Chapter 41
Brandon
Mr. Morra’s instructions are precise. Get to the cabin ahead of Ashford. Secure the perimeter. Erase any evidence trail that leads to Mr. Morra. Let the detective incriminate himself by simply being here. Simple. Clean. Executable.
I’ve executed harder things. Like falsifying credentials, lying about my age, where I come from, foster care history.
I’m nineteen, and I’ve never set foot in Texas.
In my first sixteen years, I moved from foster home to foster home until I ran away and joined the military as nineteen-year-old Brandon Gatsby.
Then, as destiny would have it, I joined Monarca last year.
Finally, after all the pain and misery, I’ve been living the best years of my life thanks to Mr. Morra and his faith in me. And yet, I’ve been doing something I’m not paid to do, something he would not appreciate. Questioning orders.
Headlights come up the road and stop thirty yards out. They die. A car door opens and closes quietly. I track the movement through the tree line by sound before I acquire visual.
Ashford. Service weapon drawn, keeping to the shadows, scanning the perimeter like someone who has done this a thousand times.
He moves like a cop and not like a man who has something to hide.
I file that away in the part of my mind that has been collecting similar observations since I was assigned to Birdie Abel’s security team.
Ashford spots me ten feet out and raises his weapon. “Hands where I can see them.”
I just stand there. This is Monarca’s property. I have every right to be here. He, on the other hand, doesn’t know what is coming his way. “Detective Ashford, please lower your weapon.”
“Not a chance.” His eyes sweep the area behind me, checking corners and angles. Guilty men check for exits. Butterfly Man is very smart. He’d figure out this is a trap right away. He’d run. Ashford is checking for threats, holding his ground. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”
“I can ask you the same thing. This is private property, Monarca’s, and you’re trespassing.”
“I’m investigating a kidnapping. Birdie Abel’s kidnapping. That’s her car right there. Now cut the bullshit and tell me what the fuck you’re doing here.”
“Mr. Morra sent me ahead to secure the location.”
“The fuck he did. Morra was right behind me. He couldn’t have— Where is he? Where’s Morra?”
“On his way. Should arrive any minute.” I step forward, and his hands tighten on the gun.
“Stay where you are.”
“Detective, you need to calm down. You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”
“Harder than what needs to be? What did he really send you here to do? What the fuck is going on here, Gatsby?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” I point at Mrs. Abel’s car. “Why would Mrs. Abel’s car show up at this location, a decoy meant to expose one person in particular?”
“What?”
I say the lines Mr. Morra prepared. I say them correctly, in the right order, with the right weight.
“This cabin that only you knew about? This address where we supposedly kept Mrs. Abel weeks ago was specifically given to you to rule you out as a suspect. It’s a decoy.
It wasn’t the actual safehouse where she stayed. ”
His face shifts with fear. He’s just figured out this is a trap. “You set me up. Morra set me up.”
“Did he? Or did you set yourself up the moment you left Mrs. Abel’s car here, Butterfly Man?”
“I didn’t leave the car here! I didn’t take her!”
“Then why are you here, Detective? Why did you race ahead of backup?”
“I’m securing the perimeter. Standard procedure.”
“Is it?” I take another step closer. “Or did you need to get here first? Make sure everything is positioned correctly to frame Mr. Morra?”
“Your boss is the stalker. This is a setup. He killed Abel, and he’s manipulating everything to have her.”
That part of my mind that has been seeing things in Mrs. Abel’s house that don’t make sense runs its own parallel operation, collecting, cross-referencing, arriving somewhere I don’t want to reach.
“You have to believe me. He’s—” Sirens blare in the distance, cutting him off, getting closer by the second.
“I’m guessing that’s not your backup.”
He backs toward his car.
“They won’t find anything to incriminate Mr. Morra anymore.” I follow him. “I can’t say the same about you.”
“Stop.” He aims his gun at my chest. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Where is she, Detective? She was inside, her laptop and phone, too, with enough evidence you made sure pointed at Mr. Morra, but then you moved her. Where is she now?”
The sirens grow louder. Lights flash red and blue through the trees. Ashford waves his gun with more urgency. “I said back off. Now.”
“You’re not gonna shoot me, Detective. You’re not that stupid. But you are going to run. Because that’s what guilty men do when they’re caught.”
“This is wrong. Everything about this is wrong.”
“Then stay. Explain yourself. I’m sure your fellow officers will understand.”
His eyes dart around at me, the cabin, Birdie’s car. “You know damn well I don’t have her, but you do. Where is she? Don’t follow Morra blindly. Just tell me so we can save her. Where’s Birdie, Gatsby?”
I think of the woman who has trusted me with her life out of all the men in the team.
The woman who must have instinctively felt it, our connection, even though she has no clue who I am.
The woman I pulled out of the tub a few weeks ago, the one I almost lost before I had the chance to tell the truth.
I must save Birdie Abel, and I will if it’s the last thing I do on this earth.
I raise my hands up warily. “Tell me one thing. Is she really working with you to capture him?”
I watch him, his reaction, the specific moment his gaze shifts from furious to startled and then hopeful, not in the way a vulture swoops down on a target, but as a desperate man witnessing a miracle.
“How did you know that?” he whispers.
“Is she?!”
“Yes. Yes! I can prove it.”
“How?”
“It’s gonna sound crazy, but she wrote a story, a whole manuscript, and this, this is almost word for word, except for you.
That part isn’t there. I was supposed to walk into the trap but then run before the police arrived to make Morra think they were hunting me.
That way we could tail him to find her without triggering his suspicion.
I’ve already tipped off my team earlier.
I have the story on a thumb drive in the car.
I have my computer, too. You can read it for yourself. ”
“I don’t need to. I already have.” I’ve been assigned to her personal security long enough to have access to her bedroom where she keeps her regular laptop…and a second one she only uses when she thinks no one is looking.
When you work with someone like Tristan Morra, you learn a thing or two about stealth.
It’s helped that she hasn’t paid enough attention to me, that she doesn’t like to look at me.
It’s given me several opportunities to snoop on what she’s writing on that secret device. “That’s how I know you didn’t do it.”
“Thank God. Gatsby, you have to help us. Morra is Birdie’s stalker. He is a very dangerous man. Every second he has her is a threat to her life. You have to help me find her now.”
“Listen, the police following Morra won’t get you Mrs. Abel. It will only spook him, make him more careful. Let me do it.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Shoot me.”
“What? Why? I’m not gonna do that.”
“We don’t have time. I’m supposed to meet him in a few minutes. If I’m shot, he’ll have to help me himself. That gives me time and a reason to be with him, monitoring him closely. He trusts me, so he won’t suspect anything.”
“At the same time, he has to be close to her, which means you will be, too.”
“I already have a place in mind he might be keeping her. A place with heavy-duty signal blockers.”
“Where?”
“I’ll tell you when I’m one hundred percent sure. I don’t want your squad fucking up. Any mistake could cost her life.”
“Gatsby, this isn’t the best plan.”
“Neither is yours, but it’s our best shot.
I’ll disable the jammer the second I get a chance, and you’ll know exactly where she is.
” I place two fingers on my left shoulder.
“Do your part. Clean through. Nothing critical. It needs to look like you fought your way out, like you’re guilty and dangerous.
Otherwise Morra pulls me off any operational role, and I’m no use to either of us. ”
The first cruiser crests the hill. I nod at Ashford. “Don’t miss.”