Chapter 11 #2
I leaned on the table and stared back at him, my temper slightly flaring. “You do know that you’re paying us to work this case, right? Don’t you have a billion-dollar empire to run?”
“Oh, I run it just fine. This is top priority.”
I understood that he was worried, that he was in pain, that he needed to be the one to bring down the culprits, but he needed to trust us. “You need to have faith in me, Dominic.”
I could see Sophie’s eyes jumping between us as we stared each other down.
With a sigh, he unclenched his jaw, as if it cost him a great deal. “You’re right. Just let me know if you need me. Day or night. I’ll be there.”
As snappy and passionate as he got, I knew his reaction was reasonable. I knew these responses. Every burst of anger and helplessness came out of a place of hurt, that bottomless pit of guilt that never abated, no matter what you did to assuage it.
“I know,” I said softly.
He looked at me as if my two words meant something to him. His Adam's apple bobbed as he gave me a nod, and it took every ounce of my strength to pull my gaze away from it.
The moment broke when Tammy arrived with my smoothie and Sophie’s cappuccino. I quickly jumped off my seat, not needing to expose myself to the increasingly deteriorating effect that Dominic was having on me.
I grabbed my smoothie and turned to the siblings. “You guys carry on. I’m needed downstairs.”
Both had similar smiles on their faces as they bid me goodbye. I nearly ran to the back of the restaurant. I didn’t. I kept my cool till I was out of sight from Dominic’s view, after which I literally sprinted down the stairs, all the way down to the Den, and jumped into the fucking shower.
I took a freezing shower that had my teeth chattering and my mind numb, which was exactly what I needed. As soon as I stepped out of the shower, Shadow was on me, jumping up to try to give me kisses.
I bent down and rubbed his head, showering him with affection.
I knew Tara was at her computers, digging through Sophie’s case. “Yo, Tara, did you get Shadow out today?”
She shouted from the other room. “Yeah. We went an hour ago when you guys were in the class.”
I rubbed Shadow’s head as he gave me excited nips. “You love going outside, don’t you? Don’t you? Did you see any butterflies? ”
I got up from my knees and walked to her side of the Den, which was basically four monitors, a big-ass rolling chair, and mood lighting.
Shadow was ahead of me as he ran to Tara and jumped around the chair where she sat.
Tara’s hair was in a bun on the top of her head, and for a change, she was without her mask.
“Stop looking,” she muttered, petting Shadow as he gave her licks on her scarred side.
Just to keep things normal and not make her feel awkward, I joked, “You want me to talk to you with my eyes closed?”
The unscarred side of her lips turned up in a smile. “Fuck you. You know what I mean.”
Grabbing the smoothie from where I’d left it on the coffee table, I dragged one of the chairs from the dining area and sat beside her. “You know, we never stare at you with pity or disgust. I look at you the same way I look at Sloane or Naomi or Lena.”
“I know,” she said, her face buried in Shadow’s neck.
I ruffled her bun at the top of her head, causing her to shriek and curse at me as she redid her hair. “Stop doing that to break the fucking tension. There are more subtle ways.”
I chuckled and sipped at my smoothie. “Nah. This was more fun.”
She grumbled about an impossible and rude bestie as she clicked through her screen.
“You find anything from the gala?” I asked, seeing various invitations she was surfing through.
“I found a lot of things. Here, check this out,” she said, turning the screen slightly so I could look at it.
“Since the people at the gala had somehow lost all the data and backup , I had to do a little more digging. Seems they’d just been paid off by someone because their data, including all the invitations, the security footage of the gala, who came, who didn’t, is all available. ”
“No shit.” I whistled. Tara scrolled through hundreds of invitations. Thankfully, the gala had a barcode on the invitation card for entry, and all the entries were digitally recorded.
“Did you find anything of importance? Or do you want me to go through these?” I asked, polishing off my smoothie.
Tara scoffed. “You’ll need to go through the invitations, who they were sent to, who arrived, and the guests they arrived with. Fortunately, we have video footage of the entry point to the gala. It’s tedious work. I would do it, but I have to work on another case.”
I nodded. “All right, send me all the files and videos. I’ll work on this today.”
She started transferring everything to a USB drive, and we watched as hundreds of gigabytes worth of files were transferred.
“What’s the other case you’re working on?” I asked her.
