Page 21 of Quiet Protector
Her gun is held high and without a quiver. She’s assessing her surroundings as all good agents do, but Hugo still treats her as if she’s a child. “Stay behind me.”
Isabelle loses the chance to remind him that she’s an agent when Hugo removes a gun from the back of his jeans. It isn’t illegal to carry a concealed gun in this state, but I doubt Hugo has a permit. Even if his alias could have passed the background check, his weapon of choice is too high-powered to be licensed.
With silence paramount, my thoughts drift to the past. The wind whistling through the cracks of the floorboards reminds me of the Greggs’ family ranch the year they moved in. It was rundown and old despite Liam having access to a bank account full of funds. I guess an eighty-three-thousand-dollar ranch paid for in cash is less conspicuous than a two-million-dollar penthouse. No one batted an eyelid when Carlyle Shroud spent fifty-eight thousand dollars in one afternoon at Hopeton thirty years ago, so would they care if a man funded a move to the country with tainted money. Money makes the world go around. Cash just slows its rotations.
My mind snaps back to the present when Hugo bumps me with his shoulder before nudging his head to the door, instructing for me to knock. Although stunned he’s handing the reins to me, I do as requested. An odd sensation is filling the air, encouraging our joint operation.
The door swings open when I tap on the weather-damaged material. “I'm an FBI field agent, is anyone home?”
I hear Isabelle’s swallow more than I see it when Hugo’s eyes rocket my way. It’s the fight of my life not to smile at the shock on his face. I had wondered if Isaac’s security team had looked into me after my date with Isabelle months ago. Now I know without a doubt. I bet he didn’t find anything. I’m as good at covering my tracks as my father is.
Endeavoring to keep my focus on the task at hand, I shift on my feet to face Isabelle. “Did you hear that?” When her brows scrunch, confused, I try another angle. “IthinkI heard someone yelling for help.” Agents can’t enter a property without a warrantunlessit’s to prevent an occupant inside from being seriously injured, hence my belief I hear someone shouting for help.
Hugo clicks onto my ruse quicker than Isabelle. “Yeah, I heard it, too. We should probably check on them.”
Hugo puts his years in the military to good use when he silently signals for me to enter the residence before him. While he sweeps the lower left of the shambled conditions, I take the right. Isabelle is here with us, but the stench of rotten food scraps and the scattering of rats has her not as eager to lead our investigation. She’d rather hang toward the back.
Signs someone lives here is exposed when Isabelle switches on the tube lighting wired throughout the beamed roof. The smell alone should render this residence uninhabitable, much less the number of rodents. I’ve spotted five rats so far, and I’ve barely stepped into the living room. Carlyle clearly didn’t get his money’s worth with his groomed bride. This place is a pig-sty.
When Hugo signals for me to clear the lower level of the property while he and Izzy take the upper half, I nod, agreeing with him. I’d rather Isabelle stay with me, but I can’t seek hidden clues if my every move is being watched. Carlyle purchased his wife at a live auction. They are invitation-only events, which means Carlyle most likely knew the men helming the operation. Although it was well before Isaac Holt’s time, so Isabelle’s attendance wouldn’t cause a conflict of interest, the man believed to shelter Isaac’s empire was most certainly in operation back then. Henry Gottle has been in this game since the day he took his first breath.
As the creaking of Isabelle and Hugo’s steps sound through my ears, I move into the kitchen. The floor is coated with food scraps, giving the room an odd fermented smell.
My heart falls from my ribcage when Isabelle’s squeal erupts into my ears. I dart for the stairwell, stomping halfway across the dirty living room before I realize the cause of her fright. Hugo’s boot broke through the frail wooden steps, sprinkling the plastic-covered couches underneath with shards of wood.
While Hugo pulls his foot out of the big hole, I move closer to the sofas that look like they were purchased right around the time Megan’s mother was bought. The plastic looks like it was placed on them to protect the floral material from being worn. Only a trained agent would know to look deeper into the reasoning. Why would you bother keeping a couch in new-like condition when you live in the equivalent of a pig-sty?
