“Vaughn...”
“Actually, yes.”
The man’s phone had remained in his pocket up to this point—a good sign on a first date—but now he pulled it out.
Flicked his thumb across the screen, held it up for her to see.
“You recognize this man?”
Of course she did.
“Yeah, that’s Blake. The guy from the bar.”
Vaughn shook his head.
“It’s not. I mean, we’re pretty sure it’s him—your friend Abby confirmed it—but his name isn’t Blake.”
“Really?”
Ivy wasn’t terribly surprised; “Blake” wouldn’t be the first man to make up a persona to try and pick up a woman at a bar. She was confused why Vaughn was telling her this, however.
“Really. His name is Henry Lane. Hard as hell to track down, but we found him.”
Ivy shrugged, not sure where this was going.
“He works for Devon Godfrey.”
“Okay. And?”
“And Devon’s son, Zeke, who you are familiar with, was being blackmailed by Tristan to do his bidding.”
Ivy pressed her chin to her chest.
“What?”
Vaughn nodded.
“Yep. Just not sure how Henry Lane fits into all of this.”
Ivy was still stuck on the idea of Tristan blackmailing Zeke. She relived the moment when Zeke had been threatening her in the hall and Tristan had approached. Zeke had immediately backed down. He’d done the same thing when Blake—no, not Blake, Henry—had saved her at the club. But Henry was much bigger than Zeke.
Tristan wasn’t.
Something had felt off about the interaction, but Ivy had been too preoccupied to put much thought into it.
Now she realized why: Zeke had been terrified of her TA, a hundred-fifty-pound math graduate student because he had dirt on him.
The cheating. It had to be the cheating. Tristan knew about it before he told Ivy. Blackmailing Zeke for what, though?
“Henry’s not saying anything,” Vaughn continued. Ivy was only half listening now, trying to put this all together. “I guess itcouldbe a coincidence, but I just don’t like coincidences. It did get me thinking... Tristan was staying in a home owned by Impact Investing, which is, in turn, owned by Devon. What if Devon wanted the laptop, too? Which, by the way, we never found. It’s possible that Devon was also working with Tristan.”
Two murderous psychopaths working together, financed by a third—maybe unfair to Devon, but Ivy had read once that all major business leaders had at least some psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies.
What were the odds?
“Anyway, food for thought. And all of this,” Vaughn swirled his finger in a small circle, “for a laptop.” He swiped his finger across his phone screen. “Speaking of which, do you know this picture, Ivy?”
She expected to see “Blake’s” friend Tony, perhaps with an accompanying comment about how he was a registered sex offender or had some other equally nefarious past, but instead, she was surprised to recognize the image.