She turned to me, scratching at Shadow’s neck, who didn’t waste a second before climbing onto her lap as she moved, making her giggle. “Shadow, baby. You’re too big.”
He only cuddled further into her lap, licking her face and causing her to shriek.
We’d rescued Shadow from a dog-fighting ring.
But it was Shadow who’d brought Tara back to life.
His body was heavily scarred on one side where he didn’t get much fur.
The day we went to shut down that ring, Tara was the one who’d found Shadow.
We’d given all the dogs to a shelter, but Shadow had refused to leave Tara’s side.
Tara hadn’t hesitated in adopting the giant dog who’d snapped and barked every time we came within three feet of Tara.
It had taken a few months of training for Shadow to see us as his family too. But he still became ragey when a stranger came close to Tara.
She kept petting Shadow as she talked. “Remember, I need to create fake IDs and jobs for the four fuckers locked up downstairs? Sloane and Lena are working on getting them shipped to Florida tonight. ”
Since it was Sloane’s case, she handled keeping them fed, and Naomi handled keeping them alive just enough.
Once I had all the files, I took a seat on the couch, retrieved my laptop, and began reviewing the invitations and videos.
With each invitation email sent to a person, I verified whether the invitation had been scanned.
The scan was thankfully time-stamped, so I verified whether the person who arrived at the time stamp was actually the one who had received the invitation.
I also verified if the person was a tall white man in a black wolf mask.
And lo and behold, I’d already come across five black-wolf mask-wearing men. I started copying over their video time stamps for later. The more I went through the files, the more suspects I started to gather.
By the time I was done, it was late in the evening, and I was starting to see double on the screen. Thankfully, I didn’t have a shift at the bar upstairs today. We had enough employees to handle the weekday crowd.
Tara was still at her computer, whereas Sloane and Lena had dragged the unconscious men up to the basement to get them transported.
I had gathered enough suspects and was confident it had to be someone among them.
Knowing Dominic was waiting for an update, I picked up my phone and opened his contact.
Me: I have some things that I’d like for you to look at before we involve Sophie.
I didn’t even have to wait fifteen seconds before he responded.
Dominic: I’ll be there in 45 minutes.
Me: I didn’t mean you had to rush right away.
Dominic: Is that a problem? I can come tomorrow.
Yes, it was a problem. I’d been staring at the screen and working for the past twelve hours.
I wanted to eat something greasy and then go home to sleep.
I was so brain-dead and so hungry, I was afraid I’d drool at the sight of him and crave a bite of those stupid dimples on his face.
I stared at his message and tried to type Come tomorrow .
But to my utter mortification and disbelief, my fingers betrayed me as I read the message I’d typed and sent.
Me: It’s no problem. See you soon.
See you soon! Fuck!
“What happened?” Tara bent sideways to look at my face from behind her screen.
I raised my eyebrows at her.
“You yelled fuck. So loud it spooked Shadow.”
I threw my phone on the couch and got up, pointing an accusing finger at the stupid device. “I did something stupid,” I said, and instantly corrected myself and stared down at my fingers in betrayal. “Not me. My asshole fingers did something stupid.”
“Sami, what did you do?” Tara asked in a teasing tone.
I shook my head and pulled off the hair ties holding my braids and started untangling them. “I asked Dominic to come look at the suspects I’ve gathered.”
“Right now?” Her eyes were as wide as saucers. “It’s ten o’clock.”
I had my long, wavy hair free of the braids as I combed through them with my fingers.
“I know,” I whined, something I never ever did.
“He even said he could come tomorrow. I even said Come Tomorrow in my mind, but my stupid fingers asked him to come right away. It typed See you soon, Tara. See. You. Soon.”
Tara laughed so loudly it actually got Shadow to start barking and circling her. She laughed so fucking hard she literally slipped out of her rolling chair and sprawled on the floor like a lunatic as Shadow licked the tears streaming down her cheeks.
She pointed her finger at me from the floor, her laughter making her gasp out her words. “And is that your stupid fingers making you remove your braid and finger-comb your long hair? Are you prettying up for Dominic?”
Horror washed through my brain as I looked at my fingers, now in my hair, combing through the tangles. I shrieked and let them go. Running to the sink, I turned the tap to the coldest setting and submerged them in freezing water.
Tara laughed harder as I heard a click.
“What are you doing?” I screamed at her.