My brows pull together when the scent of dampness fills my nostrils at the removal of the first lot of plastic. We’re heading toward winter, so the conditions aren’t humid enough to cause the plastic to sweat. It appears as if the couches were cleaned but covered while still damp.
But why clean spotless couches? That doesn’t make any sense.Unless…
I rip open the drawers in the entryway table before making my way into the kitchen. I don’t have my equipment case with me, but even a novice can scan for bodily fluids with basic gear you’ll find in any house. Although I don’t recommend doing this if you enjoy vacationing. Semen shines the brightest because of its mix of chemicals, and it lasts the longest, so you’ll generally find every bit of bedding in a standard hotel room will be coated in it. The amount will have you demanding to speak to the manager immediately.
When I find a roll of Scotch tape and a blue and purple marker, I push some rubbish from the kitchen counter to the floor so I can turn my iPhone into a UV light. After covering the flashlight in the back of my phone with a layer of Scotch tape, I color over it with the blue marker before adding a second layer of tape. Once the outer layer is filled in with the purple marker, abracadabra, I have a bodily-fluid detector.
With the sound of dripping water filling my ears, I wave my iPhone over the three-seater couch. As suspected, it has been scrubbed clean. Alas, unless you use a ton of bleach, semen, urine, sweat, and all those other nasty bodily fluids remain. The amount of semen on the three-seater couch isn’t surprising considering it appears to have been purchased when Carlyle was in his late twenties, early thirties, but the other compound is shocking. I can’t tell if it’s urine or sweat, but considering it is mainly on the base of the couches, I’ll go with the former.
With my fingerprints covered by the waistband of my shirt I tugged out of my trousers, I toss the removable seat covers off the couch to expose the sofa bed underneath. The damp smell I mentioned earlier doubles when I carefully fold out the bed. The mattress is the cause of the horrid smell filling my nostrils. It’s stained—badly—enough to have me convinced the Shroud ranch doesn’t have a downstairs bathroom.
Although disgusted about how some people live, ten minutes later, I’ve failed to stumble onto any evidence that will aid in my investigation of the Castros and Bobrovs. If I hadn’t seen Megan’s birth certificate, the mess would have me convinced Carlyle never had a wife, much less one trained to answer his every whim.
As I climb the stairwell, taking extra care not to fall through like Hugo did, I overhear Hugo telling Isabelle the master bedroom’s closets are full of clothes, but the room is empty.
When the creak of warped floorboards announces my arrival, Isabelle’s eyes swing my way. They are more questioning than her words could ever be. She’s hoping I stumbled onto a vault of secrets. All I got was hives.
“Excluding a dozen rats, there’s nothing down there but rubbish.”
She looks as disappointed as me but knows a lack of evidence doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t something shady going on. Carlyle’s checks have been forwarded to this address for over two decades. His truck is parked at the front of his equipment shed. So where the hell is he?
As my heart beats out of funky tune, I follow the slant of Isabelle’s head. There’s one final room we’ve yet to search. It’s at the very end of the hall.
Once Isabelle is safely behind us as she was when we entered the lower level of the property, Hugo curls his hand around the brass doorknob. After twisting it as far as it will go, he swings his eyes to me. “One… two… three.”
On three, he flings open the door for me to enter it. Bleach is the first thing to hit me. Shock closely chases it. This room is nothing like the ones downstairs. It’s white, spotlessly clean, and reeks like someone showers in bleach.
“Holy shit,” I mutter under my breath when I take in the room as a whole. Megan’s medical records revealed that she’s unhinged, but this is ridiculous. Every inch of her room is covered with cut-outs of Isaac’s brother, Nicholas. Not even the ceiling is free of his face. For the most part, the collection seems to have been amassed through the gossip magazines that tail every move Nick’s band makes, but there are a handful of images that deserve closer scrutiny. They couldn’t have been taken by members of the paparazzi. They’re in closed quarters—private quarters—such as childhood bedrooms.
I stop scanning the images for any pictures that don’t include Nick when Isabelle asks, “Is this Jenni, Nick’s fiancée?”
