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“Aguilar?” Rose asked from the back.
Cassie resisted the urge to look over her shoulder to see if the car was still following them. Somehow, that would make it all worse. “Some of these are for Savannah properties. Interesting that Reed would have them, considering his office is in Chicago.”
Harris grinned. “That ties Reed to Savannah. Which is one step closer to—”
“Aguilar,” Rose and Cassie said in unison.
“Do you recognize any of the addresses?” Harris asked.
“Not really. They have a Savannah zip code, but I don’t know what any of them are. I can pull it up on my phone?”
“When we get back to the hotel—” Harris slammed on her brakes, causing both Cassie and Rose to lurch forward, and the folder to dump onto the floor at Cassie’s feet. “Shit.”
“What? What’s wrong?” Cassie couldn’t resist the pull now. She looked over her shoulder, only to see a huge Ford F150 filling up the back window. “Is that the guy following us?”
Before Harris could answer, the guy let off his gas and switched lanes. Then exited the highway, leaving them to continue. Harris blew out a breath of air. “Guess not.”
“Let’s hope it was just a random tailgater and not someone trying to get our license plate,” Cassie said, then winced. She didn’t want to freak out Rose, but they needed to be honest.
“We’ll be careful.” Harris’s voice was calmer now. “It’ll help having the car in a parking garage. Hopefully we’re out of here before they manage to track us down.”
Cassie leaned forward and scooped the papers off the floor. They were all out of order now. As she tried sorting them in her lap, she came across one that had a sticky note on the back. “Wait a second.” She used her phone to illuminate the scribble written there. “There’s a list of names here. Johnson. Cleveland.” Cassie hesitated. She didn’t want to read out the next one. “Klein.” She let that sink in, but no one said anything. “Warren.”
“Warren?” Harris’s voice was deadly serious. “Are you sure?”
“I think so. Why, do you know them?”
“Officer Warren died a week before David. Routine traffic stop. It seemed strange, especially since David died a week later.”
“And now Warren’s name is in this folder. You think he was investigating this? Maybe he found something on Aguilar.”
“Seems more than a little possible. Two people on that list are dead. We need to look into the others.”
Silence filled the car. Cassie’s head continued to spin, and she didn’t know which direction to go in. “What now?”
Harris gripped the steering wheel, keeping her eyes on the road ahead. “We lay low for the night. I’ll call in a few favors. We figure out how to keep Rose safe. Then we get some answers.”
Cassie had no idea how they were going to do any of those things, but the determination on Harris’s face didn’t leave any room for doubt.
31
Jason had called later that night for an update, and by the next morning, they had figured out how to keep Rose safe. One of Jason’s contacts lived just over the border in Wisconsin and ran a security company with a built-in safe house. Jason said his friend wouldn’t charge anything to keep Rose holed up for a couple of days, but Cassie couldn’t tell if it was because the guy owed Jason a favor, or if Jason was covering the expenses out of his own pocket.
She really hoped it was the former.
But that led to more unanswered questions. How had Jason and this other man met? What had they gone through together? Did the guy know about the part of Jason’s past he hadn’t felt comfortable sharing with her yet? And what kind of favor constituted a no-questions-asked scenario that involved taking in a stranger?
Unfortunately, she didn’t have the time or the energy to ask him what was on her mind. Harris had made all three of them go to bed early that night after having Rose write down everything she could remember about her conversations with her husband. It wasn’t much, and the notes were scattered, but they had no idea which details would be important later. Or which might finally nail Aguilar to the wall.
Cassie had to admit she felt better in the morning. The anxiety of being in a foreign city would’ve been enough to exhaust her, let alone everything else going on. Hitmen and money laundering and shady lawyers. Part of her couldn’t wait to get back home to Savannah and a normal life, and part of her knew it would never feel like home without David.
Saying goodbye to Rose was harder than she’d thought it would be. The other woman looked so tiny, despite her pregnant belly, and watching two hulking men standing on either side of her as they got ready to leave only shrunk her further.
Cassie went in for a hug. “You can trust these guys.” She kept her voice low, so only Rose could hear her. “We’ll get this sorted out soon. Then you can go home.”
“I don’t really have a home to go to.”
Cassie didn’t know what to say, but Harris saved her by stepping in and placing a comforting hand on Rose’s shoulder. “I know it’s going to be hard, but relax as much as you can. We’ll keep you updated. Right now, your only concern is your baby, okay?”
