Ayla rounds me with an arm over my shoulder as Fitz wanders silently down the hall. “Come on in. I tried calling you, but you didn’t answer.”
“I don’t know where my phone is. Dang, the thing is barely twenty-four hours old, andpoof. Liam’s going to regret buying it for me.”
She whips out her phone and presses some buttons, and a sound plays from near her kitchen island.
I let out a sigh. “Shoosh. That would’ve been terrible. You have to know, there’s no way I could’ve answered on that bike.” I hitch a thumb over my shoulder.
“I called Liam’s phone. He said it was connected to the helmet.”
I’m embarrassed. Of course four lines of a song on repeat over and over is a ringtone. How many times did that play while we were on our way? “The book-smarts almost never translate to street smarts. I didn’t know. Now that I do, I wouldn’t have any idea how to even answer.”
“What got him spooked?” Ayla juts her chin past the island toward the stairs.
I pause, replaying what happened when I exited the shower. “He was ready to go, in fact, he was packed and had me packed before the lunatic started knocking on the door. We left then, but it wasn’t the guy who broke into my house a week ago or the moving truck blocking the alley and his garage that got him…”
“It’s way worse,” Liam says, reentering the fray.
52
schemey
Liam
Sliding my laptop from the bag near the huge island, I open it and verify the search is still running as I pace the room.
“Ayla, you were right. You too, Lorien.” My sister preens while Lorien looks confused. “Briggs Barnett needed a deeper dive. I relied on the referral when we started working together two years ago. There weren’t a ton of people who had my contact to pass along or the means to be able to refer. Knowing my work means deep pockets, I didn’t doubt his sincerity.”
Christian moves to the other side of their wide sitting room, giving me room to pace, and seemingly keeping himself out of the line of fire. There’s no need.
“The house in Wyoming isn’t his. It’s a high-end rental from a like-minded colleague of his out of state. It was a trap.”
“The fuck,” my brother-in-law says low under his breath, immediately moving down the hall near his office.
“Are you shitting me?” Ayla says at nearly the same time Lorien gasps.
“Rental records are sealed with a decent NDA?—”
“Which you can hack,” my sister interjects.
“Which I can hack. And did.” My pacing continues.
“Really?” My wife sounds breathless.
“Yeah, baby. And the company has exactly one record—ananonymous LLC, done through a registered agent, with less than five thousand in assets. Murphy Pest Extermination.”
“You’re fucking kidding me?” My sister is on her feet, hair flying wildly behind her as she paces.
Christian enters the room, Fitz on his heels, and looks between his wife and his daughter in his arms. He looks to Lorien and quirks an eyebrow. I nod and continue my rant as Sophia is placed in my wife’s arms and he rushes to Ayla.
“MPE rented the house for a month. There’s no board of directors and the owner of record sold the shares back to the LLC.”
Christian tilts his head. “So the owner no longer owns it and the trace is harder.”
“Yep.”
“So,” Lorien starts quietly. “A man who’s contacted you and paid you more than once in the past, decided to off you and went to a whole lot of trouble out of state. My mind isn’t that schemey, but if he wanted you dead, why not do it here? Why jump through hoops when there was no guarantee you’d go, especially after the mercenary thing.”
“Mercenary thing?” Fitz asks.
