Always Watching

by LS Sygnet

  “Honey, I’m so happy for you! I don’t know why you kept it a secret, but I have never understood some of your strange ways. Can we at least have a little party for the two of you to celebrate?”

  “Maybe. After this case is closed. This is gonna sound crazy, but we’re trying to stay focused on work right now.”

  “You’re right,” Maya chuckled. “It sounds crazy.”

  “I’d like to get inside OSI and get Johnny’s stuff done so we can get home,” I stared at the man in question for a long moment. “So I’ll call you soon, all right, Maya?”

  “Yes. Yes. Oh Helen, I’m so happy. For both of you. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks, Maya.” I disconnected the call and dropped the phone into my purse. “Promise me that you’ll let me tell Devlin alone, Johnny.”

  “I’ll do no such thing.”

  “I wish you’d stop being so jealous of him.”

  “I’m not jealous, but I’m not stupid either. We’ll tell everyone together, as a group or individually. I’m not letting you go off alone with him where he has the opportunity to convince you that you’ve made a terrible mistake, Helen, so forget about it.”

  “You’re not letting me?” Honestly, that would’ve made me bristle no matter who said it to me or in what context.

  “Let me rephrase that. I’m not giving him the opportunity to stab me in the back because I’m not around when you break the sad news to him. Better?”

  “Not much,” I grumbled.

  Johnny popped out of the Expedition and had my door open before I could argue further. He slid me out of the seat and into his arms. “How would you feel if I wanted to have a private conversation with every woman who ever thought she was going to be the one to get me down the aisle, huh? Would you like thinking about how they might react to the news that I picked you?”

  “No, but that number is in the thousands, I’m sure. We’re talking about one friend, Johnny.”

  “Yeah, one guy who not more than a couple of days ago was pawing you and salivating over the idea that you were throwing me out. The answer is no. Period.”

  Johnny kept the promise he made to me earlier, when I lost my temper over something trivial, and nibbled my neck seductively. “We’re in this together, Helen. Remember?”

  “I do,” echoed sentiment from vows taken too recently to forget.

  Chapter 29

  Before we got to the big announcement, Chris dragged Johnny away after a warm greeting to me that included a peck on the cheek and the first comment I’d received in awhile that I look well. At least nothing had turned me green and sent me scurrying for the bathroom yet today.

  I crossed my fingers and went off to find Devlin and Crevan. The former was staring at the computer screen of a laptop – the one I surmised he obtained as evidence from the Sherman house. Crevan was speaking in a low voice on his cell phone, looking none too happy.

  I bumped Dev’s shoulder with one fist and jerked my head in the other’s direction. “More trouble with the case?”

  He grinned. “Trouble in paradise, I think. His new friend isn’t so used to cop hours while we’re working a big case, I think. Poor guy. He’s probably imagining that Crevan is buckling under pressure to straighten up and fly right.”

  “No,” my eyes drifted back to my other friend. “Maybe he should cut out for a few hours, go settle him down.” Not everybody was blessed with a spouse like my former husband after all. Rick didn’t mind the long hours or frequent separations one little bit.

  “Eh, they’ll work it out or not. We’ve got bigger issues right now. Where’s the ever-present commander?”

  “Off with Chris discussing something. I don’t know what. He’s going to take a run at Holmes, and I’m going to look at this computer – that is if you’ll give up your seat for a few minutes.”

  “I’ve been looking at that message board I told you about,” Devlin slid out of his seat and patted the back. “Sit. Tell me what you think.”

  I peered at the screen.

  Serrated dingy: a deed smite thy sunup, repenting thy wit.

  “Gibberish. It’s meaningless, Devlin.”

  “Crevan thinks it might be some kind of code. If it’s not gibberish –”

  I looked at the date. “This was posted almost a week ago. Last Tuesday.”

  “And the case started from our perspective on Wednesday.”

  “There’s no indication that this nonsense is related to anything, let alone our case, Devlin. Where are these other links you talked about?”

  He leaned over my shoulder and minimized the browser window and clicked on a file folder on the desktop. “Here. The others are pretty straightforward.”

  I opened the first. Sexy Asian babe will fulfill all your fantasies. Below the posting were hundreds of replies. “Now this could be helpful.”

  “Why?”

  “Because so many of the women sold through human trafficking end up in the sex trade, Devlin,” Crevan joined the conversation.

  “Hey,” I said, reached over and squeezed his hand. “Everything all right?”

  “Plumbing emergency at the club,” Crevan shrugged one shoulder. “Even if I weren’t up to my neck in this case, I’d be useless. I told him to call a plumber.”

  “Ouch,” Devlin chuckled. “I guess that advice didn’t fly.”

  “Sure it did,” Crevan replied. “I’m not stupid, Dev, and I seriously doubt that things were quite so dire at the club. It was a ploy to get me away from here for a couple of hours.” His fingers brushed the ring on my left hand, which he still held. “Helen?” Eyebrows rose.

  Behind him, Johnny and Chris entered the room. Chris was grinning and smacked Johnny on the shoulder. So much for breaking our news together. One down, two to go. I sucked in a deep breath and called to my new husband with nothing more than a look.

