Chapter 23 A Held Breath – Elijah
A HELD brEATH
ELIJAH
"You couldn't have picked a closer motel?"
This shithole is about as far from where Ambrose's hotel is as Atticus could've possibly picked while still being within city limits.
Atticus hushes me, pushing the headphones tighter to his ears.
"What is it? Is she off the plane? Let me hear."
Atticus doesn't budge, but Sev offers me his headset from where he's sitting next to Atticus at the cleared-off seventies console table against the wall. I take them and his seat when he stands, slipping them over my ears in time to hear a woman greeting her.
It's Linette. We don't know much about her outside of the fact that Ambrose hired her about six months ago, and she doesn't seem to know anything about his other empire.
I listen as Seven stands back to watch the screens, following her path on the sat map on the right-hand side of the screens.
It's hard to sit still and listen and I wish Atty would've brought the wireless headset so I could move, but I settle for bobbing my leg instead as Aurora does a really stellar job of sounding like an anxious, innocent twenty-something who thinks she might be meeting her bio dad.
Fuck, she's really good.
Seven wags his brows at the look on my face, and even though he's muffled through the headphones, I hear him say, "Told you she'd ace this."
I wave him off, wanting him to be quiet so I don't miss anything, but the conversation has ended and Linette is on the phone with someone else now.
I wait a few more minutes to be sure they're done talking and then pull off my headset at the same time Atticus does.
"She's meeting him for dinner," I tell Sev.
"Sounds like it'll happen within the hour," Atticus confirms, fingers flying over keys as he continues trying to find a backdoor into the security system at The Rose Grand hotel and casino.
He won't do it if it'll leave any footprints, but I think he wants a visual on Aurora as badly as I do, so he won't stop trying.
Sev's hand comes down on my shoulder and squeezes. "She's got this, E. She'll be back in Boone tomorrow, and we'll do the whole debrief together."
Atticus makes a sound of annoyance in his throat but says nothing. I think he's beyond trying to stop us from all going to the laundromat to see her at the same time.
I want to tell him if he's so worried about it that he can be the one who stays back, but I know he'd never be cool with that.
Anyway, Sev's right, if anyone can do this, it's her.
"How's Ellie?" he asks, and Atticus brings up a photo Céline sent of Ellie on her leash, which says it was sent an hour ago.
"How did you manage to convince Céline to leave her salon?"
"There were a lot of zeroes involved," he grouses, but we all know she would've said yes to helping us even without them.
Atty now has her in an apartment only two blocks from Aurora's.
She'll walk Ellie every day while my angel is in classes, since taking the city bus won't get her back and forth in time to do it herself, and buying her a new car would look suspicious.
"Think we can get some haircuts in while she's here?" Sev asks, running his fingers over the sides of his head. Normally, you can see the Greek crown inked into his skin there, but it's grown out so much that it's nearly invisible now.
"Not exactly a priority, Sev."
"It was just a question. You guys need to calm the fuck down."
I want to point out that he's the one who keeps getting up in the middle of the night hungry because he can't sleep.
Atticus told me as much. I know why Atty was awake—I'm still processing that my angel drove her car off a bypass…
but Sev? Nothing rattles him. Nothing keeps him up at night.
So while he likes to pretend this isn't making him as uneasy as it's making us, I know the truth.
My hand begins to ache when Sev says, "They're there," and I see the little blue dot that's Aurora pulling into the parking garage of The Rose Grand.
I massage it absently, pulling the headphones back on to listen.
It's mostly quiet, and I flinch as I hit a sore spot in the tendons of my fingers, easing off the pressure.
There's muffled conversation as her clothes rub against the mic, and for a second, I think this was the worst idea.
I pull a headphone back. "Are we sure he won't check her for bugs?"
"Why would he?" Atticus asks, biting at a spot of dry skin on his lower lip.
"What if he does?"
"He won't," Atticus insists. "Not this time, anyway.
He's meeting her for the first time. He's cautious, but not enough to want to come across as a paranoid psycho.
We have to remember there aren't many people who know about his criminal empire.
What reason would a businessman have to be that thorough? "
Sev pats my shoulder. "Relax, bro. Have some faith."
As I listen to Linette prattle on about the grandeur of the hotel and Ambrose's casino chain, I try to channel my inner Seven. Wishing for a morsel of his confidence. Because it's not that I don't think she can do this, it's that I don't trust him.
I trusted him once when he said he would give my mother's art back to me after painting for him for a year. Then he burned some of it in front of me.
I trusted him when he said he'd let me go home, but he never intended to.
Is now the time to tell the guys what I've been thinking?
Atticus gives me a questioning look. "What is it?"
I shake my head. It's not the right time. Not yet. We need to at least try to see this through, if not for us then for my father.
"Nothing," I say, and watch Aurora's little blue dot ascend the elevator in the rendering of the building's blueprints Atticus has up on the other screen. "Don't worry about it."