“I let him live because it was what Seth wanted. But this shit ends now,” he bit out and then he was out of the car before I could even respond.
While I understood his fury, he also wasn’t the Ronan I knew. Not the emotionless killer, anyway. The one who believed in serving justice, not vengeance. And while I couldn’t condemn him for the fear that was driving his rage, I also knew nothing I said would get through to him.
Which meant my options were growing more and more limited by the second.
I glanced at the picture again and then looked up at the store in frustration. Why the hell had he gone to that house again? As I pondered the question, my eyes settled on the security camera pointing at the front entrance. There was a second one pointing towards the short drive leading to the side where the employee entrance was. I reached for my phone. I dialed and waited until Daisy answered. I’d only met the group’s tech girl once, but I’dspoken to her often enough to know she was capable of getting to even some of the most difficult of information.
“Hi, Phoenix,” she said happily. I could hear the clicking of a keyboard.
“I need you to do something for me…stat.”
The clicking stopped. “Go,” was all she said, her voice all business now.
“I need you to check some security footage. Carlisle’s Food Market, Rainer Avenue.”
“Timeframe?”
“Yesterday between 7:30 pm and” – I glanced at the timestamp on the photo – “10:00.”
“Subject?” she asked.
I hesitated before saying, “Levi Deming or Hugo Larson.”
Daisy was silent for a moment before she said, “It will take a little time.”
“Send me any footage you find.”
I said my goodbyes and then hung up. I knew I might possibly be putting the nails in Levi’s coffin when it came to Ronan, since Daisy would be forced to tell Ronan what she found, but I was desperate enough to hope I’d get some much-needed answers from the footage.
I settled back in my seat to wait and let my thoughts drift to this morning. It had taken several minutes to rouse Levi from the nightmare that had held him in its grip and my heart had broken all over for him in those minutes. He’d actually spoken a couple of sentences during the dream, as if he were living that moment all over again. I’d heard the name Jed a few times as well as Ricky…proof that the memory had most likely been about the attack on Seth and his parents rather than the brutal rapes he’d suffered at the hands of his brother and the inmates in the prison shower.
I wanted to curse the whole situation. I’d finally fallen in love for the first time in my life and I’d also managed to become a part of a family after losing mine, but the two things were incongruent. I could have one or the other, but not both.
Though, in truth, I’d already lost my new family because I couldn’t keep my unspoken promise to them.
I’d always believed in the strength of family. It was something that had been instilled upon me even as a small child. Although it had just been me, my parents and my sister, we’d been an extremely tight-knit family and losing them all at once had been something that had changed my entire outlook on life. I’d been so focused on my career in the military, that I hadn’t always considered life beyond serving my country. But Amani had been my second chance and I’d never loved anything or anyone the way I loved that child. I’d been terrified at the prospect of being a father, but I’d muddled my way through the nighttime feedings, lack of sleep and constant fear that I’d miss something vital in her development. I’d been fortunate that I’d had the financial resources to be a full-time parent to my daughter, because even without a job to worry about, I’d still struggled to keep up with the responsibility.
But I’d been paid back in spades.
Events like the first time Amani had called me Daddy and catching her when she’d taken her first tentative steps had made every change in my life worth it. But in the blink of an eye, it had been snatched away. I’d railed at God for the cruel twist of fate He’d thrown into my path for the second time in my life. Although I was grateful I still had my child, deep down in a part of my soul that I refused to even consider, lingered that question that I would never to give voice to. My focus was on the here and now and I still had my daughter with me. Cruel twist of fate or not, I knew I wouldn’t wish for anything different, except maybe that the man upstairs hadn’t brought Amani’s birth father back into the picture.
I’d never been a religious guy, but I was starting to wonder if God liked his little moments of fuckery. Because he apparently hadn’t found enough entertainment in torturing me with my daughter’s uncertain fate; no, he’d gone and added Levi to the mix.
Sweet, tormented Levi who’d suffered more in his life than anyone I’d ever known.
It was shitty enough that God had decided my loyalty to my new family needed to be tested, but to let me fall in love with someone Icould never be with was the ultimate cruelty, second only to the half-loss of my child.
My phone buzzed, jerking me from my pity party. I checked the text from Daisy.
Four external cameras. North, south and east cameras working, west camera offline. Footage attached from east and north cameras.
The east camera was the one facing the entrance to the store, the north faced the employee entrance. Which meant the one offline was at the back of the store where the dumpsters were kept and deliveries occurred.
I hit the first video attachment. The picture wasn’t as clear as I would have liked, but I could make out Levi when he came into the frame as he returned a grocery cart to the long line of carts outside the store’s entrance. Someone approached him from behind and while I couldn’t be sure it was T, he had the right build and hair color. Levi turned and ran into the man and they exchanged words. I couldn’t tell if there were bruises on Levi’s face. The image also wasn’t good enough to see his expression, but Levi’s body language showed his tension as he turned and walked with T towards the side of the store. It looked like T was holding his arm, but I couldn’t be sure.
I switched to the next video and saw T and Levi walking past the employee entrance and out of the view of the camera. Frustration coursed through me as I realized they were going to the back of the store where there’d be no video footage.
The last video showed Levi walking back towards the front of the store with a guy I didn’t recognize. Again, I didn’t have a good view of Levi’s face so I didn’t know if there were bruises or not.
