Coming from anyone else, that might have seemed like prying, but Amanda knew me well enough that I wasn’t offended. If anything, it made my heart feel warm that she was seemingly so concerned. However cool I thought I was playing everything, it obviously wasn’t cool enough to fool her.
“No, nothing else is going on, just the bar,” I said. “Between the call and the investors and the bar and my brothers, it’s just a lot.”
“I understand that,” she said, looking deeply into my eyes. I could feel her concern in that gaze. “I just want you to know that I’m here to help you with anything you need. You don’t need to worry about it. Whatever I can handle on my own, I will, and if you are needed, I will make sure you stay in the loop and I remove as much of the stress as possible.”
“I know. And I appreciate that,” I said. “I really do. I have no idea how I would get along without you in my corner.”
“Poorly,” she said, deadpan.
I laughed. “You might be right.” I stood, heading to the nightstand where I kept my wallet. Stuffing it into my pocket, I turned back to her. “Well, now that the call is done, I am going to go head out and take care of some things. If you’d like to join me, you can or you can stay here at the hotel. Either way.”
She seemed to debate for a moment and then came to a decision.
“I think I’ll stay here actually. I have a few things I need to take care of myself. If you need me for anything, just give me a call,” she said.
“Will do. Thanks again, Amanda,” I said. She smiled and nodded sheepishly, and I left.
As I arrived at Mason’s, my phone started ringing. Since it was a rental car, I didn’t have my usual hookup of display and Bluetooth, so I had to fish it out of my pocket. I thought it might be Amanda, changing her mind, but when I looked at the screen, I saw it was my PI.
“Find anything out?” I asked almost immediately.
“Well, hello to you, too, Mr. Anderson. Yes, as a matter of fact, I did find something out,” he said.
“Sorry. What did you find?”
“Well, it isn’t exactly great news for your theory. It turns out Danny has been getting himself into trouble recently, doing a lot of gambling and racking up debt,” he said.
“Is that so?” I asked.
“Yes, and the gambling debt is rather large. It’s more than just a couple days’ profits from the bar. He’s in pretty deep right now, but he seems to be making good on his payments. One of the bookies he owes isn’t too far from where you saw the money exchange. I’ll be honest, Tom, I think what you saw was a man paying off part of a debt, not paying for a job.”
“Shit, are you sure?” I asked, pissed that the one lead I had was now slipping through my fingers.
“I’ll put it this way. With the money he owes to various bookies in and out of town, he wouldn’t be able to get ahold of enough money to have someone burn a place down. Just looking at all the pieces, it doesn’t seem to fit.”
I sighed heavily and then thanked him for the call. Hanging up, I looked up at Mason’s house, dreading going inside. I had to deliver the news and tell my brothers that we were back to square one.
When I got inside, I called them all into the living room, and we sat down in our usual places. When we were all sitting, I took a deep breath.
“I just talked to the PI,” I said. “He doesn’t think it was Danny.”
“What?” Jordan nearly screamed. “Of course it was. You heard what he said when he walked past you!”
“I’m not ruling out that he could just be a major asshole, Jordan. He just might not be a criminal asshole,” I said.
“What made the PI think that?” Tyler asked, rubbing his jaw. It was a habit he’d had since childhood when he was confused about something.
“Apparently, Danny owes a couple of bookies in town a lot of money. What we saw was more than likely him paying his bookie off, not paying for a service. My PI thinks he wouldn’t be able to get ahold of the kind of money a professional hit would take.”
“Bullshit,” Jordan said, steaming. He was shaking his head slowly and staring at his cup of coffee. “Where there is a will there is a way, and that rat bastard had the will, Tom. I can feel it.”
“Well, maybe it was—I am not ruling it out completely. But I am saying we need to go about this carefully. He is just as likely to be innocent,” I said.
There was a murmur of agreement among the brothers, but it took a moment for Jordan to join in. When he did, the reluctance was palpable.
“So,” Mason said, “now what?”
10
Amanda
By that night, I felt like I had pretty much gotten into the groove of working from the hotel.
Much like Tom said, it wasn’t too much different than working at the home office. Just more comfortable and without a bunch of other coworkers wandering around all day. The room also didn’t have a full-service coffee room within just a few steps, which was a downside. But there was a perfectly good coffee maker I was getting used to. I had put in an online order for some of my favorite coffee to be delivered the next day, and that would definitely help.
Not having Tom there in the room helped me focus more. When we were at the headquarters, he spent most of his time in his office. While I went in and out throughout the day and accompanied him to meetings and conferences, we weren’t usually in such close contact so much of the time.
Not only was having him that close to me so much a bit of a distraction from the work I was supposed to be doing, but it was stirring up thoughts I really shouldn’t be having.
It was a relief to have him leave so I could concentrate completely on the work I needed to be doing. Right then it was sending off what felt like a never-ending list of emails. I had to keep up with the correspondence for a wide variety of clients, vendors, and others within the industry. I also had invoices to send out and payment acknowledgments to make.
In addition to all the emails, I had to go over the initial plans the marketing department had submitted for the upcoming holiday season. A couple of years ago, Tom had started entrusting the first look at these plans and proposals to me. He had the final say, but I looked them over first, made comments and offered suggestions, then passed them along to him when I felt they were ready for him to see.
I had to admit, the marketing department seemed to be in good form already this year. We were gearing up to have a very busy and hopefully very successful holiday season, so their marketing had to be on point. I was already pretty impressed by what I was seeing, but there were a few things I thought could be tweaked.
I looked over at the time and was shocked to see how late it had gotten. Most of the day I was on conference calls with Landon making sure I stayed on top of everything that was going on at the office so I could relay it to Tom. The conference calls pushed back getting my actual work done, so now it was several hours after the usual end of my day.
As if that thought had sent some sort of message out into the world, I heard a knock on the room door. Curious about who it could be, I got up and went over to look through the peephole. Ava stood in the middle of the hallway, waving.