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“No, I didn’t. I had someone do that for me.”
“Same thing. You’ve encroached on my territory, lady.”
The line went dead.
Gibson went to a drawer in the kitchen and took out a small toolbox. She spent five minutes taking the phone apart to see if it contained a listening or tracking device. It held neither. She put it back together again and checked her front door camera using her phone app.
At nine thirteen a hooded figure had come around one side of her house, placed the box on the front porch, and hurried off. She calculated the person’s height at five eight and weight at maybe 120, but that was iffy because of the bulky hoodie. Could have been a tall woman, or a small man.
She sat down at her kitchen table and stared at the reassembled phone before looking down at the butcher block table she’d bought from Wayfair with a signing bonus from ProEye.
Her life as a divorced woman with two young children had, up until today, been predictable and…safe. Her old job as a cop had been none of those things. For her kids’ sake she’d wanted to leave that old life, and she had. Then her new life had become…tedious. Now today had come along to deliver her kicking and screaming right back to her old life.
She rose and made sure every window and door was secure and then Gibson set the alarm system. She locked her gun away, grabbed the baseball bat that she’d used on the girls’ softball team in high school, and slept on the floor between her two kids. But she didn’t really sleep, because every sound in the house made her open her eyes and check for would-be murderers.
This is getting downright creepy. Should I tell Wilson Sullivan about this?
But if the police took over, she would be cut out of the investigation completely. And Sullivan might not believe her, even if she showed him the phone and the camera footage. If someone was going to threaten her family, she wanted to be in the loop and have an opportunity to do something about it. For all those reasons, Gibson decided to keep quiet for now.
She awoke with a start the next morning when she felt something on her face. She gripped the bat and was about to—
Tommy was stroking her cheek. “I hungry, Mommy.”
She blinked up at him, and looked around to see Darby staring at her from behind the side rail of her bed.
“Me too, Mommy,” Darby said. “Hu-un-gry.” She rubbed her belly.
Gibson eyed her watch. It was six thirty. She rose off the floor and took a moment to hold both her kids as tightly as she could.
If anything happened to them…
Tommy put his small hands squarely on his mother’s quivering cheeks and held her gaze. “Okay, Mommy?”
“Sure, honey, Mommy’s okay. Everything’s awesome.”
She changed Darby’s diaper, helped Tommy do his business with the toilet, cleaned them both up, and got them dressed. They filed downstairs, where she made them cereal and buttered toast, and poured out glasses of milk.
She watched them eat every bite, while she rubbed at her tired eyes and yawned and sucked down a cup of coffee like it was a shot of tequila. She had a babysitter come three days a week during the day to give her a break and allow her to work uninterrupted. Thankfully, this was one of those days.
The kids really liked Carol Silva. She was in her late twenties, tall and lean with thick dark hair and a toothy, perpetual smile, and she brought games and puzzles and other fun things for the kids to do. She was not really in Gibson’s budget, but the woman was worth every penny.
And when she arrived and took charge at eight o’clock, Gibson ran upstairs, showered in two minutes, and hit her computer. No delinquent billionaires today. Today was all about the dead Dan Pottinger.
And the anonymous woman on the phone.
CHAPTER8
DANIEL POTTINGER HAD BEEN Arecluse in life, and there was little information about the man online. There were a couple of local news stories about his donating money to a youth center, and Pottinger had also given funds to a retirement home for war vets. But there were no pictures of the man. He had no social media presence and, seemingly, no history. The only reference to his wealth was that he had been in retail investing, whatever the hell that actually meant.
Gibson did a search on Pottinger in Miami to see if he had any businesses registered there or had done any sort of commerce in the city or state. If the woman had been telling the truth there should have been some evidence of that, but Gibson found none in the usual places.
So maybe their business was in unusual places. Or maybe…
The absence of any real information about the man made Gibson’s cop antennae tingle. So maybe she had to get off the computer and do some forensic fieldwork. And an opportunity occurred to her.
She opened a drawer of her desk and removed a leather kit. Inside were items Gibson had bought with her own money when she had worked at the Jersey City Police Department.
She kissed her kids, told Silva she would be back in approximately three hours, and drove off in her van. The ride went faster this time, since she knew where she was going. Once she drew close to Stormfield she slowed the van. They might still be working the crime scene, she knew, but her idea could work nonetheless.
