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“Okay,” I agreed, nodding.
“I know you would prefer to handle it yourself, but your priority is getting Shawn safe. And hopefully getting some answers out of her while you’re at it.”
“Got it, boss,” I agreed, nodding.
“The fuck is this?” Quin asked, nodding behind me toward the front doors.
“Oh, delivery for Nia.”
“Who the fuck is doing deliveries at this hour?” he asked as I reached for my wallet for a tip.
“Anyone if you’re willing to pay enough,” I told him, grabbing Nia’s meal, then giving the delivery guy a couple hundred for his trouble.
“It’s a miracle you still have any money to recklessly spend,” Quin said, shaking his head.
“When it comes to a certain tax bracket, you are usually living off dividends, not touching the bottom line at all,” I told him, shrugging.
I wasn’t ashamed of my wealth. I was born into it. It wasn’t like I could help it. And the way I saw it, the more money I made, the more money I had to over-tip a delivery guy or put new wings on hospitals or women’s shelters or whatever other charity asked something from me.
Besides, it wasn’t like Quin was struggling either. Was he generationally wealthy? No. But he was well-off. Well-off enough not to even flinch at Nia’s ever-increasing salary demands. She’d surpassed my rate well over a year before. And for good reason. I knew this. Nia knew this. And Quin himself knew it as well.
“Alright. Let me go bribe Nia into getting me an address, so I can get the plan in motion,” I said, hoping my words didn’t come out as hopeful as I felt.
Because as much as I absolutely wanted to keep Shawn safe from Adams who she likely had no idea was still alive and well, I knew it was more than that. That my interest in being trapped somewhere with her had nothing to do with threats on her life and a hell of a lot more to do with what I wanted to do with her while we were in lockdown together.
About an hour later, I had an address, and I was in my car on the way toward the neighborhood about fifteen minutes on the outskirts of Navesink Bank.
Shawn lived in an upper-middle-class townhouse development. Which might have surprised me if I didn’t hear from many women over the years that even though they could afford to live in a single-family house, they chose townhouses or apartments because they liked the idea of a neighbor being close enough to hear them scream if something happened.
Women, unfortunately, lived in a world where they had to think about shit like that.
And I think it possibly went double for someone like Shawn, someone who apparently had some sort of dark secrets surrounding her if she’d so confidently pulled a gun on Adams and pulled the trigger without so much as a flinch.
Shawn lived in the tan vinyl-sided townhouse between two brown stone-fronted ones. Her car wasn’t in the driveway, but I figured she likely parked in the garage like it seemed half of the neighborhood did.
I parked and made my way up the front steps, wondering what kind of place I could expect from Shawn, but coming up blank.
When there was no answer after the third knock, my stomach tightened as I went back to my car to grab a lock picking kit out of my trunk.
I let myself in and walked right into a foyer with stairs that went both down and up. Two doors were to either side of me. One went to a half bath. The other, I assumed, was the garage.
“Shawn?” I called, my stomach tightening when there was nothing but silence in the house.
Taking a steadying breath, I went up the short staircase, finding myself standing next to the kitchen with its black cabinets and stainless steel appliances. The whole space was immaculate. Which made sense since Shawn wasn’t someone who cooked, and likely only used her kitchen to make coffee in her pricey coffee machine or stock takeaway in the fridge.
The living room was directly forward from the kitchen and was oddly impersonal. Almost as if Shawn had picked out the showroom at some store and had them move it in. There was a small dark gray sectional with a tufted footrest and ugly throw pillows in colors of gray, black, and a splash of aqua.
“Hm,” I mumbled, a little disappointed, and I realized I’d hoped to glean more about the woman from her home. “Shawn!” I called, turning to find another staircase leading up.
To the bedrooms, I figured, and took off up them.
The first room was to the left, and was empty save for a treadmill, a fold-up table, and what looked like three of four moving boxes, still unpacked.
“Shawn?” I called again, dread starting to spread through my system as I continued up the stairs to the last room in the house.
