Chapter 17 - Red Flags

Sophia

Jamie is already halfway through a bottle of rosé and building a conspiracy board on my living room wall when I get home.

“I swear to God,” he says without looking at me, “If one more rich white man dies mysteriously, I’m going to buy a taser and start preemptively eliminating suspects.”

I close the door behind me and toe off my boots.

“Please don’t tase anyone until I finish this investigation. They won’t allow me to bring wine and cheese when I visit you.”

He turns, eyes blazing with equal parts worry and fury.

“You were supposed to flirt. Not wind up one dead billionaire away from a N*****x docuseries.”

“I didn’t kill him, Jamie.”

“Not the fucking point!”

I collapse onto the couch. The whole room smells like printer ink, whiteboard markers, and existential dread.

“Richard Pemberton died of a heart attack. Apparently.”

Jamie snorts. “And I’m the Pope. The Catholic church is no longer against gay marriage.”

“He was in his private gym. No forced entry. No struggle.”

“Uh-huh. And who gave you this totally neutral, definitely-not-sanitized scoop?”

I hesitate.

Jamie freezes. “Oh my God. It was Marcus.”

I sigh.

“Sophia.” He points at me with the force of a disappointed parent.

“We talked about this. No trusting hot men with tailored suits and vague backstories. That’s rule one.”

I rub my hands over my face. “I don’t trust him.”

“Where were you when he shared this tasty little morsel?”

“In his office. He wanted to tell me somewhere private.”

“Oh, sweetie. Serial killers invite people places all the time. Charmingly. The trick is not to go with them.”

I lift my head. “He didn’t have to tell me about Pemberton. He could’ve kept that to himself. He knows I’m a journalist. Even if he thinks I’m the fluffy kind.”

Jamie eyes me. “And what did he get in return?”

I pause. “Nothing.”

Jamie raises a single, perfect eyebrow.

“Okay. Not nothing,” I mutter.

“Tell me everything.”

I do. Minus the part where I almost spontaneously combusted during the blindfold session. And the part where he said he wanted to trust me. And the part where I wanted him to.

Jamie listens, saying nothing. A rare occurrence.

When I finish, he exhales. “Okay. First of all, this guy is definitely not just a CEO.”

I nod. “He’s hiding more than just proprietary matchmaking software.”

“Exactly. He’s too smooth. Too controlled. Too… tactically charming.”

I frown. “Tactically charming?”

“He doesn’t flirt. He disarms. And then he stares at you like he already knows what page of your trauma journal he’s on.”

That’s… uncomfortably accurate.

Jamie starts pacing, hands flying as he talks.

“So let’s run the possibilities. Either Marcus an emotionally stunted entrepreneur who developed an intimacy algorithm. Or, alternatively, he’s in on it.”

“In on what, exactly?” I ask.

Jamie spins toward the wall and points to a photo of Richard Pemberton, taped beside a question mark, and the words WHO’S NEXT? in red sharpie.

I stare at the board. There are three names now.

Pemberton. Liberty-Anne Hoffman, the woman who overdosed after apparently spending every cent of the fifty million dollars in her trustfund.

And Nathanael Stafford, the man who vanished two days after his wedding. Coincidentally closing all of his bank accounts on the same day. He was never heard from again.

Three clients. All members of Platinum. It was the only link I could dig up between them.

Nathanael met his wife using the service. Liberty-Anne had been on a date with a match the day before her overdose. And Pemberton I had the misfortune of meeting in person.

I’ve run exhaustive checks Nathanael’s wife, but she’s independently wealthy and seems to be in genuine agony over his disappearance.

“Did Prince Charming happen to mention whether Pemberton is suddenly broke?”

“No. But he’d have no reason to know that.”

Jamie watches me for a long beat. Then his expression softens.

“Okay. Look. Maybe he really is innocent and on your side. Or he could be playing his own angle without being involved. We still need to know what he’s hiding.”

“I know.”

He drops a folder in my lap. “Good news is, I’ve been doing some digging and we can peel away the first layer of mystery.”

I open it. Inside I find a half-dozen articles pulled from G****e, a few inter-departmental memos, and one extremely blurry yearbook photo.

“Meet Marcus Blackwood,” Jamie says. “Yale graduate. Heir to a fortune. Former Department of Justice consultant. And… surprise, surprise, ex-FBI agent.”

I blink. “You’re serious? How did you find all this? All I could turn up was the fact that he’s rich and went to Yale.”

Honestly, I’m feeling way more than a little incompetent.

I’m supposed to be this incredible investigative journalist, but my photographer is more effective at finding information than I am.

“Don’t beat yourself up. I’ve been hooking up with a software developer who works on the facial recognition program the police uses. Giving this to me is a complete breach of ethics. I won’t tell you what I had to do to get him to abandon his morals. I can however assure you that he felt it was entirely worth it.”

Jamie offers me a devilish grin accompanied by a saucy wink. I won’t ask any more questions. He’d be only too happy to share the details.

This changes things.

And it also makes so much sense. How observant Marcus is. The poker face. The laser-precise questions.

“So what do I do now?”

Jamie flops next to me on the couch. “Now, you play dumb and keep getting closer.”

“You want me to flirt with a federal agent?”

“Do you need me to answer that? Also, ex federal agent. And that doesn’t mean he can’t still be a killer.”

I groan. “I hate this.”

“Only because you like him.”

I throw a pillow at him.

Jamie ducks, laughing, and catches it mid-air.

“Just remember, Soph, red flags are only sexy if they don’t come with body counts.”

I lean back on the couch, staring at the ceiling.

Marcus is ex-FBI.

It shouldn’t make me feel better, but it does.