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Roman buried his head in his hands. “I don’t know. Everything in me screams to get Caleb out of there, but I don’t know if that’s because the danger is real or because I love him.”
He’d said it without thinking, and it wasn’t until a soft chorus of “Aw…” rose that he realized he’d shown his hand. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. I love him, okay? We’re together now, officially. I think.”
“You may wanna leave those last two words out,” Alex said with a smile. “Everything before that was perfect.”
“Thank you.” Roman sighed. “My point is that I don’t know if my opinion is influenced by my feelings for him.”
“Of course it is,” Ryan said calmly. “I would feel the same way if it were Alex. That’s why we have a team to weigh in and counterbalance your overprotective urge.”
“Thank you.” It meant so much more coming from Ryan, who wasn’t exactly known as the warm and fuzzy type. On the contrary. So hearing him acknowledge he’d react the same way made Roman feel seen and validated.
Wander leaned back in his chair, rubbing his bald head. “What added value does Caleb still have in Isabella’s office? Yes, he’s trying to get into the encrypted files on her iCloud, but he can do that from here as well. She’s already proven to be super cautious, and in over two weeks on the job, all he overheard was that brief phone call with Joey.”
“That call did prove to be a major breakthrough, though,” Lowell said. “Just playing devil’s advocate here.”
“True,” Wander acknowledged.
“If he stays, he might be able to piece a few more things together, is all I’m saying,” Lowell said.
“But do we need him to?” Roman asked. “With what we know now, don’t we have enough to connect everything ourselves?”
Wander put a strong hand on Roman’s arm. “You know we don’t. Yes, we have evidence that suggests a link between Whitman, Coldrick, and Joey, but it’s thin and nowhere near enough to act on.”
Roman shook his head. “That’s not what I’m saying. Of course what we have now isn’t enough to get Whitman convicted, even aside from the fact that some of our evidence was obtained in ways that would make it inadmissible in court. But we do know where to dig now. We can look for known associations between the DiMartinos and others, maybe even use that to figure out who’s been bought on the Boston PD or within the FBI. We haven’t unraveled the whole messy knot yet, but we do know which threads to pull.”
Wander scratched his beard. “Good point.”
“I just…” Roman swallowed again, unable to dislodge that ball of pure fear inside him. “I can’t explain it, but I’m scared for Caleb.”
Ryan narrowed his eyes. “You said that before, that you had a bad feeling about this.”
“I do. I don’t know why, but I do.”
Ryan turned to Wander. “Call Caleb back. We’ll figure out how to get more evidence without putting him at risk.”
“You changed your mind?” Wander asked.
“Yeah. Bad premonitions have a reason, and I always take them seriously. Call him back.”
“Okay.” Wander picked up his phone, swiped a few times, and pressed the Call button. “It’s on speaker.”
“Hi, this is me. If you know me, then you also know what to do. If you don’t know me, why the hell are you calling me?” Caleb’s cheeky voicemail greeting answered.
Roman’s heart skipped a beat. The call had gone straight to voicemail?
“He could be on a call with someone else,” Alex suggested, but his tone suggested he didn’t believe it.
“Check his location,” Ryan said.
Wander swiped, his face tense. “Fuck.” Then again. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. His location is off. Last known location was Coldrick Law…three hours ago.”
Roman’s throat was so tight he couldn’t swallow. “Is there any reason why Caleb would turn off his location?”
He knew the answer, but he had to ask.
“No,” Wander said. “He’d never turn it off voluntarily. He’s been compromised. We have to assume he’s been taken.”
26
