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I’m so sorry, Summer.There’s a lot that I need to tell you, and I’m going to explain it all to you as soon as I can. I promise. I’ll let you know if there’s any way you can help, but for now, I’m okay and it’s stuff I can only really handle on my own. I hope you understand. I miss talking to you every day. :(
I knew that it didn’t explain anything, but I sincerely hoped she would recognize how much I meant the apology.
Thankfully, I was distracted from staring at my phone waiting for a response by the opening of the door. Logan and Slade strode inside.
Dexter immediately turned off the game and set the controller aside. As Slade came over to the sofa, I scooted over to make room, and Dexter’s hand caught mine. That casual contact lit me up from the inside out, waking up the memories of all the other ways he’d touched me just an hour ago.
Slade took in our joined hands with a slight raise of his eyebrows, but he didn’t comment on it, just flopped onto the cushions next to me and claimed my other hand. Logan paced the room with a grim expression.
“I take it you didn’t find anything useful from the security footage,” I said.
“No. No surprises there. Whoever came by blocked the view of the only camera in range when they must have set things up this morning.” Logan halted abruptly and spun toward the rest of us. “Which means we need to talk next steps.”
He paused, taking in my pose with his friends on either side of me. A shadow passed through his eyes, but it disappeared before I could say for sure what it’d been. If he was jealous, he kept any snarky comments to himself.
“Obviously we need to dig into this trucking company more,” Slade put in. “When we checked it out yesterday, there were a lot of tough-looking guys around, and a few of them were armed in a way that I don’t think the average trucker usually is.”
Dexter frowned. “That isn’t concrete evidence of anything. We need hard proof if we want the police to get involved.”
Slade grinned at him. “So we go back and poke around until we find something hard.”
I shot him a nervous look. “The three of you are going to go cozy up to a bunch of tough-guy truckers, some of whom have guns? Are you sure that’s a good idea? What happened to keeping a low profile?”
“It’s not like we’re going to go in throwing around accusations,” Logan said. “We’ll just ask a few questions like we’re potential customers as an excuse to look around. Get some ideas for possibly breaking in and taking an even closer look after closing hours. They only had one security camera around; we can avoid getting caught on that.”
I guessed the only alternative was to stop investigating altogether, but my stomach had knotted. I worried at my lower lip. “Didn’t you find a few other companies connected to that shell corporation? We know they seem to have something to do with it all too.”
Logan nodded. “There’s the seafood market, which we already checked out, and the accounting office, which has tighter security and is more likely to get us noticed if we try to go in. I’ve done some digging there, and I think it’s pretty peripheral to any criminal operations—all the data I turned up on their network looked legit. Then there’s a restaurant that closed down a few years ago, and a women’s only spa downtown. Obviouslywe’renot going in there.”
Slade nudged me. “That’ll be your job. You can treat yourself and snoop around a bit for evidence while you’re at it.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Is that your way of suggesting that I couldn’t hold my own against the trucker guys?”
“I know you could,” he said with an admiring smile that melted most of my annoyance. “But the truckers will see you as a target like the mechanics did before. And you’ll be more memorable there. There’s nothing so odd about you going for a spa day. It could be a total coincidence that it’s owned by the same company.”
“And none of us can investigate it,” Dexter pointed out.
They had a point. Still, I folded my arms over my chest. “I feel like this is just an excuse to make me go chill out and pamper myself. I’m not going to relax all that much knowing my dad’s murderers could be lurking in the background, you know.”
A hint of a smirk touched Logan’s lips, which told me I wasn’t entirely wrong. “You’ll just have to try your best then.”
I glowered at him half-heartedly, unable to come up with a good argument to turn the tables on him. “Fine. But I’m going to dig up at least as much dirt as you do.”
* * *
The spa I found myself in the next morning definitely didn’tlooklike a front for violent criminal activities. The chair I sat in was all creamy leather like the others spaced around the waiting room. Potted flowers let off a sweet scent from the marble reception counter. Gentle strains of new age music filtered through the air. But who knew what lay behind the posh front?
I’d been able to book a couple of basic services as a walk-in customer, settling on a facial and a pedicure. The cheerful woman behind the counter had assured me it’d only be fifteen minutes before my pedicure would start. I intended to make maximum use of those minutes.
First, I took out my phone, pretending I was texting a friend. Instead, I snapped several pictures of the waiting room, channeling Dexter’s commitment to visual records.
I kept my ears pricked for any conversations around me, but when the receptionist murmured into her phone, it was only to book appointments, and the middle-aged woman sitting across from me appeared to be immersed in her book. Most of the staff worked beyond the doors at the other end of the waiting room. Hopefully I’d find out more once I got back there.
Hopefully this reallywasconnected to that shell corporation and the guys hadn’t simply tricked me into a pampering session.
A young woman peeked past the door and called to the other inhabitant of the waiting room. As the avid reader left the room, I resisted the urge to squirm in my seat. There was nothing I could examine here without looking very strange to the receptionist, who showed no signs of leaving her post.
The outer door swung open with a soft chime. A woman who appeared to be in her thirties, with a trim dress suit and her hair in a loose bun, strode up to the counter as if she’d been here dozens of times before and knew exactly what she wanted.
