So he was worried.
‘I took the vest off because it was huge,’ Gwyn said, ripping him from his thoughts. ‘It came down past my butt. I can’t sit down properly in it.’
‘You won’t sit down at all if you’re dead,’ Thorne muttered. ‘You should be in Chicago.’
‘I should be here,’ she replied. ‘This mess with the club affects me too. As does the mess with the firm. I’m still listed as an officer and an employee.’
Thorne scowled. ‘You’re fired. All of you, from all of it.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ She kissed the top of his head, affection showing through her irritation. ‘Even if you fire us, it’s because you love us. So you’re stuck with us.’
‘Until you’re all dead.’ Abruptly he stood up. ‘I can’t just sit here. I need to do something.’ He strode to the bulletin board and made a savage noise at the photo of his office manager, now placed next to the photo of Tavilla.
Anne Poulin, Frederick thought. She’d fooled them all. Even me. Not that he’d ever had a great read on women, but . . . Only Gwyn had had reservations, though Frederick had chalked that up to jealousy.
Again he’d been wrong. Gwyn had an intuition about the woman that they’d all ignored. Even Gwyn herself.
‘Who is the real Anne Poulin?’ Frederick asked. ‘She passed the background check. I began reviewing the employee files the day all this started. Mowry’s inconsistencies stuck out like a sore thumb, but Anne’s record raised no flags. She has a past, a work history, social media, even elementary school photos on her parents’ social media. I found a copy of her work visa and cross-checked it against the government record. It’s legit. She moved here from Montreal five years ago for college. She’s continued to take classes. For a fake identity, this is exceptionally well done. And I know how to fake identities.’
Clay turned from the window. ‘I know,’ he said dryly.
Because Frederick had created the fake identity that had allowed him to hide Taylor from Clay for years, believing him to be a violent, vengeful man. He’d been wrong about Clay, but he was not wrong about this.
‘You’re right, though,’ Clay continued, confirming his thoughts. ‘It’s a good fake. I’ll ask Alec to do some digging.’
At that moment all their phones began ringing, calls from everyone. ‘They’re there,’ Frederick murmured after talking to Taylor. ‘Safe at Ethan’s.’
‘Thank God,’ Gwyn breathed.
At the window, JD sagged forward, resting his forehead against the glass. Clay gave his shoulder a supportive squeeze. ‘Come on, JD. They’re safe now, and we can get to work sending Tavilla to hell so that we can bring them home.’
JD nodded. ‘Except we don’t have a home.’
‘You can use ours,’ Frederick offered. ‘Julie and I can stay here until you rebuild.’
JD smiled wearily. ‘We’ll talk. But thank you.’ He slumped on one of the sofas. ‘Let’s bring this fucker down, Thorne.’
Thorne nodded. He hadn’t moved from the bulletin board, his body still rigid. ‘Right. I need to find him. Tavilla.’
‘And do what?’ JD asked.
‘Stop him.’
Gwyn sighed. ‘I would like nothing more than to put a bullet in Tavilla’s head, but as soon as we do that, we go to prison. I think he’d like that.’
‘From the grave,’ Thorne muttered.
‘But we’d still be in prison,’ Gwyn said carefully.
‘Not “we”,’ Thorne corrected. ‘“I”. And it would be worth it.’
Jamie pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘So what say we come up with an actual plan that doesn’t make me defend your ass on a murder charge a second time?’
Thorne turned, his mouth quirked up on one side. ‘Yes, Dad,’ he said, his tone slightly mocking, but there was affection under it. ‘We tried Chandler Nystrom and he’s a no-go. He might talk under torture, but I don’t know. I’d like to try, except that would just make Jamie scold me again. Tavilla had Patricia killed. We know that, right? I’m really asking. Because there are so many bits of string connecting so many pieces of this puzzle that I could weave a rug.’
‘He’s involved,’ Clay said. ‘Whether he killed Patricia himself or not, he is involved. His trigger was the death of his son.’
Thorne nodded slowly. ‘But Anne’s been with us for a whole year. Whatever Tavilla’s got planned, he put this in motion a long time ago.’
‘So just snuffing him out at this point wouldn’t necessarily stop him,’ Gwyn said. ‘Please promise me that you’re not really considering it.’
Thorne shrugged. ‘If I have to, I will. If I seek him out and he tries to kill me, I will. But I won’t take a potshot at him while he’s walking his dog. If he has one. At least the club will be okay now that we can show that our bartender was in his employ. The bartender – Laura or Bianca or Kathryn or whoever – was the only one with drugs. And the notoriety will just draw crowds when we finally reopen. It’s the firm that concerns me. What do we know about the clients getting blackmail calls?’
‘Six clients called me,’ Jamie said. ‘I assume there were more who haven’t come forward yet, or who won’t. Each got a call from a different number. Each described a different voice. High, low, raspy, male, female, distorted. Whoever made the calls used a voice-alteration app of some kind. Each person was threatened with exposure of their worst secret, things they’d disclosed to you. None were given blackmail terms yet.’
‘So just enough to stir them up,’ Thorne murmured. ‘If this gets out, I could be up on charges with the bar.’
‘Given that Anne-fucking-Poulin works for Satan,’ Gwyn ground out, ‘I think the bar will understand. However, your reputation may not survive. Nor will the firm.’
Thorne sighed. ‘I know. That’s really not my biggest concern at the moment. I’m more worried that the firm is discredited and that any of our employees who has to get another job afterward will be sullied. At least we have fewer employees affected by the firm than the club.’ He tapped Tavilla’s photo. ‘Our goal is to stop him. We do that by exposing his plan and the fact that he’s pulling the strings. We destroy his financial base so that none of his employees get paid. That way, any contracts he has out on any of us won’t be carried out.’
‘Tall order,’ JD said, ‘considering neither Baltimore PD nor the FBI has been able to stop him.’
‘True.’ Thorne chewed on his lip. ‘But he had that damn key ring. And my medal, the one Darian Hinman’s killer left in him. Tavilla had to have gotten them from somewhere. Brent Kiley, the EMT we talked to on Monday, said he’d seen the key ring in Richard’s body, but denied taking it. The only person left in the chain is the ME tech, who’s dead.’
‘But whose widow is still raking in enough fourteen years later to live in a ritzy part of town,’ Jamie said. ‘If the ME tech took it, then who did he give it to?’
‘Somebody with enough money to pay off the widow.’ Thorne pointed to the photo of Linden Senior.
‘Not just him,’ Gwyn murmured. ‘The Hinmans had money too. I mean, that lobby we walked into this morning was something straight out of a museum. Also, by the time the ME tech died, Patricia and Judge Segal were married. He wasn’t a judge then, of course. He was barely out of college. But his family had money too. The Lindens, Hinmans and Segals all had the means. We assume the Lindens had a motive, but what if they weren’t the only ones?’
Thorne huffed an impatient sigh. ‘We need to get that fucker Nystrom to talk to us. Or find Colton Brandenberg. If Richard was molesting his sister or Angie or anyone else, they would have known something about it. Richard was not subtle. Somebody on this board knows something that ties Tavilla to Patricia. When we find that person, we have to get them to roll on him.’
‘You mean Joseph and I do, right?’ JD looked concerned. ‘BPD and the FBI. Not you, Thorne.’
‘I don’t care who takes the credit,’ Thorne said. ‘I just want him stopped. Where is Alec on the ME tech’s widow’s bank records?’