Ride: A Bad Boy Romance (54 page)

Krissy just shrugged.

“I meet people like that sometimes,” she said. “They’re always from Texas. Every single time.”

Cody laughed.

“Maybe the rodeo’s in town,” he said.

“Do women ride rodeo?”

“Women do all sort of things these days, Ellie,” her mother said.

“The guy didn’t say anything about getting divorced?” her father asked.

“Nothing,” Ellie said.

And believe me, I was paying attention
, she thought.

“It’s probably just two people who look a
lot
alike,” her father said. “Happens sometimes. There are a couple of cases where people have wound up on death row for looking too much like someone else.”

Ellie’s eyes widened.

“Not that this will end with someone on death row,” he said quickly. “I’m just saying, people look alike sometimes.”

“You’re probably right,” Ellie said. “That makes the most sense.”

“Life is rarely that interesting,” her father said. “Who wants ice cream for dessert?”

* * *

O
ver the next few days
, Ellie kept looking at the photo of the rhinestone cowgirl’s ex-husband. It
really
did look like Garrett, but the more she looked, the less sure she was.

Did Garrett’s nose have that very slight crook in it, like it had been broken once? Were his eyebrows quite shaped like that? Wasn’t his hair a little darker?

Other than looking at the photo, Ellie didn’t work on the rhinestone cowgirl’s case at all. She finished up the other divorce cases and found a man who’d been hiding out from credit card companies in Montana.

She
also
looked into Garrett’s case. That one was the hardest by far, mostly because sixteen years ago, almost nothing had been digitized. It seemed like the internet hadn’t really come to Obsidian until recently, so she kept hitting that wall.

Kane County hadn’t digitized
anything
more than five years old: not death records, accident records, police reports,
nothing
. Ellie had to go to Google Earth to find out that the road where his parents had died had been washed out by a mudslide in 2009, and was now completely closed to traffic.

What little she
did
find suggested she wasn’t going to get very far by calling the police and asking nicely, so she decided to call the hospital in Blanding first and ask
not
-nicely.

She spoofed her number to a Washington, D.C. Area code, and after twenty minutes of battling her way through a phone tree at the hospital, she finally reached someone in management.

“Yes?” said a bored, harassed-sounding man.

“This is Agent Clarissa Sampson from the Department of Homeland Security,” she said, her voice sounding official even to
her
. “I’m calling because we believe an incident that happened May 3, 2000, may be linked to a current investigation.”

The other end of the line was silent for a moment.

“Did you say Homeland Security?” he asked.

“Yes,” Ellie said. “We’re currently investigating a group that may have been involved with this incident.”

One hundred percent lies, of course, but Ellie had found that invoking Homeland Security was far and away the fastest route to get information.

“Terrorists?” the man said, sounding breathless.

“I can’t give out any information, I’m afraid,” she said. “The nature of the investigation demands the
utmost
secrecy.”

“Of course,” he said. “What can I give you?”

It took another forty-five minutes, mostly due to technological wrangling, but by the end of the phone call Ellie had scans of all the paperwork she’d requested up on the screen: death certificates, admission records for the Monsons, pages and pages of forms, and a list of hospital personnel who’d been working that day.

Even though it was a small hospital,
that
was a long list, and Ellie sighed inwardly.

“Thank you
very
much, Mr. Porter,” she said, trying to finish the call.

“
Please
, call me Tom,” he said. “I’m only sorry I didn’t work here then and can’t help you more. It sounds like it was a
terrible
crash.”

“Yes,” Ellie said.

“You know,” Tom said, his voice dropping. “I’ve always suspected that there might be a sleeper cell right here in Blanding.”

Shit
, thought Ellie.

“Sometimes, at night, you see fires way up in the hills,” he went on. “And if you go up there, no one’s there. They’re just empty fires. I think it’s a signaling method. That the
terrorists
use.”

It’s teenagers,
Ellie thought.
There’s nothing to do but get drunk around a fire in the middle of nowhere, and when adults come up, they run away
.

“I’ll have someone look into that,” she said.

“Sometimes, when I make a phone call from my house, the line is very staticky,” he went on. “But only sometimes. Am I being listened to? By the terrorists?”

It took Ellie another twenty minutes to get off the phone.

G
arrett stood back
and looked at the wall. It had taken him all week to get it set up again in his new sublet here in Grand Junction, but it made everything so much
easier
.

The pictures, posters, and shelves that had covered the wall were stacked in one corner. They were stacked carefully, but he still had the feeling that the lady who’d rented him her apartment for two months might not be thrilled about what he was doing.

He sat on the brown leather couch that he’d dragged to face the wall, sat, and looked at it. Garrett tried to always sublet apartments from women, because frankly, their places were just
nicer
. They usually felt a little homier, more lived-in.

The last place he’d rented from a guy had been a bachelor in Madison, Wisconsin, and it had been a little depressing. Nice enough, and it had all the right amenities, but it just didn’t feel like a place where someone
lived
.

