“Oh yeah,” Mick said. “It was burned into my brain. Cos. C. O. S.”
Rod nodded again. Cleared his throat. “Does the name Clayton Spencer mean anything to you?”
“Well, damn,” Mick said. “Is his middle name Oliver? Or maybe Owen?”
“Be interesting if it is,” Rod said. “According to Cassidy, he was head of security at Devonshire Place, hired by the lawyer, Harper, after your father’s stroke three years ago. Former LAPD. I don’t know the date he left the force, but I bet Cassidy does.”
Emily wanted her life back.
This entire awful evening was badly reminiscent of the way she’d felt in the first few years after her mother’s death.
Her entire world had been upended—and here it was upended again, thanks to the Devonshires.
Mick’s attention was on Rod while the former DEA agent made phone contact with the two investigators—Cassidy and Starrett. And yup, apparently Clayton Spencer’s middle namewasOwen, which Mick took as some kind of victory.
But was it?
A monogram on a gun case that he saw when he was seventeen didn’t mean this man was now connected to the gunmen in the black SUV who’d both tried to kill her here in Palm Springs and damaged her house in Van Nuys.
Emily had no idea how this awfulness was ever going to end—aside from the fact that should she survive this, she’d have twenty million dollars in some bank account somewhere.
But that didn’t make up for the loss of her mother, and it didn’t make up for the loss of Mick. Her Mick. The Mick she’d thought she knew. The Mick she’d fallen in love with.
He was as gone as if Milton Devonshire the Senior had runhimover with his car, too.
So yes, she believed it was possible—that the horrible father had framed his innocent son.
And that awful story Mick had told about the gun on his father’s desk...
Emily could picture it so clearly. That angry old man, his mouth twisted into a permanent expression of distaste, setting a deadly weapon on one of his so-called dung-heap scripts, for his son to find and use. A man like that, with a heart so cold and shriveled...
But she’d spent her whole life hating them both, so whatever pang of sympathy she felt for a boy whose father so clearly wanted him dead... It was just that. A pang. At least it should’ve been. Goddamnit, she didn’t want to feelanythingfor him.
All she really wanted right now was for him to be gone. He’d already vanished, her Mick. This man who was sitting across from her was just an empty shell, and having to look at him was a constant reminder of all that she’d lost.
But he turned back to her now, after getting the news from Rod that Cassidy and Starrett were about an hour away.
What was going to change when they arrived, she honestly didn’t know.
Were they going to roam the streets of Palm Springs, searching for the black SUV that contained the man who’d shot at her and Mick?
When she’d first arrived at Rod’s home, after she’d been shown into a bathroom to shower off Mick’s blood, she’d borrowed Kevin’s phone and spent quite a few minutes googling Troubleshooters Incorporated. No one had objected to her having access to a phone, which was a good sign that she was in the company of at least some of the good guys.
Finding out that TS Inc was a very real, very highly regarded personal security firm run by a former Navy SEAL commander was also a good sign. The group’s second-in-command was a Black woman who was both former Navy and FBI, which Emily found appealing. In fact, the company’s roster included quite a few women. Starrett of the phone calls in the car—his first name was Sam—was listed there, too. He was a former SEAL as well. Jules Cassidy wasn’t listed, but according to Kevin he’d been an extremely high level agent in the FBI before the world had gone to hell in a handbasket.
Mick had hired Cassidy and Starrett to “find” her—which they’d clearly done.
But now what? Was she supposed to hide here, indefinitely? Was she ever going to be safe again?
Probably not.
She met Mick’s eyes now—he was sitting there, looking at her as if he could read her mind.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again.
“You’ve said that, like, four thousand times,” Emily told him. “Do those words even have any meaning to you?”
“They do,” he said quietly. “My father made me believe Ikilled your mother. I spent four years struggling to forgive myself, to figure out how I could live my life in a way that honored her. And when I found out the truth, well, I still asked myself how could I best serve her. And it always came back to... protecting you. Which I clearly have failed to do. So yes, I am so very deeply sorry.”