  He joined us. “We’ve got some news,” Johnny jumped into the fray. “Helen and I got married this afternoon.”

  And what a cushioned blow it was. I felt waves of tension radiating behind me. They quickly retreated, punctuated by a slamming door.

  “Oops,” Johnny grinned at me.

  “Johnny, I thought we agreed –”

  “There’s no way to do this beyond spitting out the happy truth,” he smirked. “He’ll get over it or he won’t.”

  “Congratulations, Helen,” Chris said. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment.”

  I nodded, knowing full well that Chris intended to make right Johnny’s abrupt announcement.

  “What’ve we got here?” Johnny asked.

  “I think we’ve got some explaining to do.” Crevan’s stunned silence weighed heavily on the room and drew my attention away from the case. “Crevan, are you all right?”

  “Shocked,” he said softly. “Why…? How…?”

  “I love her and I know people,” Johnny grinned. “Aren’t you going to congratulate us?”

  “Sure. Congratulations. I uh… I’m not sure what else to say.”

  “I told him that I spilled the beans about our engagement, Crevan, and Johnny told me that you told him what I said.”

  “Sorry,” he murmured.

  “No need to apologize. What did you find on the computer, Helen?”

  I shook off the strange announcement and the reactions we’d received so far, but not before a moment of odd realization. Nobody seemed to be as happy about our news as we were. Of course there was no time to delve into that at the moment. “The board that Devlin was so baffled by looked like gibberish. I think it’s meaningless,” I said, ignoring the moment of protest on Crevan’s lip before I soldiered on toward the important information. “I just opened one of the other links from the file in question and found a dozen or so additional links. The first is selling fantasies from a hot Asian girl who promises to fulfill them.”

  “You think she’s working against her will?” Johnny pulled out a chair and sat beside me at the conference table.

  “It’s a distinct possibilit
y, given what we know about Eugene Sherman, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “So let’s figure out how to trace this woman to an address and find her.”

  “Mmm, that won’t be so easy, Johnny. Darkwater Exchange will want a warrant, and since the ad doesn’t mention a thing about services for a fee, we’re not going to get a warrant based on this alone. They would have access to the IP address of the poster in this case, but we won’t see that information unless we have legal cause to force them to reveal it,” Crevan said.

  “Well that just sucks. I guess I could call Zack and get his opinion.”

  “Don’t waste your time, Johnny. Crevan’s right. We’d probably get results faster by responding to the post and setting up a date.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  I turned toward Crevan’s stunned question. “No, I’m not joking. Don’t worry. Nobody will make you go meet this girl.”

  Johnny snickered. “I’ll volunteer.”

  “No, you won’t,” I said with the authority that only a wife has. “Devlin will do it, and I’ll go with him. Just as soon as Chris settles him down, he and I will review the other posts and decide the best way to approach. We’ll set up the appointment and go meet her. Alone.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “Johnny, I’m not arguing with you about this. Think of it as your apology and role in doing damage control for doing what I explicitly asked you not to do. You’re going to communicate to Devlin very clearly that even though we are married, my friendship with him is unchanged. Is that clear?”

  “I don’t agree with –”

  “Shouldn’t you be off talking to Sarah Holmes?”

  Johnny swallowed hard. “Are you really mad at me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Helen.”

  Crevan inched away from the table.

  “We’ll discuss it later. Please go talk to Sarah Holmes.”

  “I think we should discuss this now.”

  “The case first,” I said. “You can’t make me talk about what you did beyond saying that I’m very disappointed that you lied to me, Johnny. You promised that you’d be sensitive and took great glee in hurting my friend.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Go talk to Holmes.”

  “Unbelievable,” Johnny huffed. He slid his chair away from the table and stalked out of the room.

  “Helen, are you sure you want to leave things like that with him? Today of all days.”

  “Do me a favor. Would you go find Devlin and tell him I need his help with this message to the alleged prostitute?”

  Crevan threw up his hands. “I don’t get it. You love him. You married him.”

  “That’s correct. It doesn’t mean that I’m fine with him hurting other people I happen to love.”

  “Helen, don’t ever say that to Johnny.”

  “We have a case. I’d like to focus on that.”

  Crevan muttered something unintelligible, then, “Fine. We’ll focus on the case. God forbid you open up and speak your mind.”

  “I already did that.”

  “No,” Crevan said. “You didn’t say anything, Helen. Not really. You remind me of my father when you use barbed words to shut everyone up so yours is the only opinion left standing. I can’t think of any truth that would hurt more than that does.”

  “It’s not the same.” I stared hard at the computer screen, ignored the eyes fixed on me. “It is not the same, Crevan. You trust him implicitly. You shouldn’t.”

  “What the hell does that mean? Goddammit, Helen, look at me.”

  He waited.

  I resisted.

  “Helen.”

  I glanced to my right. “Johnny doesn’t tell you everything.”

  “Well he tells me a hell of a lot more than you do.”

  “Fine. Everybody says more than I do. Will you please go get Devlin?”

  “Answer one question first.”

  “What?” I met his demand with a defiant glare.

