Page 50 of Curvy Nerdy Omega

Nicolette had asked for answers and I was obligated to provide proof for those answers, but she hadn’t insisted that proof be acquired legally.

Once I had a real lead, I could start working on evidence. I could ask if she wanted me to make sure it would hold up in court, but I highly doubted she would insist on the kind of justice our legal system would provide.

Someone had killed her child. Nicolette Valor wouldn’t let her resources go to waste when she could deliver retribution in a way our judicial system would never be able to. Not to mention, the police were lazy.

If they managed to figure out who killed Gideon, it was unlikely they’d dig deeper than that to see if there was something else going on other than the obvious.

Frankie and I had resources we could access – people on the inside who could get us the footage we needed, but it would have to be through the Lopez pack. That might bring up some shit she didn’t want to deal with, but I couldn’t know for sure until she got back from the Lopez compound.

I wrote down that question on my notepad as well and pulled out one of my older laptops from under the desk. I set what looked like a piece of crap on my desk and tapped the steel cover with my fingernail as I let the information percolate.

Gideon had two phones, and from what I could tell, they were identical. It was the same make and model, but there was no record of it anywhere. I didn’t think there would be either. That would bring too many things into question, so it was probably a burner.

What did he need a second phone for?

I tapped my laptop hard enough my nail broke.

Things were finally starting to get interesting.

A second phone wasn’t on the list of evidence and it hadn’t been in his office, but I could double check. Maybe there was a secret hiding place I hadn’t noticed before.

The other possibility was that safe in Melinda’s home behind the painting I kept trying not to think about.

I needed to call Liam and see if he’d gotten the safe open or not.

Remembering that he probably hadn’t had time thanks to me was a rude awakening. I grabbed my phone and shoved away from the desk. I couldn’t sit here any longer and do nothing. I needed to keep my hands busy so I could think.

Stepping over the books and knick-knacks, I headed for my room. It was the only place left that made any sense because there wasn’t shit in my bathroom that a million other people didn’t use and taking something from Frankie’s room wouldn’t fucking tell me anything.

Sure, I could be wrong, but it was far more likely the item was personal.

If I didn’t figure out what it was soon, I was going to lose my shit.

Standing in my doorway, I tucked my phone in the pocket of my cardigan and considered the cluttered space I called a bedroom. Had Liam ever mentioned anything about what he’d found in his brother’s safe? I didn’t think so. He’d been with me pretty much the whole time and it didn’t seem like a task he would give someone else.

Maybe Cas would be trusted to get whatever was in there, but my stupid heat had really fucked things up.

Thirteen days was long enough for someone to hide something they didn’t want me to find.

Well, I could always call Liam if I really wanted to know.

I headed straight to one of my armoires and yanked the doors open. The shelf in the middle had all the little toys displayed that I’d collected of my favorite animal, but there wasn’t a single axolotl missing.

Just thinking about Liam was making it impossible to ignore the fact that he’d taken something from my apartment – something that would supposedly answer all my questions if I could just figure out what it was.

I pulled open the top drawer under the shelves where my little axolotl figurines were and eyed the graphic tees folded in a way that allowed me to see what was on the front of each one.

Traces of oranges wafted up from the fabric, but it was so faint I could tell that Liam hadn’t dug through this whole drawer, but he had touched the shirts on top. Weeks ago from the smell of it.

I considered the one on top that had a cute, purple axolotl with a knife and the phrase ‘you axolotl questions’ under it and decided I would have one of the interns cross reference Gideon’s schedule with Melinda’s. I highly doubted she was the one he was secretly talking to, but I wanted to be sure.

Something occurred to me then, and I pulled my phone out of my pocket. The screen lit up when the front-facing camera recognized me and unlocked itself. At the top right of the screen were the bars to indicate I had service here, but next to it was the Wi-Fi symbol.

Once a network has been accessed, my phone would automatically connect to it in the future unless I had it set to ask me to join every time. The only network I let it do that with was the one in our apartment.

If Gideon was smart, he wouldn’t ever connect his burner phone to any Wi-Fi he didn’t control, and even then, it would be a risk if there was something he was doing that he didn’t want anyone to know about.

The problem with accessing Wi-Fi was that every device that had ever connected to the modem would be recorded. The right person could even see who he was sending files to, what kind of files, and where they were going.

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