Page 102 of After All The Wreckage

“I need to get home. I need…” God, my breath was uneven. The room spun. I was going to pass out like some fucking wuss.

“We’ll go. I’ll call the FBI from the car,” she said.

Rory whipped back around to Walden, searching his pockets. She came up with his cell phone and wallet. She left the wallet on the dresser, pushed the phone in front of his face to unlock it, and swiped through a bunch of screens.

“Code?” she demanded, and when he didn’t answer, she shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I can work around it.”

She returned to where I was waiting for her at the door.

Walden called out to us, terror in every syllable. Not a shred of the calm he’d had when we’d shoved him into the chair remained. “You leave me here, and I’m dead.”

“The FBI will be here in just a few minutes, Shawn. Sit tight.”

I was heading toward the elevator already, but Rory halted me. When I turned, she was going back into the room we’d rented. I desperately needed to get back to Cherry Bay. To my family. God, what had Demi led to our door? What had Rory and I done poking at the sleeping bear?

I waited for a beat, and then she came out of the room pulling the silver suitcase she’d gotten from the pawnshop. She had her phone on her chin, waiting for someone to pick up. I took the handle from her as we got into the elevator.

“Do you actually know someone at the FBI?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yes, but I may have oversold my relationship to Walden. Sheila was Dad’s first girlfriend after the divorce. They haven’t been together in years, but they’re still friends. I haven’t spoken to her myself in years. I guess I was always afraid if I reached out to her for anything, she’d tell Dad.”

“You don’t think she’ll tell him now?”

Rory took a deep breath. “She probably will, but we don’t have a better option.”

“What about Detective Bradshaw or Muloney?” I asked.

“No way they’d have the resources for this.” A muffled voice registered on her phone, and Rory said, “My name is Rory Bishop. I’m a private investigator in D.C. I need to speak with FBI Agent Sheila Gates urgently. I have a witness with critical information about the Lovato Cartel who needs to be protected.”

She was put on hold, and we made our way out of the hotel to my car, which we’d parked in the Willard’s lot. I’d just backed out of the spot when the other phone in her lap buzzed. Walden’s phone. She looked at the screen and hit the button.

“You were warned to stay out of this,” a deep, accented voice said on the other end.

Rory didn’t say anything. Instead, it was Walden’s voice that came across the line, panicked. Desperate. “No. Please. I’ve done everything you’ve asked.”

Rory turned wide eyes to me, and I braked sharply.

A muffled sound, like a soda can being popped open beneath a pillow whooshed over the call, and Rory gasped.

“That’s one,” the dark voice returned. “I wonder who will be number two?”

The call dropped.

“What the hell just happened?” I asked as Rory swiped through screens on her phone, pulling up the cameras she put in Walden’s room with shaking hands. When she got them up, the screen was black.

She looked at me with wide eyes and shouted. “Go, Gage. Go! We need to get to Cherry Bay.”

She didn’t have to ask me twice. I put my foot on the gas pedal and sped out of the garage with tires squealing. I couldn’t afford to get pulled over, but I also couldn’t afford to slow down. I needed to get to my family before anything happened to them.

Rory put her phone on the console, elevator music filled the air as she whipped out her laptop and started typing furiously. When I glanced over, I noticed her hands were still shaking. Calm and collected Rory was gone.

“What just happened, Rory?”

“They killed him.”

“What? How do you know? The screen was black, maybe?—”

“That was suppressor fire, Gage.”