  “Do you love Devlin the same way you love Johnny? Is it more like the way you love me? If you’re not sure, maybe you should figure it out, or should’ve figured it out before you married my best friend.”

  Tears sprang to my eyes.

  “Will you please talk to me?”

  “I love Johnny.”

  “I believe you,” Crevan said. “I loved Belle too. At least I thought that’s what I felt.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “You love Devlin too, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Different than the way you love me, or even your old friend David Levine. Am I right?”

  My lips rolled inward.

  “Is it different than how you feel about Johnny?”

  “Of course it is,” I rasped. “I’ve never felt that way about anyone in my life, Crevan.”

  “Then don’t let this come between you. It’s your wedding day, Helen. Let me work on this message with Devlin. Go find Johnny. Get this thing straight between you.”

  “We’ll be all right. It’s not like he doesn’t know. He blurted out the news to Devlin after I asked him to let me break it to him in a much kinder way.”

  “You’re right,” Crevan said. “He does know, Helen. Maybe he knows something you can’t even see.”

  “Like what?”

  “That you’re more concerned about how Devlin feels than how Johnny does. Maybe that’s what you should think about. I’ll be back with him in a few minutes. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

  Something stupid would’ve been preferable to the path we were all on. Of course, there was no way of knowing that now. I twisted the very old gold band on my left ring finger. It was once worn by Johnny’s mother. His parents were the reason he’d never married. Johnny once told me that he hadn’t found anyone he felt that deep connection with, the one his father told him to find before marrying anyone.

  And then he met me.

  The chair beside me rolled away from the table and Devlin slumped into it.

  “Are you all right?” I stared at my hands.

  “I’m confused, Helen. I know we talked about how you feel about him, but you guys looked like you might shed blood just a couple of days ago. Now you’re married? How do you go from that extreme to another so fast?”

  “I told you. It was a misunderstanding, Devlin.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I want you to help me set up a date with one of these women from the Darkwater Exchange links on Sherman’s laptop computer. I thought we could use her line of work to spring a little surprise arrest on her.”

  “All right,” Dev said. “How about this?”

  He pulled the laptop in front of him, created a user account and quickly typed a message into the board. A box popped up immediately

  This user is no longer accepting replies.

  “Shit,” I muttered. “Try one of the other links.”

  We worked our way through the entire folder without any success.

  “Maybe they’re too old. The messages,” Dev said.

  “Or maybe word has spread that the pimp is in custody and they need to lay low until she’s wiggled her way out of her current jam.”

  “That first one,” Devlin glanced at me quickly. “Do you remember her name?”

  “Fantasia.”

  He typed in a search and found a newer thread with messages posted by someone using that name.

  “What’re you thinking?” I asked.

  “The dates on all those messages, they were the day before we arrested Melissa Sherman. Or whatever the hell her name really is. That thing you said about the pimp, it got me thinking that maybe the girls aren’t the ones who create these threads.”

  “So the fact that there are new ones might mean that somebody is still out there calling the shots,” I followed his train of thought quickly. “It lends credibility to the size of the operation.”

  “Alleged operation,” Devlin was typing quickly. “We won’
t have confirmation of that until we get one of these women to talk.”

  “What’s that phone number you put in the message?”

  “A disposable cell I picked up a few months ago.”

  “Do I want to know why you’ve got one?” I asked.

  Devlin grinned unabashedly. “Didn’t I tell you I never put all my eggs in one basket? Here’s proof. Now all we have to do is wait for our girl to respond to the message.”

  Before I could comment, Chris rushed into the conference room. “Helen, I need you right away.”

  “Is it Holmes?” I shot out of my chair and rushed across the room.

  “Much worse. Johnny hasn’t even started questioning her yet. Joe Collangelo’s on the phone. We’ve got a much more pressing problem at the moment.”

  Chapter 30

  Johnny stood with his arms braced at the corners of his desk bent over, staring at the telephone. The voice of someone I had not met floated through the speaker. Unfortunately, I had no idea what our current governor said before. All I heard was the tail end of a blistering conversation.

  “What in the hell were you thinking, Johnny? Yes, we’ve had some phenomenal successes but something like this undoes all of it. When I put you in charge of OSI, it was because I trusted you to use sound judgment. Not this. Never anything like this. I’ve got Terrell Sanderfield raising holy hell with the press, and here I sit. Clueless to the whole damn thing!”

  “There hasn’t been time to brief you, Joe. Things are happening quickly with the investigation into the Sherman matter.”

  “Not quickly enough. Dammit, Johnny. It won’t matter if you find out that Sherman made illegal contributions to Sanderfield’s campaign if I end up impeached because you put personal issues ahead of business. And things haven’t been moving so swiftly in your investigation if you had time to get married this afternoon.”

  My jaw dropped, as did Johnny’s. This wasn’t about Sanderfield putting pressure on OSI because of an investigation into his campaign funds. It was something else altogether. My arms wrapped around my waist in a defensive gesture, as if the voice on the phone might materialize into flesh and blood in front of us and hurl more than angry words. What had Johnny done to incur such wrath?