Page 18 of Wicked Love
“You have some connection to that trucking company,” I prodded.
“Yes. They’re one of the businesses within our domain, answering to us, paying our tithe, and occasionally providing services.”
“Are they involved in the criminal side of things?”
“Some of their clients have them ship illegal goods,” Beckett admitted. “We’ve occasionally gotten rare alcohols that need to be smuggled in for the club through their connections, for example.”
I pulled out the document with the trucking company logo on it and slid it across the table to him. “We picked up this report—I’m guessing now that it was planted as part of the effort to frame you. Most of the data is in a code I couldn’t crack. Do you have the key to it?”
Beckett took a moment to study the papers and then tapped on his phone again, writing out a text. “I can get it. What’s your number?”
I blinked, startled, and then rattled it off. In less than a minute, my phone pinged with an incoming text. The image that came with it was a page from the Bible, of all things, with one of the line numbers circled.
Instantly, my puzzle-honed brain latched on and started unraveling the code from there. I held out my hand, and Beckett passed the document back to me.
The previously nonsensical strings of letters formed words in my head as I scanned the paper now. It was simply a list of dates, all of them from a few weeks ago, and locations that shipments had been dropped off at. Nothing unsettling there. They didn’t even mark which deliveries might have been of stolen or otherwise illegal goods and which were legit.
“Thank you,” I said after I’d finished my inspection. My nerves had settled some more, but there was one final gnawing question at the back of my mind. I forced myself to hold Beckett’s gaze for a beat longer than I generally found comfortable before letting my attention shift to his forehead and then his cheek, where I could still judge his reaction. “If we find the person responsible for murdering Evan Silver, what are you going to do about it?”
“Whenwe find him,” Beckett said without hesitation, “I’ll take care of it.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you don’t even need to worry about what I mean. I’ll make sure they’re never in a position to harm anyone else again. I’m not going to drag you, your friends, or Madelyn into that mess. You won’t have to be involved, and you won’t face any potential consequences. I’m the one best equipped to deal with the situation, and I know it isn’t the kind of thing you’d want to be mixed up in.”
He spoke coolly and firmly, and I found I didn’t doubt his honesty for an instant. It mattered to him, seeing this brand of justice done… not so different from the kind we dealt out as the Vigil. And he wanted to protect us and Madelyn from it.
How could I see him as a threat after that?
I leaned forward, my doubts satisfied, and took my laptop out of my shoulder bag. “I want to make sure it really is a ‘when’ and not an ‘if,’ so I’ve brought all the information we’ve gathered. It hasn’t gotten us far enough, but maybe combined with your resources, we’ll get some real answers.”
I talked him through the full timeline, starting with Logan’s realization that there was something questionable about Madelyn’s father’s death three years ago and our early investigations, then getting into the theft of Madelyn’s car and the new directions that event had pointed us in. As I spoke, I brought up photos I’d taken and video footage from our surveillance cameras on the computer screen. I mentioned the bar where we’d found the trinket box, the old warehouse where we’d been attacked by security guards, and the seafood market that seemed connected to it.
Beckett took it all in silently other than occasional hums of acknowledgment. He studied the images I brought up on the screen with total focus, his mouth gradually curving into a frown. Now and then, he typed notes into his phone. As I got into the finer details, he started asking questions to clarify.
“What’s this Baldwin file that comes up a few places?”
“We don’t know,” I admitted. “It seems to have been meaningful to Mr. Silver, but we haven’t been able to locate it or to figure out who the name refers to.”
“And this flyer from the seafood market is relevant because…?”
I could starkly remember the horror that’d gripped Madelyn’s face when she’d seen it. “Madelyn says her father was babbling while he was sick—he sounded delusional. He said something about how a broken catfish had ‘done this’—as in made him sick. Madelyn thought he was referring to an actual fish during a flood that’d happened a little while before, but when she saw the market’s logo, she realized it was probably that instead.”
Beckett’s gaze darkened. “He’d made it that far through the chain of connections, then.”
“Presumably. We don’t know what he found out there or what the shipments passing through the market might involve.” I watched him as he peered at the screen for a little longer and then added to his notes. His whole expression was shadowed now with a sense of gloom I couldn’t remember seeing from him before. “Can you make anything of this that I haven’t mentioned? Do you know who might have framed you?”
Beckett sucked in an audible breath. “I have some possibilities I need to look into, but nothing definite. I don’t want to put ideas in your head until I’ve had time to confirm them. Thank you for going over all of this with me. I can tell you’ve been very thorough.” He paused and turned his penetrating gaze on me. “Is Madelyn going to continue staying in your apartment for the time being?”
My hackles immediately came up. “She’s a lot safer with us than in her dorm building—asyouproved just a couple of days ago. We’re not doing it to keep her away from you.”
He held up his hands in a pacifying gesture. “Don’t get me wrong! I’m not complaining about it. Iwanther to stay with you—I’m concerned about her safety too. And the three of you have shown that you take that very seriously.” A bit of a smile came back, curling his mouth at a wry angle.
“We do,” I confirmed, eyeing him for any sign that he was only faking his acceptance.
“And protecting her matters a lot more than who’s spending the most time with her. Not that she’s all that enthusiastic about one-on-one time with me at the moment anyway.” Beckett shook his head ruefully. “I have a few trusted employees patrolling the campus surreptitiously when she’ll be there for classes, but I can’t cover everywhere she could possibly go. I’m glad she has the three of you watching over her as well.”
I couldn’t detect the slightest hint of a lie in his tone or his words. My stance relaxed. I didn’t know if Madelyn would ever fully trust him or how I felt about him becoming part of our joint relationship again, but any doubts I’d had about how much he cared about her had vanished.
