Adored (Masters and Mercenaries #8.5)(41)

“I’ll take it. I need some quiet and I can’t get it in that office. I swear I don’t know how Eve does it. I can’t have sessions because someone is always knocking on my door. And damn but there are a lot of babies up there now. Cute little things but…there is one hallway you don’t want to walk down.”

“He’s right about that. The babies can make quite a stink when they want to,” Li explained. “Now, do you want to know what I found out about your case or not? I came down here to give you a report. These two latched on. Kai wanted to nag you and Tag wants lunch at Top. I’m not going to wake him up until someone can shove a forkful of food in his mouth.”

“How are you going to get him to Top if you don’t wake him up?”

“Oh, he’ll sleep walk for ya. You gotta point him in the right direction and he walks fine. And that’s why you have to work all this out with your girl before the baby gets here.” He pointed to Taggart, who didn’t move an inch. “Because this is what you’ll be like after. Ain’t that right, Tag?”

Taggart made some kind of huffing sound and then went still again.

He didn’t even think about what would happen after the baby got here. He tried not to think past the now. Making plans would only screw up a good thing. He passed Kai the documents and all the information on the building he was going to buy. While Kai went over his paperwork, Mitch turned back to Liam.

“Okay, can you tell me what’s going on?”

“I’ve had surveillance on both the Dixon brothers for the last six weeks.”

That didn’t sound right. “I told you I was only interested in what Harvey Dixon did when he got out of rehab.”

Li shook his head. “You did, but I changed up the plan. Look, I have more experience at these things than you do. There’s always a bloody twist. So I’ve been watching both brothers and I did a thorough assessment of Dixon Technologies. The name sounds impressive, and in some ways it is. Harvey was the idea man while Patrick handled the money and the actual business operations. The company itself and the patents they hold are worth roughly three million dollars, but it turns out Patrick is a brilliant investor. He diversified the company a few years ago and now they have assets in excess of nine million. The trouble is there are three siblings involved. Patrick has a twin. Her name is Frances Dixon, and apparently she tends to side with Harvey against Patrick.”

“Good for them. None of this explains why I’m getting my ass kicked regularly.” The phone calls had started two weeks before. He got robocalls at all hours of the night. They began at precisely ten p.m. and went on until six a.m. He’d turned off his phone after the first few and then changed his number.

“Adam traced the calls back to a computer, but it was at a public library. Someone got on the system and upgraded the thing, so to speak. That’s why you only got the calls late a night. They were set up to turn on after the library closed and everyone was gone. Obviously this is something a man of Harvey Dixon’s brilliance can do, but it’s also something most hackers can handle. I’ve also used surveillance footage and found the kid who’s been vandalizing the building and your car. His name’s Austin Hunt. Seventeen. Juvie record about a mile long. I took everything to Brighton and he sent his men out to bring the bugger in for questioning, but the kid’s in the wind.”

He looked down at the picture Liam placed in front of him. He was a kid, but he was a kid who had fired a gun at Laurel. “So you think Dixon hired this kid.”

“I think one of the Dixons hired this kid. The question is which one.”

“The real question I have is why any of them would bug me. I’m just the damn lawyer. I’m representing a company that made it to market first. I’m not responsible for the invention. If I drop the case, someone else will pick it up. They can’t stop this from happening.”

Liam sat back. “No, at the end of the day, there’s nothing any of them can do, so I have to either come up with a logical reason for this to be happening or accept that Patrick Dixon is telling the truth and this is all Harvey. Harvey could be paying the kid. According to Derek, Austin Hunt is known for hiring himself out. He’s already worked for a couple of area drug dealers and his father had mob ties.”

But Liam was suspicious, and everyone who knew the McKay-Taggart boys knew Liam O’Donnell was the one with an almost sixth sense when it came to crime. “You want to dig deeper?”

“I do. I know you want this to be cut and dry, but I don’t think it is. I think there’s more here and I need to find some kind of money trail. Whether it leads from Harvey Dixon to Austin Hunt or somewhere else, my every instinct is telling me to find the money. It’s buried deep, but it’s here. In the meantime, you’ve got the new security system both here and at the house. If it escalates, we’ll put someone on you twenty-four seven.”

“How is the guard on Laurel doing?” He wanted to forbid her to work at all, but he was smart enough to know that wouldn’t fly. However, he’d also known the moment she moved into his house that she would become a target. He’d set her up with an air horn and a bottle of pepper spray, and a bodyguard for the hours he wasn’t with her.

She didn’t know about the bodyguard. He pretty much hoped she never found out about the bodyguard.

“I’ve put Remy Guidry on her. He’s one of the five professional bodyguards Tag recently hired. Adam and Jake used to do all our close cover, but that’s not possible anymore. With the corporate accounts we’ve recently signed, we’ve got a lot of bodyguard work.”