it was that late. I hope I’m not keeping you from anything.” My jaw tightens when I realize I’m once again judging her as I swore only minutes ago not to do.
She thankfully misses the snarky pitch of my tone. “Watching re-runs of Sex and the City or unearthing the secrets of an enigma, I’ll take what’s behind curtain B, please, Roger.”
I watch her in shocked awe when she laughs so hard, she snorts. She’s embroiled in a huge mess, but she can still find the time to laugh. I could learn a thing or two from her. I’ve been so moody lately, I’m one grumpy gripe away from being mistaken for Alex.
When Isabelle catches my admired glance, she tugs up the sleeves of her shirt like she’s suddenly overwhelmed with heat. “What?”
I could lie to her—again—but it’s time to try a new approach. “You have a beautiful laugh, Izzy.”
Heat treks across her cheeks as she whispers her thanks. Once the blemish on her face matches mine, she gathers a bunch of files from one of the boxes Grayson slipped between the less conspicuous ones and hands half of them to me.
“Holy fuck. I think I found a connection.” I swallow my loud voice when my glance across the table has me stumbling onto a sleeping Isabelle. She was doing the funky head-bob thing everyone does when they commence falling asleep the past thirty minutes, but now her head has fully come to rest on the file she was highlighting.
While yanking my cell phone out of the pocket of my trousers, I make my way to Isabelle’s side of the table. My ass is dead from sitting for almost over sixteen hours straight, and my legs have me walking like a robot since my knees refuse to bend, but I make it to her side of the table relatively unscathed.
I’ve just draped my jacket over her shoulders when Grayson answers my call. It’s a little slow for him, but I give him some leeway considering it’s barely five in the morning, and he’s about to go undercover. He needs as much sleep as he can get. It’s a rarity when you’re undercover.
“Isaac was photographed entering an underground fighting circuit organized by Col Petretti,” I confess, eager to get our conversation underway so he can go back to sleep. “In Col’s circuit, all the fighters had owners… all except Isaac. Tobias cited in his files many times that Col refused for anyone to participate if they didn’t have an owner. What if he allowed an exception that day because Isaac was his fighter?”
Grayson either yawns or makes an unsure murmur. “If that were the case, why weren’t they photographed together more than once? Col is worse than Kirill. He’s a gloater.”
“True.” Even though I only speak one word, nothing but annoyance is heard in my tone. “But I still think I’m onto something. In the group photo, CJ Petretti, Col’s eldest son, is in the back righthand corner of the image.”
“Seriously?”
“Dead fucking serious.”
I hear the ruffling of bedsheets before the tapping of feet stomping on wooden floorboards bellows down the line. I’ve never been to the underground hub Grayson runs in the basement of his family’s B&B, but I’ve often wondered what it looks like. He has an entire setup down there, has since he stumbled onto Katie’s file buried in a pile so deep, no one would have touched her case in years, if ever.
I twist away from Isabelle when Grayson asks, “Which guy?”
“See the kid in the diaper?”
“Crombie?” Grayson growls out, unimpressed at the snark in my tone.
“Yep. Now look two places up.”
I picture Grayson’s fists balling when the cracking of knuckles sounds down the line. “The kid would be four or five. There’s no way facial recognition would have thrown back a match for that.”
“Who said I used facial recognition?” When he growls, I talk faster. “Tobias was undercover in the Petretti crew two decades ago. He had many photos of their children.” I place my phone on speaker before activating the camera app. After taking a photograph of a polaroid I found an hour ago, I send it via a secure email to Grayson.
I don’t need to tell him to check his email. I hear the familiar ting before he curses. “The resemblance is uncanny. Still don’t know why the fuck you’re waking me up before the sparrows, though.”
“It’s a part of the web. Isaac, Henry, and Col. We need to add Col into the equation. That’s