“Let me guess. Your mother is horrified by the fact that you spend all your time researching gruesome murders?”
“Pretty much,” Ethan said. “Her husband doesn’t help. He thinks it’s a sign of fundamental amorality or something. A small price to pay for her having a decent guy in her life.”
“Being worried about you means she cares, at least,” I said. I finger-combed my damp hair into a semblance of proper order.
“Do you ever talk to your mom?”
“Once a year on her birthday,” I replied. “She swooped in to play Good Mother for a few weeks after the attack, but it didn’t last long. We get along better at a distance anyway. She just was never meant to be a parent. What about your dad? You close with him?”
“He died,” Ethan said plainly.
“I’m sorry,” I said, blanching.
“Don’t be. It was a long time ago,” he replied, seemingly unbothered. “I could use some breakfast. Can I get you anything?”
“Eight gallons of coffee and something loaded with carbs,” I said. “And I should probably go check in again.”
“Or you could stay here,” Ethan said mildly.
“I don’t think we’re ready for cohabitation,” I told him.
“It’s not that,” he said. “You were attacked. I know I’m going to feel a lot better if you’re not alone.”
“I don’t—” I hesitated. “I don’t know what this is, between us.”
“It doesn’t have to be anything. Let’s start with breakfast, and go from there.”
He kissed my forehead before I left—just about the only part of me that didn’t hurt. I tried to pace, but my bruised ribs wouldn’t let me, so I curled up in the chair in front of the laptop instead, poking my way through what little information there was on AJ Stahl again. I tried to make those old photos match the guy who’d jumped me, but it had been too long. He could have grown up into anyone.
I’d left the phone tracker open on the side of the screen. Suddenly the little dot vanished, the map reloading to a new location. Just as abruptly, it pinged “signal lost.” Someone had turned on the phone and then turned it off. But I’d had it for a brief second. I had an address.
I copied the address, heart hammering, and plugged it into the search. A nail salon in Redmond? Wait—it was one unit of the building. I checked the other businesses. A dog grooming place—probably not sinister—a pho joint, a board-game shop, and something called Jessup Consulting.
“Vague. Not at all suspicious,” I muttered. I pulled up their website. The web design was definitely criminal, with retina-searing colors and a stock photo of a comically serious-looking dude with a wired earpiece and a sharp suit. The header told me they provided security and investigation services.
The guy in my hotel room was a PI?
A personal grudge was one thing. Hiring people to come after me—that was something else.
Twenty minutes later, Ethan arrived with takeout to find me lost in a flurry of open tabs and scribbled notes. I’d tracked down the name of the owner of the company, Terry Jessup, and from there found a half dozen current and former employees. None of them were my guy. Jessup Consulting came up as a minor note in a few articles, but nothing relevant—work for corporations and small companies, mostly. Nothing that stank of “violent personal vendetta.”
“Why would this guy attack you?” Ethan asked. “It doesn’t exactly sound like normal PI work.”
I frowned. Ethan was right. At a glance, Jessup Consulting didn’t seem like thugs for hire. And why attack me? He hadn’t killed me, and he could have. So rough me up? Why?
Except that he hadn’t attacked me, had he? Not exactly. He’d lunged for me.
Or he’d lunged for the door.
I’d surprised him in my room, and he’d tried to get out. And I’d gone completely psycho, trying to brain him with an iPhone. I rubbed my forehead with the tips of my fingers. “I went after him. He was just trying to stop me,” I realized, and almost laughed. He hadn’t been trying to kill me at all.
“He still broke into your room,” Ethan pointed out. “If he wasn’t after you, what was he after?”
“All he got was my phone, as far as I know. And there’s nothing incriminating on that,” I said. You couldn’t be friends with Liv and not have a little of her paranoia rub off on you. Sensitive stuff did not belong on the cloud.
“Is there anything else they could have taken?” he asked.
“I checked all my gear. It’s still here,” I said. Unless. I walked painfully over to my roller bag and unzipped it. My cameras were there—but I popped one open and sure enough, the data card was gone. “Fuck. Oh, fuck.”
“Was there something important on the drives?” Ethan asked.
“Yeah, an entire wedding,” I said. “Shit. I hadn’t uploaded everything yet! Goddammit. I always upload everything right away, but I was starving and then he was in the room.”
“You’re missing wedding photos,” Ethan repeated, carefully neutral.
“They’re important,” I insisted.
“Of course. But they aren’t going to get you killed or arrested, so I’m going to call this a win,” Ethan said. “Jessup Consulting will have them. We can get them back. Especially if they don’t want to get reported to the police for having an employee assault you.”
“Okay.” I took a breath, released it. Calm. I could do calm.
“Sit. Eat. Relax. I’ll see if I can turn up anything more,” he said. He eyed the tabs in the browser skeptically. “Do you ever close tabs?”
“I might need them later.”
“One of them is playing ‘Old Town Road.’”
“I usually just mute the computer when that happens,” I said. “Easier than finding it.”
He sighed and sat down to work.
After I’d eaten, with Ethan still rooting unsuccessfully around the internet for signs of my assailant, I went on a pilgrimage to the ice machine. When I stepped back out of the alcove, bucket of ice in hand, I found Chief Bishop waiting for me.
“Jesus Christ,” she said as soon as she saw me. “Who the hell did that to you?”
“There was a scuffle over the bouquet, and I caught an elbow,” I said. She blinked at me. “I’m a wedding photographer. Sorry, bad joke. I got mugged.” Close enough.
“Here?” she asked in disbelief.
“I was back in Seattle shooting a wedding.”
“You didn’t mention you were leaving town,” she said, hand on her hip. She’d parked her car slantwise across two spots, right next to mine.
“I didn’t realize I had to check in with you about it,” I replied.
She frowned at me. “Olivia’s death has been ruled a suicide. We’ve released the body. The funeral is on Tuesday,” she said.
My balance faltered. I managed not to stumble, but only just. It was official, then.
“I think it’s a mistake,” she added flatly.
“You think Liv was murdered?” I asked. She nodded. “Then why—”