Page 70 of Secrets Along the Shore (Beach Read Thrillers #1)
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
My fiancé is the best.
I arrive home to find the lights on, my dog waiting for me at the door, and the welcoming scent of chocolate chip cookies—my favorite—baking in the oven.
“You’re incredible.” I toss my bag onto the bench by the door and walk over to James to hug him around the neck.
“Yes, I am,” he says, chuckling and planting a kiss on me.
“How did you know I’d need this?”
“Because you’ve had a long, tough day, and it’s too late for coffee. I figured chocolate was the next best thing.”
I sit on a barstool and he slides a plate of warm cookies toward me. The gooey chocolate and chewy cookie are absolute perfection—not as reviving as a steaming cup of caffeine, but it’ll do. I swipe another as he pours me a glass of milk.
“Now tell me all about it,” he says, taking a cookie for himself.
James listens intently, sipping on green tea as I unload the day’s events. When I reach the part about someone following me, he shifts his stance, sniffs, and clamps his lips together.
Early in our relationship, he would have asked if I was being careful or warned me to be safe.
He doesn’t now—not because he doesn’t care, but because he’s learned that, by nature, my job involves risk, and people fawning over me in that department is a major pet- peeve of mine.
It didn’t hurt that, about a month into dating, I single-handedly took down an angry protester coming at him, looking to do some damage.
That day he saw with his own—very wide—eyes that I can handle myself.
Both of us are expecting long days on Monday, so by nine o’clock, James’s taillights are headed down my drive. I watch until they vanish, a pang pulling in my chest. I miss him more and more when he leaves. In August, when we tie the knot, I’ll be glad we aren’t living separate lives anymore.
Once back inside, I grab my laptop, burrow into the couch, and gear up for some good old-fashioned—or new-fashioned, to be more accurate—detective work.
Before I left the D.A.’s office, Tasha ran the 4Runner’s license plate for me.
Within seconds, we had the registered owner—Napier Holdings, Ltd.
, 24 Ellis Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama. With Bilbo curled into a ball at my feet, I perform a quick internet search that reveals Napier offers a variety of business services to entities and individuals, including nominee services to clients wishing to legally mask their ownership of particular assets.
In those cases, Napier is listed as the legal owner, though privately it has contracted to act on behalf of the client.
The fact that someone has exercised this level of effort to hide the ownership of the 4Runner tells me I’m not dealing with the average stalker or disgruntled target from a past investigation.
Who are you standing in for, Napier Holdings, Ltd.?
One of the services listed on the Napier website is that of registered agent, where Napier acts on behalf of a corporation, partnership, or similar entity, accepting service of all legal notifications—subpoenas, lawsuits, et cetera.
It’s a long shot, but I pull up the Alabama Secretary of State database and search for all entities using Napier Holdings as its authorized registered agent.
If somebody’s going to the trouble of having Napier register their vehicle, they might have also enlisted them to be their registered agent.
The result includes twenty-plus entities utilizing Napier as their agent for service in Alabama—a mix of corporations and limited partnerships.
Nothing jumps out at me, so I start by making a list of the ones I think are less likely to be relevant—the non-profits, a few restaurants, a daycare, and a church.
Of those remaining, I focus on those with a principal office address in north Alabama, which makes the most sense in this situation. That whittles the list down to eight.
Using the Secretary of State’s database, I make a note of the counties where those eight entities were formed, then check the business licenses in those counties.
I strike gold when I get to the third one—Hutchins LLC—formed in Madison County, the county directly to our north.
According to the Madison County Business License website, Hutchins, LLC.
, is doing business as Hutchins Investigations.
Gotcha.