Twelve
No steps forward, five steps back.
That’s the kind of pace it felt like we were working at, just adding more and more questions, without getting any answers, and I was tired of it.
Monica was tired of it.
She hadn’t said much on the way to the hospital where Kim had been taken, after her landlord found her passed out in her apartment, so badly beaten that her doctor had insisted on keeping her sedated.
She hadn’t said much on the way back, either.
Now, we were back at home, where Monica had retreated to the guest room. I made my way to the office, completely content to just sit and think for hours, until I figured something out.
Kim was lucky that we’d been looking for her. After three days of unanswered attempts to contact her, no activity on her bank account, and no outgoing messages or calls, Marcus had finally taken it upon himself to go to her building. A few bills in the landlord’s palm had convinced him to take Marcus upstairs, and that’s when they found her – with a rope around her neck, and “Untying the Knot” written in money green nail polish on the floor beside her.
I wasn’t sure which detail bothered Monica the most.
The hospital got in touch with Kim’s family, who’d been trying to get in touch with her too. I managed to sneak in a conversation with her mother, where yet another question was introduced – who was this mystery long-distance boyfriend that Kim was telling people about, but couldn’t convince to be introduced?
None of her friends or family, Monica included, had met this guy, but apparently Kim was crazy about him. It took a little prodding, but eventually her mother had remembered a name – Dave, or David – that automatically set my suspicion sensors off.
David Asher Ross.
Monica had brushed that off immediately, insisting that there was no way Asher and Kim were dating. But when I pressed her about her reasoning, she couldn’t give me anything more than an assumption that they wouldn’t do it without telling her, knowing the connection she had to both of them.
Personally, I wasn’t so sure.
I was willing to admit that on paper, Asher looked like a model citizen, but my gut told me he wasn’t to be trusted – something that rarely, if ever, led me astray when I listened. Just because I couldn’t find anything on him didn’t mean he wasn’t a snake. And that thing with the names? Way too much of a coincidence for me to let it go. So I wasn’t about to.
My moral objections to hacking Kim’s Facebook account lasted about two seconds before I was in her inbox, scouring for that name.
“Jackpot,” I muttered to myself when I came across messages from a “Dave R”, but when I tried to go into the conversation, I frowned. I didn’t have the ability to click on his name like I should’ve, and the profile picture was blank. Kim’s side of the conversation was still there – and it was obvious that this was the right Dave, from the tone of the messages – but there were never any responses.
“He deleted them… but how?”
Searching “Dave R.” on Facebook gave me more results than it made sense to try to sift through, so I didn’t even try. Instead, I left Kim’s account and hacked my way into Asher’s, searching for any signs of her.
Asher’s inbox was completely clean, as if he either didn’t use it, or made a habit of deleting messages. Since that was useless, I shifted my attention to his pictures, scrolling all the way to the beginning of them.
That’s where I found Monica.
She was a common fixture in his pictures, mostly in a group, but by herself often enough that the casual observer might think she was his girlfriend. Initially, because everybody looked so young, I thought maybe these were pictures from college, but Monica was thirty-six. Facebook wasn’t even invented until after her college years. But, these were definitely the years right after.
From wedding pictures to BBQs to fireworks at a lake, it was obvious that their little group was tight. Kellen and Monica were glued at the hip, looking just like the happy couple that the rings on their fingers implied. Asher, and the woman I could tell from the captions and tags was “Amanda”, just looked… like they were there.
Many of the pictures were just three of the group, while the other person took the picture. Even with that dynamic, even though this was Asher’s Facebook page, the clear subject of most of the pictures was Monica, with Kellen as an afterthought. She was always sandwiched between Kellen and either Asher or Amanda, both as attached as her husband seemed to be. I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised – Monica was magnetic, and beautiful – but now I understood the comment Kora had made.
These pictures showed a vibe of borderline obsession.
As I scrolled, and time went on, there was a clear shift. Monica’s presence in the pictures dwindled as they got older, or… maybe there were just fewer pictures. Snapshots of friends turned into snapshots with the cigar club, colleagues, proof that he’d met and shook hands with the president. I expected to still see Amanda’s face, since I was under the impression they’d dated a while, but her appearances were few and far between, until they just… stopped.
