Chapter 10 Shep #2
Okay, so not exactly the greeting I’d been hoping for, but the one I’d expected after his outburst earlier.
It was obvious Alessio was carrying around a heavy dose of guilt about everything that had gone down with Theo, and while we all knew he was doing his best, he didn’t give a fuck, knowing he hadn’t been able to work out who was behind this.
But I wasn’t here to try to assuage him of that guilt. Hell, I knew all about feeling guilty—I was busy carrying around my own load.
We’d all have to deal with that in our own way and our own time, but right now we needed to come together to work out what the fuck this new piece of information meant—and Alessio would just have to suck it up and work with me, because I wasn’t going to sit back and twiddle my goddamn thumbs.
Keeping my voice low, so as to not wake Theo, I said, “I want to know how your search is going.”
Alessio grunted and leaned back in his seat. “Clearly awesome, since I haven’t contacted you.”
I narrowed my eyes and tried to remind myself he was going through something. But honestly, we were all going through something, and I was getting sick and tired of his surly-ass attitude.
“Clearly, but that doesn’t mean you might not have come up with some ideas, places to look, possible locations…”
“All of which I’ll tell you when I work it out.”
“I don’t want to wait until then.”
“Meaning?”
“I want to work with you.”
There was a pause, and then, “I don’t do that.”
“And I don’t fucking care,” I said a little louder than I meant to, and when Theo shifted on the couch but didn’t wake, I let out a breath. “Listen, I know you usually work solo, but I can’t just sit here and do nothing, okay?”
Alessio sighed and moved back in closer to the screen. “I think it’s a street or road or something like that. I don’t know where exactly yet, but if we’re going off the idea that whoever this motherfucker is is part of Libertine, then I’m thinking something local.”
“Yeah, I could see that for sure.”
“And based off that, we have a Mott Street that runs through Chinatown—”
“You don’t think that’s a little…obvious?”
“I think it’s super fucking obvious, but that might also be the appeal.” Alessio ran his hand through his hair and turned to the computer on his right. “Doing all this right under our nose, in our backyard? It would track with it being an inside job.”
That thought pissed me the hell off—that they would have some sort of meeting place here in our city. Fuck that.
“Let’s check it out,” I said, and opened a secure browser to pull up a map. “Great, only a half-mile of restaurants, shops, and buildings to sift through.”
Alessio grunted, then his face was back in the camera. “Theo didn’t mention anything else he might’ve heard?”
My eyes shifted above the computer screen to where Theo lay sleeping peacefully for the first time in days.
“No.” I shook my head and looked back to see Alessio’s mouth twisted into a thoughtful expression.
“He was being taken there, right? That’s what that fucker said?”
“Right.”
“Theo was pretty beat up when you got to him—”
“Don’t remind me.”
“—so I doubt they’d want to walk him into a restaurant or through the shops. So what else is on this street? Look for somewhere they could hide someone. Somewhere they could get him in and out of without—”
“Notice. I know, this isn’t my first rodeo.”
Alessio gave a clipped nod and turned back to his screen. We worked in silence for several minutes, each poring over different maps and businesses that ran along Mott Street, looking for a place that would work when taking someone—no, not just someone, the Prince of Monaco—hostage.
“Here’s something,” Alessio muttered, and shared his screen.
“A storage unit.”
“Right. It’s at the quieter end of Mott, there’s twenty-four seven access, it’s the perfect place to hide something or someone away…”
“But there’d be cameras everywhere.”
“That this fucker has proven he could easily hack.” Alessio shrugged. “I’d be able to get in their system in seconds and shut them down. No one would have a clue.”
A storage unit. That felt almost…plausible.
There was only one problem: “How the fuck are we going to narrow down and see what’s in each unit?”
For the first time since this whole shitstorm with Theo had started, a spark entered Alessio’s dark eyes.
“Leave that with me.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll search all the renters. I told you, I can get in their system in seconds and have their inventory and bank accounts in a couple of hours.”
There was the Alessio I remembered.
“You’ll call me?”
“The minute I’m done.”
“I feel good about this,” I said, nodding as I zoomed in on the picture of the storage map online. Are you really so arrogant you were going to bring him back to my city?
“Don’t get too excited,” Alessio said, intruding on my thoughts. “I’ve hit several dead ends with this asshole before.”
“Not this time. You’ve got this.” And then I’m going to finish him.
Alessio gave a final nod before ending the call, and as I closed the laptop and looked over to where Theo lay in slumber, I vowed to avenge what had been done to him—but this time to the one who had orchestrated it all.