Page 39 of A Breath of Life (Shadowy Solutions #4)

“Couldn’t sleep. Can’t leave you.”

“Did someone call? I thought I heard the phone ring at some ungodly hour.”

I hesitated long enough that I was sure he suspected the incoming lie before I spoke it. “Wrong number.” If I told him about Nana, he would insist we stop by the home. I couldn’t risk a fight, and I was out of excuses.

Tallus didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.

** *

Thursday was a day Tallus and I worked together at the office.

As far as Tallus was concerned, finding Clarence was a priority.

I planned to put him on the primary investigation and have him look into the wife’s whereabouts.

It would free me to continue researching Ace and his people—a task that was proving futile.

Locating a vaguely remembered wooden door that may or may not be somewhere on a building in Old Toronto was akin to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, but I had nothing else to go on.

If Jeffery was the name for one of Ace’s guys, it wasn’t enough on its own to get me anywhere, so whoever had visited Nana was protected.

For now. I would have loved to contact the main desk at the nursing home and find out who had graced the building in the past week, but Nathan had claimed there had been no one by the name of Jeffery.

Besides, I didn’t want to risk a phone call until I considered exactly how these people were keeping tabs on me.

Leaving Tallus at the reception desk alone made me nervous, but insisting he work beside me was a good way to provoke another fight because I couldn’t explain why.

I would come across as an overprotective asshole again and piss him off.

Unless dramatically whining about my snake, Tallus was not a damsel in distress and loathed to be treated as such.

He bitched when I demanded he leave the curtains over the windows closed, but I didn’t want any of Ace’s cronies thinking they could peep at him all day. I debated leaving Echo at his desk to keep an eye on things, but she wasn’t a trained guard dog, and it would only look suspicious.

Begrudgingly, I went to my office, leaving the door open and staying alert in case anyone showed up .

Tallus’s morning ritual included replying to emails and returning phone calls. “I’ll contact Hill and get the details for that case?” he shouted after me. “I’m still working on it, right?”

I grunted an affirmative and found the secret stash of birdseed I kept in a desk drawer.

A few feathered friends waited on the windowsill.

When I pried it open, they fluttered away.

I left a thin line of seed from one end to the other and shut the window again, returning the bag to its hiding place.

The birds quickly returned and brunched.

Their calm nature, out of place in the bustling city, usually worked wonders to de-escalate my stress.

I couldn’t watch them today and scanned the city for threats before drawing the curtains and considering my predicament.

Supposedly, the card tracked my movements, but how closely? After performing a few online searches, I discovered a high-tech tracker could pin my location to within a meter. So, three-ish feet.

If the device was of lesser quality, it could be as much as ten meters or about thirty-two feet. Interference was possible and expected, especially in real-time tracking. Signals dropped all the time, but those pockets were usually short and sporadic, like a signal on a cell phone.

Which brought me to a new concern.

I was more and more convinced that someone had tampered with my cell phone. I had no doubt the Consigliere had access to every incoming and outgoing call and might be able to read my texts. If I was in his shoes, I’d have made sure to rig it with a listening device.

I peeled back the protective case and examined the structure of the device itself to see if I could make out any damage.

Phones today weren’t meant to come apart easily.

It wasn’t like back in the day when people could remove the back and change the battery.

The average Joe wasn’t meant to access a phone’s innards .

Ace could easily have an engineer of some kind on his payroll. Someone with enough knowledge to hide their footprints. Tampering with these types of devices was second nature to some.

Hell, Tallus’s cousin would probably be able to take a smartphone apart without batting an eye. I debated asking Tallus to call him for instructions but thought better of it. I didn’t need Costa Ruiz’s help. I could pry cheap plastic apart on my own—hopefully without busting it.

As I aligned a fine-tipped screwdriver against the seam and applied pressure to see if the sections would easily part, a rap at my door made me jump.

Instinctively, I threw the screwdriver aside in a failed attempt to hide what I was doing, but it skittered off the edge of the desk and clattered to the floor.

Tallus glanced at where it landed, then scanned the various other tools spread out on the desk before arching a brow. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” I brushed the remaining tools into a drawer and scanned the floor for my runaway driver.

Tallus moved into the room and picked it up, examining it before setting it down on the desk. “Are you taking your phone apart?”

“No.”

He tipped his head to the side and eyed me skeptically.

“Yes. Trying to.”

“Why?”

I didn’t have an answer and stared dumbly.

