Chapter 7
She didn’t expect to sleep well, but, when Clary woke the next morning, she was surprised to see it was already 7:00 a.m. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a solid night of sleep. It was definitely before the breakup of her marriage, before her brother’s death, and before all the trauma over the divorce. The divorce in itself was just sad too.
The men were way off, thinking her ex-husband had anything to do with the stalking. He hadn’t cared enough at the end, and neither had she. A sad end to a sad marriage. She didn’t even know why she’d gone through with it to begin with. Except it was comfortable, and it was what everybody did. And she hadn’t necessarily wanted to end up alone. Now she realized being alone was preferable to being part of something that had no joy. That was what was missing in her life for so long—joy. She’d always been so happy when she had been with Talon—before the navy had intervened. In school with him, she had been so optimistic, positive, and full of sunshine. But, after he left, the clouds had moved in. It seemed like they’d stayed that way ever since.
Feeling depressed, she got out of bed and headed for the shower. She didn’t know where the men were right now and what hours they kept, but, when they were in the navy, they would have been up early and used to long days. However, after their injuries, she suspected their bodies needed sleep and downtime more than anything. She also remembered she’d given them her brother’s boxes last night. If anybody would be able to find anything out from his notes, it would be them.
It had hurt too much to even consider that her brother might have been killed while investigating her stalker. She’d been able to forget about it, as long as it had been a random hit-and-run accident in the parking lot. But still too painful to even contemplate digging through Chad’s boxes. She figured, once she’d had a chance to heal, then it would be better. But it didn’t seem like she was getting any better.
Now that they’d told her that her brother had been murdered, then, of course, her brother’s personal electronics and files needed to be gone through. Thankfully she didn’t have to do it alone. Or at all if she could help it. Some things were just too painful, even twelve months later. And other things were even more painful. Still, as long as everybody else could deal with this, then fine.
When she finished her shower, she dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, took her long curly blond hair that was now soaked, wrapped it up in a towel, dried it as well as she could, clipped it back, and let it hang damp down her back. She slipped downstairs, not wanting to wake the men, only to find both of them sitting at the kitchen table, discussing their notes. She frowned. “Did you at least make coffee?”
Both men shook their heads. “We didn’t want to take over your house without your permission,” Talon said. “I’m happy to make it now though, if you would like.”
She shrugged and waved him back down. “I’m here. I might as well make it.” She made a pot of coffee, and, while it dripped, she ignored the men, stepped outside, and walked along the garden to see how her flowers were doing. She needed to ask them about anything they may have discovered, but she wasn’t sure she was ready for the answers.
When she figured the coffee was ready, she stepped back into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. She poured three cups and carried them to the table. Then she sat down and asked, “So what did you find?”
Both men looked up from their notes. She realized Talon had a notepad in front of him and had jotted things down from Chad’s physical research, while Laszlo was doing the same on Chad’s laptop, opened right next to Laszlo’s laptop, she presumed.
“Was Chad tracking someone specific?” she asked.
“I think so,” Talon nodded. “We’re still going through a lot of his notes. He was tracking somebody and then added a second man to the list.”
“So most likely the two men I saw?”
“There’s no way to know that yet. I believe we’re a whole lot closer now.” Laszlo flipped Chad’s laptop around. “Your brother was taking photos of various men. Let’s go through these and see if you recognize anyone.” Laszlo hit the arrow button and slowly walked through the photographs Chad had taken.
She frowned as she studied them. “I don’t recognize anybody.”
He stopped when she sucked in her breath.
Her gaze locked on a young man on a bike. “That’s the John MacArthur who asked to rent the house.” She leaned forward. “At least I think it’s him.”
“Any chance he would have asked Chad?”
“No, he asked me just a month ago or so.”
“Well, Chad’s been gone for a year, and he found this person of particular note, so maybe he spoke with him earlier.”
She shrugged and sat back, disturbed to think of this man having been around a year ago. “It’s possible. Maybe he thought Chad owned it. Chad went over and mowed the lawn all the time.”
