Page 12 of Midnight Danger

I remembered our conversation about her parents dying in the car crash and her holding her dead sister’s hand.

“Bring up her records from childhood. She was orphaned at an early age and her sister killed. She was put into care.”

Jordan’s fingers flew over the keys. “Nope. Says here her parents passed away a few years apart from natural causes. No sister listed.”

“Fuck!”

“Do we have a problem?” Ash asked, finally giving us his full attention.

I gave them the outline of what happened in The Midnight Rooms, but leaving out the personal stuff we shared. “She had no reason to lie to a stranger,” I concluded.

“I can’t fucking believe you started a relationship with someone down there,” Jordan bitched.

There was no point in answering him because he would keep poking until I snapped.

She had no social media accounts, so he delved into her business life. Two members of staff were listed but their photographs were taken from a strange angle, the way any of us would pose to ensure facial recognition wouldn’t detect us.

“That’s her friend Megan she always talks about. They were in the care system together.”

Jordan’s shoulder stiffened. “Isn’t this just the day for surprises,” he muttered. “Meg was my sub for a few years.”

“This just keeps getting better,” Ash commented, a shit-eating smile on his face.

“Wait until Uncle Lucas works out that you’re sniffing around his daughter,” I taunted, and his smile disappeared.

In the past few days, I’d gone to her office pretending I needed contracts for one of our buildings reviewed. Her secretary Sasha had told me she was really ill with the cold and at home at the moment. Considering I had the keys to her apartment and was pacing the floors there every night, I knew that wasn’t the case.

She’d run away.

Pain that I didn’t know existed pulsed in my chest in a steady rhythm, threatening to suffocate me. The man who’d survived the other night felt the brunt of my emotional anguish and ending up breaking and telling us exactly who sent him. Jordan happily dispatched and put him in the special burn unit we had a few miles away. You couldn’t identify a body if they were nothing more than ash that was scattered on the wind.

The people behind the attack would receive a visit from us as soon as I located Cassandra and knew she was safe.

“Meg has a lot of darkness in her. I didn’t know what happened in her past, but suspected there was something she was hiding.” Jordan interrupted my thoughts. He leaned back in his chair and stared vacantly at the screens. “It certainly makes me rethink a lot of our time together.”

“Talk to her, see if she tells you anything. Run a check on the details of the accident I gave you and see if it comes up with anything.” I dragged my fingers through my hair, kicking myself for the millionth time.

“You need to sleep,” Ash said, squeezing my shoulder.

“I knew she was acting weird and I said nothing since she’d dropped wanting to yell about witnessing three murders.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I need to know she’s okay.”

“We’ll find her,” Jordan replied, bypassing the security systems to infiltrate databases he shouldn’t have access to. “If we’d known she had a past, I could have dug deeper days ago.”

“We all have pasts,” I muttered, the weight of mine resting firmly on my shoulders.

“Whatever she saw obviously triggered something in her. Maybe she witnessed another murder or a serious assault?” Jordan rambled on as he opened database after database. “All the searches are running. The results will ping to my phone. I’ll go and pay Meg a visit and see what she can tell me about your wayward girlfriend.”

My eyes narrowed on all the screens that were taunting me. If Cassandra knew how to disappear, then she had more to her past than I ever guessed. Normally, when someone came into my life, they were security vetted until we practically knew what they ate for breakfast. I decided not to pry into her past.

Ash joined me at the desk, bringing up the systems he tended to work best at since he was the financial mastermind of our group. “Give me her details over and I’ll go through her accounts with a fine-tooth comb.”

I hated doing this, but if she ran then she needed someone right now. Even if I could send her friend to her, I had to do something to make this better. Right now, I’d screwed up on so many levels that it was ridiculous. If it was either of the other two guys, I’d be tearing them a new ass right now. The only reason they weren’t doing it to me was because they knew I was a good judge of character and we all trusted my vibes.

If only I’d trusted them that last morning.

I knew she was nervous, her reactions muted. But I convinced myself that I could make everything okay when we talked later. That opportunity never happened since she ran and never looked back.

Ash typed away, hunting through her accounts. “She lifts a thousand pound out in cash every single month.”

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