In his office, the out of place element was his hidden wall. She’d left his camouflage wide open.
He’d modeled his evidence wall after the one in the police station from when he was on the force. They’d post pictures, notes, evidence, and where it was collected like a road map. Every time he looked at it, another piece fell into place.
It had worked for him then, and it worked now.
Except now he was solo and only a Home Depot door lock and a grumpy next-door neighbor protected his place when Reed wasn’t there.
He grabbed the metal trash can by his desk, turned it upside down on the floor, and started ripping apart his evidence.
Lesson learned.
One at a time, he fed the contents of the board into his shredder until it was nothing but a memory and a snapshot on his phone. He didn’t need anyone else happening upon what he’d learned.
When finished, he looked around the room. She’d planted bugs. He would have.
He moved to his bedroom, emptied his duffel bag, and proceeded to fill it with clothing to last a few days.
Back in his office, he fished out cash, a new passport, new ID, and a new credit card from a hidden compartment in his filing cabinet. Outside of the slight felony of having identification that wasn’t truly his, he wasn’t a criminal, just pushing the legal envelope. Or so he justified to himself. He did understand the streets and what he needed to blend, however.
And right now Reed Barlow needed to disappear to do everything he could to keep Lori safe.
He placed a holster on his shoulder, shoved extra clips in his bag. He’d call Jenkins to come over and retrieve the wineglass and Sasha’s cell.
He made it to the end of the hall when two men who looked like they lived at the gym stopped him.
“Good morning, Reed.” The man who greeted him chewed gum and smiled.
“Do I know you?” He calculated how fast he could draw his weapon and what the likelihood was that the men in front of him weren’t carrying.
Slim to no way in hell.
“You called my employee this morning.” The second man was all business.
Cooper.
His pulse slowed slightly. Lori’s people, not Petrov’s.
“Going somewhere?” Mr. Smiles asked.
“My place is compromised,” he said.
Mr. Serious nodded toward the stairs.
Without a choice, Reed followed. He wouldn’t be able to take them both, so he wasn’t going to try. If Cooper was any indication of the kind of men these two were, he wasn’t at risk of ending up in cement shoes in the bottom of the ocean.
Inside the parking garage, Mr. Smiles relieved Reed’s shoulder of his bag and shoved it into the back of a blacked out sedan. The second man lifted his hand, palm up.
Reed hated being stripped.
He slowly removed the gun at his side and handed it over.
Mr. Serious dropped the clip and removed the round from the chamber before handing it to Mr. Smiles.
Once again, he held out his hand.
“Fuck.” Frustrated that he was being disarmed piece by piece, Reed shifted from one leg to another.
Mr. Serious wiggled his fingers.
Reed removed a smaller weapon from his left leg, one California didn’t like people to own.
The process was repeated for all three of Reed’s guns and one pocketknife.
Mr. Smiles winked before settling in the driver’s seat while Mr. Serious slid along the back seat beside Reed.
“Where are we going?” Reed asked once they pulled onto the street.
“Someplace less compromised.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Once Lori stopped crying, Avery made her get dressed so she could drag her away from her condo. Cooper shadowed them while a new set of men moved around her space, searching for more bugs.
This time placed by Reed.
Sam met them with bags of food from a local restaurant and several bottles of wine.
Avery Ubered in ice cream and chocolate.
With all the breakup food covered, the three of them sat around Avery’s living room with music playing in the background.
Sam was the hardest to look at. Lori trusted the wrong man, and now everything the woman had worked for was at risk.
“I’m so sorry, Sam.”
Fit for the occasion in yoga pants and a big sweatshirt, Sam crossed her legs under her. “Okay . . . you’ve said that, now let that go. Whatever Reed did, or is doing, isn’t on you.”
“I trusted him.”
“We all trusted him,” Avery said from her kitchen, where she gathered dishes for their lunch/dinner/whatever meal it was when you only ate once in a day and planned to be pissing drunk by rush hour.
“No more sorry, no more self-blame, got it?” Sam used her mom voice.
“Got it.” She’d just have to say all that to herself.
Avery placed the plates on the coffee table and started to open boxes of spicy Thai food.
“What happened?” Sam finally asked.