Following a hunch, I clicked over to her profile, which was still active, but apparently defunct. Her pictures showed the same adoration for Monica that Asher’s had, from group pictures to kissy-face selfies, and then… nothing. Her last few posts coincided with her complete disappearance from Asher’s page, and since then, there hadn’t been a shred of activity.
This shit is strange.
I made a mental note to ask Monica about Amanda again, and see if I could get any more details from her on that. Something about that whole situation was off. In the meantime, I left Facebook and let myself into Kim’s email accounts to see what, if anything I could find there that was out of place.
I still had the records from when I shut down the hack at Vivid Vixen, so I cross-referenced the timestamps on when that sabotage had started against all of Kim’s email accounts. There didn’t seem to be any clear pattern, but there was a particular name that stood out.
Glen Pearson.
I backtracked through the emails until I found what I was looking for – Glen Pearson, owner and CEO of Canvas Cosmetics.
Why would Kim be talking to him?
Using his name as a keyword, I searched through the emails again. A quick perusal showed that Kim hadn’t actually been communicating with him, she’d been going back and forth with his executive assistant. Both assistants had been intermediaries in a surprisingly informal offer for Canvas to purchase Vivid Vixen, and take over the business operations. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a number on the table – the conversation was more about establishing the interest of both sides.
It was, however, one-sided. Monica wasn’t remotely interested, and she made that clear.
About a week later, shit started going wrong – yet another thing I wasn’t willing to accept as pure coincidence. I made another mental note – look further into Glen Pearson.
For now though, I was still on Kim.
After finding out that another of those cryptic nail polish messages had been left at the scene, Monica had sat at Kim’s bedside and cried guilty tears, feeling like the attack was her fault. Personally, I wasn’t moved. Sure, it was messed up that someone had kicked her ass, but I wasn’t prepared yet to say, “she didn’t deserve it”.
And once I pulled up her financials – not to see if they’d been used, which had been the focus when we couldn’t locate her at first – to look for any suspicious patterns, I was even less convinced. Ten different ten-thousand-dollar payments, over the course of six months, made her look a lot less than innocent.
What the hell is your sneaky ass doing, Kim?
I played that question in my head as I followed the thread of those payments, trying to figure out who they were from. It wasn’t very smart to accept bribes or whatever it was in her main bank account like this – it was sloppy. But whoever was on the other end of those payments had covered their tracks well, sending me digging for even the flimsiest thread that I might be able to tug, to lead me in the right direction.
When I found that thread, it simply confirmed what I already thought.
There was a connection here to Canvas Cosmetics.
Those payments were from the well-hidden account of a company Canvas had purchased more than thirty years ago – Blissful Beauty. When they made the purchase, they’d immediately shut down Blissful’s operations. It was clear that they just wanted them out of business, eliminated as competition.
So… why was Blissful paying Kim, who worked for Vivid Vixen? There were no products being made, nothing. But as I dug further, I found that Blissful’s former owner, Miranda Cline, now sat on the Canvas Cosmetics board of directors.
Those motherfuckers were up to something – the question was what.
Was the goal to scare Monica into selling her company? And if so, why did they want it so bad? And why do things that could ruin the company’s reputation, if that was the case?
Once again, I was working with more questions than answers. And, even if I could tie the sabotage and hacking to Canvas Cosmetics, there were things that still didn’t make sense. Like Kellen. Corporate sabotage was one thing – murder was a whole different ballgame.
Murder was… personal.
That was what felt off about all of this, at least from where I sat. If Monica had enemies on a personal level – the kind who would kill, steal, and maim – wouldn’t she know?
Actually, hell… maybe she did, and just didn’t realize it.
I pulled myself up from my chair just as the doorbell rang, interrupting my intention to talk to Monica. I picked up my tablet, tapping the screen a few times to get to my cameras, frowning when I saw some buff motherfucker on my doorstep, holding a massage table.
