Chapter Fifty-four — Brooks
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
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brOOKS
Trinity called in sick to work.
She wasn’t sick, but her voice certainly sounded like it. That, and she said moving felt like she’d been tortured by a personal trainer for hours. But she was smiling when she said it. Now she lounged in bed, with strict orders to rest and enjoy her day while the rest of us took care of things.
I stacked the last box into the trailer and headed back into her apartment. The cleaners were almost finished, but there were a couple of things in here that bothered me, and none of them had to do with my Omega.
The vent covers had been pulled out. All of them.
And though I hadn’t fully registered it the last time I was here—far too focused on fixing my fuck up—her throw pillows and couch had been ripped open.
The photos and art she’d hung on the walls were askew, tilted like the intruder had looked behind them.
Even the back of the toilet wasn’t on evenly.
Not that I was an expert, but this didn’t feel like a normal break-in. They’d been looking for something. Trinity had said as much, but I hadn’t understood what she meant. If it was the flash drive we’d gone to Aiden to decrypt, it put her going to the port in an entirely different context.
What would have happened if she’d been here when they broke in?
An instinct so deep I couldn’t place it told me this was more serious than we’d believed. Yes, it was an exposé that would reveal some nasty shit. And yes, Trinity was an incredible reporter who deserved to break the story. But I also didn’t want her hurt. And if this was in any way connected…
I took a slow breath. How did we protect her without becoming the same kind of asshole that had led me to this apartment the first time?
“We’re finished, Mr. Monroe.”
“Thank you.” I forced the door closed behind the cleaners and looked around for anything else I might have missed, but there wasn’t anything. The apartment was entirely empty now.
I locked the door behind me. Trinity still needed to talk to the property management company about the door. Or we could do it if she gave us the information. Still, I was happy this was finished, so it was both off her mind and she was entirely moved in.
Brooks
On my way with the trailer.
Theo
The stuff from Nestled is getting delivered soon, so we’ll meet you there.
Brooks
Don’t let the delivery people into our apartment.
A bunch of dots appeared and disappeared at the bottom of the texting thread.
Bastian
Why?
Brooks
It’s easier to explain in person. Be there soon.
The only strangers in our apartment since Trinity moved in were our cleaning staff, and only while we were away. We’d had the same cleaners for years, and we did trust them. Now I felt like we needed to recheck everything.
Paranoid? Maybe. If I was, the others would keep me in check.
The truck from Nestled was in the garage, the guys taking stuff up in trips, while the delivery people stood there awkwardly. Logan came over and opened the truck door after I parked. “We need them to install some of the stuff Rin ordered. What’s up?”
“As long as someone is with them at all times. After seeing the way her apartment was trashed, I don’t think it was a random break-in. It’s probably an overreaction, but I don’t like the idea of strangers in her nest after seeing that. Or anyone getting a good look inside our home.”
His face sharpened and became more serious. “Got it.”
“Maybe Aiden can run a background check.”
The man in question was already heading toward us. “I already did. Nestled already does background checks on its employees, and these two are squeaky clean. We’ll still have Bastian stay with them.”
“All right.”
Logan went to relay that message, and Aiden stayed with me. His expression told me he already knew I needed to speak with him.
“You’ve been looking into what Trinity is looking into, right?”
“I have. Alerts and crawlers for her name on every corner of the internet. All our names, actually. She has some incendiary information, that’s for sure, but so far she hasn’t made any waves.
Like I said, I haven’t had a lot of time to go through all of it.
If anything really urgent pops up, I’ll be alerted. ”
“How good does someone have to be for you not to find something?”
“Pretty fucking good.”
“But it’s not impossible?”
He inclined his head. “No, not impossible. Just unlikely.”
“It’ll be faster than asking the building. Can you check to see if there have been any attempts to come to our floor? Especially while we were down the coast?”
Aiden slid his hands into his pockets, but his expression was lethal. “What’s going on?”
I told him about what I suspected. “I know I don’t have a lot of experience breaking and entering, but you don’t look in the toilet tank or in the vents if you’re just searching for something to steal.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t.”
“If they were looking for the flash drive—”
“They wouldn’t stop looking for it just because they didn’t find it in her apartment,” he finished for me and swore under his breath.
“I did look for anything relating to the break-in, and there was nothing I could find. I don’t generally believe in coincidences, but this was starting to look like one. I should have looked deeper.”
I shook my head. “I doubt there’s anything to find. Not if they were careful. And maybe since they didn’t find it, they backed off.”
“That is possible,” Aiden said. “If they didn’t find what they were looking for, they probably don’t want to draw more attention to themselves with a spree of crimes. The question is how they knew about the flash drive in the first place, if that’s what they were after.”
“So you think she’s safe?”
His mouth firmed into a line. “I want to say she is. The fact that there haven’t been any other attempts to find it, or any chatter about her, points in that direction, but I’ll look.”
“Thanks.”
He glanced over his shoulder to where the Nestled truck was being unloaded.
“There are ways to keep things offline. The DuPonts dealt with it not too long ago, and I helped them. I’ve got a bunch of stuff to go through tomorrow, and I’m planning to go over to the warehouse for it.
Use the big computers. But…” He typed on his phone, faster than a human should be able to.
“The ones you have here aren’t enough?”
He laughed. “When it comes to computers, I’m not sure there’s ever really enough. But to answer your question, no. There haven’t been any false attempts to take the elevator, or to take over my cameras.”
I let out a slow breath. “So you think she’s safe?”
“I’m still uneasy about the story she’s working on,” Aiden admitted. “But I’m not lying when I say there haven’t been any clear signs she has their attention, and I have looked. So yes, she’s safe enough. For now.”
My chest eased a bit. “Okay.”
He put his phone away and clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll put up a wider network of crawlers tonight and go through it tomorrow. Let’s go make sure she has the perfect nest. It will make you feel better.”
It would. But the only thing I knew would completely erase this anxiety was once Trinity finished this story once and for all.