The realization hit me suddenly and I pulled out my phone and typed inBarry Fieldsinto the search engine of the browser and hardened my jaw when I saw a picture of the young, smiling man next to a short bio saying he was a psychologist specializing in anxiety. I closed the browser and then hit a speed dial button.
“Hey boss.”
I didn’t bother telling the man on the other end not to call me that because he’d do it anyway.
“Mav, get me everything you can on a psychologist named Barry Fields,” I said.
“Is he a mark?” Mav asked in confusion as I heard him typing in the background.
“No,” I said but didn’t offer any further explanation. Mav had been one of the first guys I’d hired when I’d started my pet project, and while he did his best work with a gun or knife in his hand, I’d relegated him to an information gathering role since I’d had to get rid of Benny, the analyst who’d been working for me for nearly just as long, but had sold me and all my men out for money to pay off years’ worth of gambling debts. Benny had begged and pleaded with me to show him mercy, but I’d saved that for the young man whose life Benny had nearly taken when he’d accepted a contract to kill him and tried to use one of my own men to do it.
Luckily, Mace Calhoun had been smart enough to realize something was off with the assignment and hadn’t taken Jonas Davenport’s life, despite all the concrete evidence Benny had faked to prove the young artist had committed unspeakable crimes against several children. I’d taken care of Benny, as well as the men who’d put the contract out on Jonas, and then I’d spent weeks combing through all of Benny’s information to see if Jonas and Mace were his first victims or if he’d used my group for his own financial gain before. I’d been more than relieved to find out it was the former because I doubted I would have been able to live with the guilt of knowing an innocent life had been taken because I’d trusted the wrong man.
“I’m on it,” Mav said.
I was tempted to ask Mav to run Seth’s name too, but didn’t andnot only because he would have figured out my connection to Seth and learned more about me, but because I didn’t want to find out everything I’d missed – no, ignored – from a computer; I wanted Seth to be the one to tell me. Because I needed more than just what was on paper.
“Thanks,” I said before hanging up on Mav. I grabbed my shoulder holster and dragged it on before tugging on my suit jacket. I gave Bullet, who was lying outside my bedroom door, a quick pat before I went downstairs and swallowed down a quick cup of coffee that I’d had to microwave since Seth hadn’t left the machine on to keep the coffee that remained in the pot warm.
I ended up stuck in morning rush hour traffic, so it was late by the time I made it to the city. I searched out Seth’s building and discovered that the parking garage where he’d been mugged was open to the public, which wouldn’t help in terms of improving the security. I found Seth’s car easily since it was in a reserved spot near the elevator and parked a few aisles over. It was only ten o’clock in the morning and since I didn’t know what time he took lunch, I knew I could have a potentially long wait and that was assuming he even left the office for lunch today. But an hour later, I saw him step off the elevator. He hesitated as he cleared the bank of elevators and looked all around him. I was oddly proud of him when I saw him straighten himself, despite the look of abject fear in his gaze. He walked quickly to his car and kept scanning his surroundings but he remained calm. I kept my distance as I followed him out of the garage and east out of the city, but it wasn’t until he began crossing the bridge over Lake Washington that I realized where he was going.
I didn’t need GPS after that but I had to keep my distance as the traffic grew lighter as he made his way to a quiet community on the eastern side of the island. Just like the Whidbey Island house, the house Seth pulled into sat on lush acreage right up against the water. I’d only been to the Nichols’s main residence a couple of times since the family had been vacationing at the Whidbey Island house the majority of the times I’d visited with Trace. Their vacation home was much larger and more remote, but that wasn’t to say the MercerIsland house wasn’t beautiful because it was; it just had a more sedate look to it and actually looked small and quaint compared to the mansions on either side of it. Which was why it seemed less likely that the men who’d burglarized the home had chosen it at random when there’d been much more secluded and well-off homes to choose from in the area.
I parked across the street from the house and watched Seth as he sat in his car in the roundabout driveway. I couldn’t actually see him up close but I could see that he hadn’t gotten out of the car. He sat there for a good twenty minutes before putting the car in gear and leaving the house again. I ducked down in my own car so he wouldn’t see me but didn’t follow him. Instead, I got out of the car and walked to a neighboring house across the street and a few doors down where I saw an older woman working on a garden bright with colorful flowers.
“Excuse me,” I said.
She looked up and smiled, her floppy hat covering her brow from the glare of the warm Spring sun.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“The house across the street,” I said pointing to the Nichols house. “I heard it was for sale,” I said, mustering a charming smile that I wasn’t feeling.
“Oh no, I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t think that boy will ever sell it,” she added.
“Boy?” I asked.
She shook her head and chuckled. “Well, I suppose he’s not a boy anymore. Seth’s all grown up now but I still remember him from when he used to mow my lawn and help me in my garden,” she said as she motioned to the flowers in front of her.
“So this Seth, the house belongs to him?”
She nodded. “Inherited it after his parents passed. Poor thing,” she added.
“Yeah, the realtor I was talking to mentioned there’d been a robbery and some people died,” I said quietly, trying to keep as much emotion from my voice as possible.
She shook her head. “So sad. It could have been any one of us,”she added and then looked around the neighborhood. She lowered her voice and said, “That boy and his mama weren’t even supposed to be there that night. Bonita – that was their housekeeper at the time – she told me the next day that Seth and his mama were supposed to visit his grandmother up north but she hadn’t been feeling well so they canceled their trip last minute.”
I barely managed to keep my expression neutral as an idea began to rattle around in my head.
“So he still lives there?” I asked.
“Oh dear Lord, no,” she said. “I haven’t seen Seth in years. I keep expecting the house to go up on the market but it hasn’t.”
I nodded. “Well, thank you.”
She gave me a smile and focused on her flowers as I made my way back to my car. The men who’d killed Seth’s parents had never been found and it had been chalked up to a random event, but the idea that Seth’s father was supposed to have been there by himself that night had me wondering things I probably shouldn’t. I supposed I’d gotten too used to dealing with the worst of humanity to blindly accept that sometimes random events were just that – random.
The trip to Mercer Island caused more questions than answers, so I made my way back to the city but didn’t go to Seth’s office. The GPS showed he’d already gotten back there so I knew I had some time before he headed out for the day. I made my way to the southern side of the city and parked in front of a small, converted house that saidHarold Brighton, Esquire & Associates.
