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“What is what?” he responded, but he wasn’t fooling me one bit.
“Don’t do that. I can tell you’re thinking hard about something. Tell me what it is, or I’m going to assume the worst.”Like how maybe you don’t want to be with me anymore.I hated to admit it, but that was a very valid fear for me.
He sighed deeply and wearily, and when he spoke again, it was with words I wasn’t expecting.
“I think Toby is alive.”
28
ZANE
Perhaps I should have waited to tell her this, but I knew I couldn’t keep it from her for much longer. She turned to me with her eyes widened in surprise. “What? Toby’s alive?”
I nodded.
“Wha—” she sputtered, looking around to make sure Casey hadn’t come down. Then she sat up, pulling away slightly from my arms. “How do you know?”
I placed my arm back around her waist again, drawing her even closer. Then I told her all about the talk I had with the PI, who insisted and confirmed that the picture wasn’t doctored. I told her how I thought long and hard and figured out that someone probably staged Toby’s death, how I tried to find the connection between Toby and Kelly, and how they could have crossed paths.
But despite everything that pointed to the contrary, I was now confident that Toby was alive.
It was a gut feeling, one I’d relied on back on the streets. My instincts had gotten us out of trouble more times than I could count. It was that same gut instinct that told me he was alive and may be in trouble somewhere.
I didn’t know why he never reached out or anything, but I guessed if the Bruners hadn’t killed him, then they might still have him. They may keep him locked up, where he didn’t have contact with the outside world.
No matter. Whatever it was, as long as he was alive, I would find him.
After I finished speaking, Charlotte’s face was furrowed in confusion.
“Let me get this straight. My sister’s lover is sending you pictures of Toby.” She looked at me when she said the word “lover” as though uttering something completely heinous and pitiful. I nearly smiled when she did. Out of everything I’d faced in my life, this didn’t even scratch the surface. “And the pictures are real, so he might know who tried to kill your friend, except your friend isn’t dead but likely kidnapped.”
“Yes,” I said. “I believe so.” But it was difficult to figure out the relationship between Kelly and whoever had him. I kept Kelly far away from my sordid fighting past, and she’d only attended one match back when we started dating. I’d sent her away and then left, but then she’d gotten drunk and came back. She’d accosted Toby and me on the way out, screaming and making a scene. That was their only interaction.
But maybe something else was going on, another angle I wasn’t seeing. Maybe something in Kelly’s communication with this man would give me a clue about who he was.
“Do you remember anything else about the texts?” I asked. “Anything about how he looked or even smelled? Anything that might give us a clue on who the fuck is doing this?”
She frowned and thought about it. “I don’t remember much. I would need to look into Kelly’s diary to understand, and Mom has that thing under lock and key. Oh, but I just remembered today, I think the man has an outie belly button.”
It was so random that I said, “Huh.”
“Yes,” she said. “Kelly said she couldn’t wait to kiss his outie again, and he said, sweetheart, you’ll be doing a lot more than that if you go down that low. I stopped reading at that point because reading about my sister giving someone a BJ made me slightly ill. I mean, no one wants to read that.”
I barely heard her last words because realization slammed into me at that moment, so much so that it almost knocked me right out of my seat. It was like a bolt of lightning hit me right in the chest.
Fuck, I was an utter moron.
It was right there, staring me right in my face the entire time. All the images and signs swung into my mind like an avalanche, and I could have hit myself. Max had been trying to get me to throw a lot of matches, and I always ignored him. But it was only after one match in particular that Toby was attacked.
“You were up against Viper, so I thought there was a chance you might still lose.”
“Viper wants a rematch,” Meech said.
“Then you told her that you didn’t have time and you had a match and didn’t care if she killed herself.”
It had been Viper. He was the bastard I was facing, the match I was supposed to throw. I didn’t know what link he had to the fucking cartel or my ex-wife, but I knew it was the sadistic bastard who did this. He had an outer navel. And from the little I knew about him, he was definitely the type to hold Toby ransom, so I would despair for years, only to finally announce he was alive to torture me.
The second I figured it out, I whipped out my phone and called Meech.
