Chapter Six

Jack Angelhart

Jack entered the house moments after the paramedics arrived. He scanned the room, his eyes landing on Margo who stood outside with her back to the house. The paramedics were checking the vitals of Jennifer White and the man she'd been meeting with. Now that Jack had a clear view of the stranger, he thought he recognized him, though didn't know from where.

"Sir? Is this your house?" a paramedic asked.

Jack shook his head, was about to identify himself when the man said, "It's my house."

He owned the rental—or was he lying? Jack suspected Margo had the answers.

"Please stand aside." The paramedic motioned for his partner to bring the stretcher forward.

As they worked on Jennifer, the man who claimed to own the house remained silent and sat on the floor against the counter, rubbing his temples. Jack needed to figure out what happened and why Margo was involved.

Dammit, Margo, what are you up to?

He made his way outside to speak to his sister, but she was already on the move. She bolted across the yard and jumped over the back fence, heading up the hill into the Phoenix Mountains Preserve. Jack wasn't sure who she was running from or why, and he debated following her or tracking her down at her house tonight and demanding answers.

His radio beeped. He and Tess communicated via radio when working, a lot easier than cell phones when you were in the field.

"Yeah," he answered.

"Margo is running up the mountain!"

"I see."

"Help her!"

"What?"

"There were two men hiding behind that cluster of boulders halfway up the hill. Both wearing black T-shirts and tactical pants. She's going after them. They're headed northeast, toward the neighborhood on the other side of the ridge. She's going to get hurt!"

Jack looked beyond the boulders, saw Margo, then a hundred yards past her were two men who quickly disappeared from view.

"I got her," he told Tess and pocketed the radio. He followed Margo's path, the sun at his back, but it was too hot to be running up a mountain. What the hell was she thinking pursuing two men alone?

Though he was closer to forty than thirty, Jack was in good shape. He spent a lot of time both hiking and working out at the gym, so the steep hillside didn't slow him down. Yet, the heat and beating sun would quickly exhaust him.

Margo had a solid lead, but he was gaining. He loved his sister, but sometimes he wanted to throttle her.

The air was dry and still. What he wouldn't give for a monsoon to clear out the dusty air, and he hoped his pop was right and monsoon season would come early this summer.

"Margo!" he shouted. He didn't yell again, realizing he didn't know who she was pursuing or why—if they had weapons or had been responsible for whatever happened to Jennifer White and her alleged co-conspirator.

Either she hadn't heard him or she ignored him. He was gaining ground.

The men she was following dropped out of sight as they descended the other side of the mountain. They weren't on a trail, which made traversing the terrain tricky—cacti and ankle-twisting boulders were the least of his concerns. There were rattlers all over the state, and when he hiked he wore appropriate boots and looked for telltale signs.

Running across the face of the mountain was not being smart.

Margo should know better. When they were teenagers, she'd been bit by a rattler during a family hike along the Pima Loop on South Mountain. If their dad, a doctor, hadn't been with them, Jack wasn't sure Margo would have survived. But Dad knew what to do, slowed the spread of the venom, and a rescue helicopter swooped in and brought her to the hospital for antivenom and fluids. You'd think after that experience Margo would be more cautious, but no—she runs up the mountain during prime rattler-basking time.

Jack was gaining on Margo, but she was now on the down side and he lost sight of her. He picked up his pace, saw a trail ten feet to his left, and crossed over to it. He slipped, started to fall, but caught himself, hands scraping across the dry rocky soil.

"Shit," he muttered. "Dammit, Margo."

He reached the trail, rubbed his palms on his jeans, shook out the pain where he'd been nicked by a stubby cactus.

He made much better time on the trail. Margo came into sight—she was now on the trail right in front of him. He still couldn't see who she was pursuing, but below them the trail led to a neighborhood of multimillion-dollar homes nestled high up on the edge of the preserve. The view from here was spectacular. At sunrise, the entire valley and mountains beyond would be aglow, an awesome sight.

But in the late afternoon, the sun burned and he didn't have time to enjoy the view.

"Margo!" he barked out once.

She glanced over her shoulder, startled when she recognized him. Then she motioned in front of her and started jogging down the trail.

Two men in black emerged from the end of the trail into the neighborhood. They were making a beeline toward a dark SUV parked on the street. No way was Margo going to catch up with them.

Suddenly, she stopped, as if she just realized what Jack had. She pulled out her camera and started taking pictures of the men and vehicle. They were gone seconds later when Jack finally caught up with her.

They were both out of breath. Margo shoved her camera back into the pouch on her side, on the opposite side from her holstered SIG Sauer. Then she dropped her small tactical backpack and pulled out a water bottle, draining half of it. She handed the rest to him.

"Thanks," he mumbled and finished it. Margo was always prepared. He rarely, if ever, saw her without her pack. He would have had water if he'd had his bag, but he left it in the car.

She took the empty bottle, put it back in her pack, and said, "What are you doing here?"

"I should be asking you that."

"My job."

"You left two semiconscious people in that house—"

"With paramedics."

"What happened?"

She shrugged. "I saw them lying unconscious on the floor, called 9-1-1, picked the lock. Those guys were watching the house from behind boulders. I don't know why, but they bolted after Fire showed up. I knew I wouldn't catch up to them but I thought I recognized one."