Ignoring the doorbell, I went back to the email from Chloe, which had included the details for the massage she’d booked for Monica. Sure enough, homeboy at the door was the one whose picture and other identifying information was there in the email – the guy that Five Star Security had vetted and approved.
Did I really feel like opening the door and letting this dude touch Monica?
Hell no.
Did I want to have to answer for it to Chloe and Monica if I sent him away?
Hell no.
So… I went to open the door.
“You can wait right here,” I told him, after letting him into the foyer. There were cameras covering every room downstairs, so I wasn’t too worried about leaving him while I went to check on Monica, and make sure she was ready.
After I knocked, she came to the door in a silky robe that I hoped she wasn’t naked underneath. I knew that was standard protocol for a massage, but it didn’t mean I wanted to know that motherfucker downstairs was going to get a front-row view of this particular glory.
“Was that the masseuse at the door?” she asked, leaning into the doorframe.
I nodded. “Yeah. You good? You still want to do it?”
“Do I still want to do it?” She let out a dry laugh. “I’m not even sure it’s an option at this point. I need something to work out some tension, and I think this massage may be just the answer. Will you be sitting in?”
Hmmm.
I hadn’t even considered that, but now that she mentioned it…
“No. I want you to be able to relax, without distraction. I’ll be right outside the door though, and the masseuse has been vetted. You’re safe.”
She smiled. “In that case… I guess you can go ahead and send him up.”
“Cool. I’ll get him.”
Back downstairs, I found the masseuse exactly where I’d left him. “Good,” I called out, and he looked up as I descended the stairs. “So you know how to follow directions. I have a few more for you, so I need you to listen hard. I don’t want us to have any misunderstandings.”
“Of course not,” he nodded. “I’m listening.”
“I will kill you,” I stated simply, casually, as my number one point. “That’s not a threat, or a tease, or just something I’m saying to keep you in line. I really will fucking kill you, and that’s the main thing that needs to be understood. Okay?”
He swallowed hard. “Uh… yes sir.”
“Good. If you make her uncomfortable, I will kill you. If you upset her, I will kill you. If you touch her inappropriately, I will kill you. If you purposely see something you aren’t supposed to see, I will kill you. If you accidentally see something you aren’t supposed to see… I will kill you. Don’t do it. Don’t chance it. Don’t think you’ll get away with it, because you won’t. You will not make it out of this house alive. You understand?”
“Yes sir.”
I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Good. Come on. I’ll show you where you can set up.”
True to my word, I showed him up to Monica’s room, regaling him with an explanation of the myriad different ways I really could kill his ass if he put even a toe out of line. I watched him like a hawk as he introduced himself to Monica, frowning when she blushed over something he said. What? I had no idea, because I was too busy thinking about killing him to listen.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
He set up his little table and equipment or whatever the fuck, then stepped out of the room with me while Monica got situated on the table, under the sheets he’d laid out.
“Hey,” I said, standing shoulder to shoulder with him as we waited for Monica to be ready. “You remember what I told you?”
He raised an eyebrow. “That you’ll kill me?”
“My man,” I told him, clapping him on the shoulder again. “Glad to hear you got the message.”
I grinned at him as he nervously inched away. After a few moments, he knocked on the door, and must’ve heard Monica call out that she was ready, because he practically bolted through the door, closing it behind him.
I went straight to my office, grabbing my laptop and a chair to drag back down the hall, sitting my ass right by the door. I distracted myself by doing what I was supposed to be doing anyway – searching for answers to what was happening with Monica. The sooner this was over, the sooner I could…
What?
The sooner I could what?
What exactly was it that I wanted out of this situation anyway?
I still vividly remembered that conversation with Quentin, which seemed so long ago, instead of just a few weeks. I’d gone on and on about how things were different now that Monica and I were in arms reach of each other, and yet here I was, jealous as if I had a right to be.
Did I have a right to be?
After all, it wasn’t as if she and I were strangers. The all-night conversations, intimate acts, all the laughs we’d shared, all the tears I’d soothed… the shit had to count for something, right? Even if she was legally bound to another man at the time, there was no denying the emotional bond that we’d shared.
But what the fuck did that matter?