“Might I suggest YouTube? It has all the answers. I’m surprised you didn’t think of that. Half my training came from YouTube.”

I frowned. “It did not. Are you done returning calls and emails?” I asked, changing the subject .

“Yeah. I’m meeting Hill this afternoon to go over things. Two more job inquiries came through the website. Suspected infidelity is a hot topic in the PI business, huh?”

“Cheating spouses pay the bills. What do you mean you’re meeting him this afternoon?”

“He asked me to come by the office so we could chat.”

An immediate protest burned my tongue, but Tallus’s challenging glare stopped me from voicing it. “I sent intake forms to the new clients. I’ll set up consultations once I get them back.”

“Good.” My mind raced, seeking an excuse to join Tallus later when he insisted on leaving.

Tallus pulled up a chair and sat, examining me in that analytical way that made me squirm. “Are we looking into Clarence today?”

“Yeah. Um… Do you want to locate his wife?”

“Sure. Are you hacking his bank account?”

I’d forgotten about the bank account. My brain was fried, too concerned about screwing the men at the top before they could screw me. Too worried about Tallus and Nana’s safety.

“Yeah. I’ll go through his bank stuff. I have passwords and email accounts to check, too.”

Tallus stood to leave, and I blurted, “Why don’t you work in here. Um… since we’re on the same case.”

“Sure. Let me grab my stuff.”

Tallus brought his laptop, notebook, and a box of Ritz peanut butter snack crackers into the office, making himself a little workstation on the other side of the desk. He nibbled crackers, clacked his tongue, and made obscure faces as he performed searches. On occasion, he jotted notes.

His immersion in the task was such that I figured he wouldn’t notice if I resumed virtually walking the streets of Old Toronto via Google satellite in my endless search for an intricately carved wooden door.

Chances were, the door would be in the rear of the building, and I’d never find it.

In fact, it was far more likely, considering my kidnappers wouldn’t have dragged me outside and left me in plain view of a main road.

What a waste of time. Fuck my life.

But I couldn’t stop.

I kept my screen angled so Tallus wouldn’t see what I was doing.

Clarence’s notebook of passwords hid my personal notebook, where I’d jotted a list of everything I remembered from my capture, including names and a visual description of the room and people involved, along with as much detail about the location as my foggy mind would give me.

I slid Clarence’s notebook up a titch and added Jeffery’s name to the bottom of the list. He was involved somehow.

When Tallus shifted or moved suddenly, I slid Clarence’s notebook back in place and darted my attention across the desk. His entire focus was on the laptop screen.

“Huh,” he exclaimed at random. “This is interesting.”

“What’s that?”

“Janessa Audraine is dead.”

I stared at Tallus as I absorbed that piece of information, unsure how to react. “Explain.”

He shifted his laptop so I could see the article that filled the screen. The header read, Woman Killed During Home Invasion . I frowned and dragged the computer closer, reading with a furrowed brow.

According to the Toronto Sun , thirty-two-year-old Janessa Audraine, wife to Clarence Audraine, was killed during a random burglary at the couple’s home in the Rosedale-Moore Park area.

The police believed Janessa interrupted the perpetrator after arriving home unexpectedly one evening.

Janessa had been stabbed repeatedly and was already dead by the time her husband found her several hours later.

I glanced at Tallus, who waited for my response. A dead wife. I checked the date on the article. One year ago. More precisely, one year and eight days ago. September seventeenth. Why did that date ring a bell?

Fuck.

Tallus spoke my thoughts aloud. “We found Clarence in the alley on September seventeenth. The one-year anniversary of his wife’s murder, Guns. There is no way that’s a coincidence.”

In his own right, Tallus should have been a detective. He had an analytical mind for picking out details that other people missed. Fucking bullshit rules. The department had no idea what they were missing. Their loss, my gain, I supposed.

“They were both stabbed, too,” he added.

“What else do we know about her?”

“I was still going over—”

A knock sounded, and the door down the hall opened, followed by a woman calling out, “Hello? Is someone here? Is this Shadowy Solutions?”

Tallus looked like he was about to pop up and handle it—dealing with random customers was part of his job—but I waved for him to sit.

I didn’t trust random strangers walking in off the street.

Not when I’d somehow ended up in the middle of someone’s sick game.

For all I knew, sending a woman was meant to lower my guard, and that wasn’t fucking happening.

“Stay here. Do more research. I’ve got this. ”

The analytical glare was back. Considering I never volunteered to deal with clients, it was warranted. I ignored it and went to see who had shown up.