Page 36 of The Negotiator

Garrett was done. He’d had enough nonsense and lying. It was time the men who committed the initial scam take responsibility. They’d flipped Lauren’s life upside down. Now they could right it. Carl wasn’t there, so the least they could do was wrap his investigation up, too.

For the first few minutes Bob stayed slumped in the chair. He stared at his hands and fiddled with his watch. Garrett was about to shove the table into his midsection when Bob finally spoke up. “I went to the house to get the documents.”

The bank documents. It all came down to that initial scam. Garrett would bet Bob had carried out others since. He was trying to bury his tracks. But he’d gone too far and somewhere along the line fraud turned to murder. “This time. The last time you went and ran into Carl, and we know how that ended. Not great for Carl.”

“No, you’re wrong.” Gone was the fidgeting and lack of eye contact. Bob faced Garrett head-on as he talked. “The money stuff, yes. Carl did it and didn’t give me much of a choice but to help, but it stopped there.”

“So you’re only a certain type of criminal,” Matthias said.

“I didn’t kill Carl.” Bob turned around in his chair. He looked from Matthias to Garrett. He pleaded with his voice and with his eyes. “I helped him before, that’s true. Carl had these stories about Lauren and how terrible... But that’s it.”

Bob had convinced himself back then that Lauren deserved to get screwed. He didn’t admit it, but Garrett could hear the excuses now. “You’re trying to say you broke into Lauren’s house once but not twice.”

“I was looking for the bank statements. So long as Carl was supposedly dead there was no reason for Lauren to study them closely. She made it clear she needed the financial issues to be over. But with Carl being back, well, I thought Lauren might turn them in to the police this time and I couldn’t let that happen.” Bob made a strangled sound. “She’s not under a microscope. Not like the last time, though I don’t know why since the body was found in her house.”

The guy had started spiraling and Garrett had heard enough. The detective could ferret it all out. “You aren’t very convincing at pretending to be innocent.”

The door bumped into Matthias’s shoulder as it opened. A very pretty female face peeked inside. Garrett recognized her. The much younger, thoroughly involved Maryanne. Lauren might buy her story but Garrett couldn’t separate out her part in the fraud from everything else.

She frowned as she looked around the room. “I’m sorry...”

Her entrance had Bob blinking and snapping out of his haze. “Maryanne?”

When she saw him, her eyes widened and her grip on the edge of the door tightened into a white-knuckle grip. “I’ll come back.”

“Stop.” Matthias blocked her way, pushing her inside the room without ever touching her. That height did have its benefits.

Garrett tried to play good cop to Matthias’s pushy cop. “What do you need?”

“Lauren.” Maryanne’s gaze flicked to Bob but did not linger.

“You told them.” Anger shook Bob’s voice.

Her knees seemed to give out as she reached for the closed door. “You know it was me?”

Matthias caught her before she hit the floor or anything else. “He does. We do.”

Her vision seemed to come into focus as she looked at Garrett. “I remember you from that night. You were on the lawn with all the other police.”

“We’re investigating what happened to Carl.” Garrett decided that wasn’t exactly a lie.

“I left something out the other day.” She inhaled. “Lauren was decent and I... I wanted her to know all of it.”

Garrett had no idea what that meant. “Okay.”

“Jake also knew. He was in on Carl’s scam from the beginning.” The words rushed out of her so fast that they slurred together.

It took an extra second for Garrett to separate them and understand what she was saying. “He helped his brother disappear and trick Lauren?”

“Carl thought it was funny,” Bob said.

Maryanne nodded. “Carl knew Jake had a thing for Lauren. He used that to get him to play along. With Carl gone, Jake thought he had a chance with her.”

“That’s creepy as hell.” Matthias shook his head. “I mean, come on.”

Garrett had bigger worries. Matthias’s people had been tracking all of the interested parties and there was one currently unaccounted for. “Where is Jake now?”

No one answered him.

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