“You’re right, Mack.” He looked around the room at the men and women he had always counted on. They were there for him, and they would be for Rory. “I’ll talk to her. She’s not going to agree to more than a couple of you meeting with her.”
Mack nodded. “Paul’s made it clear he has to be there to read her. I’ll be there. She knows Javier and she’s seen Ethan. I think that’s more than enough.” He ignored the dark look of protest on Kane’s face.
“I’ve always been with you, Mack,” Kane said, making his protest out loud.
“I’ll have Javier and Ethan with me. I’ll need you with the others,” Mack replied, his tone firm. “Paul and Gideon will be on Rory.”
Kane clearly didn’t like it, but he didn’t voice any further protest.
“Let us know when you work out the details, Gideon.” Mack continued, “What do we have on her stalker?”
“Harvey Otis Matters. Forty-two years old,” Jaimie said. “He’s a big-time arms and drug dealer. He doesn’t distribute on the street. He brings the product in and sells to the dealers. You have to be a big dealer to even get close to him. By that I mean you must be able to take large amounts of product and pay for it up front. He doesn’t mess around. He has partners. Or had them. Two have turned up dead. Jarrod Flawson is in the wind.”
Alarms shrieked at Gideon. “The men living in Rory’s apartment building? Why in hell would they be there? They have to have all kinds of money.”
“And own homes and property,” Rhianna chimed in.
“They do,” Jaimie agreed. “Harvey has two beautiful estates. One here in California and one in Nevada. He’s smart about his taxes.”
“He pays taxes?” Jacob Princeton asked. He was their underwater expert. “On the money he makes from his drug deals?”
Jaimie laughed. “He has quite a few legitimate businesses, Jacob. It isn’t well known that he’s a huge arms and drug dealer.”
“What’s he doing in Rory’s apartment building?” Ethan persisted.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Jaimie said, sobering. “The partners never go near one another. They don’t have anything to do with one another, yet they all moved into an apartment in that building around the same time a little over two months ago. I pulled the surveillance cameras, which aren’t very good, and they show nothing. The men were aware of the cameras and avoided them.”
“Something had to have brought them to that building,” Kane said.
“And brought the cops,” Gideon said. “The detective was shot and killed there, presumably by one of those men.”
“But that hasn’t been determined yet,” Javier pointed out.
“What does that mean, Javier?” Mack asked. “Do you believe someone else killed Ramsey?”
Javier shrugged. “I don’t ever jump to conclusions when it comes to cops. I don’t like them. They don’t like me. Some are good. Some are bad. Who knows what happened to Ramsey? But someone killed two of Harvey’s partners. Maybe it was the cops looking for revenge.”
“Maybe it was Harvey,” Brian Hutton suggested. “Or the other one, Jarrod Flawson.”
“Could have been,” Javier conceded. “But if it was, why hasn’t Harvey left town? If it were me, and I did everyone in and knew the cops were hunting me, I’d get the hell out.”
Gideon had to admit Javier had a good point. “Why would Harvey be following Rory around? Especially when the cops are watching her so closely.”
“Yeah, and why are the cops so interested in Rory?” Javier asked.
There was a long silence as Gideon’s team mulled it over, trying to figure out why Harvey would be following Rory and why the cops were just as interested.
“Gideon, we have to ask the hard questions here,” Mack said. “You’ll have to forgive us while we consider every possibility.”
He had known the questions would be coming. He had asked them himself. He was the only one, other than Javier, who had really been close enough to Rory to read her true character. As much as he disliked Mack and the others doubting her even for a minute, he knew, since he’d considered the possibilities, they would as well. He just had to keep his protective nature under control.
“For Harvey to be such a big-time dealer, he must distribute in other cities. Rory has traveled extensively. Is it possible she works for him? If they all moved into that building and she was there as well, they could have had to meet in person for a reason. That has to be what the cops are considering.”
Gideon looked Mack straight in the eye. “I would be a fool not to have thought of that, but I dismissed it immediately. Rory isn’t capable of working with a drug dealer. She doesn’t have the personality for it.”
“I’m going to back Gideon on this one,” Ethan said. “She’s too much of an empath. You’ll see for yourself. She’d be the type who would blame herself for the suffering around her.”
Javier nodded. “I’ve followed her for a while now and haven’t seen any evidence at all of criminal activity. She’s not the type, Mack. If anything, she’d try to stop Harvey. I don’t mean kill him or call the cops on him. She’d probably sit him down and do her best to talk to him logically and explain the error of his ways.”
