Page 14 of Secret Squirrel

I sighed, opening up my screen to renew my search into this strange key. “Duke, as fun as this is, I have work to do.”

“I wouldn’t want to hold you back.”

“Yet, clearly, you are.”

I pushed up from my chair and grabbed him by the arm, leading him out of the room. I would have just shoved him out and left it at that, but part of me wanted just a few more minutes with him. Even if he was a mechanic, and the opposite of what I needed in my life.

“You don’t have to drag me out of here.”

“I think I do. You shouldn’t even be in the building. I’m not sure what you did to convince Cash to let you in, but my room is off-limits. No one goes in my office.”

“And for that, I’m being marched out of here. You know, you have trouble trusting people, Rae.”

“Yep,” I said, not even denying it.

“Maybe you should see someone about that.”

* * *

One week later…

“I’ve been through all the evidence a hundred times,” I snapped. “Whatever’s going on here, Rafe is behind it.”

I paced Cash’s office, furious that I couldn’t figure out where FNG was. The whole thing was a clusterfuck, and the more time that passed, the more likely it was we’d never figure out what really happened to him.

“Look, you were the one that went along with the brilliant plan to release him,” Cash sighed. “Nowyou want me to find out some way to question what’s really going on?”

He had a point. I went along with the harebrained scheme, the one that nearly got me blown up. That was a week ago, and ever since then, I’d been kicking myself for allowing Rafe to slip through our fingers when we still had so many unanswered questions. But it was a gamble. If we kept him there and he was, as we suspected, planted deep in some sector of the syndicate, we were putting his life and all of ours in danger by keeping him with us.

Cash leaned forward, resting his arms on his desk. “Alright, let’s assume that Rafe really is involved in FNG’s disappearance, how do we prove it?”

I bit my nail as I considered this. “I have no clue. But when I was helping him escape, I said something along the lines of him having something to do with FNG’s disappearance. It was the look he got on his face, Cash. It was like he hadn’t expected for us to figure it out, or at least not that quickly.”

He nodded. “Yeah, that sounds like Rafe. But it still doesn’t give us anything to go on. Rafe is a ghost at the best of times. We released him a week ago. Hell, by now, he would have run off to…Thailand, and none of us would know it!”

“Thailand?” I said, giving him a dirty look.

“You know what I mean. He’s gone. There’s no finding him until he wants to be found.”

“Yes, but he took a big risk by showing up at Leah’s place. He didn’t have to do that.”

“He only showed up there because Leah is connected to Tahlia. He was protecting his guys,” Cash said appeasingly.

“Then maybe they’ve heard from him!”

He shook his head, pushing up from his seat. “Rae, I’ve talked to Johnny. He hasn’t heard shit, and he’s not in the position to help us find a missing man. He’s taking care of Tahlia and trying to figure out his own clusterfuck with Rafe. Face it, this falls at our feet. There is no one to help us this time around, and from where I stand, I can’t see a single fucking way to find FNG.”

I paced the room some more, needing to admit something to Cash. “I…have something to tell you.”

“Christ, you always do,” he sighed. “What is it this time?”

“When Johnny was on the run, he asked me to do something for him.”

Cash’s eyes narrowed on me. “Okay. And what was that?”

“He asked me to break into the evidence locker at Tahlia’s work and dig through it for information on FNG.” Cash’s eyes turned hard the more I tried to explain. “He was sure there would be something in there that would prove FNG wasn’t in the truck,” I rushed on.

“And did you find anything?”

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