Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 27958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 140(@200wpm)___ 112(@250wpm)___ 93(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 27958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 140(@200wpm)___ 112(@250wpm)___ 93(@300wpm)
Then he hung up.
I jumped to my feet and ran my hands through my hair before slamming my fists on the desktop.
I was running out of patience and if we didn’t figure something out soon, I was gonna lose my shit—which usually ended with someone dead.
Two days later, Britta and I were working in my office when the door slammed open, and Deviant stalked in, holding an open laptop. “I fucking got her,” he grunted before spinning around and going right back out.
What the fuck?
Britta jumped to her feet, but I put a hand on her shoulder to keep her from following him. “Sorry, baby. This could involve club business. Promise to fill you in on anything I can after we’re done.”
She sighed but nodded and slumped back down into her chair. I gave her a quick, hard kiss, then hurried after Deviant, ending up in Fox’s office.
Deviant repeated his statement and set his computer on the prez’s desk.
Fox stood and came around to stand by me so we could both see the screen.
“Seven years ago, Portia Lawrence married Gregory Truitt in Las Vegas. A week later, the marriage was annulled. But in that span of time, she created a new identity. P. Truitt. The only reason I finally stumbled across the marriage was because Grey and I have been combing through her life, everywhere she went, what she did while she was there, who she was with. Anything we could find.
“We followed her trail to Gregory Truitt once we realized that she’d had dinner with him multiple times, and they spent the night together. There was nothing else on her credit card, so on a hunch, I pulled his credit card charges. That’s when I found that he’d paid for a package at a little white wedding chapel.”
“How did you know he married Portia?” I asked. It was the obvious assumption, but I wasn’t going after this woman with nothing but Deviant’s hunch.
“Grey has another contact in Vegas. They hunted down the marriage certificate. It was only filed in a tiny courthouse that still hasn’t digitized their records. The only way to prove to the rest of the world that you got married is to have the original certificate on hand. But if your sole purpose is to create a fake identity, filing the paperwork in a records hall that no one would ever think to check…”
“Unless two geniuses were ripping apart your life,” Fox mused.
“Exactly.”
“How does this help us find Marylin?” I asked, trying not to sound impatient.
“This identity, P. Truitt. Obviously, it’s not the only one out there. But this one”—he pointed at a document on his screen—“has only ever been used once. It’s on the rental document for a house on the south side of Chicago.”
“How sure are you about all this?” I queried, not sure whether to let myself hope.
“One hundred percent. We saw a man talking to Portia outside her apartment building one day, but we didn’t think much about him since we were so intent on following her. I pulled up the feed from the nearest traffic cameras by the house and ran a search for vehicles that matched any others in all the other footage I’d compiled. I got a hit last night.”
He clicked a few keys, and a grid of photos appeared. It was six across and six down, every single one showing the same license plate.
“Apartment building,” Deviant said as he pointed at the first picture. “House. Apartment building. The high-rise where Portia works. The house. The apartment building. The house. The high-rise. I’m telling you, that’s where they’re keeping Marylin.”
“Be ready to ride in an hour,” Fox grunted, stomping around his desk and picking up his phone.
“Wait,” Deviant said, holding up his hand. “That’s not all.”
“You found Britta’s mom,” I muttered. “What else is there?”
“Well, unless you were intending for them to go into hiding again, I figured you’d want to know the identity of the boss.”
Fox and I gaped at him.
“We’ll need King’s leak to confirm it, but yeah, I found him, too.”
10
STONE
“Well?” I snapped when Deviant didn’t immediately give us the name.
“Tommaso Barone.”
“What the fuck?” Fox and I exclaimed at the same time.
“But…”
Deviant gestured to the computer screen. “The boss hides in plain sight. It gives him the edge because people will tell him things that they wouldn’t tell ‘the boss.’”
“That explains why they would be holding Marylin for him,” I observed, scrubbing a hand over my face. “I kept wondering why the boss would care enough to keep a hostage until Tommaso was released. Especially when he didn’t report directly to the boss.”
Deviant nodded, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning his hip on the desk. “It’s under his orders, although no one knows that.”
“How did you find this out?” Fox asked, his brow furrowed as he took in this shocking news.