Ironic that I asked him to track an email he’d sent. The guy must have laughed his ass off about that one. I was filling him in on an investigation in which he was already a part—only on the opposite side. And he would tell me nothing about Area 51. Of course he wouldn’t.
How could he have been so blind? Valentine also knew about Devine and Sara Ewes dating, the only roommate of Devine’s who had before Ewes had been killed.
That means that the motive for killing them had nothing to do with me. That was just misdirection. It had everything to do with what Sara found out about the Locust Group. And then she told Jennifer Stamos. And Stamos had come here. Valentine had let her in. He might have eavesdropped on their conversation on the front porch. And so Stamos had to die, too. And the Eweses were in their daughter’s house. Valentine and company couldn’t take the chance that they might find additional evidence their daughter had left behind. Just like I thought before. Always go with your gut.
The symbolic murders that Devine had theorized about were all bullshit distractions. This was all about two things: money and power. But in reality, they were one and the same.
Devine left the house and went to the hospital.
CHAPTER
80
TAPSHAW LOOKED WEAK AND SHAKY. Her eyes fluttered open and then closed.
Devine studied her vitals on the monitor and noted that her oxygen levels were improved, but not nearly back to normal. She was very thin and probably didn’t have a lot of robust reserve to overcome this easily.
He sat next to her bed and held her hand and watched her slight chest rise and fall.
“I’m so sorry this happened, Jill,” he said. First she had lost the investment from Chilton and Mayflower Enterprises, and now she’d almost died. And it was probably all connected to what Devine was looking into. With Will Valentine as the unknown factor.
“Is . . . o- . . . kay, T-ravis.”
“I saw your information on the email, Jill. I saw that you traced it to Will.”
“W-Will . . . e-ma. . . .”
It now occurred to Devine that that was the reason Valentine had made a run for it and tried to kill them all. He had somehow discovered that Tapshaw had found him out.
“I’ll follow up on that, Jill. Don’t worry about that. We’ll find him. I promise. But I think I should contact your family. I know your mom lives in California. But what about your dad? And your brother, Dennis? Do you have contact info for them on your phone? Or in your room?”
He knew he couldn’t get on her phone or laptop without her passwords.
She mumbled something incoherent and then fell back asleep.
He glanced at her monitor, where everything seemed to be holding its own but didn’t seem to be improving. He wished her color looked better.
He left her there and ventured to Helen Speers’s room.
Only she wasn’t there.
“She checked herself out AMA about two hours ago,” the nurse told Devine when he made inquiries.
“ ‘Against medical advice’？”
“Yes, but I think she’ll be fine. She was already recovering nicely when she was brought in. She’s a very fit young woman. The other woman is a lot frailer and she’s also anemic. We’re watching her closely.”
“Did Speers say where she might be going? We room together.”
“She didn’t.”
He wondered if Speers and Valentine had met up. And if they had, why.
I might have enemies on both flanks right in my own camp.
*
He went to work the next day and sat beside Burners who were openly weeping in front of their computer screens. Word had obviously gotten around that the firm was going under.
He had contacted Caltech, because he remembered that was where Tapshaw’s mother taught, and left a message for her explaining a little of what had happened. He had heard nothing from Speers.
He then received a text from Montgomery, and they arranged to meet later in the city.
When he got to the café in Tribeca she was already waiting. He filled her in on what had happened at his town house.
“Oh my God,” she exclaimed.
“So, two of my roomies are now missing. And Valentine wasn’t there when the gas got turned on.”
“Was he working with the laundering operation? With Cowl?”
“I think so.” He went on to explain that Valentine had been the one to send him the emails.
“Then he must be working with them.”
“And he tried to get rid of me, and my other roommates were collateral damage. But Jill tracked him down online, and Campbell’s men have an APB out on him.”