But, nope, they wintered in Bali and The Maldives.
I wondered a bit fleetingly if Mrs. Ericsson spent her money on charities or shoes and handbags with some special label sewn inside.
Not that we could bitch. We’d take her money like we’d take anyone else’s money whether she was a good person or not.
The house belonging to Senator Ericsson’s son and his wife was no less grand than any of the others. It was possibly the oldest on the block, maybe the only one that had existed alone on all this land. Maybe there was even a smaller house on the grounds for the housekeeper and groundskeeper to live. It was a red brick Colonial with stately pillars that held up a triangular overhang that umbrella’d the wide front steps. The brick itself was flawless, not a single fleck of mortar chipping out. The blue shutters had been painted within the last season or two. The pillars were power washed, spotless. Hell, even the stone path leading up to the door looked like it got a fresh red and deep gray staining recently.
It didn’t look like an active crime scene. It didn’t look like a place that could even have one. Save for maybe a robbery, someone trying to get into the goods hidden away in the safe that was likely ‘hidden away’ deep inside the master closet.
But a neat crime. When the owners were out of the house. Or one that left the owners tied to chairs in their dining room with gags to be found by the staff early the next morning – a non-violent ordeal they would milk for a decade, being called brave and strong by all the people in their circle as they clutched their pearls or diamonds at their throats in fear of losing them the same way.
But this house was home to a different kind of crime. A dark, unpredictable one that brought the demise of one of the owners. Seemingly at the hands of the other.
It would be the top of the news cycle for a week.
That is if we let it get out there.
Which we wouldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
Because she was the client.
And being the client meant she was innocent, whatever it took for us to convince the world at large of that fact.
It would be a big job.
Huge, actually.
Quin was probably shitting himself at being half a world away. He’d be on my ass day and night until we were sure all the loose ends were tied up, until the client got off Scot-free, until the media circus died down, until the check cleared in the company account.
On the books, we were a consulting company. We helped with PR and private security. All above-board, legal, nothing to raise a speculative brow at.
In reality, almost everything we did was illegal. We lied, cheated, mastered the art of spin. We got rid of bodies when they dropped inopportunely. We cleaned crime scenes. We made deals with bad guys.
It was an odd job, some might think, for a bunch of ex-military people to do, men and women who were supposed to be all for law and order and justice.
But, see, sometimes, in the service, in operations that would never make the news, that were so black there needed to be a new name for them, that were only known about by a handful of high-ranking officials, that only existed in heavily redacted files buried deep in some government building somewhere, you learn things. You learn that you – and your country – are capable of terrible things in the name of law and order. And you learn that there is very little justness in the justice handed out by lowly – but heavily trained and skilled – men and women for the grand schemes of bigger men.
Men like Senator Ericsson. And all the people he brushed shoulders with.
So there was no difference, really, between cleaning up the mess of a nation or one for a private citizen. Both jobs demanded the same skills, the same level of discretion, the same ability to push personal morals aside and do things you may or may not be comfortable with.
It was a natural choice for me when Quin came to find me. Most of us – especially me, Finn, and Ranger, had been struggling a bit with adjusting, trying to pretend we could live perfectly normal lives after all the things we had seen, the things we had done.
My feet were silent on the stone steps as I closed in on a door the same muted blue that the shutters were painted. A grand sort of door with the glass panes to either side. The kind of door that led into a grand foyer with a giant, shimmering chandelier where people greeted with handshakes and cheek kisses before retiring to the library.