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“Apology accepted, but let’s just get to it, shall we?” Taylor said sternly trying to rein in some control. She wanted answers but she also wanted to get the hell out of there.
“Sure, so tell me what you know about me so far.”
“That your real name isn’t even Ben, it’s Jeffrey Benson and you were in the army before you went AWOL and seemingly dropped off the planet.”
“Okay, well, most of that is true. My name is Jeffrey Benson, but I’ve always also answered to Ben because of my last name. But I didn’t go AWOL. I was in a special forces unit but they made it appear I went AWOL so I wasn’t traceable, and apparently it worked. Once I ‘disappeared’ I worked to gather intelligence on enemies, or those the government suspected of being enemies. A sort of spy because I could blend in easily.“
“Were you on some kind of assignment when I met you?” Taylor asked.
“I was but not for the government. I was given the boot from my post when they suspected I might have been figured out. They just sort of gave me my walking papers. Left me for dead in a way because if any of the people I have gotten crap on find out who I am, I’m dead. So I stayed off the radar and moved a lot, changed my look a lot, and took the occasional job that came my way.”
“What sort of jobs?” Derrick asked.
“Surveillance, or detective jobs. Private investigating stuff, but large cash amounts so I only had to take them here and there.”
“So you were hiding out in Chadumor, at the coffee shop?” Henry asked.
“No, I was on a job.”
“What was your job?” Taylor asked.
“I was hired to find you.”
Taylor knit her brows together. “Find me? By whom?”
“Your uncle.”
Taylor’s throat closed up, and she felt cold run through her veins. “Why?” she croaked out.
“He wanted—”
“Did he want to kill me?” Taylor blurted out. She couldn’t keep the question from bubbling out of her. It had been what she had always feared. “Or were you supposed to kill me?”
He recoiled at the question. “What? No!” he replied vehemently, moving his hands in a no way signal. “No, Taylor, he never asked me that. God, he never even wanted to know your location.”
Taylor absorbed that odd tidbit before she spoke. “He didn’t want to know where I was?” Taylor asked, confusion now replacing her fear. “Then why did he send you?”
Benson heaved out a big breath. “So here is how it goes. I was contacted by Cedric via a courier with a handwritten letter. All it said was a place to meet and a price to be given to find someone. It was a good deal of cash, so I went.
“I met him in an alley, the same alley where I had you meet me, in fact. At the time I had no idea who he was.”
“How was his demeanor?” Henry asked. “Was there anything about him that stood out, any behaviors or characteristics you thought were off?”
“Yeah, he was antsy.”
“Antsy how?” Henry asked.
“He was paranoid,” he said. “Lots of jumping, and looking over his shoulder.”
“Did he seem to be on any substances that might cause his paranoia?” Henry cross-examined.
“He didn’t seem high, no. More like panicked someone was behind him the entire time. The way he was acting freaked me out, and I have been in war. He was like some of the shell-shocked guys. Just totally trying to act like he had it together but he did not have it all together.
“Anyway, he handed me your photo, Taylor,” he said, breaking eye contact with Henry and turning his gaze to her, “and said he needed to find you. I recognized who you were in the photo instantly and I got real suspicious real fast. I started to try and say without spooking him that I didn’t stalk people. He said you two were related but again I thought it was a big redhe is a stalkerflag. But then I really looked at him, and I asked him for his ID. When I realized he was who he claimed to be I asked why and he said he needed to make sure you were alive.”
“When was this? When did he ask you to look?” Derrick asked.
“It was about fifteen months before the last time I saw you, before you disappeared from the Roasted Bean,” Ben said to Taylor.