“He took me to Santa Barbara to break it off.”
“Douche,” Avery muttered.
“He’s not a data processing anything. Unless you call a spy someone who process data.”
“Reed’s a spy?” Avery stopped dishing up the noodles.
“He said he used to be a cop, and now he’s a PI.” Lori watched Sam for her reaction.
“Cooper hinted that he didn’t think Reed was in any field that required hours at a desk,” Sam said.
“We should have listened. He was sent to Barcelona to gain information about me. About us.”
“About Alliance.”
Lori nodded.
Avery started dishing stuff up again. “No wonder he was all serious when Trina was drugged.”
“All an act,” Lori said.
“I don’t know, he was concerned.”
“He told me that someone was following me ever since our stop in France. Probably the entire time we were on the ship.”
“Miguel? Cuz that guy—”
“He said it was a woman,” Lori told her.
“Did he give you a name?” Sam asked.
“No, and he wouldn’t tell me who hired him either, or why.”
“So what did he tell you?” Sam asked.
“Just that he was hired to find information about all of us. And that he thought the woman following us was one of Petrov’s hired hands. That I was still in danger.”
Lori looked across the room to where Cooper attempted to blend with the wall. She knew he was listening. Which was fine. All the information Lori had would get back to the Alliance security team anyway.
“He knows about Alliance, Sam.”
“You told him?” Sam asked.
God, if she could take back the pillow talk after all the sex that night. “I was discussing a new client whose husband is beating her up for sport, and how if we’d done a character profile and background check, we would have caught how screwed up this man is. Next thing I know we’re talking about Trina.”
“It wasn’t like we didn’t all talk a little about our lives when we were in Europe,” Avery reminded her.
“I know. The night he and I were talking about Trina, he had this look on his face . . . like someone watching a movie and finally figuring out all the holes in the story. I should have realized then what he was up to.”
“What did you say about Trina’s marriage?” Sam asked.
“Just that we’d done all the background checks and Fedor slipped through. He figured out the rest. I didn’t confirm or deny any of his conclusions about Shannon or you,” Lori told Avery.
“Hey, I don’t care. Bernie would probably be fine with the world finding out.”
“Paul won’t,” Sam said.
Lori squeezed her eyes shut. “I screwed up.”
“Enough, Lori. He’s the private investigator. He knew enough of the pieces to draw the information from you.” Sam reached over and grabbed an unopened bottle of wine. “Now, let’s start at the beginning, everything you can think of, both of you, about what Reed overheard, and what he knows. I need to know which clients are at risk.”
Instead of some dark corner in a warehouse, Mr. Smiles and Mr. Serious pulled into the driveway of a simple suburban house in Tarzana. They entered the house after driving into the garage. Mr. Smiles disengaged a house alarm and went around the kitchen, turning on lights.
Reed knew heavy surveillance when he saw it. Cameras were in the ceiling, his guess was microphones captured the conversation. It was a kinder version of an interrogation room. He wondered if there was a double mirror somewhere with someone behind it.
Mr. Serious’s phone rang, and he moved into a living room to answer it.
“Sit,” Smiles told him.
Part of the other man’s conversation drifted into the room.
Smiles turned to the refrigerator and removed a soda. “I’d offer you something, but this really isn’t a social call.”
Reed huffed. “I took you as the good cop.”
“Ah, c’mon. We’re both good. It isn’t like we forced you to come with us.”
Mr. Serious returned, leaned against a counter, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Reed Barlow doesn’t exist,” he said.
“Sure he does, he just has a different name.”
Smiles turned a chair around and straddled it. “What’s your name?”
Reed hesitated.
“I’ll make it easy.” Smiles lifted his hand across the table. “I’m Rick, and this charmer is Neil.”
Reed extended his hand, and for a good fifteen seconds he and Rick shook hands in a way that would have broken bones for a mere mortal. The desire to shake out his hand to return the circulation was huge, but he squelched it. He opened his mouth and Neil spoke.
“You have one chance to get the name right.”
Or what?
“Lori deserves to know who screwed her over.”
Rick knew how to punch below the belt.
“Michael Reed Barnum.”
Neil glanced at what Reed assumed was a camera and then back to him.