“Honestly, that’s probably why he kept Hannah around for so long,” Priest says softly. He glances at me, and there’s an apology in his eyes for phrasing it that way.
But I know what he means.
“Right. He didn’t want to raise his own son, so he kept her around to do it for him. And then as soon as she was gone, he shipped the kid off so someone else could pick up where she left off.” I shake my head. “If that fucker wasn’t already dead, I’d want to kill him again.”
“We can’t change what Julian did before,” Gage says. “But we can act now. We found out where the school is, and we’ll go get Cody and get him out of there.”
I nod, grateful for what they’ve done to move this along.
We keep eating, making plans to leave and head up to where Cody is, and as we’re finishing up, there’s a knock on the door.
Instinctively, we all tense a little.
We’re not expecting anyone, and after last night, it’s hard to say if an unexpected visitor is a good thing or not.
Ash gets up, putting on his usual carefree grin, although I can tell it’s an act.
“If it’s someone selling something, I’m going to be real pissed,” he jokes, but there’s an undercurrent of a true threat in his voice.
“Unless it’s Girl Scouts or something,” Knox calls after him as Ash goes to get the door. “Then get me some cookies.”
I snort at that, and it does lighten the tension a little.
At least, until Ash comes back into the kitchen a moment later with Mitch Carter in tow. The look on the handsome King’s face isn’t amused anymore, and there’s a hard set to his jaw.
“Good morning,” Agent Carter says, glancing around at all of us. His broad shoulders are stuffed into a sharp, professional looking suit, and he has the same cool demeanor as always. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your breakfast. I just need a little of your time, if that’s alright.”
“Of course,” Gage says. He leans back in his chair, looking every inch like the king he is, relaxed with nothing to hide. “What can we do for you?”
Carter looks over at me. “I did some digging on that tip you gave me the other day, and it turns out that Julian Maduro’s offshore accounts were all emptied out.”
I shrug, tipping my head to one side. “That’s strange. I wonder what would have made him do something like that.”
“So you don’t know anything about it?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I see.” Carter eyes me. “What’s also strange is that Julian’s body was found in a warehouse last night.”
I keep my face straight when he says that. “Well, the upper crust of Detroit found out that Julian was fucking his sister last night. So maybe he just didn’t want to live with that kind of shame hanging over him.”
Carter’s eyebrows rise into his hairline. “You think he killed himself?”
I shrug again. “I can’t say. All I know is the kind of person Julian was probably wouldn’t be able to handle that kind of shame. It’s just a guess.”
“I see.” His eyes linger on me, and I can feel Knox bristling from across the table. “But I don’t imagine you feel sorry for him.”
“No,” I answer that part honestly. “He wasn’t a good person. Bad people usually get what’s coming to them one way or another.”
Maybe it’s a little too much to give away, but I stand by it, and Carter doesn’t probe too much deeper there.
He looks at the guys instead. “You didn’t do business with Julian did you?”
Gage shakes his head. “Not really. There were some talks of us combining in a few different ways, but nothing really panned out. He’s not the kind of person we like to associate with.”
“Really?” Carter asks. “He’s not good enough for you?”
“No,” Gage says, and again, it’s an honest answer. “We don’t like to do business the way he does it. Did it. He treated his employees like shit, and that’s not a good way to make people want to stick around.”
“Fair enough,” Carter says. “Do you know anything about the warehouse block down by the docks?”
“We know it exists,” Priest says. “Not much else. We don’t deal in shipping or anything.”
“That’s where Julian’s body was found. In a warehouse that was pretty much burned down to the foundations. We had to ID his body with what little was left. I was just wondering if you had any ties to it.”
Gage shakes his head again. “Not us. Maybe people we associate with, but we’ve never personally used it for anything.”
Nothing other than being a convenient place to kill Julian, but that wasn’t on us.
Carter watches us all very carefully, and I can tell he’s asking specific questions on purpose. He knows we had something to do with this, but he can’t prove it. Without evidence, all he can go off are his hunches.
We’re good at this by now, answering his questions with responses that give nothing away, and it’s clear he knows he’s not going to get anything out of us.
“Alright,” he says with a little sigh. “I’ll let you get back to your day then. I’m sure you’re all busy people.” There’s something loaded about the way he says that, but none of us react to it.
Ash gets up, like he’s going to show Carter to the door, but then Carter turns back and looks at us again.
“One more thing,” he says. “There was also a carjacking reported last night. A woman and three men stole a car from a man at gunpoint. They were masked, but the man reported that he thinks the woman had light colored hair, either white-blonde or silver. You don’t know anything about that, do you?”
I shake my head. “No. I hope that guy’s alright, though.”
“He’s fine. Just shaken up, from what I hear,” Carter replies. He purses his lips, letting the silence settle for a long moment like he often does. Then he nods. “Well, thank you for your time. I’ll leave you to get back to your day.”
He heads for the door, and once again, Ash follows to escort him out. I wait until the front door closes behind him and Ash comes back to breathe out and relax fully.
“Just gonna say it again,” Knox comments, staring with narrowed eyes at the spot where we last saw Carter. “I really don’t fucking like that guy.”
I roll my eyes. “We know, Knox.”
He just doesn’t like him because he doesn’t want any other man paying attention to me. Which I kind of like.
But I don’t dislike Agent Carter. There’s something about him that almost makes me feel like he understands me more than he’s letting on.
I remember what he said when I met with him to give him the intel about Julian’s accounts. About how it might surprise me what he would understand.
Part of me thinks maybe he’s glad that Julian is dead and his business has been disrupted. Maybe part of being in a position like he is as an FBI agent means picking the lesser of two evils sometimes. And compared to Julian and all the shit he was up to, the Kings and I are definitely the lesser evil.
“We need to be careful where he’s concerned,” Gage is saying, drawing my attention back to him. “He’s poking around a lot, and I definitely get the feeling he knows more than he’s letting on.”
Priest nods. “He doesn’t seem like an immediate threat, but we should be watchful.”