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He laughed. “In the office. Been here most of the night, checking in on the patrol at the Everly home and pulling footage from every traffic cam and CCTV camera I could think of. Don’t worry. All quiet at the mother’s house.”
I withheld my sigh of relief, but it swelled in my chest. “And have you got any more details? Names of the attackers? Pictures?”
I didn’t see Brody shake his head, but I could imagine the gesture. And he made his usual noise of slight disgust. “Nope. I’m coming up empty. No attacker names or pictures…but…” He said the word like a fanfare. “I did manage to get the plate of the truck that rammed them off the bridge.”
“And?”
He had a habit of dragging out good news. It infuriated me more often than not, and this time was no exception.
“And I got a business address off it. The plate was actually covered in most of the cam footage leading up to the incident, but I profiled the truck and found it earlier in the day on its way toward the warehouse district, when I assume it was headed to Gold Moon.”
He waited, and I responded with adequate praise.
He continued. “Turns out the truck belongs to a company rather than an individual.”
Well, well…that certainly made things interesting, and seemed to tie closely with the idea that a second company was also interested in taking over Gold Moon. I waited some more for Brody to elaborate, but he didn’t speak.
“Brody?”
“Yeah?”
“What company?” My frustration was clear even over the phone. Were all of my conversations today going to be like the one I’d just had with Jackson?
“Sorry, Patrick. I was just checking the name. Don’t want to get this wrong. It’s been a long night.”
I sighed softly. Yes, I was working everyone too hard, and Brody definitely needed some sleep.
“Anyway, the company is called Bane’s Garden.”
21
JOSEPHINE
Iopened my eyes and quickly shut them again as bright morning light sliced across my face from between a gap in the drapes. Other shafts of light fell on Wes and Charmaine, but no one else had been unlucky enough to cop a face-full.
We were piled in Mom’s living room like puppies, nests of blankets and cushions all that were between the thick carpet and us. None of us had felt very much like working the previous night once some degree of shock had set in.
The wreck could have been so much worse than one broken arm and an assortment of cuts and scrapes. Any of us might not have walked away at all. I shivered as the thought crashed back over me.
We’d relaxed last night, though. I stretched and winced at the sudden shooting pain in my head. Perhaps we’d relaxed too much. There’d been a bottle of red wine or two. Definitely three, in fact, but after that, I’d stopped counting. When the goal was to relax, I never counted the bottles.
There might have been a movie on as well, and definitely some Chinese take-out. I reached up and extracted an errant noodle from my hair.
But above all that, or overlaid on the top, was a friendship like I’d never experienced. If the incident on the bridge — it was safer to think of it just as an “incident”— had been meant to harm one of us, the result was the opposite.
We were now bonded more closely. We’d shared and survived something together, and now we also shared a common goal: to get to the bottom of both mysteries. Who was acting up at Gold Moon, and who had attacked us? Maybe the answers were even connected.
Maybe I was overthinking, but the other threats had certainly been connected to Gold Moon in some way. It would be nice to answer both questions at the same time.
And since when had Gold Moon become such a hub of corruption and illegal activity? To want to harm me over a potential buy-out? That was completely contrary to the way Dad had ever conducted his business.
This was real danger, and I shivered.
Every so often overnight, I’d spared a thought for the guards on patrol outside. Mom had been quite excited at the thought of men roaming her gardens, but I hadn’t explained exactly why they were there. Plus, I hadn’t entirely appreciated her “lady garden” jokes, and I’d shut those down fast. Wes had sniggered, though.
Thinking of the guards led to additional thoughts of Patrick, although it wasn’t like I needed that man in my head any more than he was there already.
My cheeks heated as I remembered some of my favorite moments with him, then I glanced at Wes and Charmaine. Probably these memories were for times of private reflection only. I didn’t need anyone else in the room with me at all when I thought of them. Not even my friends.
