Page 8 of Avenging Kelly

The story was long and complicated, and at one point in time, we had to get Casper involved to explain his part in discovering that Mia had been listed for sale on an illegal auction site on the dark web, but when all was said and done, it appeared Kelly had a more thorough understanding of what had gone into finding his little sister.

“I have to thank you for everything you’ve done for my family. I’m sorry if I sounded ungrateful, but they’re all I have,” Kelly stated.

I looked at Gabe. “You mentioned news. What is it?”

Gabe pointed to Casper, who opened his laptop and hit the button to bring the large screen behind Gabby to life. “This is Bess Trudeau leaving a big box store this morning.”

The woman on the feed was quickly pushing a shopping cart, a young woman following behind her, carrying a few bags. Casper continued. “The Trudeaus are using aliases, Elizabeth and Phil Moore, which is why none of my trackers have caught them until today, when Bess slipped up and used her personal credit card. I got a ping and I’ve been weeding through CCTV feeds until I found her. I recognized her from her spousal ID she was given while they were still at Pendleton. As you can see, I believe…”

Just then, the young woman put her bundles in the back of the SUV and turned around to give the camera a full body shot. I blinked several times to ensure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.

“That’s not a woman. That’s a little girl. Is she pregnant?” Smokey asked, his voice quiet for a second before he exploded and launched a chair into the wall.

Gabe walked around the table and wrapped his long arms around Smokey. “I know. I know. Let’s get a bead on these mother fuckers and deal with them.”

Suddenly, Kelly stood, bracing his hands on the table. “I need to go. I’ll call you in a few days, Gabby.”

He stormed out of the conference room, and I watched as he rushed down the stairs. We all heard the front door slam before Gabe’s phone buzzed.

“Shit. St. Michael, go follow him. I’m not sure what the hell is going on with him, but we can’t have him fucking this up when we find the Trudeaus, or they’ll never stand trial for what-the-fuck-ever they’re doing,” Gabe told me as he rushed out of the conference room.

Casper chuckled. “He seemed a little hot headed when he came in, so I put a tracker on his bike. I’ll link it to your cell.”

I nodded, rushing from the conference room and down the stairs toward the back door of the Victorian. I went to my SUV and linked my phone to my SUV’s navigation system, instantly seeing a map with the tracker’s dot signifying Kelly’s bike as it moved over the screen.

“Okay, Kelly Brown, let’s see where you’re going.” I knew his mother lived in Queens, but that wasn’t where he was headed. He went over the Williamsburg Bridge into lower Manhattan, and I followed about three car lengths behind.

Kelly continued toward Midtown and pulled into a parking garage under a high rise after punching a code into a keypad. I couldn’t get in with my SUV—keypad users only—so I pulled around the corner and parked in an alley behind a dumpster until I could figure out where I was and why Brown had access to the building.

I hopped out of my SUV and went around the corner, pulling out my phone and pretending to be looking at something on the screen so I could loiter outside the garage door and wait for a car to come out.

When the immense door creaked open, I hit the concrete and rolled under it as it was closing. I stayed in the shadows of the columns lining the ramp and made my way down it to find Kelly had parked his bike near the elevator on the first level underground.

Kelly had already disappeared, so I walked up to the box by the doors, seeing it required a security code to call the elevator back. I wasn’t good at guessing, so I called Casper.

“Narc, what’s up?” he answered.

“Can you break into this thing to get me an entry code?” I sent him the coordinates from the GPS on my phone, and I waited.

“Hmm. I can’t get into the system with that. Hang on and let me find you,” Casper requested.

“I’m in the parking garage of the fucking Spires Tower,” I stated as I read the sign by the elevator that listed the security desk’s emergency number on the first floor.

After a minute of key pounding and frustrated huffs, Casper growled in anger. “Mother fucker! I can’t get in. The security firewall isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen, and I’ve worked for the CIA. Get out of there and head back to the Victorian. I need some time to figure this shit out.”

Something had stumped Casper? Color me shocked! That wasn’t anything I’d ever heard the man admit, but he disconnected the call before I could give our resident hacker any shit about it.

I hurried up the ramp and waited by the garage door for almost eight minutes until someone opened it, allowing me to leave the way I’d come in. I hurried to my SUV in the alley and hopped inside, heading over the bridge to Brooklyn and the Victorian as directed.

What the hell was the deal with Kelly Brown?

* * *

“So, what’s got you so fucking pissed off?” Dallas asked me. I was slamming drawers and cabinets as I was packing, having been at the Victorian all night with Casper, the two of us as frustrated as I was sure we’d ever been.

Casper had tried to crack the firewall at Spires Tower to figure out where Kelly Brown was in that building, but he kept hitting dead ends, regardless of what he’d tried. Neither of us enjoyed being told no to anything, so I knew Casper was probably still at it. Poor bastard.

“Massive frustration. I think, though I’m not totally sure, that Kelly Brown’s not being completely honest with us. I saw Smokey and Gabe staring at him as if they didn’t recognize him when we all sat in the conference room yesterday. I need to ask them what that was about,” I explained as I poured myself a cup of coffee, barely waiting for the pot to fill.

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