I stared in amazement when he started to twist his head back and forth.
AJ let up. The man reached for his throat, rubbing where AJ’s hands had been.
He glared at me. “Sorry your girlfriend can’t take a joke.”
I froze.
AJ stepped closer. “You think what you said was funny? I didn’t hear the joke.”
The people around us stared. I was about things were about to escalate again. The bartender held his phone in his hand as if he was ready to call for backup at any second.
The asshole laughed. “Oh I get it. You’re trying to impress her. That’s it. You’re hoping you’ll get some tonight. I get it, man. She’s a fine piece of ass.”
“Oh shit,” I groaned.
AJ practically lifted him off the ground, taking his throat in his fist.
“He’s drunk, AJ,” I whispered. “Put him down.” He had to be drunk. No rationale man would stoke embers like this.
“If she was someone I’d never met, I’d do the same exact thing a hundred times over. You have a problem man.”
He let go and the man fell, doubling over, gasping for air.
He moved me away from the bar where the crowd still gawked.
“Are you ok?” AJ asked.
I nodded. “Shocked, but I’m fine.”
He took my hand, threading our fingers together. I felt the heat of his palm. “Let’s get out of here. Ok? I don’t think we should stick around.”
We climbed the stairs and I felt the cool air at the street level.
“How about you? Are you ok?” I asked. “Did you hurt your hand? He looked heavy.”
He chuckled. “No. I’m fine. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you or made you uncomfortable back there. But that asshole isn’t going to speak to you like that. He’s disgusting. What a dick.”
I looped my hand through the crook of AJ’s arm and sidled up to him. “Have you done that before?”
We walked along the sidewalk.
“Get in bar fights? I try not to.”
“You know what I mean.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “No. It’s not really ok with the Academy. I wouldn’t let him speak to a waitress that way, or one of those women at the bachelorette party in the corner. That bastard pissed me off.”
I looked up at AJ’s square jaw, shadowed when we stepped away from a street light. “Maybe you stopped him from making that mistake with another girl who won’t have someone to defend her. Maybe that’s the last time he’ll say something so gross.”
“I hope so.”
I leaned my head on his arm. “Thank you. More than thank you.”
“Does that happen often?” he asked. “Do guys pull that shit all the time?”
I shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Fuck. I thought I saw stars when he grabbed your arm.”
“He was drunk.”
“That’s no excuse.” AJ stopped walking. Another couple walked past us. “Why are guys such assholes?”
“You’re not.” I smiled at him. I appreciated his anger. I appreciated his loathing. I didn’t advocate violence, but I loved how he stood up for me. “You are the least asshole-ish guy I know.”
I pulled on the lapels of his jacket. He leaned over me.
“You deserve better than that trash, Syd.”
I looked in his eyes, and I believed this man wanted to give me the world.
I believed every word he said. He would have done the same thing if a soccer mom had been attacked, or one of the barbacks. It didn’t matter to him who the woman was. He wasn’t going to stand for it. His rage was justified. A little part of me felt better knowing there were good men in the world like AJ who were looking for the bad guys. He would do whatever he could to protect. He was willing to stand in front of ugliness, no matter how small. Even if it was in a quaint jazz bar on a date night.
That was five years ago. The rage I witnessed now was something far beyond what I had seen on his face during that scuffle in the swanky D.C. bar. I thought I knew how fiery his anger was.
“AJ.” I pulled on his arm. “Sit down.”
He paced and ripped into the mini-bar. There was a full bottle of bourbon. He yanked off the cork and began to pour into one of the highball glasses. I watched him knock it back in one swallow. I hoped it calmed him. Slowed him.
“I’m going to kill him. I’m going to put a bullet in him,” he seethed.
“Oh whoa, whoa, whoa.” I raced from the side of the bed, taking the bottle from him. “Just stop.” I poured a drink for myself. It burned the back of my throat, but I didn’t care. “You are supposed to be the professional,” I lectured. “I don’t think you’re an authorized assassin.”
“There is a fucking psycho out there who thinks you belong with him. To him. And you want me to be calm? No.” He paced in front of the window. “I didn’t know it ran this deep. I swear I didn’t know it was this bad.”
I bit my lip, waiting for him to walk it off, but I knew the suite wasn’t big enough. There were several rooms, but he needed a full football field. A place where he could run and pummel his frustrations into the ground.
“And you’ve known about this for six months?”
“Me?” I glared at him. “You’ve been following me and didn’t tell me. It wasn’t like you were in my life. Or at least in a way I knew about.”
“I thought your shadow was related to Project Compass somehow. Not like this.”
“You could have told me,” I answered flatly.
He groaned. “Ok. We can’t do this.”
“No. We can’t.” I poured us both another round of drinks. “We just have to be level-headed. Clear. We have to get ahead of him.”
AJ took the refill from me. “And why haven’t you hacked him? Why didn’t you track him down?”