"You recognized one of the men?"

"Looked familiar, but I never got close enough. I'll enhance the pictures. If I also caught the license plate with the camera, I can run it. Maybe they're involved in whatever happened at the house."

Jack didn't think his sister had been hired to track Jennifer White, not when his agency had been retained, so he guessed she was following the guy.

"We should head back," Jack said. "The police must be there by now."

Jack pulled out his cell phone, hit Tess. "Can you pick us up on the other side? I don't want to hike back."

"What happened?"

"They had a car, got away."

"Five minutes."

Jack ended the call and Margo said, "Tess?"

"Yeah."

"Shit."

"Truce."

Margo didn't say anything as they walked down the path toward the road. Jack hated that his sister felt estranged from their family. Margo was stubborn and loyal and independent. She wasn't going to give in, their mother wasn't going to give in, and Jack didn't know how to fix the family when he understood both sides of the argument. What he didn't understand was why Margo couldn't put this disagreement—serious as it was—aside for the sake of the family.

He desperately wanted to fix everything. With their father in prison, it was his responsibility to keep everyone together. The family, a close-knit unit, bonded and whole. As they'd always been, until three years ago. The fracture left him incomplete, always waiting, watching, worried. And deep down sad.

"Talk to me," Jack said after a moment.

"I have a job, apparently so do you. We'll each do our job, and I'll see you at the party Saturday."

"Don't you think it's strange that two private investigators were hired for the same case?"

Margo asked, "Why were you hired?"

She obviously knew he was fishing, and she wasn't going to share anything unless he gave her something. Right now, he was just glad that Tess wasn't here. She had taken Margo walking away from the family business personally and Jack didn't know how to fix that, either. They'd once been so close they could have been twins.

Hell, he had so many broken pieces in his life he felt like Humpty-Dumpty.

"This stays between us," he said.

"Sure."

"We were hired by White's employer because someone in their company downloaded proprietary information. Our investigation pointed to White, and now we're working to prove it. This meeting was out of her pattern, so we suspected she was meeting a buyer to sell the information. Basic corporate espionage. Clearly, that's your man. Because I don't think our client hired another Angelhart."

She smiled. "No."

"You?"

She didn't say anything.

"Come on, Margo, I gave ours, what's yours?"

"Adultery. I've been on it for little over a week, after three days I thought the wife was pulling the accusation out of her ass. This was the first time I thought maybe she was right."

"White could be sharing secrets with her lover."

"I don't think they're doing the horizontal."

"But?"

She shrugged, didn't look at him. Jack started to get angry. She was figuring out something and she wasn't going to tell him?

"Spill it, Margo. What's in that suspicious brain of yours?"

"Confidentiality goes both ways."

"Of course."

She stopped walking, turned and faced him. He couldn't see her eyes because of her sunglasses, but the set of her jaw told him she wasn't at all pleased that their individual cases had collided.

"Do you know who the guy was with Jennifer White?"

"No. But I'll find out as soon as we get back." He still knew half the guys on the force, and the other half probably knew he'd been a cop.

"Logan Monroe."

Monroe. Monroe. Did he know... "Oh!" That's why he'd looked so familiar.

"Yeah. That Logan Monroe."

"Corporate espionage? Seems like small potatoes for him."

"I certainly don't want to spread that rumor without substantive proof," Margo said. She took off her glasses and stared him in the eye. "We both know what happens to good people when they're accused of doing something illegal."

His stomach flipped. Yeah, they did.

"Okay. But if he's guilty—"

"I don't know what's going on," Margo said as she slid her glasses back up her nose. Tess turned onto the street. Jack waved at her, and she honked once.

"I hear a but."

"But nothing. We don't leak any of this unless we have one hundred and ten percent proof that Logan Monroe is stealing proprietary information. It'll destroy his reputation."

"Agreed. Where do we start?"

"We?" Margo waved toward Tess. "I don't think my big sister is going to want me involved, and I sure as hell am not taking orders from either of you."

"We, as in partnership."

"I don't know."

"Margo—"

"I don't know," she repeated. "Let me think about it. Dammit, Jack, I don't know how this will work, but I'll figure it out."

"We can figure it out." He wanted to work with Margo. He had since the beginning, when they first conceived the idea of a family business. But he understood why she couldn't be part of it, at least right now. Still, he saw an in, and he would take it. Wedge his foot into the crack until Margo opened the door and came back.

"Let's go to the house and see what everyone knows." She smiled at him as she opened the back door of the truck. "Maybe this will work," she said, her tone definitely lighter. "You'll get more out of the police than me. And we'll go from there. Okay?"

Jack wasn't certain that Margo wouldn't take the information and bolt, but she was his sister, and he—mostly—trusted her.

"Okay," he said, sliding into the passenger seat. "Don't make me regret it."

Tess turned and said to Margo, "You ran off after two men alone. You didn't know Jack was following you. Didn't have backup. They could have been armed, waiting to ambush you, and—"

"Hey, sis. How've you been?"

Tess whipped back around and glared at her in the rearview mirror, then did a quick one-eighty on the dead-end road and headed toward the rental in silence.

Truce, Jack thought. He hoped it lasted more than a day.

He doubted it would last an hour.