“There are other things that aren’t always this side of legal, Miller. Besides, didn’t you notice how scared Rochford was?”
“Yeah, of course. But youdiddraw a bunch of mobsters up to her table while we were there.”
That was true enough. “Well, whatever Rochford knows, she ain’t gonna sing; that much is clear, so—”
“—so we need to track down the other people who knew Annie,” Miller finished for me.
I badly wanted to contact the remaining two of the so-called Four Flames. But Emma Dempsey was a big star, as beyond our reach as those twinkling lights in the night sky. Harper Connelly hadn’t returned any of my messages—or Miller’s, more to the point.
But wedidneed to find out what mess Anaïs Beaumont had gotten herself into. Because what I kept coming back to was the fact that Edgar Beaumont had gone to his friend in the Mob when his daughter had disappeared, instead of to the police.
Beaumont had ended up withme, a low-level soldier whose current specialty was picking up envelopes stuffed full of cash and kicking drunks out of bars. A man like Miller’s father could just as easily have hired a PI, with access to records and systems that I didn’t have—not without a little creative hacking or some greased palms, anyways. And a PI would have been just as discreet.
No. In my mind, there was only one reason Beaumont would have called in a favor withmyBoss in a situation like this.
He, too, must have believed his daughter had been involved in something illegal.
CHAPTER30
MILLER
“So where dowe go from here?” I demanded, making Jack blink as he tuned back in.
“Have Dempsey or Connelly returned your calls or texts?” he asked, and I saw where his mind had been.
My burner phone was lying right there next to my plate, but I had it switched off. “Nope. Harper’d probably be easier to contact. Emma’s in Toronto, in the middle of shooting. She might take my call, though.”
“How do you know she’s in Canada? You said she hadn’t been in touch—”
“Yeah,” I said, “but there’s this thing called the internet where you can look up celebrities and see what they’re doing. Her Instagram PR people have been posting photos of her on set.”
“Okay. Guess that’s as good a source as any. But Miller…” He reached out a hand to my lower back and rubbed it soothingly. “Stay offline, huh?”
I frowned. “Ihavebeen offline. Nate’s called, like, a thousand times—”
“You should callhimback. I meant, stay off the internet for a while.”
“Why?”
His hand stayed where it was, but he looked down at his plate, at a mess of fish roe spilling bright orange all over the white plate. “Because you don’t know what you might see.”
It took me a second to understand the connection his mind had made, and when I did, all the beer and raw fish in my belly started rising back up. “You think someone is going to publish photographs of my sister’s dead body online?”
He gave a small sigh. “I think you’ll never lose money betting on people behaving like assholes.” His voice changed, got louder and firmer. “So,” he said, “if Dempsey’s out, that means we talk to Harper Connelly next.”
The problem was, Harper wasn’t so easy to contact. We spent the rest of the evening at Jack’s place trying to track her down, but all contact details for her were dead ends or bounced back. Her YouTube channel was still live, but she hadn’t posted a new video for years. Jack took point on YouTube, since Harper was getting a lot of new comments on the very last video she’d made, and also the ones that starred my sister. They were getting enough play to be trending, I saw over his shoulder.
I tried not to look at the thumbnails. I couldn’t take seeing Annie’s face right now.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Jack conceded at last, yawning. “Plus it’s late. Let’s get some rest, and in the morning we can pick it up.”
“Rest?” I said. “Or…”
He reached out to cup my face, his thumb brushing over my lower lip. “Don’t you know by now, Trouble? We do whatever you want. So we can rest. Or…”
“Let’s go withOr,” I said, bouncing up. “But give me some time to prep.”
* * *
