AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Gabe and Xavier leaned forward so that they could watch as Burke slit the envelope open with his pocketknife.
“Where do you even get one of those faraday bags?” Xavier asked.
Burke looked up briefly, smirking. “Amazon.”
Xavier gave him a don’t-fuck-with-me look. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Molly confirmed. “We all carry them. Y’know, just in case.”
Burke held up a small box, the size that might hold a ring. “The letter enclosed is signed ‘P.L.’ But it doesn’t have Lott’s letterhead on it. It says, ‘Rocky wanted you to have this. Open it right away.’ ”
Xavier’s voice trembled. “I probably would have taken it home to open it if I’d known it was here.”
“Why didn’t Lott put it on letterhead?” Gabe asked, then shook his head at himself. “He didn’t want anything to connect him to Xavier’s murder, assuming that was what would’ve happened next.”
“Fuck,” Xavier whispered. “I’m so glad I didn’t come back here to check.”
Molly was studying Burke. “You’re disappointed. Why?”
Burke shrugged. “I was kind of hoping that Rocky had sent something to Xavier. Something that would explain all of this.”
“But a letter from Rocky would have arrived before Paul Lott’s letter with information about his inheritance,” Molly said carefully.
Burke exhaled slowly. “I know. But there’s still Gabe’s mysterious aunt Gigi, who knew about John Alan Industries and who Rocky seemed to be confiding in. I’d hoped he’d given her something that could help us. I knew it was a long shot, but I’d still hoped.”
As disappointed as Gabe was that the package wasn’t from Gigi, at least he knew where his aunt was. Antoine had found that she’d used her credit card to buy souvenirs in Grand Cayman that morning and in Panama three days before that. They’d sent an urgent message to Gigi through the offices of any ship whose itinerary fit, but so far, they’d heard nothing.
Burke reached over his seat to give Xavier his keys. “This package does support our theory that Paul Lott didn’t know where you actually live. It still doesn’t explain how the intruder knew where to find you, though.”
Xavier took the keys and bounced them in his hand. “So, we’ve got nothing new.”
“Basically,” Burke said glumly. “Next stop, Joelle Ducote?”
“Sounds right,” Molly said. “After we take Xavier back to your camp.”
But Gabe wasn’t listening, unable to stop staring at the keys in Xavier’s hand.
Or, more specifically, the key ring. “What is that on your key ring, Xavier?”
Xavier stopped bouncing the keys and held them up so that Gabe could see. “An angel. Your dad gave it to me about a month before he died. I wondered about it at the time, but when I heard that he had cancer, I realized that it was his way of saying goodbye.”
“Can I see it?” Gabe asked, because he had seen the angel before. Or one just like it.
“Sure.” Xavier handed him the keys, then made a pained face. “If you want the angel back, it’s okay. It was your dad’s, after all.”
“No,” Gabe said faintly. “He gave this to you. Besides, I’ve got one. Dad gave it to me, also a few weeks before he died. I’d forgotten about it.” He ran his fingers over the ceramic angel, his heart in his throat. It was less than two inches tall, painted with an off-white glittery paint. “My mom made this. It was when she was in remission. She’d done some pottery in the past and wanted to do something fun. She made a few of these angels, intending to paint them, to make them into Christmas tree ornaments. But she never got the chance to paint them because she got sick again. She died not long after that. Dad had one of the angels painted for me. He must have done the same for you.”
The knowledge of which warmed him but caused a sharp little spear of dismay at the same time. His father had considered Xavier to be a second son but had never felt safe enough to bring the two parts of his life together.
“It has an inscription on the bottom,” Xavier said sadly. “ ‘Reach for the stars, mon ange.’ ”
Startled, Gabe looked up to meet Xavier’s gaze. “Mon ange? He called you mon ange?”
“Not recently. He called me mon ange when he was trying to settle me into the boat, the night he saved me—because I told him that my name was Angel. My birth mom called me that, too. I’d nearly forgotten until I saw what the angel said.” Xavier’s lips trembled up into the smallest of smiles. “It meant a lot that he remembered.”
Gabe glanced at Molly, who’d leaned around her seat and was watching him with a worried frown. Probably because his tension had just ratcheted through the damn roof. “What’s wrong, Gabe?”
He swallowed. “My dad called me mon ange when I was little, too—because my name is Gabriel. But he stopped when I was thirteen. I told him it was a baby name. He didn’t call me that again until the night he died. He sent me a text.” He pulled out his phone, going to the text thread he’d shared with his father. “See? He sent it at a quarter to midnight, right before he was killed.”
