Page 29 of Falcon's Prey

“What happened?” Sam eyed me, and I couldn’t tell if the look was suspicious or not.

I shrugged, still testing him out. “Must be the drugs.”

Sam nodded, like he understood why she did what she did. “I’ll send Dr. Wozniak a text.”

Right, ’cause that was what Ember needed: a doctor to make sure she didn’t overdose so she could go back and do it all over again. No my problem, though.

“Any update?” I asked as I went for water.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Sam said, like I hadn’t already come to that conclusion myself.

“What makes you say that?”

“The light had turned green sixty seconds before Michael and Silas drove past it.”

Running a red light wasn’t uncommon. Running a red light one minute after the light had turned red? Nowthatwas uncommon.

I walked around the kitchen island counter to where Sam had the tablet. “You have the footage?”

Sam handed me the slick device, and I played the recording. Figured they had the information in a heartbeat. I watched the black-and-white traffic light tape and saw a car floor it the moment the limousine with the Remingtons started to cross the intersection. A job like this was detailed, and it was thought out to the very last second.

“You have any suspects?”

“We’re working on it,” Sam said and took the tablet away from me.

I started to walk away when Sam called my name. My hand tightened on the bottle before I turned to look at him. “Yeah?”

“You can have your day off tomorrow. I’ll be at the hospital with Mr. Remington, and I’ll have Marcus watch over Ember.”

“Perfect,” I managed to say through gritted teeth.

This time when I left, Sam didn’t stop me. Before I thought better of it, I took the servant stairs to the second floor to where Ember’s room was. I knocked on the door and waited for an answer, but I didn’t hear one. I tried to open her door, but it was locked. I stayed there for a second, staring at the large gray doors, before I turned around back to my room.

Making sure that my door was locked, I went to my bed and went through my messages—nothing I could do about those for now. After that, I started to search the Remingtons. Something I probably should have done sooner, but arrogance was a downfall. I couldn’t find much, which was frustrating. All I found was the company’s website and pictures of Ember walking around displaying diamonds like a whore. Pictures of her father and uncle. It was all galas, parties, and shows, but nothing that could help me.

I was starting to lose my shit. A couple of pages in, I found pictures from another party. I found myself clicking on it because Ember was smiling. Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen her smile. Gloating and smirking, yes, but not a smile. Ember was a lot younger; her face still had the softness and roundness from her teenage years. Her hair was long, her dress strapless but not revealing. She was standing in between her father and uncle. Her father didn’t touch her, and her uncle had a hand across her waist. I did think much about it until I came across another picture that looked like it was the same event, but a few years later. In this picture, Ember looked older, her eyes sharper, and there was no longer a smile on her face as she stood between her father and uncle. If anything, she looked vacant. I could tell she was biting the inside of her cheeks by the hollow look in her jaw.

“What made you angry?” I asked the empty room.

After more searching and coming across more useless shit, I did what I should have done since the beginning and used Wiki, where I found out more useless shit.

Their original name wasn’t even Remington. Ember’s great-grandfather had changed it when they came to America. Redelinghuys was their original name before they Americanized it. Since all that Wiki gave me was that the Remingtons originally had a partner, but after a mining accident took him out, they became sole heirs since there was no more family, I decided to call it quits.

There were two things I was now sure of: first, I needed to find whoever was targeting the Remingtons, because they were making my job more difficult. Second, I was going to need Pamela’s help, after all.

* * *

The next morningwhen I woke up, I headed straight for the gym. I had some pent-up aggression, and it would be the only thing to give me a release. The first thing I heard were grunts, and my first thought was that Ember was fucking someone in the weights room. Murder before breakfast wasn’t my favorite. I walked deeper into the gym facility as I took off the safety on my gun. There was no guy, and Ember wasn’t even naked. She was wearing black joggers and a pink sports bra, and the grunts were because she was “hitting” a punching bag. She didn’t have gloves; she just had her hands wrapped.

“You’re only going to hurt yourself if you keep doing that.”

“Go away.” Her response was immediate.

“Look, I don’t want to be responsible if you break your wrist in a fit,” I mocked, knowing it would make her angry.

Ember stopped hitting the bag, then turned around and glared at me.

“What part of get out of my fucking face don’t you understand, dog?!” she screamed before she came at me, hitting me.

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