Page 44 of Her Keeper
I leaned back, newly interested. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “The guy that was following me when I left my building, and then chased us when we were on our way here. He’s not a Rossi and he’s not a Caruso. We don’t know him. But he’s someone, and he’s working for someone. He’s got to be someone that other someone trusts, right, or he wouldn’t be following me. And I’m thinking that whoever he works for is also the group that Monica’s working for. Which means he’s the one who can lead us to our bad guy. We just need to figure out who he is and who he belongs to.”
For once, I didn’t have an answer. She’d thought through this a whole lot more than I thought she had, and had found the cleanest possible answer out there.
She gave me a sideways grin. “Michael. You didn’t think I was actually going to meet with Monica, did you? I might have told your father I would. That doesn’t mean I meant it.”
This time I did laugh.
Because it turned out she’d learned more from me in the past week than I could have dreamed.
19
PENNY
“I’m on it,” Joseph said immediately.
Michael nodded like he’d expected that exact reaction. He’d agreed with my idea that we could pull traffic cam footage and try to lift the plates from the car that had been chasing us. From there, we might be able to see who it was registered to. Sure, there was a chance that it was owned by a shell corporation, but it was better than nothing. And it was a place to start.
In the meantime, I was going to gather everyone and start making a list of who might want to hurt the Rossis. Sloane and Brooks agreed immediately when I asked them to help, and Michael sat down with us as well. He was, after all, the one who would know.
“Okay, enemies of the Rossis,” I said, pen poised above the paper.
“And the Brennans,” Sloane added.
When I looked at her in surprise, she lifted her eyebrows.
“Brennans are being killed as well, Penny, in case you’d forgotten. The article might be about the Rossis and the mole might be in the Rossi house. But that doesn’t mean the Brennans aren’t at risk, too.”
That was a good point. And honestly, we only knew about the Rossi side because I’d been involved with Monica. As far as we knew, there might be someone working on the Brennan side as well. They might be in just as much trouble as Michael’s family.
So they were going on the list, too.
I listened as my friends listed family after family that might have a problem with Rossi or Brennan, and why. It went beyond just the underworld, too, into business and entertainment, and before long we had a list that took up the entire page.
I stared at it, shocked and wondering how the hell we were ever going to narrow this down. “So many,” I murmured.
Sloane laughed. “I’ve been telling you for years that you didn’t want anything to do with this world. Maybe now you believe me.”
I did. But I also knew that this was Michael’s world, and I loved him.
If this was the world he lived in, then I’d live in it. And I’d learn how to beat it. As long as he wanted me.
Joseph suddenly entered the room, looking incredibly excited. “I got a plate, and I got a picture.”
He slid his laptop onto the table, clicked some buttons, and turned it so we could see it. On the screen, a grainy, green-toned picture popped up. A man driving a car through the rain. The picture was fuzzy and the opposite of high-def, but I could see the man clearly.
And that was definitely the guy who’d been chasing us. Longish hair. Firm jaw and slightly crooked nose. Sunglasses at night. In the rain.
I felt a chill seeing him again, and suddenly wondered whether we were going to be able to do this. Sure, we had a picture, but what were the chances we could actually get anything from that? I didn’t recognize him, and if Michael had, he would have said something during the chase itself. We couldn’t exactly access anyone else in the Rossi house right now, though I supposed we could use Brennan contacts. Still, unless someone happened to recognize the guy...
Brooks turned her eyes from Joseph, who she’d been talking to about the plate number, to the screen, and gasped.
We all turned to her to find her staring at the screen with her mouth hanging open like she was looking at a ghost.
“Brooks,” Sloane said slowly. “You okay?”
Brooks shook herself. “Fine. I just... It’s weird to see something in that sort of format, you know?”
