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No, what bothered Harley was the wall. Jade was physically closer to him than she had ever been, but more closed off than ever before. He supposed he should be relieved that she didn’t get too attached to him too quickly, but the opposite reaction was unnerving and very unlike his Jade. The girl he remembered was an emotional open book. So full of love, so trusting.
This Jade was older, harder, less willing to open up to him or anyone else, he’d wager. It wasn’t something he’d done, either. It had to be Lance. That guy had taken her innocence and stomped all over it. After going through all that, perhaps she didn’t have the right head space for anything beyond the physical.
Maybe despite everything, Harley was still not good enough for her. Perhaps he would do better to focus on his case than to focus on his ex. That was what he was getting paid to do, after all.
A familiar ring tone roused him from his thoughts. It was Isaiah. Harley had been expecting this call, although he hadn’t been expecting it this early in the morning. Then again, Isaiah knew what hours he kept.
He reached for his phone. “This is Dalton.”
“Hey, bro,” he answered in a chipper voice, despite it being five in the morning.
Harley chuckled. While technically his employee, Isaiah was more his friend than anything. He kept things sailing smoothly for him. “Good morning.”
“So, I got your email about the equipment install and the list of people to run through the database. I’ve got good news and bad news. How do you want it?”
Harley bit back a groan. “Bad news first. Always bad news first.”
“Okay. We’re out of stock on a few items we need to install at the Charleston residence, so I’m afraid I won’t be able to send someone down right away.”
Damn it. “How long are we talking?”
“Just a few days. Maybe Monday. It depends on how quickly we can get our hands on it all.”
Since Harley was staying with Jade, he supposed a delay wasn’t the end of the world, but he still didn’t like it. What if this had been a paying client? Or someone without a security detail to keep her safe while they waited on some video camera to be in stock? “Okay. But I want you to have a chat with inventory control. We should never be out. We should have a backup for our backups. Got it?”
“Roger that.”
“And what’s the good news?”
“That I have your list of addresses for all the parents and most of the daughters.”
“Excellent. Email them to me.”
“Already done. Check your in-box.”
Harley pulled the phone from his ear and noticed the new-message alert. He opened the email and scanned through the list of names and addresses. It was incomplete, as Isaiah had mentioned. The daughter of the Steele family wasn’t there. “What about Morgan Steele? She’s not on here.”
“I told you I had most of the daughters. She’s my exception. It’s going to take a little more work for her. Morgan’s last known physical address was in Charleston with her parents, but that was before she went to college. After that, all I could get was a PO box at the University of South Carolina.”
Harley frowned. “I doubt she’s still in college.”
“Correct. School records show she graduated several years back. She’s likely got nothing in her name to trace. The Steele family is rich beyond belief, with multiple houses and investment properties. I’d bet she’s living in a property owned by her father’s trust or beneath their corporate umbrella. She probably has corporate credit cards and offshore accounts.”
“What, no driver’s license?”
“She has one, but it lists the family home as her address. My research shows she works at the DC facility for the family company, so I’ll probably be able to get her contact information from there. Just give me a day or two.”
“Steele. Why do I know that name?” Harley asked. He’d copied down the names from the hospital files, but hadn’t done any research of his own yet.
“It sounded familiar to me, too, so I started doing a little research on them. The family founded Steele Tools, man. Apparently it was started in Charleston over a hundred years ago by their great-great-grandfather. They started off selling through catalogs and now they’re in every home improvement store in the country. The Steele family is one of the wealthiest and most powerful in South Carolina. Or dare I say, America. They’ve spawned their share of CEOs, but also a senator, a judge, doctors, lawyers...you name it. Morgan works for the company, as do most of the people in the family.”
The longer Isaiah spoke, the more Harley’s stomach started to ache. He’d had no idea his list of candidates included such a high-profile family. Swapping babies started to make a little more sense now. Well, at least why one of the families might be targeted. Once you were that well-known, you were the focus of every crazy who wanted a piece of what you had.
“I need you to find out everything you can about the Steele family, especially over the last forty years. Any little detail could be important.”
“A family like that is going to be in the papers every time one of them takes a big crap.”
“I don’t care. I want it all. Get your guys on it. Especially focus on Morgan Steele. If she’s our girl, I want to know as much as I can about her. And get those parts we need for the surveillance system down here. I can’t watch this house every second.”