I shook my head. “Because the emails stopped, and by then I was too busy to worry about it. I just thought it was a prank. I don’t think it really hit me how serious it was until Dallas. When they resurfaced is when I realized it wasn’t an accident. I wasn’t some random email account he targeted. It was me he was writing.” I took a smaller sip of bourbon this time. “There were no more excuses I could come up with. It hit me when I was in Dallas, that I was dealing with someone’s dark personality.”
I sat on the edge of the bed. “He mentioned destiny in every email. I didn’t want to think there was a creepy stalker out there who knew me. I should have dug into it, or reported him.”
AJ exhaled. I was glad he wasn’t pacing anymore.
“From what we have to go on, it sounds likely he is the man at the farmhouse. And that means he sent you those texts.” He stopped. “What do you know about Ethan Howard?”
“Ethan? He was someone I interviewed. He lived on the same hall as my mom at USC.”
“You met him in person?”
I nodded. “Yes. I drove to his house. He lives outside of Dallas. I don’t know much about him. He’s single. He has a dog named Max. He’s a little non-descript, honestly. I do have the recordings from our conversation. Do you want to hear them? Would that help you if you could hear what we talked about?”
I was willing to do whatever I could to figure out who was stalking me. Who was scaring the hell out of me. It had to stop.
I knew why AJ was suspicious of Ethan, but it didn’t make any sense for a man like Ethan Howard to do this, and especially to expose himself so openly as a suspect. It was too obvious. But I wasn’t the FBI agent.
Seventeen
I knew what AJ’s answer would be.
“Yes. Yes. Let’s hear them. I want to know exactly what Ethan Howard said to you. There may be something there that points us in the right direction. We’re going to need this in a full transcript.”
“All right. We brought everything from my equipment bag, so I can set it up,” I offered. I hadn’t wanted AJ to collect my laptop when we escaped the farmhouse. I wanted to leave it behind and option that gave me the tools to hack, but now t
here was a use for it.
I hadn’t used it since the airplane. Turning it on felt strange, as if the first thing I was going to see was the marketplace. I sort of expected it when my screen blinked open. I reached for the recorder and inserted the plug into the side port and connected it to my laptop.
“I need to cue the interview, and I have to run the audio program,” I explained. “It’s going to take a few minutes.”
“Take your time.” AJ watched me work.
I plucked my headphones from his bag and fastened them over my ears. I needed to run through the audio before I played the interview with Ethan Howard.
AJ tapped me on the shoulder and motioned to his phone. “I have a call. It’s the Bureau.”
“I’ll just keep going.”
He huddled in the corner while I shuffled through the multiple recordings. I never felt comfortable listening to the sound of my voice on playback. I was glad I had a chance to skip over my monologue before AJ heard the interview.
I’d never shared my recordings with anyone. It seemed silly to be nervous, considering my podcast would be broadcast on a wide platform, but I wasn’t supposed to sit next to the audience. That’s not how it worked.
I sounded tense when I was outside Ethan’s house. I cringed when I heard him slam the door in my face after refusing to help me. I hadn’t decided if I was brave or desperate to return after that, but I listened to all of it. Just until the part when Ethan finally agreed to talk to me. I hit the pause button and looked for AJ.
His broad back was to me. He was still wearing his gun. I wondered if he’d take if off ever again. He shifted from one leg to the other.
I wanted him to hear for himself that Ethan Howard wasn’t nefarious. In fact, he had been kind and a little protective. I thought slightly paternal if I analyzed our conversation. There was something comforting in his Texas drawl. This was my opportunity to relive it and see if my gut instincts about him were right.
AJ pivoted. The phone call ended. “The first team arrived at the scene. There are no explosives in either of our vehicles.”
“Oh, that’s good news. What was it then?”
“The cables were sliced under the hood. The New Orleans unit has taken the cars in as evidence.”
“But no,” I protested. “I just bought that car. They can’t have it.” I didn’t trust anyone else to take care of it.
“You’ll get it back. It might take some time.”
“And the barn?” I asked.
He shook his head, walking toward the bed. “That’s going to take longer. They will analyze for prints and DNA. They’ll do the same thing inside the house, canvassing that wall. They are going to remove it and take it to the office.”
“Take the wall apart?” I was surprised.
“They want everything.”
I looked at the USB port. That meant they were going to confiscate my recordings as well. It was time I make the backups.
“I’ve queued up the interview with Ethan. Are you ready?”
AJ flicked the bourbon in his glass. “Yes.”
“All right. This is from Saturday evening. I went back for another visit. He didn’t want to talk to me the first time I knocked on his door, and I usually give everyone two tries before I give up.” I wondered how much of this AJ already knew from observing me. “He seemed more open to it and eventually let me inside to talk. He even agreed to let me use our conversation in the podcast. I was kind of surprised.”
“Then let’s hear what he had to say.” AJ’s brows knitted together.
I unplugged the headset in order for the sound to play through the speakers. I hit play.
“Thanks for talking to me about my mom.”
Ethan cleared his throat. “That’s on now?”
“Yes. We’re recording. You’re still ok with this, right?”
“I guess so.”
“Ok. Great. I’m recording, so we can get started with the interview.”
