Page 48 of Inevitable Secrets

“How did you find me?” Taylor asked quietly. It was of little importance but she wanted to know, needed to see where she had messed up for some reason.

Ben smiled a humorless smile, and shook his head. “It wasn’t easy. Cedric had absolutely nothing to go on. Just said you most likely were in disguise and probably as far away as you could get. And you were. You had totally disappeared. I’ve tracked down drug lords easier than I was able to track you down. But then I had a lucky light bulb one day in the grocery line.”

“Do tell?” Taylor said dryly, now annoyed with the way he was dragging it out.

“I followed him,” he said motioning his head to Derrick.

“How the fuck did you pull that off?” Derrick asked with irritation.

“It was right after you punched that photographer. I saw the photos of you going after him and I watched the video footage online. I noticed how fired up you got when they mentioned Taylor. It was more thanyou had a bad day at the officefired up, it was personal. So I got in contact with your office.”

“How?” Derrick demanded.

“Because I’m smooth,” he replied to Derrick sarcastically, “and when I spoke to your secretary, she said you were out of town for a meeting. And I called a week later and it was another meeting and then another. So I followed you to the airport and watched you get on your flight. I hacked into the system and figured out what your fake name was and the next time you got on the same flight, I got on, too, and I followed you to your next flight, and the next until you got off in Maine and I saw you in complete disguise go into Roasted Bean and stare at the counter girl.

“And then I looked at the counter girl, and noticed how she never really looked up for long, and let her hair hide most of her face. So I went there more often on a hunch. I started playing the open mike, asked the counter girl questions to get her to look up, and I could line up the similarities. And it paid off.”

There was a shifty silence around them for a beat while everyone took that in and then it started to stifle Taylor.

“Okay, so you told Cedric where I was, and then he told you to just watch me?” Taylor asked in disbelief.

“I never told him where you were.”

“I feel like you are talking in fucking riddles so if you could just go ahead and tell me what the hell happened that would be great,” Taylor said with an edge.

Ben gave a curt nod and picked up the pace. “I couriered that I had information. I could have given him the information then but I wanted to be paid. He couriered back a check with a lot of zeros on it, and told me to never, ever tell him where you were. But that if I stayed and made sure you were safe, he would keep sending checks with lots of zeros on them.”

“Why?” Taylor asked, completely baffled.

“I have no idea,” Ben answered, bewilderment at the whole thing in his tone. “I would send courier info every two weeks confirming you were safe and he would send back payment.”

“And that was it?”

“Yes.”

“And he never told you why he wanted to find me?”

“Not the whole time I was there. I didn’t even speak to him again once I located you. But the night before you left, that night he called me. A courier met me as usual and gave me the envelope but this one was thicker. It had a burner phone in it and a note to call Cedric. I talked to him and he sounded really jumpy and asked where you were and when had I seen you last and were you okay. He just kept rambling out questions. I reassured him I had just left you and you were fine and he said something was going to happen. That something bad was coming and if I didn’t hear from him, I had to tell you to talk to Mellon.”

“Melon?” Taylor asked slowly, her face screwed up in confusion and aggravation. “Like the fruit?”

“I asked him what that meant and he said go to Mellon and he could tell you what was happening, said you wouldn’t be safe. I tried to ask more questions and he hung up. I tried to call back but it went directly to an automated message. The next thing I knew you were gone and he was reported dead. But I am telling you he was panicked. He knew something bad was going to happen and he was constantly worried something was going to happen to you.”

Derrick looked back to Taylor, “Do you think he was planning to overdose?”

Taylor shrugged, “I cannot even pretend to imagine what was going through Cedric’s pathological mind just before he died.” Taylor turned her attention to Henry. “Where do we go from here?” Taylor asked.

“We start looking into connections between Cedric and anyone named Mellon.”

“Good luck,” Ben said cooIly, “I tried, but the number of people with that last name in LA alone is crazy. And I really didn’t know anything about Cedric. I tried to look into him but he was locked down pretty tight.”

Taylor dropped her face into her hands and then pulled them slowly down it. This meeting was supposed to answer her questions but now she just had more.

“Well, fuck.”

Fifteen

Derrick was in bed,ready for sleep, but it was not an option currently as his wife paced the length of the room replaying and overthinking the events of the last several days.

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