AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hope you’re having a good night, mon ange. Love you, son.
Molly sucked in a breath. “It has to mean something. Can I see that angel?”
Gabe handed it over and Molly turned on her cell phone’s flashlight, shining it on the base. “There’s a crack around the base, but it’s been glued and covered with paint,” she said, shaking it lightly. “Could he have put something in here? Burke, do you have your Swiss army knife?”
Xavier frowned. “What the hell? You’re going to break my angel?”
“I’m going to open it up,” Molly said, taking the knife Burke handed her. “I’ll be careful.”
“Please do. It’s...” Xavier faltered. “It’s the only thing I have to remember him by. We never even took a photo together. He said that it wasn’t safe.”
“I promise,” she said. “Burke, hold my phone and shine the light on the angel?” She bent her head, her gaze fixed on what she was doing. She poked the blade’s edge around the hairline crack, prodding it along the circle, over and over again until the crack completely broke and the base fell into the angel’s body.
Actually, it was kind of hovering there, even though it was small enough to have fallen inside.
“Cotton,” she said. “Rocky filled this thing with cotton. I wish I had tweezers.”
“There’s a pair inside the handle,” Burke said. “Let me get them for you.”
“No, I got it,” Molly said, sliding the tweezers free. “Wow, this is a nice knife, Burke.”
“Always need good tools,” Burke muttered. “Hurry up.”
“Be patient,” she murmured, first grabbing the base with the tweezers and lifting it out, then digging out the cotton. “Oh,” she breathed as she upended the angel over her palm.
Something small and black lay in her hand.
Gabe had to clear his throat to speak. “A thumb drive?”
“Yep.” She looked up with a grin. “This is what Rocky wanted you to find, Gabe. I have my laptop. Let’s see what’s on this thing.”
“It might not be safe,” Burke cautioned.
She scoffed. “You want to wait an hour and a half to get Antoine to read it? My laptop’s backed up to the cloud. I’ll turn off my network connection, so no one can hack in. If there’s a nasty virus on this thing, I can get a new laptop and recover my data later.”
Burke nodded once. “Do it.”
Quickly Molly pulled her laptop from her handbag. “Turning off the internet and...” She plugged the thumb drive into a USB drive. “One file,” she said and clicked. Then frowned. “Well, fuck a duck.” She looked up, her expression totally frustrated. “It says, ‘Find Gabe at Le Petit Choux, mon ange.’ ”
“That’s where my angel is,” Gabe said, his head spinning. “In my desk drawer at the Choux.” He ground his teeth. “At least I hope it’s still there. With Donna Lee’s betrayal, who knows?”
He still hadn’t processed any of that. The woman whom he’d called his friend had been questioned and released, but André had promised that a trusted officer was watching her in case she tried to flee. They weren’t sure what to charge her with just yet but were angling toward conspiracy. That meant the cops and the district attorney had to pull all the details together first, to show that a conspiracy existed. That all of these events connected together. He only hoped that Donna Lee would get her comeuppance. And he was petty enough to hope that her husband found out about her affair and left her, on top of whatever legal issues she now had.
Not now.He pushed thoughts of Donna Lee from his mind. They’d closed the Choux for the weekend, saying they’d had a pipe burst and needed to clean up. They’d lose a lot of money because it was a festival weekend, but they didn’t want to risk the rest of their staff in the event that Ducote sent another thug to harass them.
Gabe would deal with her later. Right now, he couldn’t take his eyes off Xavier’s angel.
Had he been sitting on the evidence all this time? Right under his nose? Goddammit, Dad, why’d you have to make this so hard?
Burke buckled up. “Next stop, the Choux. And if Rocky were still alive, I’d kick his ass.”
“You’d have to wait in line,” Gabe grumbled. “What did he think he was doing? Some Dan Brown Da Vinci Code shit?”
“He was trying to protect you both,” Molly said, her reproach crystal clear.
Gabe sighed. “I know. I know he didn’t want anyone to find out about Xavier, and I know he was trying to keep me safe by keeping me in the dark.”
“Still sucks,” Xavier muttered as Molly gave him back his keys and the small angel’s base.
