Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,77

understand doing things you wouldn’t normally do to try to help a person who can’t seem to help themselves.”

“Yeah, I got one of them. Damn fool grandson.”

“Then you understand where we’re at. Her niece is going to leave and get herself into serious trouble. I just want to be able to find her when she does.”

“You can’t make her stay?” Eric asked. Fern and I must have made similar faces because he laughed—a dry humph in his chest.

“My grandson is the same way.” He took a deep breath and looked from me to Fern and then back again.

“This is legit?” he asked Fern. “He’s not some shitty boyfriend with stalker tendencies?”

“It’s legit,” she said and then he opened his door a little wider.

“Then I guess you better come on in,” he said.

His condo was filled with pictures of a huge family, including a wife who clearly wasn’t around anymore. Instead of a TV, he had a setup of three computer monitors hooked to a shit-ton of equipment. He was watching foreign news on one, playing chess on the other and—from what it looked like—monitoring the entrances and exits of the condo building. Including the parking garage.

“Everyone in the condo know you’re spying on them?” I asked from a safe distance over his shoulder.

“Security is part of the package,” Fern jumped in. “Residents who don’t live here year-round are comforted.”

“My security company serves six condo units in this area as well as the hospital,” Eric said.

“No shit?” I was more impressed than I wanted to be.

Eric swiveled in his chair, his eyebrow raised. “No shit.”

He plugged Joan’s phone into an adapter hooked up to his computer and clacked around on his keyboard. The club had once tried to get into some computer scam shit, based on the tech strength of one of our members. But he got sent to jail for skipping out on child support, and there’d been no one to replace him.

“How many employees you got?” I asked. Over his computer were citations from the mayor. A picture of a little league team wearing uniforms that said “Rondale Security.” You had to be pretty flush if you were bankrolling a little league team in Florida. That shit was serious. “About twenty guys are permanent. I hire some contractors out if I need them. And no,” he shot me a look over his shoulder, “I ain’t hiring.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

I was just…curious.

He took my phone next, plugged it into the same adapter, and clacked around a little more.

“You playing again today?” Eric asked, looking over at Fern.

“I’ve reserved court time for three o’clock.”

“Would it be all right if I came around and played with you?”

“That should be fine.”

I swallowed my smile. That’s why she wore the tennis getup all the time.

It took awhile for things to upload, but it wasn’t too long before Eric was handing me the phones.

“Thanks. How much do I owe you—”

“Nothing,” he said, lifting his hands away. His palms were pink and calloused and worn. “I did it as a favor to Fern.”

I nodded. Fern could repay him.

“You know, this trouble Joan’s in…I get you don’t want to tell me but I have connections that might be able to help her.”

“I appreciate that,” I said.

“But no thanks?” he asked, his lip pulled up in a smile I recognized. Hell, if I didn’t like this guy.

“I’m hoping we can sort this out before we call out whatever big guns you might have access to.”

“Sounds wise.” We shook hands like men shake hands. No fist bumps for a man like Eric.

“And thanks for the muffins, Fern,” he said. “I’ll see you at tennis and I guess tonight at the cocktail hour?”

“I’ll be there.” The smile on her lips made her look so much like her niece it was almost hard to look at her.

“You too?” Eric asked me and I shook my head.

“Too bad,” he said, and I felt like he meant it.

Fern and I walked back down the hallway, neither of us saying anything. I had to hope that Joan was still asleep. I didn’t know how I was going to explain having her phone. My sleepless night was starting to drag me down. And something about that setup of Eric’s made me twitchy, too. That kingdom he ran from his dark condo, women with tight cleavage bringing him muffins because he was the kind of guy who commanded that kind of thing.

I spent years screaming into the void trying to make the club legit. Trying to turn