NITRO: 2 items. 1: A name/word—Andromeda. Constellation and galaxy have been ruled out unless you see anything suspicious.
2: Sending you footage taken earlier relating to the 2 subjects I asked you to investigate. Might be useful.
MERCURY: On it. Anything I should know?
NITRO: Think all this is linked somehow. But can’t work it out.
MERCURY: Give me a couple of hours. Might have some intel on the ring too.
The screen went blank, both of them logging out at the same time. West stretched, turning to me. “Mercury’s on it,” he said, as if I hadn’t been sitting right next to him for the past five minutes. “I want to try hacking into Dad’s system again, see if I can find anything. Alstone Holdings isn’t showing anything out of the ordinary, and AMC was a complet
e waste of time tonight.”
“This is so fucking frustrating,” I muttered. “Did you manage to pull up the employment records for the docks staff?”
“Yeah, but there’s no one listed that fits the dead guy. Another dead end.”
“All we’re doing is getting one dead end after another.” I drummed my fingers on the table, needing to do something. Anything. “Is there anything else we can check?”
Not only did I want Winter to find out what had happened to her dad, for definite, I wanted to pin something on Christine, something concrete. It was clear all this shit tied together, somehow. Winter needed answers for her dad, and the rest of us needed to know what the fuck was going on. Were our families involved? What the fuck was happening at AMC, and at the docks?
“Cade. We’re on it.” My brother looked at me with so much conviction, so much trust. He shouldn’t. The familiar feeling of guilt rolled through me, thick and suffocating. I’d become a pro at pushing it down, but ever since Winter had come into my life, it had forced it to the surface.
Fuck.
Glad my brother couldn’t read my thoughts, I changed the subject, before the memories could drag me under. “Anyone want another coffee? Think it’s gonna be a late one.”
“I’ll help,” Cass offered, standing up and stretching with a yawn. I nodded my thanks, and he followed me out of the room.
When Cade and Cass had left the room, and Weston was absorbed in sorting through the cargo records from the docks, I got up and switched to Cassius’ seat, next to Zayde.
“Um…Z?” I ventured. He’d been more irritable than usual the last few days, ever since the ball, actually, other than earlier tonight, when he’d been engrossed in our mission to the docks. It wasn’t really my place to ask him, but I got the feeling that he didn’t really have female friends, and maybe I could be that to him. I was that to him, at least I thought so, but I wanted him to know that I was there for him.
“What is it?” He spoke without looking at me, scrolling through the photos from the docks on an iPad with one hand, the other flicking his knife blade open and closed, over and over again.
“Is everything okay? I mean. Argh.” I huffed out a frustrated breath, staring down at the table. “Tell me if I’m out of line. I just want you to know that if you ever want to talk to anyone, I’m available, or whatever.”
His head shot round to look at me, and surprise crossed his features for a moment before they reverted to his usual blank mask. “It’s all good. Nothing sleep and a few decent hits from a joint won’t cure.”
I stared at him, unconvinced, and he held my gaze, giving nothing away, before he flashed me a brief smile. “You’re good for Cade, y’know.”
“I’m glad you think so.” I returned his smile with a big grin, beyond happy that I had the approval of Caiden’s best mate. “It means a lot to know I’ve got your approval.”
“Don’t fuck it up,” he warned, softening his words with another quick smile, before he returned his attention to the iPad.
“I think I’ve got something.”
Weston’s tone, full of cautious hope, had us both spinning to face him.
“Tell us,” Zayde commanded.
He met Zayde’s eyes, then mine. “I’ve searched through all the cargo records for Alstone Holdings, going back for a whole year, and there’s nothing for Tuesday nights. The other days, apart from Sunday, when everything shuts down, we have records—if not weekly, at least monthly.”
Caiden and Cassius re-entered the room with mugs of coffee. “What did we miss?” Cass stared at Weston curiously, while Caiden beckoned to me and I got up, rounding the table to slide into his lap. He banded his arms around me, dragging his nose up my cheek to my ear, where he nipped at my earlobe, before he focused his attention on his brother.
Weston repeated the information he’d just told me and Zayde, then continued. “That in itself seems a bit dodgy, but get this. The user ID for the records on Mondays and Tuesdays is Christine.”
“What does that mean? She’s the one filling in the records?” I tried to get my head around what he was saying.