Jake held his hand out in front of me, stopping me a few feet away from the security desk. “We’ve been in these situations more times than I’d like to count.”
My face pinched together. “Shit, I know. It’s crazy.”
“Alexander Konstantin,” he said in a low voice as an elderly couple walked past us. “He’s been chased by every federal agency, and they’ve all failed.”
“You’ve never tried catching him, though, right?”
Jake grinned. “Hell, no. If I had tried, he’d be behind bars right now.” He slapped me on the back.
This was what I needed. “Then let’s take the son of a bitch down.”
“Can I help you two gentlemen?” The security guard approached us. His appearance was a bit more Kris Kringle than an intimidating guard, with his white beard and hair, warm eyes, and full belly.
“My father lived here. Edward Matthews.” I reached into my pocket and offered him identification before showing him the key to my father’s home.
The man’s face went long. “I’m so sorry for your loss. He was a good man.”
Good man—my father? He must have had him confused with someone else, because my dad had never been kind to anyone in his life, unless it benefited him. “I haven’t been to his home since he passed away.”
The man nodded. “Of course.”
“Do you know who found his body?” Jake asked, and both the security guard and I turned to face him. It was a little embarrassing that I didn’t know the answer. I never asked Mason or the lawyer. My father never even made it to a hospital; he’d been pronounced dead by the medics in his house.
The security guard scratched his beard, and an awkwardness grew apparent in the lines of his leathered, aged skin. “His maid. I can’t remember her name. Hold on, I’ll check the list.” The guard left us and walked over to his desk.
“We should have a talk with the maid and see if she knows anything,” Jake suggested.
I crossed the lobby and approached the desk and pressed my palms to the counter. “Excuse me, sir? Can I get a list of all the approved visitors for my father? And do you keep a record of when people visit?”
The guard looked up from his computer screen. “We don’t keep a record of visits, and for some reason, my computer is acting up. I’ll try and get you the list when you come back down. My apologies.”
“All right.” I started to turn but stopped. “Sir, did you happen to notice anything out of the ordinary around the time of my father’s death?”
The security guard clasped his hands together and brought them to his abdomen, and his eyes twitched a little. “I thought your father died of natural causes?”
“He did,” Jake assured him, knowing we didn’t want to ring any alarms. Even an aging security guard could be a potential spy. “Excuse us.” Jake nudged me in the side with his elbow. “We should go up.”
I gave the guard one last look and followed Jake over to the set of elevators. Once inside, I pressed the button for the thirty-fifth floor.
“I think that’s the tenth time your phone has rang since you met me at the airport. You ever going to answer it?”
“It’s just work.”
“I take it this running-a-business thing isn’t all that fascinating to you.” Jake angled his head at me and fought back a smile. “You going to go back to your old life when Mason takes over the company?”
“If there’s a company left for Mason to take over.” I released the pent up air I held in my lungs. “I’m just glad I’m the one handling this and not Mason. Guess everything happens for a reason.” God, Olivia would be alone in all of this if I wasn’t involved. I had despised her for so long, and now . . .? I shirked off the thought of her in danger. The weight of the situation would crush me if I allowed it to hang. But what choice did I have? Our lives were now wrapped up in the same tragedy.
“Mason can handle himself, by the way. He’s not just your kid brother, anymore,” Jake commented as the doors opened.
The two penthouses sat on the top floor of the building. “3510.” I motioned to the door with my head. “Mason can take care of himself. I know.” I needed to stop treating him like he couldn’t hold his own. He was a decorated officer in the Marine Corps, now.
“Has anyone been here since he passed?” Jake asked as I opened the door. He whistled as we entered the home.
We walked into the foyer, and my eyes darted to the ceiling. Light poked through the impressive domed ceiling of stained glass and bounced off the large mirror by the front door. We walked down a long hall, on what I assumed were marbled floors—I was never an expert at decorating—and we found our way to the living area. Olivia’s apartment could fit inside the living room. “This place makes Michael’s pad in Charlotte look small.”
“Did he sell it yet?” Jake asked as he stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked out the wall of windows.
“I think so.” I moved past the modern leather furniture, which couldn’t have possibly been picked out by my father, and joined him at the window. “Nice view.” I studied the tree tops of Central Park, which waved in the distance.
“It’s a good thing your father’s place is higher up than the buildings across the way. Anyone can see inside.” He glanced at me over his shoulder.
“That’s what these are for.” I pointed up, and his eye caught sight of a long silver box that looked more like a steel beam than the hiding place for electronic blinds.
“You think you could get used to this life?”
I folded my arms and stared out the window. There were benefits to money, but I made a decent living doing what I enjoyed, and that type of money suited me just fine. I peeked over my shoulder at the lavish home—this kind of money was unnecessary, in my opinion. “You know me,” I finally answered and looked at Jake. “I’d do better in a tent in the Amazon than here.”
He laughed. “Sure. I can see that. But you grew up in New York. In this lifestyle, right?” He opened his hands palms up.
“People change.”
He half-grunted. “I hear that.”
