“What do you mean ‘what’?! What do you think?!”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
“What do you mean ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions’?!” I practically yell.
“Thea, stop quoting me with the preface ‘What do you mean.’ I mean what I said. Let’s not panic, we don’t even know what it means.”
His voice is calm and his face is unreadable, but that’s his tell. He only guards his emotions from me when it’s bad.
“I know exactly what it means.” I wrap my arms around my chest, trying to keep myself together.
“It can’t be as bad as it seems,” he says, but it sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself, to speak it into existence.
He turns his face away from me and back to the papers, but it’s too late: I saw it. It’s just a quick, barely there glimpse, but I saw it.
He’s scared.
He’s trying to be strong for me, to reassure me that my world isn’t crashing down around me. He’s trying to do what he does best and take care of everything, but it’s too late; we both know we’re screwed.
We stare at the file: a file full of information on Tony. My Tony: The man I’ve spent a year running away from. The man who locked me in a basement for three days. The man who’s trying to kill me. Tony.
There are pictures of him, although they look older. Polaroids of him with a bunch of people, dated on the backs to almost twenty years ago. There are other men in the file as well, but none featured as much as Tony, although he’s referred to by his real name, Anthony DeRosso, in Luke’s notes about him. Does Luke know who I am? Is he looking into me? What could he possibly want with information on Tony?
“What are you guys doing here?” Annalisa’s voice cuts through my thoughts, causing me to jump.
She peers into the room from the doorway, a frown on her red lips. We were both so absorbed in our thoughts and worries that we didn’t hear Annalisa sneak up on us.
Aiden turns to face her as well, casually sidestepping so his large body blocks the file sitting on the desk, blocks the connection she has to Tony, the man making my life hell.
“I—uh—forgot my house key here last night. This is the last room I searched so I figured it would be here,” I answer, praying that it sounds as smooth and believable aloud as it did in my head.
“Oh.” She tilts her head, my words turning over in her mind.
“Hey, what happened at the convenience store?” Aiden asks before she can decide that I’m lying.
He walks toward her, and I casually lean on the desk and slide over so that my back is covering most of it.
Aiden’s distraction works, and her eyes light up as she explains what happened.
“When we got there the guy said that they do have cameras, but if we wanted to look at them we’d have to get a warrant! A warrant! Can you believe that? Like, can you not just help a girl out? But obviously we didn’t go all that way for nothing, so I told him to . . .”
The sound of Annalisa’s voice trails off as Aiden very casually leads her into the main part of the apartment as she tells her story, away from me and the cursed file.
As soon as she’s far enough away, I quickly shove the file into my bag.
I find my keys and hastily detach my house key from my car keys, throwing my car keys back in my bag and making sure it’s completely closed so the file isn’t visible. I try to school my expression to look somewhat normal and walk out of the room.
“Found it.” I hold up the key in what I hope is a nonchalant manner, but Annalisa barely glances at me, still deep in her story.
“So, after we bought a bunch of garbage that he said wasn’t selling, tried to bribe him, and got Char to fake cry in an actually very convincing performance, he finally let us check the cameras.”
I throw my key on the coffee table and sit down beside her on the couch, catching Aiden’s eye and giving him a small nod to let him know I took care of the file.
“Luke was there, and he was very drunk. It was actually really sad and kind of embarrassing. I recorded it on my phone.”
She shows us the video, and she’s right. It is kind of sad. He can barely stand straight and stumbles around. He throws some money on the counter, shoves the receipt and change into his pocket with most of the change dropping on the floor, and somehow makes it outside without tripping. The camera view switches to outside the store, where Luke promptly leans over and throws up. He then stumbles out of view of the camera and the video stops.
“The time stamp when he walks off camera is 5:25. So I thought this would be good proof, you know, the guy is too drunk to even stand, let alone kill a guy. But stupid Julian had to be practical and remind me that it could technically be argued that he still had time to get to Aiden’s house and it doesn’t prove where he was at the actual time, so we still have some work to do.”
Annalisa looked so hopeful for a second. I can only imagine what was going through her mind when she thought this was the proof she needed to clear Luke’s name.
“Did you send it to Luke’s lawyer anyway?” Aiden asks.
“Of course I did, but we’re still going to figure out where he went after that.”
I glance at my bag, an action that doesn’t go unnoticed by Aiden.
He gives me a look, one that says he knows what I’m up to, that he knows I took the file. Of course I’m taking it this time. No way am I leaving it here where someone else can stumble upon it. I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t need Annalisa poking around it and asking questions. Plus, I need answers, and there’s only one guy who can give them to me.