Chapter 8: The Message Marcus Sent
He held the phone so I could read it.
*I know you ended things with Vanessa today.
I think you should know that wasn't her choice.
She's been trying to protect you from something.
Call me if you want the full picture.
— M*
Daniel stared at the screen.
"How does he have my number?" he said.
"Vanessa," I said.
"She gave him my number."
"Or he found it.
He's a property developer.
He knows how to find people."
Daniel set the phone on the coffee table.
He didn't call back.
He looked at the message the way you look at something you're not sure is safe to touch.
"This is a play," he said.
"He's trying to get in front of whatever she told me."
"Possibly."
"Or she told him I ended it and he's trying to cause damage."
"Also possible."
"Or there actually is something she's been protecting me from." He looked at me.
"Which would be the worst option."
"Yes," I said.
"It would."
He picked the phone back up.
He typed: *If you have something to say, say it in writing.*
The reply came in under a minute.
A screenshot.
Daniel enlarged it and I leaned in to read it with him.
It was a text conversation.
Vanessa's name at the top.
The messages were dated — the most recent ones from the past three weeks.
*You need to tell him about the Hargrove account before he finds out another way.*
*I'll handle it.*
*You said that two weeks ago.*
*Marcus, I said I'll handle it.*
*He's going to find out.
His firm is connected to Hargrove.
It's only a matter of time.*
*Then let it be a matter of time.
Stop pushing me.*
*I'm not pushing you.
I'm warning you.
There's a difference.*
Daniel lowered the phone.
"Hargrove," he said.
I waited.
"Hargrove Capital," he said.
"They're a real estate investment group.
We've been in early talks with them for three months.
A commercial development on the east side." He looked at me.
"My firm."
"And Vanessa is connected to them."
"Apparently."
"Through Marcus."
"Through Marcus." He stood up.
He walked to the counter and back.
"If she has a financial relationship with Hargrove — if she's involved in that deal in any way — and she's been dating me while knowing my firm is in talks with them—"
"That's a conflict of interest," I said.
"That's more than a conflict of interest.
That's the kind of thing that ends careers.
Hers and potentially mine if it looks like I knew."
He picked up his phone again.
This time he didn't text.
He called his office — on a Saturday — and left a message for his assistant asking for everything they had on Hargrove Capital to be pulled and ready by Monday morning.
Then he called someone named Patrick.
"Pat.
It's Daniel.
I need a favor and I need it quiet." A pause.
"I need you to run a name for me.
Vanessa Cole.
Real estate agent, licensed in this state.
Look for any disclosed or undisclosed connection to Hargrove Capital or Marcus Davis." Another pause.
"Yes, that Hargrove.
I know it's the weekend.
I'll owe you."
He hung up.
He stood in the middle of his kitchen looking like a man who had walked into a laundromat to help his mother and come out the other side of something much larger than a stolen dryer.
"Daniel," I said.
"I know."
"This isn't about Vanessa anymore."
"No," he said.
"It isn't."
He came and sat back down.
He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands — just for a moment, just long enough to feel the weight of it — and then he straightened up.
"I need to ask you something," he said.
"Ask."
"Last night at the laundromat.
When she offered you a hundred dollars." He looked at me.
"What did you think she was afraid of?"
"I thought she was afraid of being embarrassed in front of a man she wanted to impress."
"And now?"
I thought about the shaking hands.
The way she'd looked at me when she'd first seen Daniel walk through the door — not just surprise, but calculation.
The speed with which she'd made the offer.
A hundred dollars, just please don't tell him.
Not don't tell him I was rude.
Don't tell him what happened here.
"Now," I said slowly, "I think she may have already known who I was."
Daniel went very still.
"I think," I said, "that when she saw me loading that dryer, she may have recognized me.
And I think the hundred dollars wasn't about the laundry at all."
"She was trying to buy your silence before I arrived."
"I don't know that.
I'm not certain.
But the offer came very fast, and the words she used were—" I paused.
"Broad."
He looked at the ceiling.
"She knew I was coming to the laundromat," he said.
"I'd texted her that afternoon to say I was stopping to help my mother before dinner.
She knew where I'd be.
She knew who you were."
The room was very quiet.
"She put your laundry on that cart on purpose," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"I don't know that either," I said.
"But I think you should find out."
His phone buzzed again.
Patrick, calling back already.
Daniel answered.
I watched his face as he listened.
May you like
The expression that crossed it — slow, settling, grim — told me that Patrick had found something.
And that whatever it was, it was worse than a text message and a screenshot.