“What we saw in the Middle East. What I’ve done . . .” I thought back to my recent case. Saving the girl in Mexico. Keeping a family safe in Johannesburg, and before that, helping my friend Aiden’s now-girlfriend. The list went on and on—a litany of moments that had severely altered my view on what really mattered.
“We should get started.” I left the living room before Jake could speak and made my way up the black metal spiral staircase in search of the master bedroom. “Checking for his pills,” I hollered out as I reached the top floor.
“I’ll try and find the name and number of his maid,” Jake shouted back.
I stopped just inside the entrance to the bedroom, and my hands dropped to my sides like dead weight. I cocked my head and stared at the canvases on the wall. Photos of Mason and I were displayed as works of art in a collage-style pattern above my father’s four-poster bed headboard.
Black and white images. Mason and I laughing. Playing. Graduating high school. College.
What the hell? This wasn’t like my father. He wasn’t a sentimental person—he was cold, hard, calculating. He had been brutally honest with Mason and me as we grew up, always knocking us—okay, more often me—down for any mistakes. I’d strike out in Little League, and he’d yell at me. If I didn’t make straight A’s on one report card, I’d hear his wrath.
I couldn’t ever do anything right. And he thought he was so damn perfect. It wasn’t him that screwed up the marriage with my mother, after all. She’d been the cheater, the bad parent.
I swallowed and folded my arms, just staring at the images.
“Connor?”
I took a step back and turned around. “Huh?”
“I found a magnet on the fridge for a maid’s service. I’m assuming it’s the one he used.”
“We should call,” I said and pushed open the double doors that led to the master bath.
“Damn,” was all Jake s
aid when he entered the bathroom, which had enough open space to serve as a dancefloor.
There wasn’t a medicine cabinet, so I started opening drawers. One drawer rattled as I opened it, three bottles rolling toward me. I picked them up and studied them. “Niacin, Lipitor, and Aspirin.” I handed the half-empty bottles to Jake. “Like you said, they’re probably legit, but we should have them analyzed, just in case.”
I started to shut the door, but paused and pulled it back open. I picked up my father’s hairbrush and cocked my head.
“What?” Jake shoved the bottles in his pants pockets and eyed the brush.
“Last time I checked, my father didn’t have long, brown hair.”
“Was your father seeing someone?”
“Looks that way. We really need that visitor list.” I went downstairs and scoured the kitchen for a bag. We could run a DNA test on the hair.
After another long hour, Jake and I had managed to scavenge the entire place. We hadn’t found anything out of the ordinary. If my father had information on Declan, Konstantin, or anyone else for that matter, it wasn’t here.
Either my father didn’t trust to keep information in his home, or someone had scraped the place clean. Probably the same someone who had him killed.
“You ready to call the maid?” Jake dialed the number on the magnet as we stood in the foyer. He pushed the speakerphone button, and the ringing echoed along the tall walls.
“Maids of Manhattan. This is Sarah, speaking.”
“Hi, Sarah. I am trying to get ahold of whoever cleaned my father’s place. Edward Matthews.”
She didn’t respond, but I knew she was still on the line. I could hear her breathing. “I—I worked for him.” A muffled noise, and she said, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Was it you who found Edward’s body?” I asked as Jake’s brown eyes focused on mine.
“Yes. I found him,” she answered with a shaky voice. “I’m so sorry,” she said again.
“Sarah, I need to ask you a few questions. Is that okay?”
Her young voice sounded through the line, “Yeah.”
“How long did you work for my father?”
“I only started cleaning for him a few months ago.”
“Did you ever notice anything unusual? Or see him with anyone?”
“Um.” She was hesitating. Why?
“Sarah?” I looked down at the phone.
“I only spoke with Mr. Matthews twice. Once when hired and one other time.” Another pause. I was getting irritated. “I cleaned his place twice a week during the day. Once I was listening to music, and I had my headphones on, so I didn’t hear anything when I first got there. I was in the process of carrying all my supplies in when I saw Mr. Matthews come into the living room. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Only dress pants, and a woman followed in after him, dressed in a robe.”
My lips parted, but after finding the hair in the brush, I wasn’t too surprised to hear about a woman. “What happened?”
“Mr. Matthews yelled for me to get out and come back the next day. I hurried away, and I didn’t see him again until two weeks later when I discovered his body. I found him when I showed up Tuesday morning, the seventeenth. I heard the medics say he’d passed away the night before judging by, um, rig-a-mort-or-something.” She released a loud breath; the sound crackled through the phone.
“What’d the woman look like?” I asked.
“Young. Brunette. Pretty. But I’d seen her before.”
I exchanged looks with Jake, hoping for an ID.
“Your father had me meet him at his office when he first interviewed and hired me for the cleaning position, and she was there. I believe the woman worked there.”
A pretty brunette from Matthews Tech. Had my father seriously been having an affair with Lauren Tate? God, no. I looked down at the floor, unable to think straight. I gripped my hair, pulling at it as he wrapped up the call.
“You okay?”
“I need to get out of here.” I tossed the key to Jake to lock up and hurried out of the place before my pain suffocated me.