Garrett leaned back and put his arms on the back of the sofa, looking at the wall.

I can never have a girl over here
, he thought.
This makes me look like a serial killer.

At the very top, up against the ceiling, was an index card with a question mark on it, red string connecting it to three other cards.

On the left, his parents. In the middle, his brother Seth. On the right, his brother Zach. Crammed between Zach and the ceiling, like he’d remembered at the last minute, was an index card with his own name.

Every card but his own had the word SHIFTED written in red in the lower right-hand corner. Seth was connected with short red string to a card that said QUARCOM. Zach was connected the same way to MUTAGEN, and below those, was a mess of notes, maps, spreadsheet printouts, and a million other things.

In the next room, on the kitchen table, three computer monitors hummed away. Garrett knew he could have set this up electronically, and it would have been a lot easier to move stuff around, but this way made it easier for him to
think
.

Okay
, he thought.
So think
.

He stared at the wall for a moment.

Think Ellie’d go on a date with me?
He wondered.
Maybe I can just call her to pull her off this case, and then ask her out or something.

I wonder if she’d say yes, but maybe she’s married. Maybe she’s seeing someone.

Just the thought darkened his mood and made something in him
seethe
. He looked at the wall and read the names over and over again, trying not to think about Ellie with someone else.

After a minute, his phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket. A Grand Junction number.

“This is Garrett,” he said.

“Elliott Velasquez,” a familiar voice said on the other end.

“Hey, Ellie,” he said.

A grin spread itself across his face.

“I’ve made some decent progress on your case,” she said.

Garrett imagined her, sitting in her desk chair, her soft curves in another button-down-shirt-and-pants ensemble.

“That was fast,” he said.

“Could you come in tomorrow morning?” she asked. “These things are usually best face-to-face.”

“I could come in this afternoon,” he said.

“I’m busy, I’m afraid,” she said, her voice professional and stoic.

Fuck it, just try
, Garrett thought.

“We could do it over dinner,” he said.

There was a tiny pause on the other end. Ellie cleared her throat very quietly.

“I don’t socialize with clients,” she said. “Does tomorrow morning work for you?”

She suddenly sounded less professional and almost
nervous
.

Tomorrow morning would work better if I were bringing you breakfast in bed
, he thought.

“Sure,” he said. “Nine?”

“Perfect,” Ellie said, sounding relieved.

They hung up, and Garrett went back to sitting on the couch, staring at the wall, thinking about Ellie in his bed, sheets wound around her.

* * *

A
t eight fifty-five
, Garrett walked down Main Street again, in a
much
better mood than last time. He nodded to a woman wearing a suit and a kid wearing a backpack, practically whistling.

Then he turned the corner into Ellie’s alleyway and saw the glass on the sidewalk. Someone had shattered her frosted glass door, and as he got closer, he could see shards inside, tracked all the way up the staircase.

Ellie
, he thought. A tight fist of fear closed around his windpipe, and he reached through the shattered door, opened it from the inside, and bolted up the stairs.

The glass crunched under his feet as he took the stairs two at a time.

“Ellie!” he shouted.

No answer. Adrenaline raced through his veins.

Her door at the top was shattered as well, the broken glass scattered around the landing.

No blood,
he thought.
Maybe she’s OK
.

This door hung open and Garret pushed it so hard it slammed into the wall.

“Ellie?” he shouted, looking around wildly.

The chairs were toppled over, one of the wooden legs broken. The plants were on the floor, soil scattered everywhere, the pots broken.

Where is she?!
Garrett thought, striding around the office, hands balled into fists. She wasn’t behind the desk or the filing cabinets.

He threw open a closet door, only to find it filled with office supplies.

They took her
, he thought.

They took Ellie.

“AARRGGHH!” he shouted, and kicked at a flowerpot on the ground. The heavy terra cotta cracked and rolled, more dirt spilling out, and Garrett paced across the room, trying to think.

Those utter fucking bastards
, he thought.
They can do whatever they want with me, but an innocent woman?

She has nothing to do with this
.

Then he heard a
click
in the doorway and whirled around, breathing hard, ready to
fight
.

Ellie stood there, pointing a gun at him.

For a moment they just looked at each other. The hand around Garrett’s windpipe slackened. He felt like he could breathe again.

“You’re okay,” he said. He put one hand to his forehead, nearly sagging with relief.

“Did you
do
this?” she asked, her voice tight.

“I thought they took you,” he said. “I got here and the place was destroyed, and you were gone, and I just thought the worst.”

Ellie walked a few steps forward, her high heels crunching over the glass, gun still pointed at Garrett.

Slowly, he put his hands into the air.

“I swear I got here thirty seconds ago,” he said softly. “To meet you at nine. Like you said yesterday on the phone.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Is this why you wanted me to have dinner with you last night?” she asked. “To make sure I was out of the office? So whoever you’re working with could take everything?”

Garrett looked at the desk.

