Knowing the time was right, I asked gently, “Where did you meet Diego Mantoya?”
When she looked up to the left, I discreetly watched the rest of her body language as she replied. “I only just met him at a party. He’s a friend of a friend type of guy, so I don’t really know him at all.”
After a couple more questions about the party and the friend, she started to change her answers.
“We’d been hanging out, and when he said he needed to visit his grandma, I didn’t think anything of it.” Nodding encouragingly at her, I kept my body language relaxed. “I wasn’t even inside the house when he and his brother went in. I stayed outside and had a smoke.”
That was strange, seeing as how his brother wasn’t involved in things usually. “Cullan Watts was there?”
“No, Ashesh. At least, he introduced him as his brother.”
After getting identifying details for Ashesh, she confirmed she’d be able to work with our artist on getting a sketch together.
Looking at her lawyer for confirmation, he sneered, “My client intends to work with you fully to clear her name.”
“I appreciate that,” I murmured, looking down at the paper with fingerprints on it that Alex slid across the table to me. “The thing is, Cinder, we found fingerprints on some items of furniture in the house. We’ve cross-referenced them with the ones we took when you first came in, and they match. Can you tell us how they got there?”
What followed was hell on my brain. She twitched, she grasped at excuses, she backtracked, and then she broke.
“He pulled me inside and made me go through drawers and shit to find everything possible. The medicine cabinet kept closing, so he made me hold it while he emptied everything—and she had a lot of stuff in there. It was orange bottles, not stuff you get in a store, you know?”
“We know,” I assured her, leaning forward to show her I was genuine. “The problem is, Cinder, a lot of the medications in there are serious. If someone takes them, it could easily kill them, so we need to find out where they could be. The lady also has a heart problem, so if she hadn’t been taken into hospital after Diego knocked her out, she might have died without them.”
Chewing on her lower lip, she mumbled, “That’s bad shit. I don’t want anyone to die because of me.”
“So you understand why we need to track them down?”
Taking a deep breath, she flashed me a wide smile. “I do. I think I know where he has them.”
Holding his hand in the air, Alex asked, “You think, or you know?”
“Oh, I know. Diego didn’t tell me they could kill someone, and I’m not down with t
hat. I ran out of the house as soon as I could, but I should have called 911 for the old lady.”
And that’s how we ended up paying a ‘visit’ to one of the newly built houses, right across the road from where Jarrod Klein and his fiancée lived.
The proximity to him was just as well because we were grateful for the water in their faucets by the time we were done, thanks to the pepper spray bombs that went off ‘accidentally’ during it.
Being the kind people we were, we also helped out Diego, and his non-brother brother, Ashesh, who’d been separating the pills into baggies when we’d turned up.
That didn’t mean any of us came out of it without some sort of problem.
They’d grabbed modified canisters that continued spraying without someone holding the trigger on them and had thrown them around the small room when we went in thinking they were smoke bombs, and releasing pepper spray that burned your eyes, skin and lungs.
The thing was, Diego Mantoya was a skinny little kid whose real name was Jordy Watts. He just used the other name to scare people into thinking he was some big-time guy, and when he met with people, he introduced himself as one of Diego’s enforcers. It was Ashesh who ended up being the one we should’ve worried about.
At two-hundred and eighty pounds, he hit me like a linebacker before using my chest as a trampoline to launch off of as he tried to escape. Fortunately, I had quick hands, and even with no oxygen in my lungs and my eyes burning, I managed to grab onto him and hold on for life.
As it was, DB had needed to get his eyes flushed, and Garrett was going to have some wicked swollen eyes for a while after he’d reacted badly to it. My throat that like I’d rubbed it raw with acid, and my sinuses were so full, it felt like they were overflowing out my eyes. And that didn’t even take into account the bruises from the bull, Ashesh.
Once it was all done and they were transferred back to the department for questioning and a stay in the cells, I walked out, knowing I was going to go to the only person who could clear my mind of my day. I was struggling to see and was a total mess, but I didn’t even think about not going to her.
I didn’t have my Bexley back yet, but at least she was here, and was talking to me. Every moment I could take with her was something that soothed my soul. For seven years I’d had something eating away inside me, missing her and hating myself for what’d happened. Now that she was back, it’d changed to wanting and needing her.
She was the one person who’d ever made me feel whole. And I needed her back.
I just hoped she didn’t have that damn dog with her.