PAIGE
“So it’s all set, you’ve secured the location?” I’d been on the phone to Shay for the last hour, hashing out the last details of my plan. We’d finally secured a safe location to take Alexander.
“Yes Paige, I had the dummy corp set it up, changeover happens tomorrow and it will take the crew a week to fit it out for what you need. The warehouse went into foreclosure months ago, we will have the basement set up with holding cells just needed to finalize what to do with the rest of the building.” Shay informed me she'd been my financial advisor for the last year and a half. Having no connections with the rest of my family I felt it safe to involve her in this side of the plan.
“Appreciate that Shay, what has your research on the area shown?” I asked as I walked into my dingy hotel room. The faint scent of stale smoke, sweat and dampness hit me immediately and made my stomach roll. Even after being here for the last few weeks, it still wasn’t easy to overcome. “If we can turn it around and make a profit that would be great, I don’t plan to keep this building.”
Dumping my keys on the worn down dresser, I slowly lowered myself into the worn out armchair. Kicking off my shoes, I stretched my arms over my head, the tension of spending the day in a small confined space had my body aching. Today had been long and I needed some good news. Cian’s words had been weighing heavily on my mind. If the Ducanes were becoming suspicious, I’d need to move the time frame up, or look at switching our homebase.
“There are a lot of investors in the area Paige, my suggestion would be to turn them into condos when you’re done with whatever it is you're involved in.” The slight concern in her voice warmed my cold heart a little. At this point in our relationship it had gone way past professional, she had become family to me. “If it were me that's what I would do. There’s enough space to put 10 to 12 in the building if you want high end. I took the liberty of having a look at what other developments are going on around Claymore and it looks like the town is set to have a facelift of sorts.”
And this is why I paid her what I did. Shay was always thinking one step ahead, if there was an opportunity to grow my trust, she would thoroughly investigate and then proceed to advise me on what I needed to do.
“Okay make it happen, just send me through the paperwork so I can go over them and approve everything.” I gave her the go ahead, hanging up as I opened my laptop and started going through the mountains of surveillance photos I had. I studied these every night, looking for any anomalies. At this point I knew these pictures inside out. Starting tomorrow we’d have to take our surveillance into the skeezy clubs.
The first of which would be the fight club, word around town told us that there was some kind of event being held there, and if I knew Alexander Ducane, he wouldn’t miss the chance to attend in order to expand his contacts and dealings. It was common knowledge the Lions Den was the place to go if you wanted to rub shoulders with the skeevy underground elite. There was no doubt in my mind that the opportunistic bastard would pass this up—not for anything in the word.