“All right. What do you want to ask me, darlin’?”
“First, I’d like to know what made you change your mind about talking to me. You didn’t seem happy when I showed up this morning. I was wondering if that was because of my mom. Is there a history you share with her that is uncomfortable? Something I should know about it?”
“No. No, not really. I don’t always like to talk about that time in my life. You know college is a beast for a young buck. But after you left I looked for one of my old photo albums. I got to thinking about what you said. I did find a picture of Penny Neworth.”
“You did?”
“Hold on, it’s on the dining room table. I’ll get it.”
There were footsteps that faded then grew louder again.
“Here it is. It was a group picture the RA took at the end of fall semester. That’s her in the back row.”
“But you can’t see her face. It’s so blurry.”
“Sorry. It was 1990. It was taken regular film. There was no such thing as a digital camera. And it’s been under plastic for twenty-eight years. But that was her, the one smiling.”
“Thanks for showing it to me.”
“Of course.”
“Can you tell me what my mom was like? Do you have any stories about her?”
There was a long pause.
“It was a long time ago and I don’t have the best memory when it comes to college.”
“But you do remember Penny Neworth? Enough to point her out in a group photo.”
“I do. Pretty girl. Very pretty girl. She could have been a model. She had a nickname actually.”
“She did? I haven’t heard that before. What was it?”
“She had this mark. I guess girls call it a beauty mark. You know over her lip. Cindy Crawford was big back then. You know the model? And with the dark hair, it just kind of fit her. A lot of people called her Cindy.”
“Not Penny?”
“She went by either one. It was just a nickname. I don’t know if she liked it or not. I never used it. I stuck with Penny, but maybe someone else you might talk to might remember her as Cindy.”
“Thanks, that might be really helpful. I guess it’s kind of cute. Cindy?”
“Yeah, a lot of people called her Cindy.”
“What else do you remember other than her good looks?”
“She was quiet. Most of the time. Not all the time.”
“Did she study a lot?”
“I don’t remember. Sorry. It didn’t seem like she was around all that much. But I wasn’t either. I played club soccer. I was at practice most days. But we passed each other in the hall. I saw her on campus. We’d say hi.”
“You mentioned there were times when she wasn’t quiet? What was she doing? Who was she with?”
“Other girls I think.”
“What about any guys? Who was she dating?”
“I didn’t know her like that. I saw her with guys I guess, but it wasn’t like I asked who anybody was. It was college. People were in and out of the dorm. We said hi. I recognized people from class. You went to college, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Then you know you don’t commit everything to memory. Some people are there for the party. Some go to study or to play sports. No one is a private investigator. Not like what you’re doing now.”
“I realize it sounds like that, but it’s because I’m trying to piece things together. I’m trying to gauge how well you knew her. How many conversations did you two have do you think?”
“Enough for me to remember her. Not enough to give you what you want.”
“There must be something that stood out. Something other than her looks.”
“I agreed to do this because you seem like a sweet girl. And I do remember Penny, but I don’t think I have the information you need.” There was a long pause. “What if Penny Neworth doesn’t want to be found?”
“I guess I’ll ask her about that when I get to the end of this.”
“But maybe you should st
op.”
“Why? Why would I stop looking for her?”
“You could be doing this for a long time. Don’t you have other things you could be doing with your time? You seem like a talented girl. You’re doing this radio thing.”
“Podcast.”
“Right, whatever you call it. Why don’t you do a different one and move on? Are you a writer or something?”
“I don’t want to move on. I want to find her. I’m going to keep talking to people who knew her until I do.”
“It seems like a lot of work to track down someone who isn’t trying to track you down.”
“It is, but how do I know she hasn’t tried to find me? My adoption was closed. She wouldn’t know my name or my adoptive parents. I’ve considered all these things, Ethan.”
“I admire your guts, darlin’. You’ve got to have ‘em to keep doing something like this.”
“Thank you. Is there anything you’d like to add before we finish?”
“I think Penny was a good girl back then. I just want you to know that whether you ever find her or not. If she gave you up, it was for a good reason. It had to be.”
“I appreciate that. Thanks for sitting down and answering my questions, Ethan.”
The recording ended and my eyes lifted to AJ’s.
“What happened after that?” he asked.
“I gave Ethan my number and told him to text me if he remembered anything or heard from anyone in their class that might know something about her. Then I left. That was it.”
“There is no more of the recording?”
“No. That was it. You heard the entire thing from start to finish.”
AJ looked frustrated. “But you didn’t ask him why it was a tough time for him. Why he didn’t like going back to those memories from college.”
I huffed. “He said it wasn’t related to my mom so I moved on. It wasn’t the Ethan Howard interrogation show. That’s not how this works. It’s about Penny Neworth. It’s a show about my journey to find her. Not about his college heartbreak or hangovers or whatever drama a twenty-two-year old guy had in 1990.”
“Sorry. It just seems like a missed opportunity there. I wish there was more.”
Shattered Hart: Hart Pursuit Trilogy Book 2 Page 7
