“Hey!” I said, sounding out of breath.
“Hey, you okay?” Perri asked in husky, calm tones. From the moment Perri Wilcox contacted me, I’d found her voice soothing and her capable, take-charge demeanor reassuring.
“Fine. Just dropped my phone.”
“How goes it in Scotland?”
“It’s what I needed,” I answered honestly.
“I’m glad to hear that.”
I frowned, realizing the time difference. “Isn’t it like three or four in the morning there?”
“It’s after five. I have an early flight out.”
“So, do you have news?”
“I do.” Perri sighed. “It’s not exactly the news I was hoping to impart.”
“You met with Adila?”
“I did. She was very anxious and jittery and kept looking around, but I managed to get her to tell me that she has now accepted a settlement figure from the Silver Group. Signed off by Halston Cole.”
Disappointment crashed over me. “So she can’t talk to you.”
“Legally, she can’t go on record or that fucker could sue. I told her I could still quote her as an anonymous source, but Adila got very frightened. She thought someone in the restaurant was watching us, someone she recognized and thought was following her that morning. She left.”
“Shit, shit, shit.” I stood and kicked the bottom of the sofa, the dull pain not enough to satisfy the frustration raging through me.
“I got back to my hotel room and after I showered, I found a note shoved under the main door. It was typed—and it was a threat. It said I needed to get the hell out of Australia and to mind my own business or I would end up dead like my friend.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that it took a second for the threat to register.
“Perri …” My phone shook against my ear as my body trembled at the reminder of what happened to my parents and Perri’s colleague, Ben. “This isn’t worth your life. Maybe you need to stop.”
“Isn’t it? They killed Ben and they killed your parents and they know that one more ‘incident’ is going to fuck them. I don’t work for some small-time newspaper, Tierney. I work for one of the biggest fucking papers in the country and every single one of us at theChronicleis gunning for this guy. Don’t think for one second he doesn’t realize that. If one more reporter dies investigating this, it is a nail in his own fucking coffin. So don’t you worry about me. Okay?”
Heart racing, my whole body vibrating with adrenaline, I let out a shaky breath. “Okay.”
“Good. I’ll reach out when I return to New York. Adila is a setback, but it’s not the end of the world. We can still do this.”
“Okay. Thank you, Perri.”
“Talk soon.”
After we hung up, I stared around the tiny apartment suddenly feeling so restless it was claustrophobic.
I needed to get out.
I needed to expend the rage and fear and frustration building inside me.
In my mess of emotions, I didn’t even remember walking to the guesthouse. One minute I was in my rented apartment, the next I was letting myself into the dark building on the hill. There were solar lanterns at the front door. I picked one up and walked into the dining room. There was currently a wall between it and what was a sitting/leisure area. It was the room with access to the gardens and views of the harbor. I wanted people to see it from the dining room. However, the wall obstructing it was a supporting wall.
Quinn had told me they were putting temporary support braces in place today so they could take the wall down tomorrow.
I noted the braces at either end of the wall. And I noted the sledgehammers.
He’d invited me to be there since it was one of the changes I’d most been looking forward to.
