Page 15 of Quiet Protector
“You don’t ask questions.”
She nods. “I’ve been asking questions for months, but since no one was willing to answer me, I went higher.” She doesn’t mention her father’s name, but her face tells her story without additional words needing to be spoken.
When she dumps the massive file onto the table with a thud, a handful of photographs fall out. They’re all of the same man—Kwan Turgenev.
“You were right. Kwan was on the scene at the Greggs’ accident. He also took a witness statement after the death of Marjorie Hawke and her unborn son, and he was the first ‘officer’ on the scene when Police Chief Rory Langfield was gunned down.” She slaps down photographs to each corresponding event. “He’s also been a butcher, a chef, a pilot, and a marine.”
My throat becomes scratchy. “A marine? So we have a file on him?”
Phillipa shakes her head. “No, we don’t because he’s a ghost.”
I ‘ha’out loud. “A ghost who enjoys having his photo taken.”
“Not that type of ghost. He’s aghost,ghost.” She speaks her last sentence super slow.
It takes me a few seconds to click on, but when I do, I’m left breathless. “He’s a spy?”
“Allegedly,” Phillipa responds, her mood picking up from what it was moments ago. Purging has that effect on you, especially when the person you’re spilling your guts to believes you. “Crombie’s sealed testimony was like unlocking a vault. He said Castro had jumped the gun when he killed Milo. He was so eager to claim his prize, he didn’t authenticate Milo’s story that all members of the Gregg family had been in the car when he plowed into them. He was at the Gottle compound when Henry received word from Kwan that Melody was alive.”
My jaw twitches as it begs to drop open. “That’s why he waited. It would have looked suspicious if Melody showed up dead hours after he claimed to have taken down the man responsible for the Greggs’ murder.”
Phillipa nods then sighs. “Believing justice had been served, Henry ordered that the scene be declared an accident. He’d risk another cartel war if his enemies discovered he had been hit unprepared.” Air whizzes from her nose as she gently shakes her head. “He had no way of knowing every man on the scene that night would end up dead within the next two years. Castro had improved his game. Instead of making them straight-up murders, he covered them with a range of incidences—a boating accident, a drive-by shooting, a suicide—”
“Suicide? He made one of his murders look like a suicide?”
“Yeah…” She peers at me with unease before dropping her eyes to her file. “Crombie couldn’t remember the exact date, but he told officials it was late May se—”
“Seven years ago? Fuck.” I clench my fists so tightly, my nails dig into my palm. “My brother committed suicide seven years ago. He had blond hair like mine with a newly shaven chin. You couldn’t mistake us as strangers. We had a lot of similar features.” Moisture burns Phillipa’s eyes when I lock my watering ones with hers. “I was on the scene of the Greggs’ accident. Could they have mistaken Joey for me?”
“Don’t make me answer that, Brandon. Please.” Her demand is more telling than giving me a straight-up answer. “No matter what, we can’t go back and change the past.”
The brutal hammering of my heart is heard in my reply, “But I can prove Joey didn’t kill himself. I can admit it was my fault.”
Hair falls into Phillipa’s eyes when she shakes her head with force. “It wasn’t your fault—”
“They were supposed to kill me! I was the one they were targeting. How is this not my fault?”
I glare at her when she pulls aduhface. “I can think of a few things. Like you were just a kid. You trusted that not everyone had a black heart, and how about having no clue Liam was thrusting you into the middle of a mafia war when you were four!”
“Five, not that it matters. I would have signed up anyway.” Nothing but honesty is heard in my reply. “You can’t fault Liam for wanting to protect his family, Phillipa.”
“Just like you can’t fault Joey for doing the same thing.” She lowers her voice a notch before my neighbors call in the feds, then locks her eyes with mine. “If any of this is true, if Joey was killed by Castro because he thought he was you, who’s to say Joey didn’t know that? Perhaps he was protecting you. You don’t know what was going through his mind at that exact moment.”
Her excuse is piss-poor, but when you’re grasping at straws, you have to hold on tight. I want justice for Joey, and I’ll get it, but only once I’m certain those still living won’t fall on the same knife he did. “You said Castro was killing everyone on the scene, so why didn’t he go after Kwan and Melody?”
My flipping stomach rolls through some extra churns when Phillipa slides a faded polaroid to my side of the table. It appears weathered, but to someone who didn’t assess every perfect imperfection on Melody’s face, they may believe the woman lying lifeless on a single bed in a dorm-like room was her. She has the same tulip-shaped nose, kinked hair when she lets it dry naturally, and the tiniest slither of silver above her right brow from her home invasion.
After sliding a second photo my way, Phillipa says, “The family crest tattooed on Milo and Crombie’s neck are similar, but they’re not identical.”
I scoff at her, well aware she’s wrong. “I went over their tattoos with a microscope. They’re identical…” I eat my words when she reveals a third photo. This one has the lights switched off. “They had invisible ink embedded in them?”
Phillipa nods. “I asked a scientific photographer to take a look at the photo Melody sent you.” I’m tempted to ask how she got a copy of an image on my phone, but the guilt in her eyes saves me wasting my breath. “Kwan’s tattoo isn’t real. It’s as fake as his ties with the Bobrov entity.” She hits me with photo after photo after photo that shows a timeline of Kwan’s childhood. Katarina Rouse features in nearly every one of them. “Katarina adopted Kwan when he was ten. Unfortunately, it was years too late to save him from the lifestyle Tobias removed Isabelle from. He was still grateful, though.” Her next lot of images show Kwan with Henry. He’s older, rougher, and ten times more deadly—especially in the last image where he appears to have a bullet hole between the eyes.
My lungs become breathless when the truth smacks into me. “Who faked their deaths?”
Phillipa shrugs. “We don’t know. Crombie wouldn’t say.”
“Do you believe it was Henry?”
