Defending Harlow (Mountain Mercenaries #4)(81)

“Bye.”

He kissed her one more time before heading for her door. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the night before, but she knew he’d make a stop at his apartment before meeting with the rest of his friends at The Pit.

After learning about what he’d done to Brian the day before, she felt safer than she had in a long time. She doubted he or his friends would be harassing her anymore. But if Lowell wanted to escort her from the parking lot to the door, she wasn’t going to stop him. She wanted to soak up every second of time with him that she could.



“Who the fuck canceled her credit cards?” Ball asked.

The entire team was gathered at their usual table at The Pit, although they were drinking coffee instead of beers.

“It had to be this mysterious contact,” Black said. “Harlow told me that when Loretta called the bank to inquire what was going on, they told her someone had called and used their automated system to dispute a charge on the card.”

“Right,” Ball said. “Many banks automatically shut down the card and issue a new one.”

“The card wasn’t connected to the anonymous report to the state about the funds the nonprofit has been receiving?” Ro asked.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Meat replied. “I’ve been up most of the night, and from what I’ve been able to find out, I’d say the same person did both.”

“Explain,” Arrow ordered.

“Right. So now we know Loretta has received several offers for the building. She didn’t tell us because she didn’t feel they were relevant, since she wasn’t selling. The building wasn’t even on the market.”

“Then how could people send her offers?” Black interrupted.

“Just because a house isn’t on the market doesn’t mean someone can’t offer to buy it,” Meat said patiently. “Someone could walk up to Gray’s house, knock on the door, and tell him they’ll give him a million dollars for the place.”

“True,” Black said. “Go on.”

“Since we didn’t know about the offers, we didn’t make the connection between the harassment and the building. But then we found out from watching that video of Brian threatening Harlow that someone planned to build low-income housing in the area. When I checked the records, all of the buildings seemed to have been bought by different people and companies. It wasn’t until after hearing about Loretta’s money issues that I really started digging. I would’ve done it earlier, but with Rex being no help, I was swamped trying to finish looking at all the exes and everything else.”

“No one’s blaming you,” Arrow said quietly.

“I know. Anyway, so I used some of my more creative techniques to find out who owned the various businesses—and every company was handled by the same lawyer. When I dug into his financial records, I found several deposits over the last couple months from the same person.” Meat paused dramatically.

“Who?” Black growled impatiently.

“A Nolan Woolf.”

“Who?” Gray asked.

“Do we know him?” Arrow questioned.

“Nolan Woolf is a developer who’s known for building crappy properties and not giving one little shit when things go wrong with them.”

“So he owns all of the other buildings on the block?” Ball asked.

“Yup. Including the gas station that went up in flames,” Meat told them.

“Why would he burn down his own building?” Gray asked. “For the insurance?”

“As of today, he hasn’t claimed the insurance money yet,” Meat said.

“Which is suspicious in and of itself,” Arrow commented.

“Yup. But I’m thinking the fire was all a part of the intimidation factor,” Meat said. “Hear me out. He hired Brian and his friends to start harassing the residents, to try to get them so scared they wanted to move out. They were instructed not to hurt the women or touch them, simply to harass them. The harassment morphed into threats, probably more because Brian is an asshole than because Nolan told him to do anything. He put in another offer for the building right after he torched the gas station, probably thinking Loretta would be ready to accept it. But either he didn’t realize she was getting other offers, or Loretta was more stubborn than he realized. Anyway, so he somehow got ahold of her credit-card statement and canceled the card. Again, simple harassment.”

“Then he got the idea to cut off her money flow,” Black interrupted, taking up the scenario. “He called in the anonymous report, and when the government froze all her funds, he figured she’d have to accept his offer.”

“Exactly,” Meat said, leaning back in his seat with a huge smile on his face.

“What a clusterfuck this investigation has been,” Gray said with a sigh. “We’ve been on a wild-goose chase tracking down all the exes.”

“We need to call Rex,” Black said. “He was supposed to be figuring out who Brian’s contact was. We need to give him Woolf’s name if he doesn’t have it already.”

The others groaned.

“He’s checked out,” Ball said.

“Call him,” Black repeated. “I talked to him yesterday. We had it out. He’s back in.”