Grayson steps closer to me, his eyes comforting. “I’m not saying the home invasion didn’t happen. I’m saying it occurred under a different name. The name those men…” his eyes drop to the massive file he handed me nearly an hour ago, “… knew. Liam kept them off Wren and Melody’s scent for years, but somehow the thread unraveled.” He locks his eyes with mine. They’re more determined now than nurturing. “That’s the thread we’re hunting, Brandon, and I have a feeling it’s hiding somewhere in these files.”
Since I agree with him, I get started on my investigation. “How were Crombie and Bobrov related?”
Grayson makes a ‘pfft’ noise. “Third cousins or some shit like that.” He flips over the report I’m holding until he arrives at an image that looks like it was taken at a family reunion—if every member was part of the cartel. They’re all holding guns, and they’re standing in front of a massive shipment of drugs. “Crombie is the kid in the diaper. Bobrov is this guy at the back.” He taps to a dark-haired man in the middle of the back row. “He was the older brother of Kirill Bobrov, once-Russian operative. Details on his movements are shady at best. Up until earlier this week, his last known citing was over two years ago in Kazan.”
“Where was he seen last week?”
He hands me a second photograph. “Boarding a cargo ship in Portugal.”
“Was Katie with him?”
My stomach drops when he points to a blur of fabric in the far right-hand corner of the picture. The height and size of the person hints to the fact it’s a woman, much less Kirill’s possessive clutch around her waist, but with most of her face covered, I doubt facial recognition picked up a positive match.
“Are you sure it’s her?”
I don’t mean to raise mistrust, but Grayson doesn’t see it like that. “I’m sure,” he grinds out before snatching the photograph out of my hand and devoting his focus back to Melody’s case. “We’ve identified most people in this picture, but there are a handful of stragglers. They’re usually dead—”
“I’m beyond accepting assumptions right now, Grayson. I need to know every man in this photo.”
He takes my sooty attitude in stride better than he did my mistrust. “All right. I’ll forward you the ones I have and get my crew onto the ones I don’t.”
I dip my chin in gratitude before handing him back the file. “Who do you have watching Melody?”
Grayson pulls a face like I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m more than aware he has a crew on Melody because he updated me on Agent Russell’s visit to Melody’s office last week before my guy did. Although Crombie was found hanging in his holding cell hours after his arrest, we must remain cautious. His ‘death’ could spark an entirely new war if anyone in his crew believes his death wasn’t suicide.
Incapable of standing the heat in the kitchen, Grayson sings like a nark. “I put Malachi on her. He’s a good kid. He’ll make sure she’s safe.” I’m not worried about him calling Malachi a kid. Anyone under the age of twenty-six is classed as a kid to him. He’s an old soul.
While licking my dry lips, I dig a business card out of my pocket. “Have Malachi make contact with my guy. I don’t want them spooking each other.”
He looks physically ill when he takes in the name of the private investigator I hired to protect Melody since I can’t. It’s not really my place anymore, but even if it was, I can’t have Agent Russell thinking we still have contact with one another. That will add more flames to her fire that I killed a man to keep Melody safe. I would have, but I’d rather not be prosecuted for a crime I didn’t commit.
“You hired a PI, Brandon? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I whack Grayson in the gut before leaving the safety of our hidey-hole. “Who should I have reached out to, Grayson? The Bureau who has IA so far up my ass, I’m not going to shit for a year? Or the CIA who’s hiding the murder of one of their own?”
Grayson twists his lips. “They flew Crombie to New York on a private jet. Even if you had the capabilities to hire your own plane, there’s no way they could fudge his time of death to make out you were in the same state as him, much less the same holding area.”
“Agent Russell isn’t implying I killed him. She’s insinuating that I organized his death.” As I pivot around to face him, my jaw gains a tick. “Kind of like I ‘supposedly’ arranged his incarceration years ago.” I air quote one word in my statement, beyond pissed. I understand Agent Russell’s objective, I too would be looking at me if the shoe was on the other foot, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be frustrated as well.
Grayson pulls on the collar of his shirt, suddenly hot. “You have a point.” He joins me at the rear of my car, his strides apprehensive. “What about the local detective you mentioned a few weeks back? Do you trust him?”
I make an iffy face. “I don’t know him well enough to trust him. Besides, my trust is at an all-time low right now.”
Grayson holds his hands up and steps back, hearing the scorn I didn’t articulate. He’s still in my shit book—very much so. If he hadn’t stuck his neck out to help me secure the files he did, we still wouldn’t be talking. That’s how annoyed I am that he kept all of this from me. I may have dropped the ball a handful of times back in the day, but once I proved my worth, he should have been honest.
Grayson watches me load the final box into the trunk of my BMW before asking, “What now?”
The tick of my jaw is heard in my reply, “We do exactly what Tobias taught us to do. Heads down —”
“Asses up,” Grayson fills in with a smile. “Then, when no one is looking, we conduct our own investigations on the sly.”
I smile for the first time in weeks. “Exactly.”
Even though I’m still angry at him, I return his man-hug when he ups the ante on our usual chin-lift farewell by wrapping his arms around my back, although I’m tempted to strangle him when he mutters in my ear, “Call your girl. Now is as good a time as any.”
I slap his back a little firmer than I usually do. “She’s not my girl anymore.” Before he can dispute my comment, I add, “And I’ve got a massive web to unravel first. I don’t want to give her half-assed facts. She deserves to know the truth.”
Incapable of denying my highly accurate statement, Grayson remains quiet, only speaking when I slip into the driver’s seat of my car. “Reach out if you need me.”
