Where was he born? Carmel.
What was his first pet’s name? Rocco.
What is his mother’s maiden name? Gerard.
All things only someone who knew Huntley would have known. Or knew Huntley’s wife.
“Listen to me. I do not have time to dick around with you. Here is the deal. I find the guy who took your product and tell you where he is. What you do with him after that is your problem. My fee is twenty-five percent of whatever your take is.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Sinead held out her hands as two scales. “Seventy-five percent of something. One hundred percent of nothing. Your choice.”
“Twenty percent.”
Sinead’s jaw dropped. “Are you fucking negotiating with me right now? I am not playing. You want your guy, I’ll get him, but you’re going to do what I tell you and pay me what I tell you. Let’s just say I have people in my life who know how to collect on debt. Right now I need some details about your wife.”
Huntley’s lip twitched and Sinead got that feeling again. Like it wouldn’t be out of the question for this guy to make a fist and punch her.
Instead he said, “You’re a real bitch, you know that?”
She knew it now. Because she felt bitchy and mean and angry. But feeling all those things was a whole lot better than feeling powerless and destroyed and sad.
“Let’s keep it simple,” she said. “What’s your wife’s name?”
He sighed. “Mary.”
“Last name?” Sinead pushed.
“Gallagher. But I don’t get why any of this is important.”
Sinead watched as he ran his hand through his hair. His brow was damp with sweat. Yeah, this guy was in something up to his eyeballs. At least three weeks, Sinead thought. Three weeks at least since she’d been gone. Not with her husband. Not here at home. Gone. Along with all her clothes, makeup. Not even a body wash a woman might use. Sinead had to buy all of that when she started staying over.
Garrett Huntley was not a good man. I’ve corrected an injustice.
“You have no idea where she is right now, do you?”
He slumped. “We had a fight and… she left. No, I don’t really have any way of getting in touch with her right now. But I know her, and she’ll be back. She loves me.”
“As you keep saying. Where was she from? Around here?”
“No, I met her back on the east coast. We were lawyers, working for the same firm in DC.”
“Anything else you can tell me? Her favorite restaurant in DC? Maybe a coffee shop she always went to? Some detail about her.”
Garrett shrugged and looked away from her. “I don’t know why you care. This has nothing to do with Mary. Someone jacked my safe. This is a drug transaction. Clean and simple.”
Sinead didn’t say the word, but it popped up in her head in big bright shiny letters.
LIAR.
Finally Garrett threw his hands up in the air. “She was born in Ireland. Raised there until she came over to the States. Does that count?”
Lovely Irish name. Do you spell it correctly?
Yeah, Sinead thought. That counted.
“I find him. I get twenty-five percent.”
“Fine,” Garrett said. “Deal. Whatever. You seriously think you can find him?”
Sinead smiled. “I think I already know where he is.”
* * *
Garrett watched as Sinead got in her car. She was texting something to someone, then she started the car and drove off.
Garrett picked up his phone and called his father. Finally something going his way.
“The cop was here. The one who turned off the alarm.”
A pause. “Why?”
“I think… I think she might have had something going on with him. She seemed pretty upset when she found out there was no David Whitmore. Kept mumbling about her missing toothbrush. When a woman looks like that when she finds out what’s gone down…I bet he was fucking her. Now she says she can find him.”
“Do you believe her?”
“She’s pissed,” Garrett said. “A woman scorned and all that. Maybe if he told her something… something real about his life. She could be our only lead.”
“Find her. Follow her.”
“Done.”
“And Garrett, don’t fuck this up again.”
Garrett gritted his teeth. There were times he really hated his father. “Yes, Father.”
Chapter 12
Declan stared at the open monitor on his desk and read the letter he’d written to Sinead. Each word of it crafted to convey his apologies, trivialize what had happened between them, and make her angry enough to label him a douchebag and write him off forever.
He figured that happened at the lack of judgment line.