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She sucked her teeth as she moved back, giving me room to step onto the elevator with her. “It wouldn’t do to bealllthe way in the bar if you actually needed help, now would it?”
“Probably not,” I agreed, pressing the button for the lobby. “This was simple though. In and out. And I got the phone cloned. So we’re golden.” When Tamra didn’t reply, I turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow. “You good?” I asked.
She smirked. “I’m fine. Just…being quiet so you can focus.”
“Man,come on,” I laughed, hooking an arm around her waist to pull her into me as the elevator stopped to let other people on. “You’re not going to hold that against me, are you?”
“You should be glad somebody was worried about your ass,” she whispered back, rolling her eyes. “But… no, I’m not gonna hold it against you.”
“Or… youcouldhold it against me. And let me make it up to you tonight…”
She bit her lip instead of responding, which I took as good sign. By the time we walked off the elevator in the lobby, I had her smiling again as I flirted all the way back to the car.
“You know…” she said, once we were pulling out of the parking lot, “I don’t know if I think Lana did this either. She would have to be the stupidest criminal in the world, doing all that blabbering to a stranger, if she did this to her own husband. And did you hear how adamant she was that it was May?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I noticed that too. At this point, I really don’t know what to believe. We’ve got the stuff from Tommy’s phone now at least though, so maybe we’ll get some insight from that.”
“Yeah… we can hope.”
It wasn’t a very long drive back to our home base, and Alicia was waiting for us at the front door.
“Damn, ready to get right to it, huh?” I asked, chuckling at the serious look on her face. “I already set the data to upload straight to the cloud, you know everything we know.”
“It’s not that,” she said, still wearing that grim expression. “I’ve got something I need y’all to see. Come with me,” she said, turning to stride down the hall.
Tamra and I exchanged a look, then quickly followed to the briefing room, where the ball footage was pulled up on the oversized screen.
“I can’t believenoneof us noticed this,” she started, hitting the play button to bring the screen to life. As I watched, I realized we were looking at footage frombeforeMay had shown up, which we hadn’t given much attention before.
We were more concerned with Tommy’s interactions with May and Lana.
“Watch this,” Alicia said, pointing out Tommy on the screen. As we looked on, a tall, suited man bumped into Tommy, hard, gave a profuse apology, and then moved on as Tommy rubbed his shoulder. Alicia stopped the playback at a point where the man’s face was in clear focus on our screen. “Did y’all see what I just saw?”
I nodded, but Tamra was the one to speak up.
“Yeah. It wasn’t May,orLana… it was a professional hit,” she said, walking up to the screen. “Andthis,” – she pointed at the man. “Is athorn.”
“That’s very likely,” I agreed. “It was smooth. Some kind of toxin on a needle, a quick jab to administer it, the hard knock to mask it… he was gone before Tommy even knew anything was wrong.”
Tamra shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. I’m not saying Ithinkhe’s a thorn. Iknowhe’s one.”
“How?” Alicia asked, crossing her arms. “You’ve seen him before?”
“More than justseen,” Tamra revealed. “Iknowhim.”