“Who does that now?”
“I do normally. And sometimes I get a service to come in and do it. They do both houses at the same time then.”
“And the other men in these photos?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t know any of them.”
Laszlo nodded and flipped the laptop back around so she couldn’t see the pictures again.
In the meantime, Talon wrote more notes from the file before him.
“How would you even begin to find out who that person is?”
“Your brother already did the legwork. He found a name, John MacArthur, the same as the man on the bike told you his name was. Whether it’s an alias, we don’t know yet. But, now that we have it, we can certainly track him down.”
“Like I said, it’s not an uncommon name. He could be anywhere.”
“He could be. But we have ways and means.”
She’d heard already how they apparently had a lot of people to help them. And maybe that would be enough to make the difference. She watched as Laszlo flicked through Chad’s laptop again, occasionally taking a sip of coffee. By the time she finished her first cup, she was feeling a little more alert. “Did he find anything dangerous? Anything that would have gotten him killed?”
“We’re not sure yet. He took extensive notes of all the men he’s tracked down and checked up on. He had a friend in the police department run a few license plates of vehicles that came back and forth from outside the city. He was marking down when and how long they were here for. Also he did the same for people at your job, those who came and went.”
“My job?”
Talon nodded. “He’s got several sheets of notes of vehicles that came and went. But he didn’t conclude that any were an issue. Nobody seemed to sit there for any length of time.”
It made her head spin to think of her brother being so concerned about her and this stalker that he’d spent days at her office building, checking as she came and went from work, sitting there, following all the moving vehicles. “I do miss him.”
“And so you should. He was doing a lot of work to try and keep you safe.”
“And what if that got him killed?”
“If it did, it did. It’s well past the point of us being able to change things. But let’s not have his efforts be in vain,” Talon said. “We need to make sure you stay safe. I’m pretty sure he was killed because of me, but, at the same time, it could be that some hit man—or the boss man behind the hit men—will come after you.”
“But like you said, he has to have a reason to come back around.”
“And we don’t know that he doesn’t. If he’s doing this to make a game of it, he’s got to be frustrated that we haven’t figured it out yet. However, things are starting to blow wide open now, and I’m sure he’s getting into the game a little more. He may come back around, or he may disappear. There’s just no way to know.”
“Follow the money,” she said out loud.
“We’d like to. But we don’t have any idea where and how the money is traveling.”
“Didn’t you say the serial killer you caught in Santa Fe had all his information on his laptop?”
“Yes, and we do have people following the money from there. We don’t know yet where from, where to, and what they might find. Obviously we’re hoping for a break.”
“What you need is to know how he got paid because that’s how you’ll find out who’s the boss man, hiring these hit men.” She leaned back. “And that’s about the extent of anything I can help with.”
The men smiled.
Talon nudged his empty cup toward her. “Not true. You make a mean cup of coffee.”
She rolled her eyes. “Because you’re working on Chad’s case, I’ll help but don’t take this to mean that I’ve been delegated the coffee bitch around here.” But she was laughing by the time she stood, grabbing all three cups, and filling them again. She had just returned the cups to the table when Talon mumbled at something he was reading.
“What does that mean?” Talon asked. He had a folder in front of him that she didn’t recognize. He flipped it open and started going through the paperwork and the images in it.
She pointed toward it after she placed the cups down. “What’s that file?”
“The one Chad kept on all your friends and associates.”
She froze. “What?”
He looked up guiltily. “I’m sorry. You didn’t know?”
She shook her head slowly. “Hell no, I didn’t know. What do you mean, on all my friends and associates?”
“Everyone in your life. He’d come to the conclusion that whoever was stalking you was quite possibly somebody very close to you.”
She had no idea what to say. It was just a little too much to consider that her brother had been investigating the people closest to her. She held out a hand. “Let me see it.” When he hesitated, she narrowed her gaze at him. “Remember how you’re supposed to share any of your findings with me?”
