AllFreeNovel
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A few moments later, she’s back in bed, I’m dressed, the house alarm is set, including cameras, and I’m on my way to Wells’s place. In true Hamilton fashion, my father did buy Wells a house just three down from mine when we initiated him as an executive after his marriage to Parker.
Pulling into his driveway, I look at my text messages, find the dropped pin from Hendrick, and enter the address into my GPS. Wells opens the car door and sinks down into the passenger seat with a grunt.
“I hope this midnight shit stops soon. I like just working during the day,” he mutters.
I snort. “You used to love being up all night,” I point out.
He groans, closing his eyes as he lays his head back on the headrest. “Yeah, well, that was before I got married. I like being with my wife. I like dinners with her. I’m good going to the office during the day and coming home at a decent hour for a cocktail and to relax.”
“You sound like Dad now,” I state.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, because I feel the same way,” I say as I pull onto the interstate and head straight for Hendrick.
“Did he tell you who it was that he found?”
“Nope, just that he found them.”
Wells clears his throat. “Yeah, that’s what he said to me, too.”
It doesn’t take us long to get to the dropped pin. It’s an industrial area, which doesn’t surprise me, but when I pull up to my brother and unfold from the car, I make my way toward him and notice he’s staring straight ahead at a bunch of shipping containers. It’s a truck-loading spot.
“The trucks come here and pick up the containers, then drive them to their destination. Most are actual items like toilet paper, furniture, whatever needs to be moved from one side of the country to the other,” he begins.
“The others?” I ask.
“Remember when I would pay for girls from Ray Randolph and we knew it was a much bigger operation, but we couldn’t quite figure it all out?”
“Fuck,” Wells hisses, knowing exactly where he’s going with this.
“When the party ended locally, or if they have a special request, they get put in these shipping containers and transported elsewhere.”
“What does this have to do with Allison?” I ask.
He clears his throat, his eyes finding mine. “Let’s just say that these men are straight up pissed off that we got rid of Ray. Sure, he was an idiot, but he was working well for them, and they liked that. I found some communication between them and our uncle and cousins. When they discovered that Uncle Dean was not going to take over, they thought they would kidnap Allison.
“When Junior and the rest of the idiots were taken out, they didn’t know what to do. They knew that Dad wasn’t going to do shit for them, especially since Allison wasn’t a wife. She was just someone I was fucking. They knew they fucked up. Instead of sending her away, they held her captive, scrambling to figure out what the fuck to do next.”
I still don’t know how Allison got free from them. Hendrick never said a word to any of us. Allison, as far as I know, is pretending that none of it ever happened. Truly living in complete and total denial. I get that. There are plenty of things I’ve done and witnessed in my life that I pretend never happened myself.
“So are you going to tell us who they are?” I ask. “And how you found out about them?”
“These guys?” Hendrick asks. “They’re nobodies.”
“But?” Wells murmurs.
“The men they work for are the important ones. Think big, like federal office. Like head of the country’s transportation big.”
“And they’re transporting women?” I ask.
He jerks his chin toward me, his eyes finding mine and holding my gaze. “Lots of money in that.”
“I kind of like the fake passport gig myself. We already got them all done for the family, and we’re ready for vacation,” Wells says with a laugh.
He’s right. We are ready for a vacation. I am ready to take a fucking break, especially with all the shit that’s gone on the past few months, including this. “So what happens now?” I give Hendrick my full support and attention.
“Keep watching,” he murmurs. “Look.”
