I nodded.
“You all right?” Upper asked.
“Look her up. I have to know who she is. This doesn’t make any sense.”
Upper nodded as he got to work on that. We all settled in behind him.
He typed her name into a private illegal database network.
A grainy picture of her ID card came up with her address, old and new. Height, weight, high school and college details, birth certificate, and other useless information like her bank statements and shit I didn’t care to know about.
The face on the ID card was what drew me in. I couldn’tsee much of it, but I recognized that blond hair, and I swear my heart skipped a fucking beat.
“Gemma Parisi, age twenty-six. French and Italian descent, parents died when she was five in a brutal car accident, and she’s been living with her grandma ever since.” Upper summarized from what he could pick up and the details I didn’t see.
“She dog-sits and babysits?” Milk mused aloud.
“Yup. Income is nothing to write about, but it’s enough for two,” Upper said.
Devil frowned. “Is this legit?”
“Yup. She’s clean,” Upper said.
“Too clean,” Dog muttered. “Too clean, it’s unnatural. Can you dig more into the parents?”
Upper navigated the cursor, and another tab opened, revealing two other ID cards for her mother and father. “Mother was a social worker; Dad was in construction. His criminal record isn’t spotless—vandalism, arson—but those date back to his teenage years, nothing suspicious in recent times prior to his death.”
“The cause of the car accident?” Devil asked.
“Collision. A truck driver,” Upper answered.
“The truck driver still breathing?” Dog asked.
Upper typed something, and another tab opened. “Uh… was in a coma for a couple of months, but he died soon after. He was a normal guy, too.”
“Huh…” Dog said. “So, she’s actually clean.”
“Yes,” Upper said.
“I’m not getting any bad vibes either,” Devil said. “Which means Elio isn’t acquainted with her for business purposes.”
“Can the database provide more pictures of her? She looks familiar,” Milk said.
“No. The only picture we can get from here is the one from her ID, but we can check Google or the gram. The gram issafer.” Upper opened a tab that already had his account on display. He went to the search tab and typed out her name.
There were many Gemma Parisis, but one caught us after looking through the list. This one had a single underscore before her full name. When Upper clicked on it, my heart stopped.
“Oh my God,” I said breathlessly.
“You know her?” Devil asked.
“She was—she’s the one from the cruise,” Milk spoke up. “The one who was looking at Elio!”
“And the one who came to his suite and said she had directional issues…” I raked my fingers through my hair, gripping it as my chest tightened with hurt. “Oh my God, how could I be so stupid?”
“Hey.” Devil was quick to interject into my mini breakdown. “It might not be—”
“Shit,” Upper said, drawing our attention. “They went together. There’s a picture of the private jet—and… there’s Elio.”