Hadn’t I told myself that being in the same city killed the appeal of it all? Hadn’t I been so goddamn sure my interest would wane? Hadn’t I been convinced that the mystery was what kept me so enthralled, the suspense of what was behind the curtain, and that once the secret was revealed, the fun would be over?
Yeah.
I had.
But…
I was wrong.
Really, really fucking wrong.
I liked seeing her laugh, and smile. I liked having confirmation of what I’d always known – that she was beautiful, in and out. I liked knowing that she really was a boss, she didn’t just play one on the internet. I liked… her.
But again, that wasn’t news.
Just confirmation of something I had no idea what to do with.
The buzzing of my cell phone pulled me from my thoughts. As soon as I saw Chloe’s name on the screen, I answered, stepping away from the door so that my voice wouldn’t travel through.
“Open the door for me please,” was the first thing she said, a request that made me frown.
“Huh?”
“I’m at your front door,” she explained. “I didn’t ring the bell in case Monica is still with the masseuse.”
Oh.
I made my way down the stairs to collect her, wondering what she wanted. Once she explained that she just wanted to check in on Monica, I led her up the stairs to the room, where the door was still closed.
“Oh wow,” Chloe commented, glancing at her watch. “They’ve been at it a while, haven’t they? I assumed she’d probably end up wanting a little extra time, but I only booked him for an hour.”
My eyebrows went up. “An hour? He’s been in there with her for nearly two.”
Nope.
Before Chloe could stop me, I’d turned the doorknob, only intending to peek in and make sure everything was good, but then I saw – “Motherfucker where are your goddamn clothes?” I growled, wondering why the fuck ol’ boy was giving a massage in nothing but his boxers – not the uniform he’d been wearing when he came to my door.
“Chadwick, please,” Chloe pleaded, grabbing onto my arm as I shoved the door open all the way and started toward the table, intending to take apart the “masseuse” limb by limb. She thought she would stop me, but I just dragged her along.
Monica had sat up on the table, looking sleepy and confused as she tucked the sheet around herself. Ol’ boy looked rightfully terrified as he backed up, hands raised in deference.
“Whoa, man, I’m just doing my job!”
“Like hell you are!” I bellowed, scowling at Chloe when she managed to put herself between us.
“Chadwick, stop. It’s part of the massage! Just a gimmick, and you are ruining Monica’s rest and relaxation. Collect yourself!”
My eyes bugged out. “Collect myself? Collect myself?! This motherfucker is in his boxers in my house, and you want me to collect myself? You’re about to be collecting pieces of—”
“Wick!”
Monica’s voice cut through my anger, and I turned to where she was perched on the massage table, wrapped in nothing but that sheet.
“He’s not going to be giving me a happy ending, if that’s what you’re all fired up about,” she said, her tone half-annoyed, half-amused. “It’s just a massage.”
“Just so we’re clear though,” Chloe interjected, still standing between me and the masseuse. “Happy endings are included in the package I booked for you, so if you want him to do that, he can dear, just tell him you want to add it.”
“Chloe!” Monica scolded, barely stifling a laugh while I was standing here seeing red. “Will you stop teasing him, and get him out of here?”
“Of course dear,” Chloe said, smirking in my face as she tried – and failed – to push me backward. “Move,” she insisted. “Let’s let her finish up.”
I let out a frustrated grunt, but followed what Chloe was saying and reluctantly left the room. As soon as the door was closed behind us, Chloe turned to me, clear mischief in her eyes.
“Well, he’s quite handsome, isn’t he?” she asked, and I shook my head as my hands clenched into fists.
“Chloe, what the fuck is this?” I hissed, trying to keep my voice down. “You didn’t say shit about naked massages and happy-endings and shit. You made it seem like… I don’t know. Not this!”
She folded her arms. “I made it seem like exactly what my friend needed, and it was. Did you see the bliss on her face before you barged in there like a Neanderthal?”
“All I saw was the fact that the motherfucker was touching her, and neither of them have clothes on.”
Chloe shrugged. “Monica is a grown woman, it’s no business of yours. She needs to relax, and she needs to sleep, and I certainly don’t see you stepping up to do what needs to be done.”
