Catfish places his palm on my thigh, the warmth seeping through my denim. “It can do that to the best of us.”
“I’ve started to run all the messages through a linguistic filter to look for patterns.”
“You find anything?”
I place my hand over top of Catfish’s. “Nothing conclusive. The person likes contractions. And there’s the use of the termrisk perimeterwhich, who the hell would use risk perimeter in regular informal speak? That feels more corporate.”
“So, you think a big company might be behind it?”
I shrug. “I don’t know what it means, right now. In isolation, it could be nothing. Or it could be a person who usually works in a corporate office and doesn’t know how to switch that off. But the program has returned a seventy-two percent match to northeast U.S. English. Add to that the fact the metadata on the message shows it was sent from a device that has EST as its default time setting.”
“And that doesn’t add up?”
I look up at Catfish. “No. It doesn’t. But if it is someone from the northeast, whether it is the involved person or some hitman for hire, it explains how they were able to find me. How they were able to torch the fake safe house we set up so we could know when they were closing in on me.”
Catfish moves from beside me and comes to stand with his butt leaning on the desk. I open my legs, then grip his hips and slide him between my knees. The difference in height placement puts his cock right in my line of sight.
“Be my guest,” Catfish says, as if reading my thoughts. He folds his arms across his chest.
“As much as that is a tempting idea, I have a lead I thought you might be able to follow up on.”
He raises an eyebrow. “For real?”
“A burner email used in the first approach had been scrubbed. Except the domain registrar used a now-defunct masking service.”
Catfish picks me up beneath my arms and, in one smooth move, switches our places so he’s sitting on the chair, and I’m astraddle his hips. He wiggles us until I’m flush with his chest. “That’s better,” he says. “But you’re gonna have to translate that into English for me.”
I wave him away. “You don’t need an explanation. All you need to know is I found a typo, a loose thread. The kind that if you focus on it, you realize someone has sloppily used an old burner registration from a shell company. An LLC. They were called Valent Supply Chain Holdings. And they are registered right here in Colorado. And their tax ID matches with a long-defunct freight logistics company at the same physical address.”
“You think we should go check the place out?” Catfish asks before tracing a row of kisses along the side of my neck.
For a moment, I can’t answer. Something about this man makes me feel like I’ve been hit by lightning.
Beneath my binder, my nipples tighten.
“I think that would be a good idea.”
He presses a kiss behind my ear, and I shiver. I feel the breath of his chuckle. “Do you think it’s cartel?”
“Maybe. Or someone pretending to be them, possibly. Plus, I tracked the rest of the Outlaws’ lost funds to three possible bitcoin wallets. Two are cold. But one pinged just two days ago, rerouting currency though a Litecoin mixing pool. Someone got paid for something.”
“I need that address.” He glances out the window in the direction of the clubhouse, even though we can’t see it.
“You need to go and check it out. I’ll be fine here alone. We’ve got security around the house and at the access points to both the clubhouse land and the ranch.”
He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “Still doesn’t feel like enough. You’re fast becoming precious to me, Wren. Doesn’t suit me to leave you vulnerable.”
“Look at it this way. I’m doing what I can do. Finding leads. And you need to go do what only you can do. Run them down. We’re a good team when you put it like that.”
“Do you know how to shoot to kill? To fight like your life depends on it?”
I sigh at the question. “I know how to fire a weapon, and I’ve done basic self-defense.”
Catfish stands with me in his arms. “We’re gonna fix that. Let me fire off a message to my brothers to let them know we’ve got a lead we can wrestle down tonight. But before then, you and I are gonna increase your chances of defending yourself. Go put some warmer clothes on while I call Grudge.”
I do as he says, tugging warm layers on, and when Catfish joins me at the bottom of the staircase, he’s bundled up too. “We’ve got an hour before everyone can get to church. So, let’s go work on your shot.”
Snow blankets the ground in a clean and undisturbed sheet that sparkles under the wintery sun. The fence posts at the end of the lot are capped with tin cans.
