Rastor (Lawton Rastor Book 2) (29 page)

By the time fifteen minutes passed, I was in the attic above the bonus garage, wondering what the hell I was looking at.

Through the open attic window, I spotted Bishop, making his way across the backyard. Quietly, I called down to him. "Up here."

A minute later, we were both staring at the thing.

"What is it?" I asked.

If anyone would know, it was Bishop. Electronic security was his specialty, and as far as I could tell, the system I was staring at fell into that general category. Either that, or it was just a weird-looking computer that I was too stupid to figure out.

He reached for the compact keyboard and hit a few buttons. Sure enough, the system lit up. A few keystrokes after that, and I felt my whole body tense. Near as I could tell, I was watching footage from inside the house.

Bedrooms only.

And fuck, the master bathroom, too.

That son-of-a-bitch had been filming her.

I turned to Bishop. "What the fuck?"

"Hey, don't look at me," he said. "I didn't set this up."

I gave him an annoyed look. "I
know
you didn't put this here, but what is it? I mean, where does it go?"

He glanced at the thing. "You mean the footage?"

"Yeah, the footage." I had visions of somebody watching Chloe's bedroom, even now. Yeah, I knew she wasn't currently in there, but she
had
been. For weeks. No. Months. And tonight,
I'd
been in that bedroom, too –
all
of the bedrooms, in fact.

Had someone been watching me remotely? If so, that wasn't good. I'd gone through every closet. I'd looked under every bed. I'd grabbed everything of Chloe's that I could possibly find, and I'd stuffed it into a couple of garbage bags, not caring if anything got wrinkled or wrecked.

And then, I'd gotten the hell out of there, ignoring the two guys – now tied up – who happened to be half-dead, courtesy of me. Well, they'd been half-dead the last time I'd checked. Hard to know their status now.

Bishop was still working the keyboard. When he finished, he circled around the thing, tugging on wires and seeing where they led. Finally, he said, "It's just here."

"What do you mean 'just here'?"

"It's local only. No wireless. No other connections, except for the line that ties into the house. The way it's set up, the footage downloads to a hard-drive, probably retrieved every few weeks or so."

Every few weeks, huh? Well, that explained a lot, didn't it?

I recalled the douchebag and all those so-called electrical problems. I recalled the other stuff he'd offered me – freaky pussy with bald chicks and what-not.

The guy wasn't a pimp. He was movie producer, of the secret variety.

I felt my blood pressure rise, thinking of the footage he probably already had. Chloe naked on her bed. Chloe taking a shower. Damn it. Chloe on the toilet.

I felt my hands tighten into fists. The next time I saw him, I was going to kill him.

"So that's why you called me?" Bishop asked.

I shook my head. "No. It's something else."

His eyebrows furrowed. "Something else?"

I gave him a brief rundown of everything that had happened inside the house and finished by saying, "So, what do you think? Should I just burn it down?"

"You serious?"

Hell yes, I was serious. But as an answer, I only shrugged.

"And about the two guys?" he asked.

I gave another shrug. "I haven't decided."

He lowered his face and rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers. "You're nuts. You know that?"

When I said nothing, he added, "You're not a killer. And trust me, you don't wanna start now."

So I wasn't a killer, huh? Well, that made one of us.

But I didn't say it, because if there was blood on Bishop's hands, there was blood on mine too. The guy he killed? Well, it was because of me. When push came to shove,
he'd
been the one who'd taken out that councilman, the one who'd been after my little sister.

I hadn't asked him to do it. But he had. And he'd done it while I'd been fighting in front of a hundred people – the perfect alibi, not that I'd realized what was happening at the time.

I didn't regret what happened to the guy, but I
did
regret not doing it myself.

When I said nothing, Bishop spoke again. "Those guys in the house, were they after Chloe? Or was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time?"

I recalled what the guy had been saying. He'd been calling Chloe by another name. What was it? Louise? He'd been demanding some sort of loan-repayment.

And one thing was for damn sure. He wasn't from the bank.

