“Can you take me back to Jude?” I ask.
“Right away,” he says.
“Coming,” I say into the phone and then end the call.
45
Jude
I’ve just gotten off the phone with Craig. Twenty minutes after Thad was murdered in a restaurant men’s room during lunch, the very same restaurant Ally used to be the assistant manager at, Jonah Steele also suffered a gunshot wound. This one: in the shoulder delivered through the living room window of his residence. He was able to dial 9-1-1 and has been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.
I tell Craig that Wade Daystrom is their primary suspect for both and could be heading to take out more of that family. Jonah has three more brothers and two sisters, plus both parents and a large extended family of cousins, uncles, grandparents. Most of them are connected with the criminal underworld. Most of them, other than Jonah Steele himself.
Yeah. And that’s something I’ve been chewing on since last night. I need to tell Ally. And there’s more, too.
Bottom line though, Thad is already dead and they don’t know if Jonah is going to pull through or not.
Craig lets me go and tells me he’ll keep me posted and wants me to send him the file from Ally’s phone, which I’m about to listen to as I’ve got everything going to her phone backing up to the cloud.
While I listen to that call, I do a quick dig on Daystrom on my laptop and the guy doesn’t look like a killer. He looks like a Clark Kent type. Decent shape, thirty-one years old, five foot eight, dark hair and glasses. He’s got a genius-level IQ. And no criminal record.
I get a notification on my phone that someone’s pulled up out back, so I engage the camera view and see it’s the cab. Hitting the command to open the garage door, I head toward the door from the desk in the corner where I’ve been working. I greet her as she climbs the three steps to me. Ash is behind her.
She falls into my arms with panic in her eyes.
“You need anything, anything, please call on me,” Ash offers.
“Thanks, bro. Ally pay you?”
He waves his hand as if I’m ridiculous.
“Anything, Ally,” Ash says.
“Thanks, Ash. See you later.”
“Please call me and tell me you’re okay, Ally.”
“I will.” She looks at me.
“Ash?” I call out.
He turns back around.
“Can you pick the cat up and bring him back sometime between three and five if you’re around?”
“I can certainly do that, Jude,” he says with a tight smile.
“If something changes, I’ll call you. Thanks buddy.”
“My pleasure.”
He leaves and I hit the switch on the wall to shut the garage door.
Ally looks at me. “I blurted a bunch of my stuff to him on the way here. I just had to. I can’t believe Thad is dead. I don’t know what possessed Wade…” She shakes her head. “ I just can’t believe this.”
“C’mon.” I walk her up to the next floor and get her a bottle of water from the fridge.
She immediately downs half of it and then sits on the couch.
“Thad Steele is dead. He’s dead. He’s gone.”
“Ally,” I say and squat in front of her.
She looks at me questioningly.
I sigh.
“Jonah Steele got shot.”
Her eyes widen. “Fuck, Wade.”
“Last I heard, he was on the way to the hospital with a gunshot wound to the shoulder.”
“Is he gonna live?”
“Don’t know. But that’s not all.”
“What?”
I sit down beside her and take her hands into mine.
“I had a conversation with the lead investigator, Craig, in Ohio last night and all evidence suggests that Jonah Steele doesn’t condone his brother’s criminal behaviors. Jonah approached someone at the Columbus police department, asking for help finding you right after you went missing. Seems like his shit is pretty tangled up with that family, that Jonah wasn’t caught up in the criminal shit. Was trying to live outside the family business. And, in fact, his siblings apparently were tired of some of Thad’s shit – which was extreme – so they recruited Jonah to help them make sure that Thad got pinched for a murder he’d committed. They wanted him put away for a while to get him out of their hair.”
She stares at me.
“There was evidence planted and the cops were going to conveniently catch Thad at the airport with a gun and a whack of money connected to a specific robbery.”
Ally’s eyes bulge.
“Everyone in the Steele family was on board with that. Left it to Jonah to take care, of because Thad wouldn’t have suspected him. But someone else happened upon that bag that day.”
She gasps.
“And that someone vanished, never to be seen again.”
“Oh my God.”
“Jonah was looking for you. Your mother ever tell you he showed up there and asked her about you?”
“No. I’m not sure if he did.”
“He did. I talked to her and she confirmed it. He was also working with the team that’s been working to take Thad down, in part because of the bullshit the family was fed up with but more so, because Thad was seen at his place the day before you disappeared, and Cruickshank was also seen there that morning. Somehow, you leaving in that car was not picked up by the cameras. A glitch, possibly, but Jonah’s car was filmed on Thad’s street, you in it, and later found abandoned at a shopping mall without the money or the gun, but footage of Cruickshank there at the same time had Jonah believing he caught up with you.”