“We’ve already established I’m not smart enough for metaphors.” Laughing, he finally releases me and heads to the kitchen. “Beer?”
“No thanks, but I’ll take a kombucha if there’s any left.”
He returns with two bottles—beer for himself, an orange-mango kombucha for me. “Fresh out of bee pollen, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll survive.” I crack open the bottle, then peek at my laptop. We’ve already got a few hits on Pomeroy, complete with photos, recent addresses going back five years, and a list of known associates and family members.
The asshole has a rap sheet a mile long too, but all the charges were mysteriously dropped.
Every fucking time.
No matter. He’s definitely our guy. He looks about the same age as West, but that’s not what confirms it for me.
It’s the family members.
Chapter Eight
ROOK
“Oh, shit.” I set down the kombucha and tab over to my encrypted email, where the details on Hunter’s healthcare visitor are still sitting in my inbox. “It’s his mother, Jude. Belinda Eckhardt is Jacob Pomeroy’s mother.”
“Who the fuck is Belinda Eckhardt?”
Ignoring him, I export all the details on Pomeroy into a new document, send it to the printer, then submit similar queries for Alonzo Florentine. While that’s running, I pull up one of my own databases—the list of Forsythe wedding guests we’ve been able to positively identify so far.
Bingo. Belinda Eckhardt is on the list. No wonder her name sounded familiar.
No Pomeroy yet, but hey. I’m just getting warmed up.
I import his photos from the report and run them against our footage from the cathedral cameras. It takes less than five seconds for my program to confirm the match, serving up a shot of him in the third pew from the altar, sitting right next to his mother.
“This has shadow magic society written all over it,” I say, tabbing back to the query results on Florentine. His rap sheet isn’t quite as extensive as Pomeroy’s, but for the most part, their lives seem to be running on parallel tracks.
Once a fucking moron, always a fucking moron.
I print out those results too. I don’t recognize any of the names on Florentine’s list of associates, but when I export his photos into my wedding database, we get another immediate match.
Bastard’s sitting right there on the other side of Pomeroy. The rest of the people in their row are women, but it’s not a stretch to assume Full Metal Jacket was at the wedding, too.
And if he was, I’ll find him.
“Far be it from me to interrupt a genius on the verge of discovery,” Jude says, “but any time you feel like clueing me in, I’m here for it. Preferably before that vein on your forehead bursts.”
“Huh?” I glance up at him, my mind still churning through this new info, connecting dots and opening up all new lines of questioning and—
“You’ve got this vein, see?” Jude taps a spot above his eyebrow. “Throbbing like a cock in—”
“Hold that simile.Please.” I head over to the printer to collect the pages on our shadow mage pricks. Flipping through them, I give Jude the rundown on my findings.
“So this Belinda Eckhardt,” he says. “She’s shadow magic society as well?”
“Yes. Also a doctor working at—drumroll, please—Garrison Medical.”
“All roads lead back to that fucking hospital, don’t they? Maybe I should blow it up.”
“Focus, Jude. Focus.”
“Right. Shadow magic society… You were saying?”
