CHAPTER 56
The property had filledup fast.
Three deputies, two state troopers, and an EMT who kept trying to get Naomi to sit down and kept being ignored. Karen had also shown up.
Each of the people involved with the kidnapping were now zip-tied and separated in the back of different law enforcement vehicles.
Micah stood near the door and listened to his deputy run through what they had.
“They’re not talking,” Deputy Knox said, flipping through his notes. “The man inside is saying it was a kidnapping for ransom. Independent operation. No one hired them.”
“That’s not true,” Micah muttered.
“No, sir. It’s not.” Knox kept his voice neutral. “But without direct evidence connecting them to Dale Harding, we’re going to have a hard time making that case stick.”
“Pull everything on that man the SUV is registered to,” Micah said. “Financial records, known associates, any property connected to it. Dale Harding has been careful, but nobody’s that careful.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I want the phones. All of them. From every person on this property. I want a warrant for the call logs before the end of the day.”
Knox nodded and moved off.
Micah scanned the room.
Naomi stood a few feet away with Grace against her shoulder. She hadn’t put her down. Micah didn’t expect she would for a while. Good Boy sat beside her, watching the room with quiet intensity, like he’d appointed himself her personal security detail.
Naomi looked pale. The gash at her temple had been cleaned and butterfly-taped by the EMT she’d finally allowed near her, and the headache behind her eyes was visible in the careful way she held herself. She needed a hospital. She needed rest.
She needed about fifteen things she wasn’t going to accept until Grace was settled and the situation was resolved.
Micah understood it, but that didn’t stop him from worrying.
He was about to cross to her when the front door opened.
Gio Moretti stepped inside.
He stood in the doorway, taking in the room with the measured expression of a man who’d calculated his entrance and decided on composed but concerned.
His eyes found Naomi.
Micah watched her face.
Something shifted in her expression. It wasn’t fear or relief.
It was . . . recognition—the kind that meant something had clicked into place.
The memories had been coming in pieces all day.
Fragments. Impressions. The edge of something Naomi couldn’t quite catch.
But when Gio walked through that door and looked at her with that carefully constructed expression of concern, everything had clicked into place at once.
It was like a door that had been stuck for eighteen months finally swinging open.
She was back in New York. Late night at the office, the city glittering beyond the windows. Her own hands moving through quarterly reports, finding the first discrepancy. Then another. Then a pattern that made her stomach drop.
Transfers. Shell companies. Money moving through accounts it had no business being in. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe more.
