Page 15 of Ravaged With You

His body stiffened as he fought off the rising memories. He didn’t want to go back into that world, but he had no choice. He couldn’t turn his back on his friend any more than he could have stayed away from Nikki Stark that night in New York.

And he damn sure couldn’t push this off on someone else. Not Renly. Not Stark Security. Not when the bastards had threatened Jo.

Hell, even if they hadn’t threatened her. This was his distillery, Mel had been his partner, and Jo deserved answers.

“I can wait with you until Jessn and Charlie G get here,” Renly said, those all-too-knowing eyes studying his face.

“I appreciate it, bro. But I should probably be alone to tell them what’s up. I only said there was a crisis, and that I needed them to get here as soon as possible. Suicide’s a hard subject. I don’t want them to feel uncomfortable reacting around you.”

“I still can’t believe he did that,” Renly said, making clear he understood the need not to talk about the murder. “Killing himself, I mean. I never would have expected it of Mel.”

“I know. The whole thing blows my mind. But he really had been acting strange lately.” That part was not a lie. He’d been moody and evasive. And from what Jo had told him, it wasn’t just at work.

“Why do you think he did it?” Renly asked.

Red translated the question as what is this thing that they’re supposedly looking for?

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think you’ll ever figure it out? Do you think Jo understands what he was going through?”

“I doubt it,” Red said. “Whatever was going on with him, I think he held it close to the vest.”

“You should go see her.”

Red agreed wholeheartedly. “She wanted to be alone tonight. I considered going by and talking to her, anyway, but decided that sleep probably is the right thing.” That decision to let Jo go the night thinking it was suicide had been a hard one.

Renly’s voice was sympathetic when he said, “In a situation like this, nothing’s ever easy. She’ll be better prepared to deal with this in the morning.”

Some of the tension drained from him, knowing that Renly thought he made the right call, too. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

“Sure.” Renly said, his expression curious as they moved through the property to the customer parking area.

They paused by Renly’s Ducati, a damn sweet bike that Red openly envied.

“Aren’t you the gentleman?” Renly’s mouth curved with mirth.

“Nah. I just wanted to look at that bike of yours. You know, you can always park in an employee spot. Though I’m glad you didn’t. Let’s me know you know your place.”

“Yeah, I’m smart that way.”

“Listen, there’s one more thing.” He chose his words carefully. He’d moved their conversation to the parking lot because the odds of surveillance on the customers was slim, but he had no way to be sure. For all he knew there was one video-only camera in the fermentation room. On the other hand, the whole place could be wired for sound and video.

And that was the one thing he did want Renly and Stark Security to jump on. “I’m glad you came—God knows I needed the moral support. But I didn’t just call about that. The truth is if we’d had a better system, we might have caught this before Mel was able to kill himself. An alarm when he shut some of the safety protocols off. I don’t know. Something.”

“You want to upgrade your system.“

“That’s the kind of thing your company can do, right?” By which, of course, he meant Stark Security.

“Absolutely.”

They shared a smile. They both knew that while it was in fact among the things that Stark Security did, it occupied a tiny percentage of the workflow. In reality, Stark Security did so much more, but the deeper level things were through referral only. Things the general public didn’t know. Things that only a very few select groups and individuals understood as the depth of the agency’s expertise.

“Can you get me a quote? We have a base level, but I want the gold standard. Where anything that’s changed is logged. And if there’s anything even remotely unusual, I personally get a text.”

What he didn’t say was that while all that was true, he also wanted a sweep of the entire building to locate and get rid of any bugs or recording devices that whoever killed Mel had installed anywhere on the property.

From the way Renly was nodding slowly, Red was certain his brother understood. “If it’s okay by you, I can bring the tech guys in tonight and we can probably have something spec’d out for you in the next day or so.”