“Excuse me?”
“You most certainly are.”
“What the fuck is happening right now?” I muttered to myself, and Chloe laughed.
“You’re jealous, is what’s happening right now. And it’s rather delicious.”
I shook my head. “So that’s your role now? Antagonizing me about your friend?”
“For as long as it’s amusing, yes,” she quipped, before a grin spread across her face.
“That’s not very nice.”
“And neither were you. Monica may be over it, but I don’t have to be.”
I sighed. “I thought, at the hospital, that I was back on your good side?”
“Oh, Chadwick. You are,” she said, reaching up to cup my face in her hands. “But that doesn’t mean that I won’t still torture you.” She dropped her hands to prop them on her hips, shifting to business mode. “Now, tell me – are we any closer to knowing who is behind all of this?”
Scratching my head, I dropped back down into the chair. “Maybe? I know that Kim has been paid a hundred thousand dollars in the last six months, by a subsidiary of Canvas Cosmetics. It still needs to be investigated further, but I’m pretty confident in assuming that she was being paid to help sabotage the company. I’d put good money on a bet that she was the one who put the virus on Monica’s computer, and made sure that it stayed covered up long enough to put their plan into action.”
“Canvas Cosmetics? Really? That seems… I don’t know. This is all a bit of overkill for a corporate takeover, is it not?” Chloe asked, and I nodded.
“That’s the same thing I thought. Which is why I say we need to keep investigating. Somehow, all of these crimes are connected, and it has to be deeper than somebody wanting to buy Vivid Vixen. And I have every intention of figuring it out.”
Chloe smiled. “I have full confidence in you, Chadwick. If anyone can find an answer, I know it’s you. Are you going to tell Monica?”
I let out a heavy sigh. “I’d planned to, but… I don’t know. I feel like she’s gotten enough bad news today. I don’t want to add to it, but I also don’t want her feeling guilty about Kim when I’m pretty sure she has something to do with all of this.”
“Right. Monica said that she’d changed the combination on the safe in her office without mentioning it to anyone. She also said that Kim was pretty adamantly trying to get her out of the office that night. What if Monica getting attacked was simply a case of her being there at the wrong time? The detectives seemed certain that the safe was the target, but the contents were intact because only Monica knew the combination. If getting access to that safe was part of Kim’s job…”
“Maybe the beating was retaliation for the failure with the safe. I mean, a job like that… you really only get one shot. You fail, and your target adds another layer of security, moves what you’re looking for to another place, and so on.”
Chloe nodded. “Exactly. I just don’t understand why Kim would turn on Monica that way though. Certainly Monica expects a lot of her, but I know for a fact that she’s extremely well-compensated for her time.”
I shrugged. “Beats me. But whenever she wakes up… she has some questions to answer.”
Chloe and I both glanced behind us as the door to the guest room opened and the masseuse stepped out, back in his clothes, with his bag and table in tow.
“Oh, are you finished?” Chloe asked brightly, and the young man nodded, nervously creeping toward the staircase.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Wonderful. I’ll show you out,” she offered, stepping between us again and guiding him down the stairs. While Chloe handled that, I went straight for Monica’s room, looking in at exactly the right moment to catch a – glorious – glimpse of her ass cheeks peeking underneath boy short panties as she pulled her Blakewood hoodie over her head.
“Shit, my bad,” I called out, backing away and closing the door. “I was just making sure you were okay. Probably should’ve knocked.”
Not even five seconds passed before she pulled the door back open, creamy caramel thighs on full display as she stood there pantless, in just that hoodie. “Yes, you should’ve. But it’s not like you haven’t seen all of me anyway.”
“Still. I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “Yes, still. And, apology accepted. And to answer your question, I’m fine.”
“Enjoyed your massage?”
She smirked. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I did. And now, I am going to take advantage of my relaxed state, and try to sleep. Unless you’d like to barge in and interrupt that too.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Yeah. I’m… as the young folks say, tripping, huh?”
“Yeah, a little bit. Who knew you’d be so wildly jealous and possessive of a woman you said you never wanted to see again?”
