Beck moves off, already knowing what to bring.
Vin lights a cigarette, smoke curling lazily between us.
“Did you find out anything since our meeting?” I ask. The impatience edges into my voice. Boudreaux made a vailed threat, at best. But more than that, I don’t want to drag this out unnecessarily, especially if we’ve moved on the wrong family.
“Ridge—”
“We’re stalled. I need to know if pulling Boudreaux’s daughter was the right call, or if we just made things worse.”
Vin takes a slow drag, then lets the smoke spill from his mouth and pulls it back in through his nose. He doesn’t answer right away.
“After our meeting with Boudreaux, I thought about what you told me Tripp said,” he says finally. “It was too far-fetched to be made up, so I dug deeper.”
I still. “Go on.”
“He said someone told him to spend time with Duvalls, but not gather intel or deliver anything,” Vin continues. “That was curious to me. Why would someone want that?”
“You’re going to have to fill in the blanks, Vin. I’m not following.”
“It comes back to the Duvalls.”
“How?”
“That was my question, too. Why would one of our guys be talking to the Duvalls?”
He leans back, cigarette resting between his fingers. I can see his gears turning. This is why he’s always been my father’s right-hand man. His brain works differently, and he sees connections where most don’t.
“I had Wells take another pass through internal logs,” he says. “Not transactions or money, but files. I wanted to know who touched what, and when.”
My jaw tightens. “And?”
“There was a report buried in the system,” Vin says. “Flagged as internal review, but it outlined weak points in our routes that just so happened to match up with the same routes the Duvalls had proposed paying us for.”
“And you think that’s what this is all about? Tripp, the misdirection, the murder?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Vin replies. “I think the Duvalls put all this in motion to get those routes. When your father said no, they came up with a way to remove that barrier. And I think they let the system use Tripp unwittingly. Of course, too, they made sure you were focusing on Boudreaux, not them.”
I lean forward. “How in the hell did you come up with all of this?”
“I connected the dots. When you step back and look at the whole picture, you can’tnotsee it.”
He taps ash into the tray.
“And the man with the birthmark?” I ask. “The one who slit my father’s throat and died swearing Boudreaux ordered it. Why would he lie when he knew he was going to die anyway?”
Vin’s gaze sharpens, just a notch. “That’s the piece I’m still working on.”
Silence stretches.
“If Boudreaux didn’t send him,” I say slowly, “then someone else needed that man to die proclaiming it.”
Vin nods once. “Exactly.”
“And someone wanted me angry enough not to question it.”
“They counted on you reacting fast,” Vin says. “On momentum, on a desire for revenge.”
I sit back slightly and let it settle.
