Page 48 of Out of Control

“Listen, you need to get to Athena Kane’s house and convince her to come in right away.”

I shook my head. “No, she’s clean, I promise. I was wrong,” I admitted, but the truth needed to come out. “There’s nothing suspicious about her.”

He paused. I could hear the wheels in his head turning.Shit.“Okaaay. But she needs to come in for a real protection unit. Maybe even sending her to that place with Witness C and Witness W.”

I forced air in my lungs and back out again. I needed more information before I fell straight into a panic. “What happened?”

“Check your goddamn email, Luke.”

He kept talking to me, but it was a dull background noise as I took the phone away from my ear, opening up the email app on my home screen. The first couple unread messages were nonsense that wasn’t urgent at all, but then I saw what Mark was talking about.

More surveillance footage was back.

I clicked on the email from Leo Lombardi’s tail first, flicking through the stills sent to me.

There were a bunch of Lombardi in his shitty rust bucket of a car, but it wasn’t the vehicle that was important. It took me a moment to recognize the background, but his car was clearly sitting in this very neighborhood. I took a few steps to the front window, flicking open the curtains. I could see the house he’d been parked in front of in the photos from where I stood and looked at the timestamp. It was yesterday evening, not long before I arrived to arrest her. Shit. He knew where she lived. How long had he known? Did my arrival scare him away? How did Lombardi find her?

Breaking the rules to spend the night with Athena probably saved her life.

I backed out of that email and opened the other, the one from the analyst monitoring the footage from the surveillance van sitting in front of the Morelli office. I read the quick note typed into the body of the email before opening the attachment.

Same woman as last time I think. Whoever she is, I feel bad for her.

I steadied my hand before pressing play.

Lombardi was clearly visible through the glass window at the front of the office, talking with Angelo Morelli. They both looked angry. Lombardi handed a file folder to Angelo. Angelo looked hard at it, and even from a distance I could see the anger morph into pure, terrible fury. Whatever Lombardi showed him caused an intense rage. We weren’t set up to capture quality audio, but I still flinched from the volume of the scream Angelo let out.

Carlo Morelli came into frame from somewhere in the back office at his brother’s bellow. He slowly made his way to the front of the frame, back facing the window as Angelo shoved the file into his hands.

I could see Carlo’s back stiffen as he absorbed whatever the new information was. The hand holding the folder dropped to his side as he turned to Lombardi. Now I could see his face, lips clear as day as they formed the wordsAre you sure?

But that wasn’t the most damning part of the video.

When his arm dropped, I could see a vague outline of what so affected the Morellis. The folder had two photos side by side in a comparison. I paused the video, not quite able to make out the features from this distance, but one photo was a woman with curly blonde hair, and the other was the same woman with straight brunette hair.

I checked the timestamp out of reflex. This video was from late afternoon yesterday, not long before Lombardi parkedon Athena’s street, staking out her home. Leo Lombardi got Athena’s address since it would have been in the CV she left with Morelli & Morelli, Attorneys at Law.

Leo and the rest of the Morellis knew exactly who she was and that she’d been playing them. He was sent here last night to murder her, and the only reason he didn’t make his move after she let down her guard and went to sleep for the night was because I showed up and put a damper on his plans.

I pressed play on the video. Angelo was still raging, throwing staplers and other office supplies from the main reception desk. Even with the shitty audio equipment I could hear his screams of fury as he destroyed the office. Carlo kept spitting out angry words. He drew a single finger across his neck and among the jumble of words I could see his mouth shape the words “dead” and “now” before he shoved the file folder into Leo Lombardi’s chest, knocking him back a few feet.

Fuck.

They knew who she was, and she was getting ready to walk right into their headquarters.

I checked my watch and looked around desperately for my shirt. Only five minutes had passed. Athena’s meeting didn’t start for another twenty. As long as she didn’t show up too early I could make it.

Ihadto make it. I couldn’t lose her, too.

twenty

Athena

Iknew better than to have Lucas conscious if I wanted to actually make it to my interview with Carlo and Angelo Morelli. Plus, he was sleeping so peacefully I couldn’t bear to disturb him even I planned on staying in bed with him.

So I quietly gathered my clothes and tiptoed out the bedroom door, holding the knob at an angle to it wouldn’t so much as click when it closed behind me. I climbed carefully down the stairs to use the first floor bathroom without waking Lucas.

Then I hurried through a shower, keeping my hair out of the spray so I didn’t have to use a loud hair dryer, pulling on a professional looking dark gray power blazer with a matching pencil skirt, a pale green button-up tucked in underneath.

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