her. “What?”

  “I’m not the only one who’s jumpy.”

  “Right.” He shook out his arms and then stretched his neck. “Sorry about bursting in here like that. I heard voices and—”

  “Mine. I talk to myself when I’m working sometimes. I’ll have to be more careful to whisper in the future.”

  Travis shifted his feet. “No. It’s your office. It’s just—I don’t know.”

  “It was nice to know that the cavalry would come if I ever call out for help.”

  Frowning, he glanced out the window again toward his own office on the opposite side of the courtyard. “I don’t know what we were thinking when we designed this building where you can see inside the offices.”

  “Transparency, maybe?”

  “We might have considered that there’s no place to work in privacy. No place to even think.”

  “Did it bother you before?” she couldn’t help asking.

  He shook his head but didn’t look back. “Things change.”

  Neither had to mention that her arrival at Colton Plastics was the biggest recent development, one that appeared to have thrown the company on its ear.

  “I’ve asked Jan to schedule for the decorator to order blinds for our two offices.” He shrugged. “The designers wanted to do that from the beginning, but I thought it ruined the aesthetic.”

  “Good idea” was all she could say. She hated that he was making so many changes to the company for her benefit, but she couldn’t deny his actions reassured her.

  Finally, he stepped away from the window. “Were you able to get any work done this afternoon?”

  He scanned her desk, his gaze falling on the laptop that she’d closed and pushed to the corner.

  “Some.” She pointed to the two stacks of paper. “I’m ready for Jan to schedule interviews.”

  “At least one of us finished something.” He indicated one of her visitors’ chairs with a flick of his hand. “You mind?”

  She shook her head. He sat and pointed to the piles of résumés.

  “Maybe you were more productive because of that nap you had on the way back to the office.”

  She dipped her chin. “I sti
ll can’t believe that I fell asleep. One minute I was mulling over the things Ellie said, and the next you were waking me up at the CP loading dock.”

  “With a bit of drool on the corner of your mouth,” he said with a smile.

  “You weren’t supposed to notice that.”

  He probably hadn’t intended for her to see the tenderness in his eyes when she’d awakened, either, but she had. Her heart still fluttered at the memory of it, though she still wasn’t certain what it meant.

  “I hope you didn’t sit in the parking lot, waiting for me to wake up. I can sleep pretty hard when I’m tired.”

  “To be fair, it was only for a few minutes,” he admitted.

  It was the second time in two days he’d watched her sleep, and yet she didn’t feel creeped out by it. In fact, she found it almost comforting. As if she would be okay knowing that Travis Colton was the one watching over her. She was a strong, independent woman. Since when did she like the idea of having a protector?

  “You might have been fighting against your exhaustion, but our growing baby won.”

  And there it was, the reason for his attentiveness. The baby. She should have been grateful, she supposed. Some guys denied paternity, and Travis had been on board from the moment she’d told him, even without a DNA test. She needed to remember that everything he was doing—the proposal, the offer of shelter, all of it—was for their child. Those were all good things, but she couldn’t allow herself to think that he might care about her, too. Travis Colton might have offered her marriage but never love.

  “How’s the belly feeling?”

  Automatically, her hands moved to her abdomen, which had become an unfortunate habit in the past two days. She had to stop that if she planned to keep the pregnancy a secret.

  “You know, after the fast foodfest.”

  She nodded. “You should be a medium. You did a great job at predicting the future.”

  “I’ll remember that if Colton Plastics goes under.”