"He was a loan shark," I finally said. "Or more likely, they worked for one." From old experience, I was painfully familiar with that sort of thing. Shit, for all I knew, they worked for the same guy who'd loaned money to my grandma all those years ago.

It seemed unlikely, but then again, it wasn't exactly a popular business.

Bishop's voice broke into my thoughts. "So Chloe owed them money?"

"No. Not Chloe. Someone else owed them, probably whoever was
supposed
to be there, the owners, I'm guessing."

He nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense."

And five minutes later, we had our plan, which, as it turned out, didn't involve gasoline and a pack of matches. But it would take some creativity. And I'd need Chloe to do me a favor.

Lie.

When I walked through the back door of my own house, Chloe threw herself into my arms. "I was so worried," she said. "What were you doing?"

I'd been doing a lot of things, and some of them weren't exactly legal. But the
last
thing I'd done? I'd used a burner phone to leave an anonymous tip for the police.

"Well, that's complicated," I said, stepping back to take her hands in mine. "Do you trust me?"

She nodded.

I gave her a serious look. "Say it."

"I trust you."

"Good." I was still gripping her hands. "Because in about an hour, you're gonna have to lie like a rug."

"Why?" Her hands tensed against mine, and she gave a little tug. "I didn't do anything wrong."

I glanced down. "Was I hurting you?" Deliberately, I loosened my grip. "Shit, I'm sorry."

"Forget that," she said. "Tell me why I have to lie. I didn't do anything."

That's where she was wrong. She
had
done something. She'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the way it looked, she'd been working for the wrong people.

On top of that, there was her
real
job description. Half porn-star, half patsy. As far as tonight, she'd witnessed way too much for her own good, and way too little to have a decent idea of what, exactly, was going on.

Even
I
didn't know everything, but sooner or later, I was determined to find out.

At the moment, I didn't want to get into all that. By telling her now, I wouldn't be doing her any favors, especially when the cops showed up. And they
would
show up. Hopefully, I'd made sure of it.

I looked into her eyes. "Baby, I know. But these people, they don't think like you and I do."

"What people?" she asked. "Who are you talking about?"

"People I used to know. That's who." I pulled her close and wrapped her tight in my arms. "And I won't let 'em hurt you, but you've gotta help."

In the end, I had to give her credit. When the cops showed up, she played her role perfectly. Funny, it looked a lot like the role she played at work – sexy as hell, but not too bright.

She was even dressed for the part, in a red bikini and some sort of flimsy cover-up that hid next to nothing. As for me, I was still damp from the hot tub, but wore jeans and a white, unbuttoned shirt over my wet torso. The way it looked, we'd been hanging out, having a good time, oblivious to whatever was happening on just the other side of my fence.

The cops were taking notes as Chloe told her story. "So then," she was saying, "they stopped paying me, so I said, 'Screw this. I'm outta here.'"

"When was this?" the taller of the two cops asked.

"A while ago." She paused, as if thinking. "Maybe a couple of weeks?" She glanced briefly in my direction. "Besides, I found a better deal." She lowered her voice and said, "Do you know, he even has a hot tub?"

"Um, yeah," the cop said, "you mentioned that." His gaze shifted to her dripping wet hair. "When we showed up, in fact."

"Oh yeah." She gave something like a giggle. "That's right. Sorry, I guess I was distracted."

Her story boiled down to a few basic facts. She'd been hired to watch the house, but when the owners' checks started bouncing, she'd stopped going there, except for a few trips here and there to check the mailbox, just in case the missing payments showed up.

Supposedly, she'd left her car in the driveway because, "I think it's dead. And besides, Lawton has cars that are a ton nicer."

As for the dog, she claimed she hadn't seen him in a week, not since "the little sucker escaped" through no fault of her own. She finished by saying, "I'm still looking though, so he'll probably turn up. Right?"

"Uh, sure," the guy said.

What we
didn't
mention was the fact that right now, Chucky was with Bishop, who'd taken the terrier for a drive and wasn't returning until we gave him the all clear.

