Page 93 of Corrupted Deception

Given the tension in the room, it surprised me for the space of a heartbeat when Cielo didn’t snap at Aiden, but then, he wasn’t the kind of man who did the macho ‘chest out, in your face’ bullshit. No, he was far more likely to do nothing at all… then come back while you were sleeping and kill you. Hopefully, Aiden had the good sense to sleep with one eye open.

I clicked the button on the laptop, and the video played. A busy, narrow street in midday light, hundreds of people hustling in both directions, congested traffic moving so slowly it could have been Canal Street in Manhattan but for the vivid display of colors and the South American architecture.

Cielo’s hand slid down the back of the sofa, onto my shoulder. He squeezed lightly, then let go, but he kept his hand there, his fingers moving lightly over my collarbone.

That thing in my chest squeezed uncomfortably. It still felt like I was running down a dark, endless tunnel, but for the first time, it didn’t quite feel like I was doing it all alone.

“There,” Aiden said, a welcome distraction. He stood beside me now, pointing to the left corner of the screen as Daniel Marín’s mediocre frame stepped out of a cab. I swear I could smell the old cigarettes and fried onions on his breath as he walked calmly across the street, weaving around the cars that crawled by, and disappeared inside a café I didn’t recognize.

The video played on, and I waited. And waited.

Aiden crouched down next to the laptop, right beside me, which had Cielo squeezing my shoulder possessively—awesome.He skipped forward through the video until the timestamp showed that ten minutes had passed, and he paused the video.

“No one suspicious went in or out,” he said, “And then this.”

He un-paused the video, and Marín came walking out the café doorway—almost running, actually. Though the video played at normal speed, it was like he was moving in fast-forward, looking over his shoulder again and again as he wove through traffic so quickly, he nearly got clipped half a dozen times before disappearing off the screen. Even after he was gone, I swear I could smell the faint, pungent odor of his sweat and fear wafting from the screen.

Aiden paused the video again. “I’ve watched it right through, and no one that raises any red flags goes in or out the front door.”

“What about the back door?” Cielo asked. “Surveillance footage from any other angle?”

Aiden shook his head, his lips pressed tightly together like answering Cielo was pretty much the last thing he wanted to do.

All right, so ignoring the testosterone in the room, I leaned forward and looked at the frozen frame on the screen, looking for something—anything—useful.

“Where is this?” I asked when my search turned up nothing.

“Cartagena,” Aiden replied.

Colombia?

I shook my head. “His passport showed no movement out of Venezuela, and neither did his bank accounts or his cell phone.”

Aiden nodded. “Everything said he was in Venezuela the whole time.”

“So, he travels into Colombia under the radar,” I said, thinking out loud, “meets with someone who stresses him the fuck out, then makes a call to Miguel Silva.”

Aiden nodded. “According to his secretary, he had meetings scheduled the following day—the day we know he met with Silva. He cleared them all at the last minute.”

The room grew silent, so quiet I could almost hear all the gears turning, thoughts whirring. And Ray breathing, almost panting with his tongue hanging out, ready for the next race across the living room.

“Someone fed intel about Charlotte’s father to him,” Cielo said confidently, rupturing the silence. “Marín didn’t rat him out on his own.” He squeezed my shoulder once more, then let me go. I couldn’t see them or hear them, but I could imagine his fingers drumming against his thigh as he shifted puzzle pieces this way and that in his analytical brain.

Aiden stood and looked over at Cielo, his eyes contemplative.

“No, he didn’t,” he said, albeit reluctantly. “I’ve sifted through everything. There isn’t one bit of evidence to suggest Marín was even aware of who Declan was before he made that call to Silva—who he’d also had no contact with, to the best of my knowledge.”—And Aiden’s knowledge bank was vast.

The two men exchanged a look, one of those silent man-conversation things, and it pissed me off.

“If either of you have something to say, use your god damned words,” I said, springing to my feet and making Ray do a double-take from the floor at my feet. I stroked his head and scratched behind his ear in apology.

Cielo nodded, pacing out from behind the sofa. “Silva was just a puppet. Someone wanted to go after your father but didn’t want any link back to them, so they bribed or blackmailed Marín—blackmailed, by the look of him on the video—into feeding intel to Silva to get the job done,” he said, but there was a furrow between his brows. Something wasn’t sitting right for him.

“It’s a fair assessment,” Aiden agreed with a nod.

“My father isn’t a fucking job,” I yelled, hands curling, fingernails digging in. It was anger, but more because they’d hit a nerve. Because I’d been basing my belief my dad was still alive on my knowledge of Silva—a man who would want to glean every bit of intel he could from him and use it for bargaining power and profit. But if Silva was just a puppet…

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” I asked.

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