When the dinner party was breaking up three hours later, I was surprised when Nick came walking down toward my end of the table.
“You can stay here with him,” I told him before he could say a word.
“Yeah, I know,” he told me, scowling. “I don’t need your permission. But he has a teleconference with some overseas buyers, and he said he’d come by and visit with us later.”
“Oh, that’s lovely,” my mother told him, turning to me. “Isn’t that lovely, sweetheart?”
“Lovely,” I echoed, rolling my eyes when he turned away.
She smacked me.
Once we were back at my mother’s, the two of them went outside on the back porch, where she lit her million or so candles, and they sat there on the chaises and stared up at the stars. I was still in the kitchen when Nick’s phone, which he’d left on the counter all day, chirped. Glancing at the screen, I saw a voicemail notification. When I looked closer, I saw he had thirty-two missed calls, all coming in the last three hours, and all from the same private number. I stared. Thirty-two missed calls in three hours was not normal. Thirty-two missed calls in three hours was someone hurt or dead. I glanced out the window at the two of them, chatting, smiling, so at peace, and after a brief war with my conscience I thumbed the phone open—thanks again, Owen—and hit the voicemail icon. I was going to hell anyway; what was one more sin in the tally?
“You son of a whore, you think you can stop my fuckin’ payments? You think I won’t sell that video to the highest bidder? Who the fuck do you think you are? Everybody will know! Every fuckin’ body, are you listening to me?”
The snarling vitriol of the man’s tone came over the line clear as day, and I was stunned as I listened to his seething hatred.
“What will your fans think when they see you fuckin’ those guys when you were just a kid?”
My blood went cold, and I paused the playback, walking out the front door to give myself added distance from Nick and my mother. I put the phone back to my ear then, and what I heard knotted my stomach and chilled me to the bone.
“What’ll they say when they see your weak ass gettin’ beat?”
I almost threw up. I’d seen things as a policeman, horrific things done to children, to adults, things that sometimes still haunted my dreams at night.
“And the videos you want of your old man bustin’ up them horses for the insurance money? You think I’m sendin’ you that shit if you don’t pay me my money, you filthy fuckin’ whore?” His voice rose, sounding furious and unhinged. “You make me chase you down—if I have to talk to that fuckin’ cunt accountant one more fuckin’ time, I will end your life, Mr. Madison, and you ain’t never comin’ back from that shit.”
When it ended, I played it again, and again, and then a fourth time for clarity, to confirm that I was hearing what I already knew it was.
I had to pace a bit, walk off some of the anger so I could think and not just react. Even though the number was private, I was fairly certain that I knew who the voice belonged to.
I grabbed my own phone and started by texting Rosalie Simmons, and she confirmed that yes, just as I thought, Walker Evans had been at her all day about money that was supposed to be coming to him.
“He’s a vile man,” Rosalie texted. I was glad she didn’t know for certain how vile. I was glad she had no idea who he really was.
I called Owen then.
“Loc?” he sounded sleepy.
“I need help,” I croaked out, barely in control of my voice, knowing it was late there but not caring in the slightest.
“Yes,” he said, fully awake just that fast.
“Please find Walker Evans for me, right now. His name is in Nick’s file, and then I need you to get me on a plane to wherever he is.”
“Absolutely, just give me a minute.”
“Who’s not on a job right now?”
“Ella, Nash, Rais, and Cooper.”
“Okay,” I said, speaking around the lump in my throat. “I need Nash here, like right this second, and Ella, Rais, and Coop need to head wherever I’m going as soon as Nash gets here.”
“Got it.”
“Send whatever you think I’ll need, starting with a good jammer.”
He cleared his throat. “Done.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to swallow down my anger. “Okay.”
“I don’t know what this is about, Loc, but try and breathe, huh?”
I ignored him. “Also, I need you to hack Nick’s phone and get the number from his most recent calls. That’s Walker Evans’s number. From now on, anything, calls or texts, Skype, FaceTime, DMs, PMs, whatever, from that number get rerouted to my phone.”