Page 36 of Caged

Cate

When we walked in, Meg told us everyone was waiting for us upstairs.Everyone?Whatever they found must be bad. I grabbed my white board and files from our office before rushing to the conference room where Doug had the images we’d sent projected on the big screen. I set my whiteboard on the floor for quick reference.

“What’d you find?” Jaden asked. Patience was not a virtue he possessed.

“The Quick Wash is owned by Roman Enterprises, so is the building,” Doug said.

“Roman? Please tell me it’s not Richard Roman,” I said.

“One and the same,” John answered.

“Shit.” Roman’s name came up a lot when we investigated the threat against Blake, now AJ’s fiancée. We suspected he blackmailed Blake’s father, but the connections were circumstantial at best. And Roman was a slippery bastardwho paid smart people with questionable ethics to bury his connections deep, making what little we had on him useless. The few thugs who’d survived when we rescued Blake had protected Roman by naming a dead man as their boss.

Her father’s gambling debt was the reason Roman had Blake kidnapped. He wanted the millions she inherited from her grandfather, on her twenty-fifth birthday, to settle her father’s debt, and then some.

Looking at Jaden, I could tell he was thinking the same thing. The back room wasn’t big enough for a gambling den, but either of the two spaces beside it were.

“What’d you find?” John asked.

I nodded for Jaden to start.

“The Quick Wash has a hidden room in the back.” He stood up and pointed at the still I screen capped from the video. “The back door is under surveillance and can only be opened from the inside. The address we found in Wendy’s trash should be in the same plaza, but doesn’t legally exist.”

After a pause, Jaden said, “I noticed a Quick Wash business card on Darling’s refrigerator during our visit. Something’s hinky.”

“Hinky?” Jack asked.

Ignoring him, Jaden continued, “We'll talk to Darling again, see what he knows. With any luck, he’ll spill his guts about his connection to the Quick Wash, and Roman.”

"When we pick up our laundry, we'll look around the building some more,” I said.

Eyebrows around the room went up when Jaden told them we were posing as a married couple. I couldn’t blamethem. We weren’t exactly the poster children for workplace camaraderie.

“Has anyone told AJ?” I asked. If we were investigating Roman, he’d worry about Blake.

“I called him,” Jack answered. “He was ready to quit so he could race home but I convinced him to stay. We’ve assigned Eric to watch Blake, and she’ll stay with us until AJ gets home.

I nodded.

“Any thoughts on how this connects to Wendy?” Jamie asked.

“No. When we’re done here I’ll update our notes. Jaden will go back through Wendy’s socials and see if anything stands out now that we have more info. We’ll question Darling again after he gets home from work.”

“Let us know how we can support you. I have a meeting at three but I’m all yours after that,” John said.

Jaden looked shocked when he said, “Thanks.”

Doug chimed in, “I haven’t identified Wendy’s Mr. R from the picture yet, but I’ll keep looking. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”

Jamie and Jack had full calendars for the afternoon, but said they could help later. I didn’t think we’d need to disrupt their evenings, but it was good to know they were available.

“When you’ve organized your notes, CC the team,” John said with a smile. No one at SSI teased me for my near obsessive need to organize my notes. Except Jaden.

“Will do.” I gathered up my files and whiteboard and went back to the office.

Jaden and I worked quietly until four-thirty, only talking when we needed to verify information.

“You good if I call Darling to see if he can meet with us tonight?” he asked.

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