Her computer’s gone
, he realized. He’d been so convinced Ellie was gone he hadn’t even noticed the missing computer.

“No,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I just do this in the middle of the night anyway?”

“Why’d you want me to come to dinner, then?”

Her brown eyes were hard, almost brittle, and Garrett glanced around the office before answering.

“Because I wanted to take you to dinner?” he asked.

Ellie blinked. The gun lowered a fraction of an inch.

“That’s it?” she asked, her voice less suspicious now.

Well, no,
Garrett said.
I also wanted to go back to your place and literally eat you for dessert.

He thought better of saying that part out loud.

“Yeah,” he said. “It was just a date.”

Now she blushed and lowered the gun to point at the floor, though she didn’t put the safety back on.

“If I check my security video, it’ll show you getting here thirty seconds before me?” she asked.

“Maybe sixty,” Garrett said. “I got here, there was glass everywhere, I ran upstairs, yelled your name a bunch, and kicked a flower pot.”

He glanced at the corners of the room, but he didn’t see a camera.

Ellie put the safety back on the gun, stuck it behind her back, and pulled out her phone, watching it intently for a few moments.

Garrett walked to her side and looked over her shoulder.

On the screen was a view of the office from somewhere above and behind the desk. He turned to look for the camera but still didn’t see anything.

“It’s very small,” Ellie murmured, then nodded at the screen. “That you coming up the stairs right now?”

“ELLIE!” Phone-Garrett shouted, shoving the door open.

Do I always look that disheveled?
Garrett wondered.
I need a haircut
.

Ellie shut off her phone and put it back in her pocket.

“Looks like you’re in the clear,” she said. “Sorry about that.”

“Will that thing show you who
did
break in?” he asked.

Ellie nodded.

“The app only goes back an hour unless you pay an extra fifty a month for premium, though,” she said. “I gotta use a computer.”

She glanced at the desk.

“Fuck,” she muttered, and walked around the back.

“You had backups, right?”

Ellie just nodded, though she seemed preoccupied with something on the back of the desk. Garrett walked around beside her, and a low whistle escaped him.

All the drawers were open, paper and office supplies strewn around, like whoever broken in had been
looking
for something.

Ellie was looking at the top left drawer, though, biting her lip.

It had a lock on it, or it
had
. Now it looked like someone had gone after it with a hatchet, the wood splintered and destroyed.

With one finger, Ellie pulled it the rest of the way open.

Inside was a checkbook, some keys, and a few dollars in cash. She rooted around in the drawer but came up empty.

“What was in there?” Garrett asked.

“The flash drive you gave me,” Ellie said.

“What else is missing?” he asked.

Ellie shrugged.

“I have no idea,” she said. “Besides my computer, at least. I didn’t really have the contents of my desk neatly categorized, you know.”

She pulled open the wide middle drawer and then froze.

Inside was nothing but a single sheet of paper.

Someone had scrawled on it with a sharpie.

G
arrett’s breath
caught in his throat again, and he curled his hands into fists at his sides. He stalked away, stepping on pens and papers and paperclips and a stapler.

This is my fault
, he thought.
They did this to her because of me
.

He took a deep breath, staring out the window, then turned around.

“I’m withdrawing my case,” he said, arms crossed in front of him. “I don’t want you looking into it any more. I’ll pay for everything that got destroyed.”

Ellie stood behind the desk with her hands on her hips, and she frowned at Garrett.

“No,” she said.

“What do you mean,
no
?”

“I mean I’m working this case,” she said. “Frankly, at this point, I’m going to do it whether you want me to or not.”

“Are you crazy?” he said, and gestured at her office. “Someone broke in, smashed the place up, and went at your desk with a hatchet. Next time it’ll be
you
, Ellie.”

“I can take care of myself,” she said. “And I’m not
about
to let some bully push me around in my
own office
.”

“These people are
dangerous
, Ellie,” Garrett said, his voice slowly raising. “If this is step one, what do you think step two is?”

Ellie looked at him, her jaw working.

“Do you know who did this?” she asked, her voice suddenly soft.

“No,” he said.

“Are you lying to me?” she asked, her voice still soft but
dangerous
.

Kind of
, he thought.

“No,” he said.

“Well, this isn’t step one,” she said. “I think this is step two.”

Anger flared in Garrett again, wild and unpredictable. He nearly snarled.

“What else did they do?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “You know something, and I
know
you know something. You’re going to tell me before I go any further.”

Garrett glanced at the closet.

I could lock her in there
, he thought.
Leave, call the police, and she’d be fine in ten minutes and I’d be out of here. I could keep her safe and away from me
.

He looked back at Ellie, her eyes flashing, her jaw set.

Could I, though?

He had the feeling that
no one
told Ellie what to do, and that included him.

“What if I say no?” he asked.

“Then it takes me that much longer to figure out who did this,” she said.

“What would convince you to drop this?” he asked.

Ellie just snorted.