Unfortunately, he didn’t know what the next step was.
He reluctantly believed Jeremiah. Not so much because he believed the older man had warm, fuzzy feelings for his grandchildren, but because he didn’t think Jeremiah had the balls to pull off a kidnapping, much less risk the fallout if he was caught. Jeremiah Stark was not a man who would do well in prison, and he had to know that.
And Jackson was right about Breckenridge. He’d boldly asked to be invited back into The Domino. Which meant he was either innocent or the boldest motherfucker on the planet.
With a frustrated sigh, he stepped off the stairs and into the chaos, then was rewarded when Nikki slid into his arms, a glass of Scotch in her hand for him. “The gatehouse guard called to let me know you were back. I thought you could use this.”
He grinned, the weight of the day sliding away from nothing more than the feel of the woman in his arms. “You have no idea,” he said, accepting the glass and giving her a very thorough kiss before taking a long, life-sustaining swallow.
Across the room, he saw Evelyn standing with Frank. He glanced down at Nikki, who nodded. “I think they’ve smoothed things over,” she said, drawing him toward the small seating area at the top of the stairs.
She pulled him down onto the love seat, then sat next to him, one leg tucked under her so that she was looking at him as she continued. “I still don’t know exactly what’s between them, but I think he’s gained back whatever points Evelyn docked him when he didn’t come home for me right away.”
“He’s trying to be a good father,” Damien said. “I respect that. It’s not an easy job.”
“You make it look easy.”
The words, so simple, shot straight to his heart. “I love you,” he said. “And God knows I’m trying.”
She leaned closer and kissed him. “Do you want to talk about today with Jeremiah?”
He made a scoffing noise. “It’s a rare day when I actually want to talk about Jeremiah. But, dammit, Nikki, he—” He cut himself off, a red-hot flare of anger making him grind his teeth and shake his head.
“Damien?” He heard an edge of panic in her voice. “Wait, wait a second. Are you saying—I mean, is he really involved? What did he say? Why would you wait so long to tell me?”
“No. Baby, no.” He stroked her arm. “I’m sorry I scared you. I thought it was him, but it’s not.”
“Then, what?”
The fury he’d tamped down began to boil. “Redemption,” he said, anger driving him to his feet. “My father said the girls were his redemption. And mine. Bastard.”
He saw a reflection of his own pain in her eyes. Then she stood, too. She slid one arm around his waist, her other hand going to cup his head as she lifted herself up on her toes and kissed him. Gently at first, but then he drew her in closer, claiming her mouth, taking what he needed. And, dammit, he did need it. Needed her. Her support surrounding him, and her love filling him.
“Redemption,” he murmured as they pulled apart. “You’re my redemption.”
She smiled, but it was bittersweet. “You’re wrong, you know. We’re a lot of things to each other, Damien, but I’m not your redemption. Because you don’t need redemption. You’re a good man, and you always have been.”
He looked at her face and saw that she believed those words. “Thank you,” he said, even though he knew damn well that they weren’t true.
* * * *
The hum and buzz of electronics and conversation filled the third floor, so much so that Damien almost didn’t hear the house phone. He snatched the handset up from the credenza, then frowned when the guard on duty announced the waiting guest.
“Nikki?” He lifted a hand to catch her attention, and she looked up from where she was reviewing the transcript of Rory’s confession and the formal statement he’d made when entering his plea. A long shot, but maybe he’d said something useful. “Did you order food?”
Her brow furrowed in confusion, and he was about to tell the guard to hold the scammer—probably a reporter trying to gain access—when Bree bounced across the room. “That was me. It’s Kari. She’s bringing by all the breads and cookies and pastries and stuff that were left over today.”
He must have looked baffled, because she went on. “I thought everyone could use the pick-me-up. That’s okay, right?”
“Very okay,” he said. “And very thoughtful. You can let her through,” he added to the guard, who still lingered on the line.
“I’ll go meet her at the door,” Bree said.
As she hurried down the stairs, he heard Ryan calling him over.
“What have you got?”
“Just come. You need to see this.” Ryan’s voice was low and level. “You, too, Nikki.”