Looking to change the subject, I said, "Just curious, how'd you know she was staying here?"

In a bored tone, he answered, "From some papers we found at the house."

I let it go. There were no papers. But there
was
a brand-new semi-crumpled note that I'd left taped to the fridge. The note was a scribbled message from me to Chloe. All it said was, "Saw you walk by. You're smoking hot. Bring your bikini, and stop by sometime." It was signed with my name and included my street address. Nice and convenient.

The cops stayed less than ten minutes, but mentioned they might be calling us later with further questions. That was fine by me. Who knows? By then, we might have some answers, assuming my suspicions were correct.

Already, I knew a lot more than Chloe did. Some of it, she might not
want
to know, like the thing with the hidden cameras, or about the GPS tracking device that I'd found hidden underneath the passenger's seat of her car.

After the police left, I pulled Chloe into my arms and said, "You're amazing. You know that?"

"Me? Hardly." She lifted her head to look at me. "And I still don't get it."

"Get what?" I asked.

"Why I had to lie. I mean, I didn't
do
anything."

"Yeah, but that story wasn't for
them
."

Her brow wrinkled. "Then who was it for?"

"The grapevine."

"What grapevine?"

From experience, I knew how this worked. But apparently, Chloe didn't, so I spelled it out. "They'll file a report. Someone with connections will get ahold of it. And one important thing will be spelled out for anyone who looks."

"What?

"That you weren't there."

"But why does it matter?" she asked. "I wasn't the one who trashed the house."

"It matters," I explained, "because whoever sent those two guys isn't gonna give up. And trust me, there'll be hell to pay for what happened to them."

"You still haven't told me. What
did
happen to them?" From the look on her face, she wasn't completely sure she wanted to know.

"They'll be fine," I told her.

She gave me a skeptical look, but said nothing.

I shrugged. "I left them in the living room."

"Alive?"

"Last time I checked." I gave her a reassuring smile. "Hey, if the cops had found a couple of dead bodies, we'd have heard about it by now. Now c'mon." I led her to a nearby sofa. Once we were seated, I turned to her and said, "I've gotta ask you something."

"What?"

"When you were staying there, did you sleep naked?"

"What?" She blinked over at me. "When I was house-sitting? No. I wore shorts and stuff. Why?"

"How about in the bathroom?" I asked. "Were you ever naked there?"

She gave me an odd look. "Well, I
do
shower naked, in case you haven't noticed."

Oh, I noticed, alright. I just didn't want anyone else to notice. "In which bathroom?" I asked.

"Over there?" she said. "I used the guest bath. Why?"

Again, I dodged the question. "Not the master bath?"

She shook her head. "No. Never."

That house had four bathrooms. By far, the master bathroom was the nicest. "Never?" I persisted. "Not even once?"

"No. Not even once."

I didn't get it. "Why not?"

"Because, it was part of their master bedroom," she explained. "I considered it off-limits."

"They told you that?" I didn't see their logic. I mean, why would anyone put a spy-camera in a bathroom that was off-limits?

But Chloe was shaking her head. "They didn't
say
that I couldn’t. It just seemed disrespectful, you know?"

I did know. She took that job seriously,
so
seriously that until today, she'd refused to let me inside the place. Funny to think, it was that same quality that kept her from being filmed on the toilet.

Chloe was studying my face. "Why are you asking?"

I didn't want to tell her, but she deserved to know. "Because I found a camera."

"What?" She sat up straighter. "You're kidding. In the bathroom?"

"In the
master
bathroom," I clarified. "No other ones."

"You sure?"

I nodded. "A hundred percent."

And I was. That's part of what took me so long. Bishop and I had gone through that house inch-by-inch, looking for anything else that might cause trouble for Chloe.

Next to me, Chloe blew out a sigh. "That's a relief."

I was relieved, too. But the camera in the bathroom wasn't the only one.

Trying not to alarm her, I asked, "So, when you got dressed over there, where'd you do that? In the bedroom?"