“Never gonna let me forget that, huh?”
“You forget I thought Kayla was your girlfriend, and we can call it even. Deal?”
“Deal. And for what it’s worth… the jealousy is blowing me too.”
Monica grinned. “Good to know.”
“Rest well. Okay?”
“I am certainly going to try,” she sighed, glancing around the room behind her. “A glass of wine would probably help. You have one of those lying around?”
I cringed. “Actually, no, I don’t. I try not to keep it around the house.”
Monica’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh, right, you told me that. Your precarious relationship with alcohol. You mentioned it, but you never explained what happened.”
There was silence between us for a few seconds before her eyebrows went up a little further.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “That was a hint, wasn’t it?”
She hiked one shoulder. “Yeah, a little bit.”
“Right. Uh…” I cleared my throat, then pushed my hands into the pockets of the sweats I’d changed into after my shower earlier, before we’d gone to the hospital to see Kim. “So… eleven or so years ago… my life got turned upside down. I was minding my business, between ops, and I get a knock on my door. Surprise, you have a child. She’s ten. Her mother – a fellow government agent, living abroad – was killed in the line of duty. So this beautiful little girl – looks exactly like her mother – doesn’t have anyone except you now. I was still young. Still a little wild. No plans of settling down anytime soon, let alone having children, but… she was here. So I had to adjust. Drastically. Resigned from the CIA, landed a desk job with the FBI. Bought a house suitable for a family. And I… do my best, you know? But I’m trying to raise a pre-teen girl who is grieving the loss of her mother, dealing with my own feelings about learning that Lisa had died – grief, confusion, anger that she’d never told me our fling had resulted in a child.”
“Wait,” Monica interrupted, holding up her hands. “You had this fling, and then never saw her again?”
I nodded. “Yeah. She was stationed in Prague. I was… hell, twenty-one, twenty-two? Kids, honestly. I was still an agent-in-training. We had fun while I was there, and I actually wanted to keep in touch. Not gonna lie, she was seven years older than me, and had my young ass sprung. But she didn’t want that. For her it was like… holla if you’re ever back in Prague.”
“And you were never back in Prague.”
“No. I wasn’t. I never saw her alive again, but here was this little girl, with her face. Just dropped into my lap, turning my whole world upside down. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. I was confused, and angry, and… scared. I was really fucking scared. A drink at night to help me sleep turned into three. Turned into working from home so I could drink during the day, while Kay was at school, and have time to be sober for her. That’s how you know your ass is a drunk, when that’s your rationale, as if your responsibility to your child is only during their off hours from school.” I stopped, letting out a dry chuckle. “But… anyway… social services stopped by one day. Surprise visit, to see the state of the home, talk to me while she was at school.”
Monica put a hand to her mouth. “Wick… no.”
“Oh yes. The quick version? They took Kay from me, because they felt I couldn’t provide a suitable home. This little girl who’d already lost the only parent she knew, but was finally, maybe starting to feel a little bit of normalcy, kinda maybe starting to trust me… ripped away, again.”
“But you got her back, right?” Monica asked, her eyes glossy and wide. “They didn’t put her in the system, did they?”
“Only because I fought. Tooth and nail, I fought. Whatever classes they told me to take, I was there. AA, I was there. Random breathalyzer, whatever the hell they wanted, I did it, because I wasn’t going to let my daughter down,” I told her, clearing my throat after I finished. “And that, is the Saturday morning special story of my, as you stated, “precarious relationship” with alcohol.”
Monica stepped forward, wrapping her soft hands around my wrists. “Stop it. Don’t downplay that, as if it’s…”
“Corny? But it is.”
“So what if it is? It’s also what makes you so much more of a man than... others.”
“Am I interrupting something?” Chloe asked from the stairs, and I stepped back from Monica’s doorway.
“Nah,” I told her, shaking my head. “I was just about to go back down to the office. She’s all yours, Chlo.”
Before they could protest, I’d already scooped up my laptop and chair and headed back down the hall, to the safety of my office. The further I was from Monica and her questions… the better.