Protector (Copper Mesa Eagles Book 3) (5 page)

At the loading dock she descended the steps and walked across the asphalt. She looked left and right and stepped through a wide spot in an evergreen hedge.

Right behind it was a simple wooden rail fence, and even with heels on, she was over it in half a second, looking around, as she brushed herself off.

In front of her was a blue apartment building, a green one to the right. She could hear a dryer going, so she followed the sound until she saw a gray door next to an air conditioning unit, and Ellie raised her fist.

This could be a very complicated way to murder you
, she thought.

She knocked anyway.

A moment later, the door swung open and Garrett pulled her into the utility hallway.

“Perfect,” he said, his hand still on her upper arm. He closed the door, and the hallway went dim.

Suddenly, Ellie realized how close together they were, his hand still on her. For a moment she forgot everything that had happened that morning and looked up into his face, his golden eyes looking down at her, smiling.

Her heart leapt.

Then
she remembered what she was doing there and stepped back, releasing herself from his hand.

“What’s this about, then?” she asked, her voice echoing a little.

“Come on,” he said. “Upstairs.”

* * *

Garrett’s apartment had a welcome mat with pinwheels on it, and that was the first thing that made Ellie hesitate.

This is not the welcome mat of a single man
, she thought.

Shit. What if asking me to dinner was a ruse after all?

He opened the door and held it for her, and Ellie stepped into a lovely, homey apartment.

It was
also
not the apartment of a single man. There was a huge
Le Chat Noir
artwork hanging on one wall, along with a photo of the Eiffel Tower at night. A side table had a candle on it, along with some sort of geometric golden sculpture... thing.

The door shut behind Ellie and she swallowed. Garrett tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter.

“It’s safe to talk here,” he said.

“Your girlfriend’s not home?” Ellie hazarded.

Really?
she thought.
That’s the first thing you ask? About his girlfriend?

He looked at her and frowned.

“Huh?”

Ellie waved at the whole apartment.

“I mean, unless those are your candles and throw pillows...” she said, starting to feel dumb.

Garrett laughed, an easy, deep,
very
appealing sound.

“I’m subletting this place,” he said. “From a lady with better decorating sense than me.”

“Oh,” Ellie said.
 

She could feel herself blush.

“Don’t worry, I’m single as the day is long,” Garrett said. “Did you already forget that I asked you to dinner yesterday?”

“A
lot
of weird shit has happened already today,” Ellie said, crossing her arms in front of her.

“Fair,” he said, and plopped down onto the couch, rearranging a throw pillow that said
follow your dreams
in script.

Ellie turned to do the same.

Then she saw
the wall
, and sucked in a breath.

At the top was a giant question mark, connected with red strings to cards with his parents on them, his brothers, himself. Below that was a network of red webbing, like some spider had gone utterly mad connecting maps, newspaper printouts, pictures, and index cards.

He’s a serial killer
, she thought.
This is definitely the kind of weird shit that crazy people do
.

She stood and stared.

“I’m a visual thinker,” Garrett said, still sitting behind her.

“I see that,” Ellie said.

And a serial killer?
she half-wondered.

“I think someone’s after my family,” he said.

“Why?” Ellie asked.

“Family members keep getting attacked,” he said. “My parents were killed, then my oldest brother had to fight off this mining company—”
 

“No, I mean why is someone after your family?” Ellie asked.

Garrett cracked the knuckles on one hand.

“There’s a rare genetic anomaly,” he said. “My mom had it, and my brothers both have it.”

“Do you?”

“No,” he said. “I think that’s why I’ve escaped so far.”

“What’s the anomaly?” Ellie asked. “And why is someone after you for it?”

He cracked the fingers on his other hand.

“That’s not really important,” he said.

Ellie sat on the couch, kicked her shoes off, and pulled her feet up under her.

“If someone’s trying to kill people over it, I’d say it’s pretty fucking important,” she said. “What is it? You don’t get cancer or something?”

“Not quite,” he said.

