Time’s up.
Crystal wasn’t the least bit sure she’d found anything useful, and nothing about Friday night, but she’d tried. Damnit. She could only hope there was something here that would help Shane the way he was helping her. Rushing around to the far side of the desk, Crystal cursed when she saw the contents of her purse spilled across the floor.
She dropped to her knees, grabbed her things, and stuffed them messily back in the bag. With one last look to make sure nothing appeared out of place, Crystal forced a deep, calming breath and opened the door. The outer office was quiet, still. They hadn’t returned yet.
Walking casually was absolute torture since her muscles nearly screamed with the desire to bolt out of there and never look back. But that would raise immediate suspicion. With four weeks left before they could go anywhere, she had to keep playing her part.
The outside air tasted like freedom. The farther she got from Bruno’s office, the more assured she was that she hadn’t been detected, and the easier it was to be normal, not just act it.
Which was a good thing since she had a list of normal things to do in the next three hours before she returned. Pharmacy, a quick trip to the grocery store, then home to drop it all off. And at some point, she needed a good ten or fifteen minutes to text Shane all the photographs she’d taken so she could delete them from her phone. No way she could go back to Confessions with those images on there. She’d be a nervous wreck all night. Bruno had been known to thumb through her text messages (entirely from him and Jenna) and emails (almost all advertisements, Nigerian bank-type scams, and penis-enhancement treatments) from time to time.
So she better get to it.
SHANE’S GUT WAS tied up in knots because he’d botched the ask to get Crystal to safety at Hard Ink.
Sitting at Marz’s desk for the past ninety minutes, he’d run his choice of words through his mind again and again and he’d come to one dumbfounding conclusion—he’d never made it clear that he wanted her here with him. Not because she was in trouble, not because he could protect her, but because he was a man wanting a woman and a chance.
Fucking idjit.
Since Marz had pulled a string of nearly all-nighters, they’d convinced him to go get some sleep. But first, he’d shown Shane how to run the Port Authority registries queries he’d been working on to try to identify any relevant businesses of interest at the marine terminal. Shane was more than willing to help, even if his brain was slowly oozing out his ears in boredom.
Next to him, Jeremy sketched on a big sheet of paper while he waited for the mug-shot research he was doing to produce results. Shane leaned closer. The guy was talented, that was for damn sure. The design was of a big tree full of leaves, but at the top, the leaves turned into blackbirds taking flight and baring the uppermost branches. The birds were dynamic, and the whole image was powerful and melancholy.
“For a client?” Shane asked.
“Yeah,” he said, not looking up from the drawing.
“Maybe I’ll get you to do me sometime.” Shane hadn’t gotten a new piece in a while, but he’d always liked the feeling of the needles crawling across his skin.
Jeremy’s face slid into a slow grin, and his tongue flicked at the piercing on the side of his lip. “Do you?”
“You know what I mean, asshole,” Shane said, chuckling. His cell rang, and he grasped it off the desk. Crystal. Maybe she’d changed her mind about staying with him. “Hey. Everything okay?”
Silence.
“Crystal?”
The line went dead.
Shane redialed, but the call went straight to voice mail. Probably just a spot of bad reception. No doubt she’d call back in a few.
“Everything okay?” Jeremy asked.
“Yeah. She just dropped me.”
Five minutes passed. Ten. Tension settled into Shane’s shoulders, making his muscles tight and his joints stiff. He rolled the shoulder with the healing gunshot wound, but it didn’t help.
He dialed again. Straight to voice mail.
As he stared at his phone’s screen, Shane’s intuition shot up a red flag.
Glad Marz had shown him how to turn on the audio feeds from Confessions and Crystal’s apartment, Shane minimized the screen with the registries query—now at 42 percent. Almost three o’clock, so Crystal was probably done with the luncheon but not yet scheduled to be back for her evening shift. Where would she go?
“Mind if I play this on the speakers, or would you prefer I get some headphones?”
“I don’t mind,” Jeremy said, frowning up at Shane’s computer. “What is that?”
“Crystal’s apartment.” Music played in the background, like maybe a door separated it from the listening device picking it up. No voices. No sounds of movement.
Another ten minutes passed, and Shane dialed one more time. Same result. And now his gut was calling an outright foul.
Something’s not right. Why the hell hadn’t he asked for the number to her iPhone? The thought had passed through his mind whenever she’d checked the cell for the time. But Crystal was skittish, and her nerves had been out in force during some of their conversation. He hadn’t wanted to add to her stress by asking for it.
Shane glanced at the speakers and crossed his arms tight over his chest. This was going to make him crazy. He shoved out of the chair. “I’m going to go find her.”
Jeremy’s pen fell still, and his expression was all concern. “You really think something’s wrong? I could come with.”
“Appreciate that, man. But stay here and keep at this—we need the data you’re producing. I’ll grab one of the guys.”
Jeremy nodded, disappointment flashing across his face. “Good luck. I hope everything’s okay.”
Shane cut across the gym, planning out a strategy. Should he go to Confessions and look for her truck first? Hell, why hadn’t he put a GPS tracker on the vehicle? Rookie oversight. The thought had him doing a one-eighty and marching back to Marz’s desk. Beckett had brought tracking devices with him, so Shane knew they had them. It was the work of a few minutes to find the box in which they were stored, then he took off again.
“Shane?” Jeremy called across the gym. “Wait. Come here,” he said.
The growing alarm in the man’s voice hauled Shane back to the computer, back to the feed pouring through the speakers.
“I want this place searched top to bottom,” came a bitter male voice. One Shane recognized. Bruno, with that same suspicious, paranoid tone he’d had the night Shane had been there.
Shane’s gut twisted.
Something crashed. A scream.
“What the hell are you doing—” Another scream. “Get the fuck off me—” The sickening sound of a slap or a hit. The voice was so warped by fear and anger, Shane couldn’t tell if it belonged to Crystal or Jenna, but it didn’t matter.
“Jesus Christ,” Jeremy said. “What the hell are we listening to?”
Shane didn’t stick around to answer. Because he knew. That call he’d gotten hadn’t been from Crystal. Somehow, Bruno Ashe had gotten ahold of the burn phone he’d given her. And Shane’s calls had given the scumbag all the ammunition he’d needed to suspect Crystal of—what? Disloyalty? Cheating? Lying? Any of the above. All of the above.
He tore across the gym and into the Rixeys’ apartment. Much as impatience and urgency ripped through his gut, Shane needed backup, because Bruno hadn’t been alone. Shane’s entrance was so abrupt that everyone froze and looked at him.