Page 67 of Six of Hearts
She packed a bag in about three minutes while I was standing there, asked me to keep an eye on her place, and left,” the woman explained.
“It was really weird. Is everything okay?”
I couldn’t blame Aria for her reaction, but I wish she’d just waited a moment before resorting to such a severe course of action. “It is. She’s actually my children’s nanny, and I just think we overwhelmed her. Thank you for caring for her. I’ll find her and bring her home.”
“Okay,” the woman said.
“I gotta go, but this is my apartment, so just let me know if I can help.”
“Thanks,” I responded, and the woman started off down the hallway. I waited a little bit and then made my own way back out of the apartment and down to my car.
Once inside, I called Noah.
“Yo.”
“What the fuck? I’ve been trying to get ahold of someone for hours and no one is responding to me,” Noah hissed.
“Yeah, look, I don’t have time to give you the whole documentary right now, but Ronan is actually in witness protection. He was accused of doing some horrible stuff, that he obviously didn’t do, but someone with it out for him sent some of the photos from the crime scene to Aria and she freaked out and disappeared. I’m in front of her apartment now, and she isn’t here and her neighbour said she left in a panic this morning. No idea where she went,” I explained.
“I’m going to work with Liam to see if we can figure out where these pictures came from, but I may need you to worry about the kids. We’re also going to have to figure out what to tell them about where Aria has gone. They’re going to freak out when she doesn’t pick them up.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Noah said.
“We need to go into damage control mode. I’ll deal with the kids and hold down the fort, and you and Liam get started on figuring out who sent her the photos and where she’s gone to. I’ll get Ethan and Julian on Ronan duty to keep him from going off the deep end.”
Noah was truly the leader we needed.
“Sounds good. I’ll call Liam. Keep us posted.”
“I will, you too,” Noah said, and then the line went dead.
I sent Liam a text telling him to meet me back at my office. We were going to need to exercise our channels to investigate the strange goings-on with Aria and the package.
The phone dinged and I smiled at the message on the screen.
‘We will use the law as long as it works for us, and as soon as it doesn’t, we’ll deliver this mystery man the justice he deserves by any means necessary.’
I typed a response. ‘You read my mind. If I have my way, I’ll stick my gun in this guy’s mouth myself.’
Twenty
Liam
I used the trip to meet up with Gabriel to do a bit of my own research. I had more contacts and inroads in legal channels than most people had in their social circles, and I knew that I could track down the people who’d reached out to Aria and get my hands around their necks myself.
I took all the information Gabriel and Ronan were able to provide to me, and called out to everyone I knew who would be able to check around their places of business and tell me more.
The first thread I chose to follow was Gabriel’s telling me that the packages had been delivered to Aria. That meant, above all else, that someone knew Aria’s address and had to give that information to whomever delivered the package.
I called my contact at the post office, hopeful that he would be willing to give me some answers. He was a former witness in a case of mine and wasn’t my number one fan, but where power couldn’t make a man talk, money typically could.
He was able to inform me that the package had been delivered via certified mail the day prior, but clammed up when it came to giving me a point of origin.
“You do know that my compatriots and I are very wealthy,” I told him, furious that I even had to stoop to such levels to get information I would otherwise take by force. The situation required finesse and I needed the people I was questioning to handle the circumstances with discretion.
“What would it take for us to be able to figure out exactly where that package came from?”
“I could do some digging,” the contact told me, “but it will take a little bit of time, and you know tampering with the mail isa federal crime. If I’m going to risk it, I suppose I at least need to be able to cover any fee I would incur if I was caught.”
