Eight
Deacon found Solene groggy but awake as he entered the hotel room. “One good thing at least.”
“Oh…my head.” She stumbled from the bed and slammed the bathroom door behind her.
“Brenda?” Noel asked. He sat at the desk looking at his laptop.
“She confirmed most of what we knew. But I’m still getting the sense the tie-in with Burleigh and Mexico isn’t what we think.” He repeated word for word their conversation. “We know it’s Burleigh behind all this. And maybe someone else.” He sighed. “Maybe Brenda.”
Noel frowned.
“She was off. I can’t tell you why I think that, I just do.”
Noel shrugged. “We’ll look into it when we have time. Right now, we need to focus on Burleigh. Hammer did some more digging. He confirmed what she told us about Burleigh. He’s no longer in India.”
“With our luck, he’s renting the room right next door.” Deacon stared at the closed bathroom door. “I bet he’d love to get his hands on Solene.”
“The thought of that monster getting his hands on any woman makes me ill.”
“You ratted him out. I did too. According to Brenda, Hammer reported him as well. That’s the connection.”
Noel nodded. “But the baby? Where does he fit in? All this talk of Burleigh’s ‘angels,’ then we have the word Angel on Little Dee’s locket. Maybe we were wrong thinking the baby had a connection to the missing contractor.”
“Could the dead woman who dropped him off have been one of Burleigh’s angels? Maybe he assaulted her, resulting in the baby. Maybe she knew you’d help because you were so vocal about hating him.” Which still meant the woman who’d given birth to Little Dee was connected to the Business somehow. How else to know Noel didn’t like Burleigh?
“But why mention Mexico? He had no overt ties to Sinaloa. No. I don’t think the baby has anything to do with Burleigh.”
“Yes. Maybe.” Deacon sighed. “I don’t know. We’re a little bit closer, but not by much.”
Noel shrugged. “We know to look out for Romero Burleigh, so there’s that.”
“We need to find him and eliminate the threat.”
“It looks like he’ll come to us. There have already been two attempts to take Solene. He wants her. To get at you or just because Solene is too tempting an addition to his fan club,” Noel said wryly. “The good news is Big Joe will be able to get me DNA on Burleigh. We’ll be able to rule him out of any connection to Little Dee in days. I’m going to head back and start processing what we know with Hammer and Addy.”
“Aw, Noel. You’re calling him Little Dee.” Deacon smiled.
“Better that than Noel Jr. I knowIdidn’t get a stranger pregnant.”
“Hey man, I told you I never got anyone pregnant either.”
“Shocker.”
“Asshole.” Deacon saw Noel’s small smile. He liked this Noel better than Ice.
Would Solene change him the way Addy was changing Noel? Should he care? Or was he seeing things with her that he wanted to see, things that weren’t really there?
“I’m going to stay here tonight with Solene. We’ll be back tomorrow.” Deacon sighed. “She’s going to have to go back to her usual routine, isn’t she?”
Noel nodded. “It makes no sense to keep her away now. Hammer looked into the issue with her security and came up with nothing. No fault in the system, no tap we could find.”
“Great.”
“So you’ll be even more vigilant. At least now we know to look out for Burleigh. And having Solene in the open will get him to move sooner than later. She’ll go for it. She wants this to be over so things can get back to normal. Something we all want.”
Well, not all. Deacon felt a pang at the notion of leaving Solene and found all kinds of reasons to stick around. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he could. If he wanted to. No, ifshewanted him to.
“You’re probably itching to get back into action,” said Noel
