“There's a gentleman here to see you,” she says quietly. “He doesn't have an appointment, but he says Liam sent him?”
She cocks her head and gives me a questioning look, asking me what to do with her eyes. Normally, I'm not open to impromptu meetings and walk-ins. I usually have enough on my plate on any given day that I don't have the time. Veronica knows this and is one hell of a screener. She's a bulldog about not letting people in without a prior appointment.
But, bringing up the name of one of my brothers likely put her in a pickle and left her not knowing exactly how to handle it. Veronica has been with the company for almost as long as I have. She was hired by my father and is a matronly middle-aged woman who does her job incredibly well. Sometimes too well. I appreciate having her though. I often tell her, in all honesty, that I don't know how I'd function without her.
“Let him in,” I grumble.
Liam hadn't mentioned sending someone to see me, which likely meant I was about to have something thrown on my plate I don't particularly want to deal with right now. He knows better than to send somebody my way without giving me a heads-up first. I might have already left the office, or worse, I might not even be in town.
Business depends on communication and if I’m not here when he sends me a prospective client, that’s bad for business. It could be the difference between winning or losing a multi-million-dollar deal. Liam knows better. This is clearly something I'm going to have to speak with him about.
Veronica goes out and I hear muffled voices. A moment later, a tall man I've never seen before steps into the room. He's a big guy, lean muscles, but not someone you'd really pay much attention to if you ran into him on the street. He's non-descript in almost every way. Brown hair. Brown eyes. A face that you'd easily forget a moment after he walked by. Even his outfit – which was definitely not business professional – was ordinary. Jeans and, black t-shirt, and black leather jacket.
The most noticeable feature about him is the sleek, black briefcase at his side. It looks expensive and hefty. And, given the beefy combination locks on the thing, it appears to be locked down tighter than Fort Knox. I stand up and shake his hand.
“Mr. Anderson,” he says. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise,” I say. “Liam sent you, did he?”
“Yes, he did. And he has a gift for you,” the man says with a smile. “My name is Adam McMurtry, by the way.”
“I'm Brayden. Although I assume you already know that.”
Adam nods and takes a seat across from me while I sit back down behind my desk. I sit and lean back, tapping my fingers in front of me, waiting for him to say or do something. To tell me the reason he's here and why my brother sent him. Adam sets the briefcase on my desk and works the combination lock on it like a pro – hiding it from my view, of course.
“That thing looks bullet-proof,” I marvel.
“It is,” Adam says as he finishes the combination and opens it up. “Quite literally.”
“Do you tend to frequent a lot of places where bullets are flying, and you need James Bond toys?”
He shrugs. “Not really,” he says. “But, it never hurts to come prepared with some cool toys.”
I chuckle as he pulls a thick file folder out of the briefcase and sets it on his lap before closing it back up again. He locks the case and sets it down on the ground beside him. He holds the file up, gesturing at it.
“This is why I'm here, Mr. Anderson.”
“Please, call me Brayden.”
Adam nods. “Very well,” he says. “This is why I'm here, Brayden.”
He hands the file over to me and the first thing I notice is that there is only one word on the front of the folder. There, written in neat, exact handwriting – Holly. I raise an eyebrow, but Adam motions for me to open it.
“Liam filled me in on the details of your situation,” he says. “And because he cares about you as much as he does, he wanted to make sure you knew everything about this wife of yours. So, he contracted me to do some digging.”
“Wait, my brother had you spy on Holly? Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask, feeling a little pissed at the gall of Liam, not to mention the invasion of her privacy.
Adam shrugs. “Not exactly spying,” he says. “Just a light background check. Some poking and prodding behind the scenes. Beating the bushes to see what crawls out, so to speak. It's not a bad habit to practice for men in your positions, by the way.”
“I can't believe he hired you –”
Adam holds his hand up to stop my train of outrage before it could even leave the station. “Don't be upset with your brother, Brayden,” he says. “He asked me to do it because he cares about you. He loves you and doesn't want to see you get suckered into anything. I don't need to remind you about his situation with his first wife.”
A wry chuckle escapes me, and I shake my head. “Yeah, she was a real piece of work.”
“Exactly,” he says. “And he doesn't want to see you in the same situation. So, he asked me for my advice and I gave it to him.”
“Your advice, of course, was to run a background on Holly.”
He nods. “If she's going to be your wife, you might feel more comfortable if you know what kind of skeletons are lurking in her closet.”
It sounds so weird to hear him call Holly my wife. The idea of being married is still foreign to me. I haven't come close to wrapping my head around it. Most likely because I haven't actually seen my wife since the wedding night and I wasn't sure that I'd ever see her again.
I still hesitate, unsure if I should let myself go down this rabbit hole or not. But, considering the fact that Holly isn't answering my calls, I need to find some way to get ahold of her. And maybe Adam's found a way for me to do that.
I open it up to the first page, which has a photo of her. Looks to be a license or passport photo. She's wearing little, if any, makeup and her red curls are pulled back into a ponytail with loose tendrils falling around her face, highlighting the softness of her cheekbones. I stare at her face for a long while and feel my heart race. Even in such a normal, everyday photo, she's stunning and makes my heart swell with emotions I didn't even know I possessed.
Adam clears his throat, then speaks.
“As you can see on some of the following pages,” he says, “her father is Michael Gallagher, owner of Gallagher Construction. The business did moderately well for a long time, but with the economic downturn coupled with several bad business decisions, the company floundered. And because of that, as you can see in the report I prepared, the Gallaghers are currently tied through some shady dealings to a man named Gabriel Trujillo. Does that name ring a bell to you?”
I shake my head as I scan the papers, flipping through everything Adam's prepared for me. But, as I read the words, it's like this file was written about someone else. Not Holly. Not the girl I was with in Vegas. Not the girl I enjoyed every damn minute with. And not the girl who had given me one of the best blowjobs of my life.
“He's the head of the Trujillo drug cartel down in Mexico,” Adam says. “One of the most ruthless and brutal cartels in the country. Which really says something.”
I drop the file on the desk and shake my head, trying to deny what I had just read. Nothing I read matches up with the girl I'd gotten to know in Vegas.
“I don't know,” I say. “This just doesn't sound right to me. Something seems off. There's no way Holly would be mixed up with a drug cartel. Not the woman I know.”
“I know you want to believe the best in your girl, Brayden,” he says evenly. “But, Liam's very worried, given what I learned. Trust me, it may sound far off, but it's not. Her family is in deep with this cartel. Trafficking. Money laundering. The whole shebang. This is what I do for a living – I find and pull up the shit people would rather keep hidden.”
“So, you're a PI?”