Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
MASON
“ T he Morettis have property on the Jersey Shore,” Diego says, looking up from his desk. “And check out what Bianca just posted.”
I take the phone from him and look at Bianca Moretti’s Instagram stories. She’s at Midway and gate numbers are visible behind her. “Let me guess. There was a flight leaving for New Jersey from one of those terminals.”
“Yep.”
I set the phone down and reach up, stretching my hands over my head. “Okay, so Enzo gets rapid fire phone calls, complains about family, gets out of the city, Mark Roberts is killed in an abandoned house in Gary, and then he tells Mira he’s going to New Jersey an hour before Bianca posts evidence that she’s about to board a flight to New Jersey.”
“That sums it up.”
I drum my fingers on the desk, thinking. What did Enzo do, or didn’t do, that could cause this kind of mess? If he did go clean something up so to speak, then it couldn’t have been him outside Mira’s courtyard last night.
So, who the fuck was it? Were they there to watch her? Fuck, it felt so good to have her against me last night, but having her close like that made her feel so far at the same time. Because I want more, and I’ve found myself thinking about her more and more.
I had given up on the idea of finding someone who understands what I do, who would be okay with not knowing the full details of my schedule or what’s going on at work. Mira entered right into the thick of it and has a good grasp on what goes on here. We have similar backgrounds though we each went a different route with our degrees, but she’s good and understands how the mind works.
Yet she has her own struggles and doesn’t pretend to be perfect or act like she has her shit together all the time. I might have spent a good amount of time going through her older Instagram posts this morning, which then lead me to finding her ex mother-in-law’s fake accounts. It was pretty obvious to figure out it was her since she leaves the same negative comments over and over again.
And then I went to that Noel chick’s page and Mira wasn’t joking when she said this lady is trying to single white female her. Some of her posts copy what Mira wrote word for word, leaving me to assume that Noel is just plain stupid. She wants to make Mira mad to get a reaction out of her, but all she’s doing is making herself look like a total ass. If she was really trying to start a career in a similar field, mocking and making fun of someone who trail-blazed their way to the top is the worst thing to do.
“We need to get all the files on the Morettis in New Jersey,” I say and start to pull up files. I get an email from the ME and quickly read through the report. “Mark Roberts died from a single gunshot wound to the head,” I tell Diego. “And the bones in his arms seem to have been broken by being run over with truck tires, fitting the MO, but the bones weren’t crushed as good as before, which is a fucking weird thing to say. Done post mortem and sloppy.” I pull up crime scene photos. Roberts’ arms are pulled up over this head, tied together like the theater victims. But his wrists are bent out at unnatural angles. Whoever set this up was in a rush.
“I think we will take this to the bossman,” Diego suggests. “This could be enough to get a tap on a few phones.”
It doesn’t take me long to think it over. I’m going to have to bend the truth, say something along the lines of me seeking out the girl Enzo is dating and seeing if she’s willing to talk or something like that. “Yeah.” I put my hands on the desk’s surface, spinning my chair around so Diego can see my face.
“Let’s go.”
“I’m kinda surprised you wanted to get together,” Mira starts. “Since I won’t be your puppet for the next week or so.” She gives me a pointed look before smiling.
“I am too.” I slowly shake my head. “It’s not like you’re enjoyable to be around or anything.”
Mira and I met for lunch and the moment she walked in, I had to remember to breathe. She’s dressed casually in jeans and a white crop top. Her hair hangs in loose waves around her face, and a gold horse pendant rests on her collarbone.
“You’re not the worst company, either,” she shoots back. “What’s going on? Got some good intel for me?”
“I do, and I wanted to let you know that we have confirmation that Enzo is in New Jersey.”
“Oh wow. He was telling the truth.”
I nod. “The Morettis lived there before moving to Chicago. I can’t really go into more detail than that, but if you could try to get some text conversations or even a phone call or two out of him over the next week, that would be great.”
“I’ll do what I can. And yes, I know that phone is cloned or whatever the proper term for it is.”
“I didn’t—”
She holds up her hand. “You didn’t have to. It’s a phone the freaking FBI gave me. Of course, you can see and hear everything. I’ll just call from my other phone if we get freaky.”
“For the safety of our nation, I’ll have to hear that.”
She makes a face. “Can you imagine him on the other end of phone sex?”
“I really don’t want to but something tells me you’re going to paint a very vivid picture.”
“Ohhh, how detailed can I go?”
“Don’t make me lose my appetite.”
She laughs and reaches for the breadsticks that were just put on the table. “What do you do all day? Like what’s a typical day in the life for you?”
“No two days are the same. Sometimes I’m in the office a lot, going over files, looking at crime scene photos…that sort of thing. Other days I’m out in the field, on active murder investigations. Or I could be under cover, trying to get information. Or maybe I put on my flashy FBI jacket and do a raid. And then there’s the odd days when I sit across from a rather good looking amateur PI and play a game of twenty questions.”
