Page 30 of A Touch of Frost
The last thing I wanted to tell her was that I had been a shit brother to Paul. I hadn’t meant to. I’d put up with our parents and their ways for far too long and Paul always seemed to be taking their sides. I was sick of it and I allowed my temper and pride to take over.
Before I knew it, I was homeless. The strange thing was, though it was hard, and I didn’t have a roof over my head, I could breathe. I knew what laid ahead of me wouldn’t have been easy. Most street kids didn’t make it.
Most street kids fell into dark places where they either wound up in jail or six feet under. The next few years were spent in a race against time and a fight to keep from starving.
I meant to go back and explain everything to Paul. Even if he didn’t forgive me, even if he didn’t understand, at least he’d know that I had been slowly dying living with our parents.
But one struggle morphed into another and another until, eventually, life had just gotten in the way.
I followed Frost inside, my shame weighing me down, almost crushing me under its heaviness.
There wasn’t much else we could do for the night. Tex found some information on the laptop but neither he nor Frost could make heads or tails of what any of it meant. While Frost showered, and after I’d managed to curtail my brain from seeing her naked and wet, I managed to take a look at what she’d found.
Frost entered the room, dressed in a pair of trackpants and a tank. It was obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra for her nipples imprinted through the thin material. I tried not staring by focusing extra hard on the pages in front of me.
But how could I concentrate on anything but those rounded buds I wanted to pull into my mouth?
I exhaled. “I think I know what these are—some of them at least.”
She walked over to stand behind me and leaned over my shoulder. Frost smelled like roses and a first-class ticket to temptation.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Right here, these could be dates. That column seemed to be money and right here quantity. This is like a ledger of sorts.”
“I can see that. But a ledger for what?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged.
My body was overheating.
She was too close.
All I would have to do was turn my head enough and her lips would be on mine.
“Could be anything—drugs, sex-trafficking, contraband goods…” I sighed. “Lot of good that did.”
Frost tapped my other shoulder. “No, not a lost cause. Over the past ten years or so there has been an explosion in overdosing on Cocaine in this area—from Bucharest really, through Serbia and into Montenegro. It means someone has opened up a line between the three countries.”
“Do you think that’s where Striker got the money for his mansion?” I asked. “And of all the places to buy a mansion…why here? I mean, no offence because it’s beautiful here…”
“I get it.” She walked away to sit on the other side of the table.
“And another thing that’s been bothering me.” I cleared my throat. “Paul had to have been here. I mean, Ray said he was at Mountain Head at one point.”
“Right.” She seemed contemplative.
“So, if the intel Mozart and the others have is right, that means they brought him here, then took him back to Bucharest. Why? That’s crossing three countries twice—unnecessary risk. I mean, you do it once and get away with it, but a second time? Why take the risk?”
I sighed.
“Unless, it’s starting to show more and more that Ray was right.” Frost stopped rubbing her hair and strung the towel around her neck to tap away at the computer. “Unless they knew the first place we’d go would be to Ray.”
“If your reasoning is correct—they moved him from Mountain Head to somewhere else because they knew Ray is afraid of you.” I paused. “But they have no way of knowing you’d come looking. After all, you had a falling out with the SEALs, why would Striker and his team assume you’d be the one?”
I rubbed my eyes.
“That makes sense. Maybe they hadn’t thought of me.” Frost licked her succulent lips. “Maybe they thought Wolf and his guys would be coming—either way, they must have known someone would come looking and Ray is too much of a coward to not talk.”
“Remember what the guy on the phone was saying?” I asked. “He was asked why they would risk moving Paul!”
