“Anything good?” I poured milk over the cookies in my cup. “On the phone?”
It wasn’t the sexy conversation I’d had in mind when I’d been fantasizing about Cassie, but at least my dick was standing down.
Cassie slid onto the chair next to Jagger at the island. “Not sure. I just scrolled through it on the way home from the warehouse.”
Aloha worked with a bunch of other hackers in one of the old warehouses on the south side of Blackwell Falls.
Cassie bent her head to the phone. “It’s a lot of everyday stuff. Jokes and logistical stuff between the guy who owned the phone and the people he seemed to be working with.”
“Tell them about the princess thing,” Hawk said.
“What princess thing?” Jagger asked.
“They keep talking about a princessA.” Cassie read from the phone. “PrincessA is going to the villa, PrincessA wants the boat, PrincessA is in trouble.”
I frowned. “Well, that’s not what I expected.”
“Same,” Cassie said.
Hawk pulled a beer from the fridge and looked at Cassie. “Get you something?”
She glanced up and shook her head, then returned her attention to the phone. “I’m good.”
“Is anyone identified in the texts?” Jagger asked as Hawk as popped the top on the beer. “The guy who owned the phone or the people he was texting?”
Cassie shook her head. “Only their phone numbers.”
I finished chewing the Oreos in my mouth. “That’s weird.”
“Not if these people are members of Imperium Fratrum,” Jagger said.
“They have to be,” Cassie murmured. “Anna was killed right after we talked to her about Dimitri, after she told us he was part of Imperium Fratrum. It can’t be a coincidence that someone came for us at the paper mill right after that.”
“Can Aloha trace the numbers?” Jagger asked. “The locations of the other phones?”
“They only texted over an encrypted app,” Hawk said, taking another slug of his beer.
“Fuck,” Jagger said.
“Yeah.” Cassie sighed and set down the phone. “I really thought this was going to be our break.”
She wasn’t the only one. A lot had been riding on the phone. It was our closest connection to the men who’d ambushed us at the paper mill.
And even more important, whoever had hired them.
“Speaking of breaks,” Jagger said, shoving a piece of paper at Cassie. “This doesn’t ring a bell for you?”
I knew what it was — a payment made from Cassie’s parents to a company called S & S — because Jagger had asked me to take a look at it too.
Cassie looked at the payment record circled on the paper, then shook her head. “It’s from their personal checking account like all the other bills. I assumed that was what it was.”
“I thought so too,” Jagger said. “But turns out the payment was made every month.”
Cassie furrowed her brow. “So?”
“So I checked all the other payments and everything else is accounted for: mortgage, utilities, credit card bills, insurance.”
“So what’s S&S?” Cassie asked.