Jake caught up with me outside the elevator. “Any idea who she was talking about?”
I cursed beneath my breath. “Lauren Tate.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he answered, a bit of Southern twang creeping into his voice.
We stepped into the elevator, and I pressed my hands to the mirrored back wall. “I wish I was kidding.”
“You think he was sleeping with her?”
“She was in his robe,” I said in a low voice while looking at Jake via the mirror. “God, the woman has come on to me, too.” Chills rushed up my spine.
“Wow. I guess you were right about her. Women don’t usually sleep with men three times their age unless they’re after something.”
“Yeah, and I’m thinking it wasn’t his money.” If only it were that simple. “I can’t confront her about it. It’ll just tip her and Declan off.”
“Try and relax. I know this is hard to deal with, but we’ll figure it out. I got your back.”
We re-approached the security desk, but the man we’d spoken to previously was gone. “Excuse me?” I asked the younger gentleman sitting behind the computer screen. “Where’s the guy who was here earlier?”
“He called me to come in for him. Said he wasn’t feeling well.” The younger guard straightened the lapels of his black jacket. “What can I do for you?”
I explained who I was and asked him for the visitor list. As he started tapping at the keys, I also asked if we could access video feeds of the cameras in the lobby.
“I’d have to talk to my supervisor, but I’m pretty sure that will require a warrant.”
Damn.
“That’s interesting,” the guard said, looking up at me.
“What?” I folded my arms and studied the man.
“The visitor list of your father’s is gone.”
22
Connor
“When I get out of here, I’m calling up my old girlfriend and proposing.”
That’s what my friend Jim said during my third year in the Marines. We had been sitting inside a crumbled building in Baghdad, which had been severely destroyed at the height of the Iraq War. The barely-there scrap of a roof was the only thing protecting us from the harsh rays of the sun.
My team had been sent in for ground support during a CIA op, which involved taking down one of the ringleaders of al Qaeda. My buddy and I had remained on lookout a hundred meters away as the black boot operatives had charged the building.
“Really? Why?” I shut one eye and focused through my scope.
“Because I should never have let her go to begin with—she was the one. Second chances are far and few between,” he had answered. As I’d thought about what he’d said, my mind pulled up images of Olivia. For one long minute, a future with Olivia took root in my brain.
Then blood had sprayed my face.
I had pulled my friend against me and away from the window, holding my hand over his throat to stop the bleeding. When I’d realized there was no point, that he was gone, a fit of rage had consumed me. I grabbed my rifle and found the sniper peering out from a distant building.
Gunfire from inside the building that the CIA ops had entered popped loud in my ears as I shot the man. His body rocked back as my bullet smacked into his skull.
After the mission was complete, I went back for my friend. My body shook as I knelt over him. He’d never have his second chance, and I hadn’t thought it possible to have mine. I thought the world wasn’t big enough for Olivia and me to coexist.
But after being with Olivia again, I wondered if there’d ever be a world in which I could live without her.
“You find anything out?” Jake’s voice shattered the memories of the past.
I chucked my keys on the entrance table and joined him in the living room of my rental home. “Here.” I handed him a few files I had printed from my office computer and took a seat next t
o him on the couch.
He slipped his glasses on and flipped open the first manila folder before he shifted through the papers. “Financials?”
“As of last August, the company was in severe danger of either being bought out by a competitor or closing its doors. Declan and Lauren were correct when they told me the company would have been in serious trouble without the Saudi deal.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “The contract with the Saudis is directly with the Saudi Arabian government. It’s legit, but Declan helped Matthews Tech win the bid.”
“Which is corporate bribery—or espionage, if you will—but nothing earth-shattering.” Jake looked up from the file. “This fits with Konstantin’s MO.”
“What do you mean?”
“Konstantin preys on financially weak businesses. Reid Enterprises was on the brink of collapsing when Declan took over. Konstantin stepped in and helped out, but only because Declan had something he wanted. I’m sure Konstantin uses Declan’s clubs to launder money, sell drugs, and so forth. And the cargo shipments to and from the Middle East and abroad . . . Konstantin probably smuggles goods in them every once in a while,” Jake explained.
“You think they targeted Matthews Tech because it was failing? They saw an opportunity to get into bed with a weapons and defense manufacturer?”
Jake nodded. “They needed to offer your father something big.”
“There have also been ten sales transactions between Reid Enterprises and Matthews Tech,” I admitted. “The last four of the shipments correlate with Tyson’s flights abroad.” I stood up and gripped the back of my neck with both hands. “I’m just wondering how Konstantin or Declan discovered my father opened the box to begin with.”
“Andrei and Oleg were following him. Konstantin must have suspected something.”
“How do you know?”
“I was scrubbing traffic cam footage and spotted Andrei and Oleg just outside Capital James Bank the day your father died. See here.” He zoomed onto the video. I moved to the coffee table and leaned in toward the laptop. The same two men I’d seen at the gym were standing a few feet away from the bank entrance. “When your dad left the bank, they followed after him on foot. But I only have them on camera for about a block.”
The Hidden Truths Series Box Set Page 64
