Page 110 of Duty Unbound

“Yeppers. I did some brute force hacking and found they all linked to an app registered to Tommy Fucking Fitzsimmons.”

Shit. The implication slammed into me. “He was creating fake coupons to lure her out to somewhere he wanted her.”

“Bingo.” Jace pointed to the last received message on Mel’s phone. “The last text was a coupon for coffee from the exact coffee shop she went to. The fact that the barista remembered her trying to use it was what had me looking into it to begin with.”

The exhaustion fogging my brain burned away, replaced by laser-sharp focus. “Who is this guy? What do we know about him?”

“Not much yet.” Jace pulled up a driver’s license photo. “Tommy Fitzsimmons, age thirty-two.”

I stared at the image—average build, sandy hair, utterly forgettable face. The kind of man who could blend into any crowd.

Then recognition hit me like a physical blow.

Fuck. “I’ve met this guy,” I said, straightening in my chair. “In New Orleans. The night of the club fire.”

“You sure?” Logan asked, studying the photo more carefully.

“Positive. He was talking to Mel outside after the evacuation, right before I found her. She introduced me to him.” The memory crystallized—Mel standing in the crowd, this man beside her, their conversation interrupted when I approached.

“Wait,” I said, realization dawning. “It’s possible that Tommy was responsible for that fire alarm. If I hadn’t gone back for Mel, she would’ve been alone with him.”

“This is starting to fall into place,” Logan said, his expression grim.

I kept staring at Tommy’s face, another connection forming. “Pull up Clark Arici’s personnel file.”

Jace gave me a questioning look but complied, bringing up the dancer’s photo. The resemblance wasn’t identical, but thesimilarities were definitely there—same build, similar coloring, comparable features.

“Holy shit,” Logan muttered. “Could this Tommy guy be the stalker?”

“If so, that’s why he targeted Clark,” I said. “He could pass for him with the right mask and costume.”

I turned to Jace. “Let’s look at the text messages Tommy sent Mel over the past few months and compare them to the stalker incidents.”

Jace pulled up everything—the flowers, the Barbie dolls, the roadkill with Nova’s rainbow wig. All three incidents with their threatening messages.

“All of these were very specifically targeting Nova quitting her tour,” I noted, scanning the threats.

“And look at Tommy’s messages to Mel,” Jace said, highlighting several texts. “Similar themes—that Mel was giving too much of her life to Nova, that if Nova loved Mel, she wouldn’t ask Mel to go on tour or would not tour at all.”

I read through the messages, a disturbing pattern emerging:

“Nova’s using you. Can’t you see that?”

“You deserve a life of your own, not living in her shadow.”

“If she cared about you, she wouldn’t drag you along on this tour.”

“One day you’ll see I’m the only one who really understands what you need.”

Each message revealed an obsession masked as concern, a possessiveness disguised as care.

As I studied the images of the stalker incidents again, something struck me that we’d completely missed before.

“Look,” I said, moving closer to the display Jace had up onthe big screen. “All three of Nova’s stalker incidents contain two separate messages.”

Logan crossed his arms over his massive chest. “Yeah. Dude is creepy as fuck.”

“We’d all thought both messages were geared to Nova and were just an extra way of being dramatic.” I pointed to the first image. “But looking at them through the Tommy filter…maybe they weren’t both meant for Nova.”

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