He slapped the folder closed and shoved it her way. Then he leaned back and picked up his coffee. But his gaze didn’t leave hers.
She frowned at him. “I don’t understand why he’d do that.”
“Because he was worried about you,” Talon said in exasperation. “Honestly I’m damn glad he did. It saved us a lot of time and effort, even if we do nothing else but read his notes and manage to cross off the same people he crossed off. As long as he made logical deductions as to why they weren’t valid suspects, then we’re good with that too. And he left very detailed notes.”
“How would he know to do any of this?” She was amazed as she dropped her gaze to the folder again, hating to even open it.
But she did, especially after making an issue out of it. The folder opened in front of her, she shuffled through the papers, scanning each and every page as she went. Each of the lawyers she worked for, the other three people in the office she worked with, several of her school friends. And, of course, her ex-husband. At that, she pulled out Chad’s notes and studied them. She could feel the cold setting in as she realized he’d never liked Jerry in the first place.
She read his notes out loud. “I tried to dissuade Clary from marrying Jerry. But she wouldn’t listen. It’s obvious they weren’t right together, and she wasn’t happy. She was hiding behind him. It wouldn’t be a good deal. In all the years she was married to him, I don’t think that ever changed. However, he doesn’t appear to be a suspect at this time. There’s a part of me that’s really disappointed in that. I’d like to think there was some hard proof he felt something one way or the other. Rage, at least, is the other side of passion. But I don’t see that either of them had either emotion in their marriage. Clary shared why they were unhappy, how Jerry felt she wasn’t invested, and I agreed with him because I don’t think she was. She was still too busy hiding away from her loss. She’s never been the same since …” She let her voice peter out as she realized Talon’s name was next. Her brother had actually written about Talon after he had left her. She shook her head and slumped back. “This stuff is so old, why would he care?” she murmured.
“He was ensuring every stone was turned to make certain your life wasn’t in danger.”
She dropped that piece of paper and stared at the folder. It was pretty thick. She flipped through several other sheets. There were pages on her neighbors, even her parents, and their parents’ associates at the university. She shook her head. “If I was being stalked, it’s much more likely it was a complete stranger than anybody we knew.”
“He was being very logical about it. He didn’t end up thinking it was anybody who knew you either. But he did take these photos and wondered if any of them had something to do with it. If you notice, at the back of the file, there’s a clip of folders. Those are photos, and those are the ones of people who he managed to take off the list. The ones still in this file, which he did cross-reference properly, are the ones he couldn’t identify.”
She glanced up at Laszlo’s laptop. “The ones you pointed out earlier?”
Laszlo nodded. “Those are the seven photos he couldn’t take off his list, with one of them being that MacArthur guy.”
She slammed the folder shut and shoved it at Talon. “It’s incredibly invasive.”
“So is an autopsy.”
She gave him a horrified look, stood up, and bolted outside again.
“Not exactly sure, but I don’t think that’s the way to win her back,” Laszlo murmured.
Talon ignored the look his friend shot him. “I’m not trying to win her back.” Yet he stood to watch her from the French doors.
“Why not? It’s obvious you still care.”
“Doesn’t matter if I care or not. I cared last time, and it wasn’t enough for her. I’m not the man I was before, even if I no longer have missions of extreme danger,” he said sarcastically. “And what I do have, my love now, won’t be enough either.”
There wasn’t a whole lot Laszlo could say to that.
Besides, Talon didn’t want him to say anything. Some things were best left unsaid. He sighed, returned to the table, and sat. He continued to flip through the folder, but he’d already read it once. Talon glanced over at the box. “I wonder how long he’d been working on this.”
“Three months, I’d say,” Laszlo gave his opinion. “At least by the dates I came up with.”
The box Talon had brought down that morning was on the floor beside him. He put the Friends and Associates’ folder back and grabbed a small wooden box. He had lifted the lid earlier and had taken a cursory glance, but nothing had meant anything. Now he brought it onto the kitchen table, opened it up, and studied the contents closer this time.