“I asked two. But at least you think I’m good looking.” She dramatically tosses her hair back. Fuck, she’s gorgeous and funny. It’s not a combination you see that often and when you throw in that she’s aware she’s a ten out of ten but is still humble, it makes her all the more attractive as a whole person. “I wanted to be a criminal profiler back in the day.”
“You would have been good at it.” I grab a breadstick and break it in half. “Why didn’t you pursue it?”
She bites her lip and widens her eyes. “I got married and my ex made me feel guilty for having a job that might force me to travel and be away from home. And then…” She shakes her head.
“And then what?” I encourage.
“And then I found out I was pregnant.”
I don’t know how to respond at that moment so I take a bite of my breadstick and wait for her to go on. She doesn’t have a kid and I didn’t see anything in her file about giving one up for adoption.
“I had just graduated with my bachelors. I always wanted my own family.” She gets a faraway look in her eyes. One I recognize. She doesn’t think it’ll happen and the pain of letting go of a dream like that hurts. “So I was really excited. But, um, my ex wasn’t, even though he told me he was all on board for trying for a baby, but when it seemed like it was going to become a reality, he was all pissy that he wouldn’t be able to nap after work and he wouldn’t get uninterrupted video game time.”
“I’m really glad you divorced that loser.”
“Phhh, right? Me too.” She picks her breadstick apart, eating little bites at a time.
“Can I ask what happened?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m an open book. If you watch all my reels and listen to all the podcasts you’ll hear this story. Basically to make a long story short, Cory hated that I was getting extra attention for being pregnant and was so butthurt that his mother was doting on me instead of him. When I was almost eight weeks, we moved into a townhouse that had an upstairs. The shower leaked, which he said was my fault because I took a hot shower and the hot water was too hot for the pipes—okay, loser—but I mopped it all up with towels and then asked him if he could help me carry the laundry basket downstairs since it was heavy with the wet towels.”
I swallow my breadstick, my mouth suddenly dry. Because I know where this story is going.
“He didn’t help and when I was slowly going down one step at a time, he rushed past me, bumped into me, and I fell. I went to the hospital and everything seemed fine, but that night he went into a drunk rampage, screaming at me about how I’m going to be a terrible mom and I don’t care about the baby and how selfish I was for wanting to bring a child into the world…blah blah blah.” She rolls her eyes. “He even said I only wanted a baby so I could stay home all day, not work, and not do housework. I cried all night and went to work exhausted the next day. The baby was okay but I was really sore from falling down the stairs. I came home even more exhausted only to find that Cory had dumped a bag of garbage in my closet, on top of my clean clothes, as a punishment for not finishing all the laundry ‘I started’ the night before.”
“The wet towels.”
“Yep. He screamed at me again then wouldn’t talk to me for two days. Then I had a miscarriage. They can just happen, but my blood pressure was so high, the OB said it was probably from stress.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, wanting to reach out and comfort her as well as find Cory and push him down a flight of stairs.
“It’s okay. It was years ago and in hindsight, it’s good I’m not tired of him in that sense. When the time is right, and I find someone for me, it’ll happen.”
I watch her pick apart her breadstick some more, trying to figure out if she actually believes it or not.
“Anyway…is there any more trauma you want me to dump on you?” She’s back to smiling.
“Hah. I’m done torturing you for today.”
“Good. Though I will say he used to put dirty dishes in my car.”
“The fuck?” My brows go up. “Why?”
“As a punishment for not washing them.”
“Couldn’t he wash dishes?”
Her head bobs up and down in a nod. “Yeah. He could. I don’t want to come across as a bitter ex.”
“You don’t. Some really fucked up shit happened to you and you’ve come out pretty damn strong. And you’re using your story to help others. That’s admirable.”
A bit of color rushes to her cheeks. “Thank you. That’s what we can do right? Don’t shut the door on our past and be ashamed but use it to teach others as well as ourselves?”
“Yeah.” I look at her in awe, once again. “It is.”
The waitress comes over and takes our order and our conversation shifts again. It’s so fucking easy to talk to Mira and before we know it, we’ve been here for nearly two hours, talking even after the food is gone. There’s a break in the rain and Mira asks if I want to take Violet for a walk with her and can’t say no. I didn’t get my morning workout in so a fast-paced walk is better than nothing.
I walk her to the entrance, making sure she’s in the building with the doors closed and locked to the public behind her and then go around to the courtyard. If anyone has been there recently, footprints will be visible thanks to the recent rain. There’s nothing new, but when I round the corner to go back to my car, I see Mira standing on the sidewalk, standing frozen as some guy walks toward her.
She’s tense, gripping the leash tightly. I break into a jog, coming up behind her right as the other guy does. And that’s when I realize she’s tense with anger, not fear.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Cory,” she spits. “What do you want?”