“Are you a mutant? Can you shoot laser beams from your eyes?”

“Closer,” Garrett said.

Ellie rolled her eyes and tossed a throw pillow at him. He batted it out of the air.

“Anyway,” he said. “Sixteen years ago, my parents died under possibly-suspicious circumstances.”

Ellie listened as his voice went quiet and serious.

He still misses them
, she thought.

From his parents he moved onto his oldest brother, Seth. He’d fought against a mining company that wanted to kick him out of their home and destroy their land — leaving him and Zach, the youngest brother, destitute.

Garrett stood and reached up to an index card that said QUARCOM, tapping it with a finger.

“Remember that,” he said.

His younger brother, Zach, had made headlines when he’d been kidnapped by a bioengineering corporation. MutaGen, the company, had placed all the blame on one rogue employee, and
that
guy was in jail. The company itself had settled with Zach for an undisclosed amount.

“Well, it was two-point-five million,” Garrett said.

Ellie whistled. Garrett shrugged.

“I think they donated some and put the rest into savings,” he said. “He’s still working as an engineer, and so is his wife. Girlfriend. Fiancée?”

“Wait,” said Ellie. “He told you how much he got but not whether he’s married?”

“Not exactly,” Garrett said.

“Did they elope?” she asked, frowning.

Garrett didn’t say anything.

“You don’t know?” Ellie asked.

“I don’t talk to them all that often,” Garrett said. He ran a hand through his dark hair.

“Do you talk to them
ever
?” she asked.

No answer.

“When was the last time you talked to your brothers?” she asked.

“I send postcards sometimes,” he said. “They know I’m alive.”

“How long?” Ellie demanded.

“A while,” he said.

“How
long
?”

“A long time, okay?” he asked, his voice going rough. “I haven’t talked to my brothers in a long time. Can I move on?”

Ellie laced her fingers together in her lap.

“Sorry,” she said.

Garrett pointed up again.

“Both Quarcom and MutaGen have lots of investors, board members, that kind of thing. But if you wade through it all, it turns out that slightly over half of each company is owned by other shell companies.”

Ellie saw where this was going.

“And they’re owned by...”

“Other shell companies, who are owned by
other
shell companies, but if you untangle those threads long enough, they all come back to one name.”

He pointed at an index card she hadn’t even noticed before: BTVS.

“What does that stand for?” she asked.

“No idea,” Garrett admitted. “They’re registered in the Dutch Antilles, which is an offshore tax shelter, so it’s hard to get information about them, no matter what I try.”

Ellie leaned back and chewed on one thumbnail.

“They must have an entity in the US somewhere,” she said.

“Sure, in Delaware,” he said. “Filed by one Mrs. Lena Walsh, who’s a very nice notary public in Charleston, South Carolina.”

“So it’s her?” Ellie asked.

Garrett just shook his head.

“It’s part of what she does for a living,” he said. “Registers offshore business in the US. Her name’s on the paperwork, but the actual owners get to stay anonymous. Those documents are sealed.”

Ellie frowned.

“I think I killed an entire forest with all the paperwork I had to file when I incorporated,” she said. “There’s
none
of that here?”

“Maybe in the Antilles,” Garrett said. “Things work differently for billion-dollar companies, or holding corporations, or whatever BTVS even
is
. I mean, when I owned a business, I had stress dreams about the IRS for a month every year, but I doubt these guys do. I think they pay people to have stress dreams for them.”

“You own a business?” Ellie asked, looking around.
 

Subletting a place in Grand Junction for a couple of months didn’t really seem like business owner behavior.

“Not anymore,” Garrett said.

“What happened?”

Please don’t say “I quit to become a crazy person with a murder wall,”
she thought.

“I sold it,” he said. “You ever heard of SnapGram?”

“Is that one of those photo apps for phones?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah, you can draw on a picture and show your friends,” he said, and shrugged.

Ellie stared for a moment, her eyes narrowing.

“Wait,” she said. “You made SnapGram?”

Garrett nodded.

