Page 90 of The Ripper

Fuck.

It wasn’t one of Grimm’s enemies, as he thought.

It was mine.

My only enemy.

I am so fucked.

CHAPTER 17

THE SECRETS WE KEEP

GRIMM

I didn’t leave the hospital all day. I sat in the car, in the passenger seat, and reviewed every second of surveillance footage Hannibal sent me, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. No strange looks, no out-of-place individuals, nothing.

I banged my head against the headrest repeatedly, then slammed the laptop shut and cursed.

I was missing something; I could feel it in my bones, and I didn’t like it.

~ Maybe you’re just stupid. Just saying.

I had to find out what before it was too late, before I went completely off the rails.

~ I think it’s a bit too late for that.

I assumed Arella held the missing piece in her hand, and if she wasn’t willing to share it with me, to tell me what she was hiding, I actually considered myself incapable of solving things on my own.

~ My, my, how the mighty have fallen.

~ Just shut the fuck up.

My phone rang as I counted down the hours until the end of her shift.

“Ripper,” Hannibal’s voice scratched at my eardrums.

“Tell me you found something, kid,” I sounded almost desperate.

“Not much. I managed to dig up the camera footage from the airport where you told me she first saw you, and she picked up her luggage from a flight that came from Colombia. Now, there’s no way of knowing if she’s originally from there, or if she was back from a trip. My money’s on a trip, because your lady friend doesn’t look Colombian at all. But just to be sure, I ran her face through all the international databases, again, and still couldn’t even find a birth certificate in her name. It’s like I told you the first time, Arella Santino didn’t exist before she went to college.”

“You’re thinking about witness protection?”

“Could be,” he sighed. “Or someone really good at their job helped her erase her existence and gave her a new identity. Either way, I think it’s caught up with her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I found it odd when I saw that she came from Colombia, and I remembered all those guys you asked me to look into, the ones who were always watching her.”

“Spit it out already,” I said, gripping the phone tighter, close to breaking it in my hand as I bit down my fist.

“Eight of them were also Colombian, but all fourteen were involved with the cartels.”

“What the fuck?” I ran my fingers through my hair, then rolled down the window and lit a cigarette.

“It’s a stretch, I know, but I find it a bit odd that there are no records of her existence before she came to the States, that she passed through Colombia and then all the men seemingly stalking her were from there as well, Grimm,” his voice echoed in my ear, because it was the first time he used my name.

“What do you mean seemingly stalking her?” I bit the inside of my cheek. “They tailed her for days.”

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