"Not usually," she said. "I kept most of my stuff in the bathroom, so I normally got changed there." She gave a nervous laugh. "Good thing it wasn't the other bathroom, huh?"

Yeah. Good thing. But there was more I needed to know, as much as I hated to ask it. I tried to keep my tone easy. "Baby, I've gotta ask something else, and don't get insulted, okay?"

Her tone grew cautious. "Okay?"

"I know you said you didn't
sleep
naked, but is there anything…" I hesitated, trying to find the words. "…X-rated you wanna tell me about? Like at that house?"

"Are you serious?" She gave me a what-the-hell look. "No. Of course not. I'm not a cheater."

"I know that." I softened my tone. "But we weren't together the whole time."

"So what?" she said. "Cheating aside, if I wouldn't let
you
inside the house, why would I let someone else in? That doesn't make any sense."

"I know."

"Then why'd you ask?"

"Because I had to know for sure. For your sake."

"For
my
sake?" She frowned. "Why?"

"Because…" I met her gaze. "We found cameras in the bedrooms, too."

Her mouth fell open. "
Every
bedroom?"

I nodded.

"Wow." She said nothing else for a long moment, and I could see it all over her face. She was horrified.

Yeah, that made two of us.

"You okay?" I asked.

"I guess. Maybe." Suddenly, she froze. "Oh, crap."

I tensed. "What?"

She shifted on the sofa. She was blushing now. When she didn't answer my question, I tried again, making a lame joke out of it. "You didn't star in your own sex tape, did you?"

"Well…" She glanced away. "Oh, God, this is so embarrassing. I guess you say, um, yes?"

I froze. Yes? What the hell? Trying to keep the edge out of my voice, I said, "Who was he?"

"Well, uh, you, actually." She winced. "Except you weren't really there."

I felt a slow smile spread across my face. "Yeah? So you were…"

"Yeah." Her face grew a couple shades redder. "I was."

"And you were thinking of me?"

The way it looked, she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Stop looking so happy about it," she said.

"I'm sorry." I pulled her close and whispered in her hair. "You're right." And she
was
right. I might love the thought of her pleasuring herself to thoughts of us together, but that didn't change the thing I hated – someone might have copy of that footage.

After a long moment, Chloe asked, "So someone was watching?
While
I was doing that?"

I shook my head. "No. It was local only." I paused, hating what I had to say next. "But they might have a copy of it."

The blush disappeared, replaced by skin so pale, I was almost worried.

"You okay?" I asked.

She nodded, and figuring I might as well get it everything out there, I went on to tell her the other thing we found, the GPS tracking device on her car.

I finished by saying, "Best we can tell, he used the GPS to make sure he only showed up when you were gone."

She gave me a confused look. "Who?"

"The guy you were house-sitting for."

"Mister Parker? But I never met him."

"Not true," I told her, thinking of the douchebag. "Remember the property manager? Best I can tell, that was him."

"How do you know?"

"I met the guy." I went on to tell her about the times I'd talked to him, and how he'd offered me girls of the paid variety.

"Oh my God," she said. "So
that's
why you thought I was some kind of hooker?"

I shook my head. "No. I thought that because I was stupid. I should've known better."

"Oh stop it," she said. "Knowing that, I can see why." She bit her lip. "And now, he has footage of me? In bed?"

"We don't know that for sure," I told her. "We ripped everything out. Bishop's gonna check out the system, see what he can learn. If there's something there, he'll find it."

She closed her eyes. "Oh my God," she groaned, before opening her eyes again. "So Bishop might see it?"

"Hey." I squeezed her hand. "He's just looking at the technical side, for connections, download history, stuff like that."

"You sure?" She paused. "I guess I shouldn’t complain about." She gave a humorless laugh. "Cripes, for all I know, everyone will be seeing it."

"We don't know that," I told her. "For all we know, the guy never downloaded the footage. And if that's the case, we'll just delete the files, trash the system. End of story."

"When will we know?" she asked.

"A couple days."

And if I was lucky, it would be even sooner.