Page 77 of Family Bonds- Jarrett & Andi

“I can’t believe anyone that powerful would hire someone sloppy enough to be on camera,” Jarrett said.

“No loose ends,” Jack said. “It’s easier when they are young and sloppy. The night he was arrested he was shanked in jail.”

The guy hired to do the hit was never going to live tosayhe did what he was hired for.

Andi took a deep breath. “I knew that much,” she said. “I even know who they suspected hired the hit, but there was no proof.”

“Did they ever get their proof?” Jarrett asked.

“Weeks later,” Andi said, “my father’s house was trashed. I wasn’t living there. I was going to put the house up for sale. I couldn’t keep it. I could barely step foot in it. I’d only been in a few times. I couldn’t even say the day it happened, just that I went there to get my father’s cat’s old bed. She didn’t like the one I bought her.”

“The cat in the picture on your phone?” he asked.

“Yeah. It’s a reminder of my dad. I’m not a cat person, but someone had to take Pillow.”

“That’s an odd name,” he said.

“My father rescued the kitten one day coming home. It was on the side of the road. She always slept on his pillow and he said it stuck.”

“You go to your dad’s house and it’s trashed,” he said. “What else?”

“She called me,” Jack said. “I raced over and a few other marshals went through everything. We tried to pull prints, but there was nothing. We don’t even know what they were looking for. We had his laptop already and there wasn’t anything on it.”

“After they were done going through Dad’s house, I was able to get Pillow’s bed and I left. I couldn’t stay there. I ended up hiring someone to go through and clean it out, kept what I wantedandsold the place. But I went home with the cat bed and was going to wash it and took the cover off of it. When I did, I heard the noise of something dropping. There was a USB that fell to the ground.”

“Did you look at what was on it?” he asked quickly.

“No,” she said. “I wanted to, but then something in my head told me not to do it. Give it to Jack.”

“That USB was all the proof that was needed to bring the Dustin Family down for human trafficking and close their ring while rescuing close to a hundred women. Luke had more than he needed already. Why he was going for more, no one knows. My guess was he wanted the name of the person who tortured his informant.”

The revenge part. “Do you think he would have put himself at risk unless he thought he’d get it?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “Everything he had he’d been gathering for years from a distance. I’m not sure how they suspected it was him, but they covered their bases and took him out. They trashed his house and found nothing. It was weeks after we got the USB before we got our arrest warrants.”

“You needed to verify everything?” he asked.

“We did. This was the most and the closest they’d ever gotten to bringing them down. But there were still a few names we had nothing on. They were untouchable,” Jack said.

“They are still out there?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jack said. “When everyone was getting arrested, pictures of Andi showed up in my email one day. A few of them from a distance. I didn’t tell her. We had herwatched. There didn’t seem to be any reason to do anything at that moment. I had nothing to do with this case.”

“She was being watched to protect her?” he asked.

“Yes. And you have no idea how hard it was,” Jack said. “She didn’t know and I thought she’d figure it out, but she didn’t.”

“I can imagine.” Jarrett had another level of respect hearing that. “What caused Andi to go into Witness Protection? A few pictures wouldn’t do it.”

“No,” Jack said. “Not yet. Talk, Andi.”

He turned to Andi. “That wasn’t the only thing going on in my life,” she said. “I was dating someone.”

“Did he hurt you?” he asked. He’d heard about this accident that happened before she moved.

“Not directly. I hadn’t told my father about him. It was only a few dates when my father was alive anyway.”

“What’s his name?” he asked.

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