Nick quickly scarfs down a couple of slices and says he’s getting a ride home with Cody. He glances at me once more as he leaves the warehouse. There’s something about the look he gives me that should have made me realize something was off.
It should have, but it didn’t.
I leave Jonathan to his research and head off to find Alina.
I really hope I don’t have to search too long.
Chapter 14—Devastating News
The glow from my laptop bathes my hands as I type quickly. I feel like I’m on the verge of figuring something out, but there’s still something missing—something that shouldn’t have escaped me. I click through a few more documents and then zoom in on one of them.
It’s a little past four in the morning, and Alina is sleeping in the other room. My mind is too cranked up for sleep, so I waited until she dozed off to get back to work. I’ve spent two days digging into anything and everything that is Beni Segreti, and I don’t care for what I’ve found.
There is no doubt in my mind that he’s tied to Seattle. I just can’t figure out exactly how. I’ve got pictures of him with Justin Taylor going back five years, long before Beni was supposed to be in this country at
all, but nothing of him with Landon Stark, Joseph Franks, or the southern gangs.
I have to be missing something.
Beni’s too smart for an obvious liaison with another outfit. Joshua Taylor has to be the go-between, but he’s an elusive one. Other than the two pictures Jonathan has of Joshua, there have been no signs of him anywhere in Chicago since he first arrived.
Someone has to be hiding him.
I go back to the shot Jonathan found of Joshua and Beni. The place where they met isn’t in the south, but right off the Magnificent Mile. He could be staying somewhere close by. I make a mental note to have Jonathan check out all the security cameras in the area to see if we can spot him.
I hear a little creak behind me and turn to see Alina in the hallway. She walks up to me, and I quickly close the laptop.
“Everything all right?” she asks.
“Just some work I need to catch up on,” I respond.
“Have you slept at all?” She reaches out and runs her hand over my head. “You look tired.”
“Not really, but I’m all right. Too much going on in my head to sleep.”
I open my arms, and Alina straddles my lap. She kisses me softly as she runs her fingers over the back of my neck. I tilt my head back toward the pressure.
“Every time you do that, I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a week.”
“I know.” Alina chuckles softly.
“Doing it on purpose, aren’t you?”
“Acupressure. It helps you relax.”
I think about all the times she has pressed her fingertips against my skin. It did usually calm me down; I can’t deny that. I hadn’t realized she was doing it intentionally.
“Manipulating me, are you?” I reach down and cup her ass with my hands.
“It’s like the lavender,” she explains, “just something to help you get what you want anyway. If I were going to try to manipulate you, I’d grab your cock.”
“That works, too.”
She kisses me again but doesn’t deepen it. Instead, she leans back and looks at me for a long moment while her hand continues to massage my neck.
“Where did you learn all that stuff?”
“The acupressure I learned from a friend who took classes in it,” she tells me. “The aromatherapy I got out of Cosmo.”