Page 109 of Merciless Obsession

I clicked the button to respond. “Take a message.”

“Alright, and when it comes to—” I started but was interrupted again by my secretary.

“Sir, it’s Sergeant Colon. Says it’s urgent.”

“Shit. I need to take this.” I pressed the button again. “Send him through.”

The phone on my desk beeped and lit up, letting me know there was a call waiting.

“Give me a minute,” I told Henry.

He nodded and stood to leave. “Close the door behind you!” I called out before picking up the phone.

“Why didn’t you call my cell?” I mentioned as soon as I answered.

“I did, but it kept going to voicemail.” My brows furrowed.

I went into my top desk drawer and pulled it out, forgetting I’d put it on DND so I could work in peace this morning before court later this afternoon.

“Did you find anything with the samples?”

“I did. There were three different traces found. One from Winston Porter.” I expected that. Sergeant Colon was a cop on my payroll. I kept him paid and he helped me with off the record things. He was looking into the semen samples found in Tiffany. “The second one came from Nelson Ortiz. He has a few assault charges and was recently released after serving four years for grand theft. He’s currently out on probation. And the final sample we couldn’t identify.”

“Couldn’t be identified?” I ran my hand down my mouth. If the last sample wasn’t in the system that meant he hadn’t been convicted of a crime.

Grabbing a sticky note, I wrote the second name down then tapped my pen on my desk. “Got it. Thanks. You’ll have the money in your account by the end of the day.” I hung up the phone and grabbed my cell phone to send a text to Emmet. It was time to look into this Nelson guy. He would be next on The Bloodline’s hitlist. Next, I pulled out the cloned phone. Ziora thought I would get rid of it because I revealed it to her, but that wasn’t happening. She was currently at home. Outside of kickboxing and the grocery store, she hadn’t left. I planned on peeping in on her soon. It had been a while since we played. Not to mention, the Mayor’s Ball was this weekend and little did she know she would be in attendance on my arm.

____

“The plan is to set up a fake order for a girl as if we’re Winston and stake out the area until someone shows up. Hopefully they’ll lead us somewhere useful,” Nazai announced.

I was exhausted. After spending all day at the office then in court, I came right to the farmhouse. I was running on fumes at this point.

“Do we believe they’ll fall for it?” River asked.

“They have no reason not to. No one but us knows Winston was killed. We have his car and phone. From his previous texts we’ll be able to message as if we’re him.”

“We checked the storage unit Winston had and it was odd. There was a bunch of old junk inside but it was organized. It was kind of set up like an apartment honestly, like someone wasstaying there temporarily. It had a mini fridge, futon, and some perishable items,” Lucas said.

“Did you get anything from the workers?”

“No.”

“I looked into it,” Emmet interrupted. “Winston paid it up for a year with a prepaid credit card so that’s a dead end.”

“Do we believe the girls could be kept there?” Nazai asked.

“It’s possible. There were a few random articles of clothing too,” River said.

“I checked the files Ziora sent over on Winston. He purchased plane tickets frequently.”

“Do we know where?”

I pulled my phone out and went to Ziora’s contact. It took a few minutes for her to answer, and when she did she seemed annoyed, as if I was interrupting her.

“Bumblebee, when you looked into Winston, did you happen to check where all the plane tickets he bought were for?”

“Plane tickets?” she mumbled. Tapping sounded in the background.