25. Jude
25
JUDE
She looked like she was walking into the lion’s den and I couldn’t really blame her. I wanted to believe we’d done enough to earn her trust over the past few weeks, but the truth was, I wasn’t sure there were enough good deeds in the world to make up for what we’d done to her.
That was why we’d been handling the search for Mr. Suit, not because we didn’t want to include Lilah but because this was something we wanted to do for her, a chance to make up for what we’d done — not by doing some abstractly right thing, like we’d done when we’d taken the hit of our dishonorable discharge for calling out that sick fuck Sandoval, but by doing something for her .
But that was something I’d learned about Lilah (and believe me, I’d been trying to learn everything I could because she’d become something of a fucking obsession): you couldn’t tell her you were doing something for her. She’d only refuse, tell you she could take care of herself, throw up those walls she’d built after the shit show that had happened in high school.
You had to help Lilah quietly, in ways she wouldn’t notice, in ways that didn’t seem like a big deal. We’d been doing a whole lot of that since she’d moved in.
That she didn’t know it was the point.
She moved toward the empty chair like a murder suspect taking a seat at an interrogation table, then leaned over to extend her hand to Storm.
“I’m Lilah. Nice to meet you.”
I could see Lilah taking Storm in, saw Storm the way Lilah probably did: a waifish teenager with silver hair, piercings, and tattoos. A kid with something to prove.
Storm grinned, looking every bit as young as she was, which was somewhere around nineteen. “Storm. You too.”
“Storm’s been working on the security cameras around the Dive,” I explained as Lilah took a seat.
“You’re a hacker?” Lilah asked her. “Is that an okay question to ask?”
Storm laughed. “I prefer ‘cyber security expert.’ Gets me into less trouble. But, yeah. I can get around most of the vanilla security measures out there.” She looked nervously around the room. “Or I could, if, you know, that was a thing I wanted to do.”
Lilah pressed her lips together and nodded. She got Storm’s drift.
“Can you show her the car?” Nolan asked Storm.
Storm turned her computer around and magnified the grainy image she’d already shown us: a long black car — not a limousine but a Lincoln Town Car, the kind with tinted windows piloted by drivers whose employers didn’t want the attention of a limousine — with a New York plate.
“Kind of generic, I know,” Storm said. “And these cameras are never the best for resolution.”
“Where was this taken?” Lilah asked.
“The lot at Pink,” Nolan said. “Is this the car Mr. Suit drives? The one they shoved the girl into that night?”
Lilah leaned in, squinting a little at the image. “Maybe… It’s such a generic car. Can we run the plate? See who it’s registered to?”
“Already done,” Storm said. “Not much help.”
“Why not?” Lilah asked.
“It’s registered to a company,” Rafe said, the first words he’d spoken since Lilah sat down.
“Can’t we trace the company?” Lilah asked. “See who owns it?”
“It’s a shell company,” Rafe said.
Lilah frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It’s not real,” Storm said. “I mean, it’s real on paper, but there are no offices or anything, and in this case, the CEO listed on the paperwork is dead.”
Lilah’s frown deepened. “Dead?”
“It’s a tactic people use when they set up untraceable companies,” Storm said. “It’s technically illegal, but what’s going to happen if someone finds out? They’re going to prosecute a dead person?”
Lilah turned to Nolan. “It has to be him right?”
I wasn’t surprised she was asking Nolan. He spent a lot of time with her because of the medical shit, and I didn’t think it was my imagination that he’d taken a little too long to hit the water at the beach.
Maybe they’d just been talking, but from the way Lilah had avoided his eyes when we’d toweled off next to the car, my bet was on less conversation, more making out.
Lucky bastard.
“Hard to say for sure,” Nolan said. “But considering this was taken the night Lombardi and those other goons chased you through the woods, it’s a better-than-average chance.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Put it all together and it’s suspicious as fuck, so either there were two shady motherfuckers driving around the Dive that night, or this is our guy.”
Lilah sat back in her chair. “Shit.”
“Yeah,” Storm said. “I might be able to find something out about the company with more time, but…”
“It’s a long shot,” Lilah finished.
Storm sighed. “Yeah, sorry. When someone goes to this much trouble to stay undercover, they’re usually careful everywhere.”
We sat in silence for a minute, Rafe drumming his fingers on the stained tabletop.
“What’s the name of the company?” Lilah asked Storm. “The shell company?”
“Imperium Fratrum LLC,” Storm said. “Why?”
Lilah shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I was hoping it would ring a bell or something.”
“Does it?” Storm asked.
Lilah shook her head. “Not even a little.”
“Fuck,” Rafe said.
He would never admit it, but his frustration was more complicated than not being able to identify Mr. Suit. Not identifying Mr. Suit meant we couldn’t deal with him for Lilah, and that meant Lilah couldn’t move out.
And Rafe wanted her out, although not for the reasons he was telling himself.
“Sorry I couldn’t help,” Storm said.
“You did,” Nolan told her. “It’s more than we had yesterday.”
Storm looked at Lilah. “Can you remember anything about the guy in the suit? Any tattoos or scars that might make him easier to identify?”
Lilah chewed on her lower lip. “Not really. I never actually saw his face up close. He always came in late when the lights were low, and he went straight to the back room with his bodyguards to talk to Vic.”
Storm teased one of her eyebrow piercings. “Damn.”
Nolan’s alarm went off on both his phone and his watch and we all looked his way.
He looked from Rafe to me. “We done here?”
I nodded and we all stood, Storm included.
“Thanks again,” Rafe told her. “We’ll send payment tonight.”
“Anytime.” She closed her laptop and looked at Lilah. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too,” Lilah said. “Thanks for trying.”
“Sure thing.”
We stood there watching Storm leave, and I couldn’t speak for anyone else, but I was feeling pretty fucking deflated. Storm had identified the car and the shell company, but it hadn’t gotten us any closer to identifying Mr. Suit.
“Ugh,” Lilah said.
I looked at her and felt my spirits lift, then felt like an asshole. The truth was, I liked having her around and wasn’t in a hurry to see her go. But I knew she hated us — well, maybe not Nolan anymore, but definitely me and Rafe — and wanted to leave ASAP.
Rafe scowled as Nolan draped a casual arm around Lilah’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“What now?” she asked no one in particular.
“Now we go home, sweetheart.” Nolan headed for the door, taking Lilah with him.
Rafe frowned at me, an obvious question in his eyes. I shrugged, because what could I say? Nolan had gotten there first and Rafe was a fucking liar if he claimed he wasn’t jealous as fuck.