Page 44 of Against the Clock

Twenty-One

Roman

5 Days Ago

“Okay, so where do wego from here?”I asked as I looked around my apartment at Mike, Trevor, and Max.Quinn and Rosie had stayed the night with me last night but left to spend the day at her mom’s house while us guys tried to figure out a plan to keep Rosie safe.

“It’s hard to say,” Mike replied with a hint of frustration in his voice as he ran a hand through his hair.

“We know that it’s not just one person that’s involved,” Max added.“There are several people at play, and that will make it even harder to narrow it down.”

“There’s also a strong FBI thread,” Trevor said with a nod in Mike’s direction.

“I know,” he muttered.“I fucking hate this.I can’t even go to my own team for help because I don’t know who I can trust.We know Rosie is the ultimate target, but Quinn and I are also targets.”

“Let’s start at the beginning.”Max stood up and paced the space between the kitchen and living room.“Things started when Rosie’s teachers spotted a van across the street.They were the ones who said that she was being targeted.The police were called, but nothing happened because he was gone by the time they got there.After that, Quinn spotted the same van parked outside of her mom’s house after she picked Rosie up from school when Quinn had a last-minute meeting at work—right?”

“Yeah, that’s correct,” I confirmed.

“And the person driving the van was wearing Mike’s baseball cap that was stolen from his office?”

“Correct again,” Mike said.“Very few people have access to my office, so it leads me to believe that someone in my department took it.”

“Do you think that it was the same person wearing it and driving the van?”

Mike shrugged in response to Max’s question.

“In addition to that, we know that Justin was killed on the job in a car accident and that he was the only one ejected from the vehicle because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt.Were you with him when it happened?”

I looked over at Mike and noticed his jaw clenching as he balled his fists.

“No.I wasn’t with him when it happened.We worked on two different cases, so we didn’t cross paths much.Given that we were considered family, the department kept us separated and prohibited us from working on the same case.”

“Do you know who all was in the car with him?”Max asked, folding his arms over his chest.

“From what I remember, it was Justin, Saul, Frank, and Julia.”

“The woman from this morning,” I confirmed.“Quinn told me that she was the one who was driving the car.”

“Does she still work in witness protection?”Max turned to Mike.

“Yeah.She’s still there.”

“So she would have had access to your office?”

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