Chapter 34
“Did you reach him?”
Blake shook his head and sipped his coffee. “He’s still not answering the damn phone, Noah.”
Noah sighed and sat down at the table in the War Room. “Do you think we should go to the house and check on him?”
Blake shook his head. “No way.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s fine. We don’t want her knowing anything about us. Besides, I think he’s just getting a little action and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“I could go. She’s met me. And how the hell do you know he’s getting action?”
He put down his coffee. “It seems pretty obvious to me. He’s not answering his phone.”
Noah shook his head. “Blake, that could be anything. The battery could be dead, the phone broken … you don’t know.”
“Oh, I know.”
“I should go out there.”
“No, just leave the poor bastard alone. If he’s getting some, the last thing he wants is for your ugly mug to be showing up at the front door.”
They sat in silence for a few moments as Blake pondered the results of the lineage computer program they’d run on Holly’s neighbors.
His phone rang, interrupting his thoughts.
“It’s the devil himself,” he murmured as he picked up the phone. “What up, Justice?”
“Hey. Sorry I missed your calls yesterday.”
“No sweat. Everything okay?”
“Yeah.”
Blake noted the low tone in his voice and he realized Holly must be close. “Are you in a safe place to talk?”
“Yeah, but let’s make it quick. What do you have for me?”
“Two of her neighbors came back inconclusive, Justice.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that we can’t be certain if they’re Colonist offspring. The information out there on their ancestry isn’t complete.”
Justice sighed. “So now what?”
“Now, we need to see if there’s a way to tie the murder to one of them.”
“And how do we do that?” Justice asked.
“I think I’ll take Jovan and Rayner and go pay our unknowns a little visit.”
“No. I’ll do it.”
Blake sighed. “Justice, let us do that.”
“No. As Noah so eloquently put it, this is my circus. I’ll take it from here and let you know what we find, okay?”
Noah tapped him on the shoulder and Blake waved him off.
“Blake, look at this report that just came over,” Noah whispered as he shoved a piece of paper in Blake’s line of sight.
“Hang on a second, Justice.”
He quickly read the report, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. “Holy shit.”
“Exactly,” Noah murmured.
“Justice, there’s been another murder in Holly’s building. A husband killed his wife, but he told the cops that someone else did it and he’s being framed. He’s in jail as we speak.”
“It makes Holly’s story sound a little more realistic, doesn’t it?” Justice asked after a beat of silence.
“Oh, yeah.” Any doubt he’d had about Holly’s tale disappeared.
“What are their apartment numbers?”
Blake gave them to him.
“Listen, I’ve got to go.”
“Justice, I know you’re banging Holly. Just be careful with all that, okay?”
“How can you possibly think that?”
Blake laughed and sat back in his chair. “There’s only one thing that can get a SR44 male all wrapped up for a day so that he doesn’t answer his phone, and that’s a female. They’re pretty, soft, and sex is the best thing on God’s green Earth. I know that, Justice. Just don’t go making any babies or catching any diseases, okay?”
“I’ve got to go,” he repeated and hung up.
Blake stood and stretched his arms above his head, then tossed his phone on the table.
“Don’t break the damn thing,” Noah muttered.
Ignoring him, Blake continued. “Justice is going to look into the crap at Holly’s apartment.”
“We should be doing that.”
“Well, you made it pretty much clear to him that you didn’t want anything to do with it with your circus lecture.”
Noah grimaced. “That was a good one at the time.”
“Yeah, not so much now. But I think we need to let him do this. We can’t be bumping into each other down there and bringing any attention to ourselves.”
Noah stared at the white screen for a moment, then nodded. “Agreed. For now, just have him keep us posted.”
“Yup.”