Chad’s football ring was here. Plus a couple marbles Talon didn’t understand the meaning of and several pictures of Clary and even Talon from when they were much younger. He reached back into the box and pulled out a flash drive. “Did you get a chance to look at this yet?”
Laszlo frowned. “Why don’t you get your laptop? I’ll stand watch over Clary while you do. You can bring that flash drive up on yours. I’ve got so much stuff here to go through that I won’t get to that for a while.”
Talon nodded. “I left it upstairs.” He stood, turned, and headed toward the stairs. He glanced outside as he went. Clary stood on the back porch. Instead of her face to the sun, she stared down at her feet, the world around her forgotten. He knew it was a tough time in her life. And, with her absentee parents, that just added to her sense of isolation.
Up in his room, he grabbed his laptop and mouse, returning downstairs. At the kitchen table he plugged in his charger, and, when the laptop had booted, he plugged in the USB. It held many images in a single file. He opened it up and started flicking through them. “I wonder where he got these from.”
As he watched the screen change, he realized they were all photos of vehicles. A small Audi. Blue. “He’s got tons of pictures of a blue Audi here.”
“Any with a license plate?”
“Yes, one with a partial.” He flipped his laptop around.
“How many are there?”
Talon checked the file. “Forty-two.”
Laszlo lifted his head. “He caught sight of that blue Audi forty-two times?”
Grim-faced, Talon nodded. “Looks like it.” He studied the photos closer. “They do appear to be in a different location or from a different angle. Some of these might be the same location.” He twisted the laptop around again and showed it to Laszlo.
He noted the image. “What about any damage?”
“Front right fender appears to be dented, and a couple big scratches are along the trunk.”
“And Erick,” Talon said. He sent the images, asking Erick if there were any further updates. His phone rang a few minutes later, Erick calling him. “Hey, I guess you got my email.”
“I did. Somebody on Levi’s staff is tracking bank accounts, apparently from overseas.”
“Where overseas?”
“Switzerland,” Erick said.
“Of course, Switzerland. We don’t have any ability to get information from there, do we?”
“No. Some of the money has been routed to England. I was contemplating contacting Jonas out of MI6 to see if he can do any kind of run on it for us.”
“Will he though? It’s not an official investigation.”
“No, it isn’t. But the alternative is,” Erick continued, “we fly over to England and create mayhem and murder again. Jonas might be happy to get us the information instead.”
Talon chuckled. “Who knows? He just might.” After a pause, he asked, “You got any other information to add?”
“Since our earlier phone call tonight,” Erick continued, “the police have been given the files on all the cases our dead guy was involved in. As some of the crimes were committed in other states, even other countries, they’ve contacted the FBI to deal with the notifications.”
“Good. But you and I both know it’s his boss we want,” Talon stated.
“What’s this about somebody still being after Chad’s sister?” Erick asked.
“We’re not sure. Apparently somebody was stalking her, and her brother went looking into that issue. When he was killed, she thought it was an accident or could possibly be related to his investigation into her stalker. We now know he was murdered, but, a month ago, she started getting that same creepy feeling of being watched again. She came home, and her door was unlocked. Another time her living room window was open. Things like that. But that all started just a month ago, a long time after Chad’s death.”
“I wonder if it’s the same guy?”
“It can’t be our John Smith guy obviously. But it doesn’t mean the ringleader doesn’t have another hired killer here. Chad has the information in his sister’s stalker files, which we’re currently going through. He has a lot of photos of a blue Audi.”
“The more I think about it, I can’t see that our ringleader is the one who came and killed the John Smith gunman in Santa Fe or previously shot at our money man, Warren Watson. Not unless the boss man was desperate, not unless he couldn’t hire anybody else to do it.”
“Right, but he certainly could have hired somebody in San Diego. Perhaps they were both here. Perhaps this guy moves around a lot.”
“No way to know yet, is there?”