Aiden took a long breath.
“When Cayden was born, Megan and I hired an attorney to draw up wills for us. Neither of us had a lot to do with our families, and we wanted to make sure Cayden was taken care of if something happened to us, you know?”
I nodded.
“It was all very simple—if I died, she got everything of mine, and if she died, I got everything of hers. If we both died, Cayden was going to be raised by Megan’s aunt in Tampa, and everything would go into a fund for him until he was eighteen.”
“We had some life insurance,” Aiden continued in a quiet voice. “That was just enough to bury them both. What I didn’t know was that Megan’s aunt had passed away about two months before…before everything else. She left Megan everything, and Megan hadn’t changed the will. I’m not sure Megan even knew her aunt was gone. I ended up with it all—an estate worth about two million.”
“Wow.” It was the only word I could manage.
“I honestly didn’t want it, but Megan didn’t have any other family that I knew of, and there wasn’t anyone coming out of the woodwork and demanding a cut. After about a year, my lawyer called and told me it was all mine. I used most of the money to buy this place and the jeep. I invested the rest.”
Everything fell into place, and it all made sense.
“Aiden, I’m so sorry.”
“What are you sorry about?”
“I never gave you a chance to explain,” I said. “I just made all kinds of assumptions about you and what was going on.”
The corner of his mouth turned up, and his eyes twinkled at me.
“You thought I was a drug dealer, didn’t you?”
I blushed, and Aiden shook his head.
“I ought to be pissed off about that,” he said. “Before they got to know me, a lot of the cops around here thought I had to be a bad guy because of the tats. They thought I had to be a lunkhead because I did all the bodybuilding shit. They tried to sweep the murders under the rug, figuring I wouldn’t pursue it out of fear that they’d find out I was also mixed up in that shit.”
He gritted his teeth.
“If they had moved sooner, they might have gotten to Marc and Hayden before they left the state. They didn’t listen to me for the longest time, even when I had evidence that they were in Ohio. I hired my own private investigator up there to find them. He finally made progress about a month ago.”
“That’s who you were talking to in the bar the night I met you.” I remembered the man in the blazer who had been sitting across from Aiden.
“It was,” he confirmed. “He had turned over all the surveillance information to the police down here, and they said it wasn’t enough to go on.”
“Why were you angry with him?”
“Because he said he couldn’t get the cops to do anything with it.” Aiden sighed. “We got together the next day for a conference call with them, and it was basically worked out. What I didn’t know was that Marc and Hayden were on to me. They knew I had found them, and they headed back down here.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Best guess, they thought the guy who hired them to kill Jackson would protect them. He won’t, though.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he’s the one who gave me their names,” Aiden said. “I may not be involved in crime, but that doesn’t mean I’m ignorant as to who is. Mo and Lo have their contacts –a lot of them. You can’t be in the security business without knowing who the lowlifes in the area are. They knew exactly what was going on after making a few phone calls.”
“I guess that makes sense.” It did, too. In fact, everything was falling into place. “Is there anything else I need to know?”
“Only that they ran,” Aiden said. “The police are searching for them. The security cameras at the strip mall caught the car and license plate, but it was a stolen vehicle. They might still be in it, though. It hasn’t turned up anywhere.”
“What happens if the police find them?”
“They’ve got arrest warrants outstanding,” Aiden said. “Aside from car theft, Chris Marc is wanted for robbery up in Orlando as well as suspicion of homicide on another count as well. If they’re caught, they’re going to go to prison. I hope they get the fucking chair.”
Aiden looked exhausted, and I decided he needed a break from all of this. He went to take a shower while I cleaned up in the kitchen and sorted through all the new information in my head