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Miranda pointed at her face and grimaced.
I turned the volume down.
“What do we know about her?” Sofia asked, breaking the silence.
“She’s not a journalist,” I said, his fingers busy on my laptop as I looked at the information I’d already gathered on her. “She’s a freelance writer who mostly writes clickbait articles for those like, top ten websites. She’s been trying to get famous for years, and finally found her niche in true crime. Before she did, she was trying to break into traditional journalism but hadn’t had much success.”
“Which is why she’s doing these videos, right?” Grayson asked. “They’re her ticket to fame.”
“Right. You gotta give her props, she is pretty famous,” I said. “Four hundred thousand followers amongst different platforms is nothing to scoff at.”
Teo rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We need to silence her, but we can’t kill her. That would draw too much attention.”
Sofia spoke up, “What if we give her something else to write about? Something that’s not dangerous for us or our operations.”
Teo raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Go on.”
“We leak some information to her, something that’s juicy enough to distract her from us. It has to be something that’s important enough for her to drop everything and focus solely on that,” Sofia explained. “Like…about Monroe.”
Victor leaned forward. “That could work. You could even make it seem like we’re doing her a favor, giving her an exclusive scoop.”
“But it would be tricky,” Grayson said. “Monroe leads to Sam, and while you’ve done as much as you can to protect him, you won’t be able to protect him from public scrutiny if the link between the Strangler and your brother comes out.”
“Sam has a story,” Sofia replied, looking into his eyes.
“Sam has a story that doesn’t pass muster to even his superiors at work,” Grayson said. “But the only reason they didn’t call him out on it is because they’re all part of this conspiracy, either by choice or because they’re being blackmailed. You don’t think Monroe is the only one who’s involved, do you? I have a feeling that the money laundering, tax evasion, all of that…it’s endemic to their precinct, fuck, it’s endemic to the force.”
“What Grayson is trying to say,” Victor cut in. “Is that as soon as Sam’s story comes under any scrutiny, it’ll be obvious to anyone that he’s more accomplice than victim.”
Sofia rubbed her temple hard with her fingers, her eyes tightly closed. “What the fuck,” she said.
“We can also figure this out later,” Teo said. “What’s most important is the guy. The guy who gave Jason the note. The one who’s masterminding this whole thing.”
“Right. I did look into Jason too, and he really is just an innocent bystander from what I can tell,” I said, going to the window I had opened on the guy who’d given Sofia the note. “Just a broke college kid who was targeted because his usual haunt is the block where Neon is.”
“So he was scoped out,” Victor said. “Not chosen at random.”
“No. If he’d been chosen at random, there’s a good chance the man in the shadows would’ve stumbled upon one of our men,” Teo explained, though he wasn’t really talking to Victor. This explanation was entirely for Sofia’s benefit.
Sofia nodded, understanding the implications. “So how do we find this guy?”
“We need to use our sources,” Teo said firmly. “I have a few people who owe me favors who might have information.”
“And I can try hacking into some databases and see if I can track any suspicious activity linked to him,” I offered. “I know we didn’t see anything in the security footage, but I’d like to go over it again.”
Teo nodded. “Yes, whatever you need to do,” he said. “We need to make sure to get whoever is threatening Sofia and we need to do it fast. I don’t like how we got outplayed last night. It’s...concerning.”
“It’s more than concerning,” Grayson said. “What the hell have we been doing? We’re getting watched, outplayed by one person? Please. We’re better than this. We’ve always been better than this.”
“We’re not better than this, Grayson,” Teo said. “Clearly. This person is obviously able to think one step ahead of us. They’re a huge problem.”
“I know, but…”
Sofia stood up abruptly. “I need to get out of here for a bit. I need some fresh air.”
Teo’s eyes followed her as she stormed out of the room, toward the balcony. For a moment, no one spoke, and then Victor cleared his throat, breaking the silence.
“Do you want me to follow her?”
