Page 69 of The Cinderella Secret
“Sorry,” said Garcia, sounding sincere. “I really don’t know how he got past me. I swear he was in for the evening last night.”
“Yeah, I know. He’s a sneaky bastard. Talk you in a bit.”
With a sigh, Jackson hung up and dialed his cousin.
Aiden picked up on the first ring. “Oh, good,” he said before Jackson could speak. “You’re up.”
“Yes,” said Jackson, “I am. Where are you? You’re not home.”
“How would you know? I wiped your software off my phone.”
“My guy is supposed to make sure you make it to the office. He calls when you don’t answer the door.”
“Right,” said Aiden. “Forgot about him.”
“Mr. Deveraux,” said a female voice, chiming through clearly from Aiden’s side of the phone. “We’re ready for you to head back into the dressing room.”
“The dressing room?” repeated Jackson.
“Yeah, I’m getting an MRI,” said Aiden, with the sound of rustling fabric.
“Would you care to explain why?” asked Jackson, pushing one finger against his eye to keep it from twitching.
“Got conked on the head,” said Aiden. “It’s fine. Teeny concussion. They just want to make sure I’m not going to throw a blood clot or something.”
“Aiden, what the fuck? What the hell happened?”
“No time to explain,” said Aiden. “I’ve got to go get changed and I need you to do me a favor.”
“And what would that be?” demanded Jackson.
“I need you to get Evan and go out to the storage unit.”
“The storage unit?”
“Yeah, that’s where Grandma dumped all of Owen and Randall’s shit that no one wanted to go through. There’s some DevEntier boxes in there, and I need you to bring them all back to the house. I’ll be over to go through them after I get done here.”
“Aiden, is this really important? Shouldn’t you be—”
“Figuring out why someone at DevEntier is falsifying documents about Bo Zhao and, you know, also whacking me on the head? Yes, this is what I should be doing. And I’m asking for your help. Evan will know where everything is, but he’ll need the moral support. Can you please just do this?”
Jackson took a beat to assess if this was something that he argued about even though he was going to do it anywhere.
“Yeah, of course I’ll go,” said Jackson. “And you’ll bring the MRI report home from your doctor.”
There was a second of dead air. Jackson guessed Aiden was taking a moment to assess ifhewas going to argue.
“I will do that,” said Aiden. “And I’ll bring you up to speed on everything else when I get back to the house. I should be done in a couple of hours. Maybe faster since it’s early and it shouldn’t take them that long to look at the results, but I feel like I say that every time.”
“And how many concussions have you had?” asked Jackson.
This time Aiden was only silent for a fraction of a second. “Just the normal amount,” he said cheerfully. “See you back at the house. Bye.”
Jackson hung up the phone and reached for his shoes. He wasn’t sure he wanted to broach the topic of storage units with Evan over the phone. He jogged down the stairs and found Theo holding his coat for him. Jackson could never figure out how Theo managed to predict his movements.
“We’re going to need some space for laying out papers,” said Jackson. “Aiden’s sending Evan and I out to the storage unit.”
“I can put extra leaves in the dining table,” said Theo, “or we can put the cover on the billiard table upstairs in the games room.”
