Page 33 of Stolen Kisses
Claudius shook his head at him. “Dante, what she doing at her aunt’s, I hate that place.”
“I know. She maintains she’s fine, but I know she’s not.”
“Get her out of there and sort her out with someplace to stay. Ava was worried. They met and she liked her.”
Ava liked everybody. The woman wore her heart on her sleeve.
Something was going on with Maria though, and now I knew with certainty that she was asking for a job.
I was about to continue gathering advice when a man walk in through the door.
He was a middle-aged man with muscle.
He had a full beard that was speckled with gray hair and a crew cut. He wore a suede jacket and black clothes underneath. In his hand he carried a white envelope.
Claudius straightened when he saw him.
“Gibbs,” Claudius said.
Gibbs tipped his head and nodded at all of us.
I looked on at him.
Was he the P.I?
He had the look of a guy who’d been in the military.
“I went by the office and your secretary told me I could find you here. I hope it’s okay I came by,” Gibbs stated.
“It’s fine.” Claudius nodded. When he looked over to me, I knew this guy was the P.I. “Dante, this is the guy I was telling you about.”
I stood up. “Hi.”
He could only be here if he had something. Claudius said he would make contact when he had something to report back. Maybe this was it.
Gibbs came over and shook my hand. “I have something for you,” he kept his gaze trained on me while handing me the envelope.
I took it and held it, just looking at it. It felt light.
The guys all looked at me waiting and watching.
I steadied my hands and reached into the envelope, pulling out one single image. My heart stopped when I saw Christina in the picture.
She was standing outside a building.
It was just her and she was smiling while looking on at someone.
She looked … so alive and happy.
“What is this?” I looked at Gibbs. It may have seemed like a stupid question, because clearly it was a picture of Christina. That wasn’t what I was asking though and he knew it.
“In my line of work, you look everywhere,” Gibbs began. He leaned against the wall and looked at me. “Places most people would never look, after all it’s what you do when you’re trying to find something. I found that in some documents taken from an old photographer who was murdered around the same time as your sister. Looked like he had seen too much. His name was Stephen Archamey and he wasn’t the run of the mill photographer. This guy took pictures of very important people. Secrets. He took pictures of secrets and that was how many secrets were exposed.”
“Secrets exposed?” I asked, because I was starting to see that I was right. I was damn right and this was starting to take some kind of form.
Gibbs nodded.
“You found this picture by itself?” Claudius asked cracking his knuckles.