“Something concrete?” He moved across the floor, coming to a stop behind the end of the table where Ryan had set up his laptop. He held out his left hand to Nikki, who had risen from her chair and come to stand behind him.
“Is it a lead on whoever was manipulating Rory?” she asked, twining her fingers with his own.
“Not Rory,” Ryan said. “Nikki’s office. Hang on, I’ve just about got this.” Ryan fiddled with a control panel that he’d plugged into one of his computer ports. Immediately, the third-floor projection screen descended and all windows that lit the room were shuttered, blocking out the waning light from the descending sun.
A moment later, as he heard the front door open and Bree chattering with Kari, the screen glowed white, then with a test pattern, then white again. Soon, grainy video footage started to play, a timecode running along the bottom.
“Is that—”
“The alley that runs behind your office building,” Damien confirmed for her.
“But I thought—” Nikki began.
“So did I,” Damien said, frowning at Ryan. “I thought there were no functional cameras back there.” They’d hoped that the perp had driven to the office and had parked in the small pay-for-parking lot two buildings down from Nikki’s office. Unfortunately, the security cameras for that lot had been tampered with a week before the vandalism occurred, and the lot owner hadn’t yet fixed them. The few other businesses that had cameras only aimed them at their own back doors.
And yet here was broad, high definition video coverage of the entire parking lot and a significant chunk of the alley leading all the way to the intersection. If Nikki’s vandal parked in that lot—or even just walked down the alley—they’d see.
“I don’t understand,” Nikki said. “Without cameras, where did this come from?”
Ryan tilted his head to indicate Ollie, who was coming to stand on the other side of Ryan’s workstation.
“What? How?” Nikki asked, voicing Damien’s thoughts.
Ollie shrugged nonchalantly, as if the whole thing was no big deal. But Damien saw the pride on his face, and knew that Ollie was pleased to be able to help. “Long story, but the bottom line is that the FBI has had a surveillance camera on that parking lot for a while. Nothing the FBI is interested in happened on that night, so I was able to get the footage copied for you.”
“And we are definitely interested,” Ryan said. “From my preliminary scan, I think we may have caught the perp on video.”
“Ollie!” Nikki ran to him and gave him a hug. “That’s amazing.”
“It really is,” Damien said, following Nikki and shaking Ollie’s hand.
“Perhaps we should hold off on showering him with praise until we see if the clarity is sufficient for an ID,” Quincy said, coming over from the far end of the table, where he’d been giving instructions to one of Ryan’s techies, an eager young man who looked to be scrolling through data at the speed of light.
“Okay, here goes.” Ryan started to manipulate the video, fast-forwarding until a person entered the frame. “There, see? Look at this.” The screen split into two columns, the new video on the left and the security video from Nikki’s office on the right. On the right, they saw the now-familiar tall, thin figure in a whi
te hoodie carrying a shopping bag.
“That’s our vandal,” Damien said.
“Bags look to be holding spray paint cans, and the timing is right,” Ryan agreed. “So, yeah, that’s the assumption.”
“Now we’re looking for him on the other footage?” Nikki asked. “Hoping that we’ll see his face so that we can ID him?”
“That’s the plan,” Ollie confirmed. “He probably kept his head down in the building on purpose. But he might not be so guarded outside.”
“Enhance the image,” Quincy said, and Ryan nodded as he manipulated the mouse, zooming in on the video footage of the alley until they were tight on the person walking across the screen, same outfit, the hood up, their head down.
“That’s not a guy,” Nikki said, her hands on the table as she leaned toward the screen. She turned to look at Damien, then Ryan. “See how she’s moving? Her hips.”
“Are you sure?” Ollie asked.
She turned to him. “Have you met my mother? I spent most of elementary and high school studying video tapes of women walking.”
“You may be right,” Quincy said. “But it’s all bloody useless unless we get a face. Boy, girl, teen, adult. We need more to go on.”
“Hell,” Damien said. “This isn’t going to—oh, fuck.” The word was ripped out of him, torn out by the image on the screen. Tall and thin, with a face he knew well.
Nikki was right. Their vandal was woman.