“It’s probably nothing,” she cautioned. After all, she was the one who didn't know what she was doing. If the guys hadn't picked up on it, she doubted it was anything significant.
“Or maybe it’s the missing piece,” Lion reminded her.
Nodding slowly, she flicked through the images on the database she’d been searching and stopped at one in particular. “This woman. She reminded me of the one we’re looking for. I discounted her because she was too old, but maybe … I don’t know,” she finished somewhat lamely.
Picking up her laptop, Steel studied it for a moment and then began to read whatever he’d found. “She’d be old enough to be the woman’s mother,” he told the others. “She used to work for a pharmaceutical company but retired about a decade ago.”
“She would have been young to retire,” Blade noted.
“She would,” Steel agreed. “And the company went under not long after.”
“Went under or changed hands?” Lion asked, and she shot him a quizzical glance. “If this woman is somehow related to the one who gave you the warning, and she worked for a pharmaceutical company, then that’s two possible connections to Dr. Gardner.”
“What's the name of the company?” Thunder interrupted.
As soon as Steel gave the name, Thunder’s fingers flew over his keyboard all over again. Had she found something useful? Had she been helpful in pointing out the woman who had caught her attention?
“Just because the woman who kind of reminds me of that girl works for a drug company doesn’t mean anything,” she cautioned, worried she was getting her own hopes up.
“Doesn’t matter if it does or it doesn’t, we work it through, and if it goes nowhere, no harm, no foul,” Dragon told her.
“You shouldn’t doubt yourself, Cassandra,” Thunder said with a grin as he turned his laptop around so everyone could see it, only she wasn't sure what she was supposed to be looking at. “For a company that’s been out of business for almost a decade, they just made two bank transfers.”
“To them?” she asked, stunned that she’d actually contributed something this big.
“To them,” Thunder confirmed. “Two transfers to the man Dragon killed in your house and the one who set it on fire. There is no way in hell that’s a coincidence. From Nature, is the company’s name, and Dr. Gardner was always on about how his experimental drugs were derived from all-natural ingredients. That he was merely utilizing nature as it had always been intended.”
“So this woman really is connected?” she asked.
“Maybe she really is the woman’s mother,” Lion said.
“There’s an address,” Blade said. “Only one way to get our answers.”
“I'm coming too,” Cassandra blurted out before anyone had a chance to say otherwise.
“Oh, I am in total agreement with that,” Rose quickly piped up.
“There is no way in hell you are coming with us to check out an address that may be connected to the man who wants us backunder his control and who put out a contract on you,” Dragon said, so calmly that it spiked her anger.
“Yeah? And how do you plan on stopping me?” she snapped back. All her life, she’d let other people take the lead. She’d never stepped up and helped her brothers try to unravel the truth of what had happened to their parents. This time, she wasn't sitting quietly in a corner and letting everyone else handle things. “I care about you, and I want you to get answers. Besides, this wasmylead, and I'm following through on it whether you like it or not.”
Chapter
Seventeen
January 9th
7:40 P.M.
“Are you going to stop sulking any time soon?”
It would be completely inappropriate and unprofessional to stick his tongue out, and yet Dragon had to fight against the urge. Although he was barely able to rein it in, he was able to keep his expression neutral, impassive, a mask for the terror raging beneath his skin.
Bringing Cassandra with them was a mistake.
A mistake of epic proportions.
Even Rose shouldn’t be there, this wasn't like last time when they’d needed her help to reel in her brother. At least Rose had been raised to know how to defend herself. She was capable with a weapon, gun or knife, she had good hand-to-hand combat skills, and she knew how to use her much smaller size to her advantage to still be able to take down an attacker much larger than she was.