“I thought that was that other guy? The one who writes a lot of editorials about tech and does TED talks and says ‘disrupt’ a lot?”

“You just described everyone in the tech world,” Garrett said.

“But you know who I mean.”

“Max and I were partners,” he said. “I taught myself to code in my early twenties, because I was traveling a lot, and had shitty jobs, and wanted to not have shitty jobs anymore.”

“And... you met Max?”

“We were bartenders together in Reno for a couple of weeks. I coded the first version, he helped me fix my crappy code — he actually went to college — we released it. Soon, it was popular, he was talking to investors, and I got to quit being a bartender. It kind of exploded after that.”

“And Max got all the glory?” she said.

Garrett crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, smiling.

“We split the money,” he said. “He got to have his face everywhere, which I never wanted. I didn’t even move to California with him.”

Ellie just stared. She didn’t know how much SnapGram had sold for, but she knew the number had a
lot
of zeros after it.

“I’m hiking my rates,” she said.

“That’s fair,” he said.

Ellie looked at the wall again, trying to take it all in at once.

This is at least a day of reading
, she thought.
And that’s just to wrap my head around it all
.

“That’s the overview,” Garrett said, his voice quiet. “You can read over everything. But I think whoever’s behind BTVS is also behind your office getting smashed up.”

“You know what that means, right?” Ellie asked.

She felt the familiar
thump
of adrenaline that she got when she worked on a case she could
really
sink her teeth into.

“What?” asked Garrett.

“Means you’re close,” she said.

Chapter Five

Garrett

Something caught in Ellie’s voice. Garrett looked down at her, her brown eyes flicking over the slew of information on the wall, concentrating.

She’s having a good time
, he realized.

“So you’re still on the case?” he asked, trying to make his voice sound light.

If she’s not, I’m fucked, because now she knows nearly everything
, he thought.

He’d never told
anyone
the full story before. At first it was just because he knew how crazy it sounded.

The story
did
start with, “My mom and brothers can turn into eagles whenever they want,” and from there went to “I think someone is trying to
get
me.” It wasn’t the kind of thing sane people said or did.

“Yeah,” she said, and looked at him. “Those fuckers broke into my office and left me a note about what I should and shouldn’t do. Now I’m
pissed
.”

Despite himself, Garrett grinned.

“That reminds me,” Ellie said. “Do you know a blonde lady who dresses like she runs Liberace’s ranch?”

“Does what?”

“Wears a lot of rhinestones and cowboy hats,” Ellie said.

“I don’t think so.”

“She wanted me to follow you,” Ellie said, and told him about the cowgirl who’d claimed to be his ex-wife. As she did, Garrett started pacing back and forth in the living room.

“Shit,” he muttered. “The other day, I was getting a burrito at Loco Taco and there was this woman in there, and she wasn’t dressed like that, but I could have
sworn
I’d seen her before but I didn’t know where. But then I thought I was just being paranoid.”

 
Ellie looked at him, opened her mouth, and then closed it, looking at the floor.

“I don’t have an ex-wife,” Garrett clarified. “And definitely not a current wife. I haven’t even had a girlfriend in a couple years.”

Sure, tell the hot detective your relationship problems
, he thought sarcastically.
Women go nuts for that kind of thing
.

“You ever heard the name James Wilson?” Ellie asked.

“Was he a president?”

Ellie laughed.

“That’s who she told me you were. I’d almost convinced myself that it was a picture of someone who looked a
lot
like you, but with all this...”

She waved one hand at the wall and at Garrett. Then she snapped her fingers.

“The camera,” she said. “Do you have a computer?”

“Do I have a computer?” Garrett said, teasing her. “How do you think I found all this? I didn’t even leave my apartment.”

Suddenly, Ellie laughed, then stood from the couch.

“
Now
it makes sense,” she said.

“It does?” he asked. “Which part?”

“The part where you asked for my help,” she said. “None of the stuff you’re looking for about your parents has even
seen
a computer. It’s all paper. Your
weakness
.”