“He sure as shit does, Luke. I just met her. Or should I say, I just saw her again,” I answer quietly, my irritation coming down a few notches with the realization that Luke wasn’t withholding information from me. Nothing would have earned my brother a black eye and a bloody lip faster than if he would have been holding out on me.
“There’s no mention of a daughter in his file, Blake, besides the one who died years ago. You know that. You’ve memorized every page of that thing.”
“The file said that Mattias has a daughter. Could that information be wrong?” I ask my brother.
“I suppose it could, though I don’t know how. That information has been in the file for a decade. Either the agents who started the case were misinformed or they changed the info, hindering the investigation. I’d rather not think it would be the latter.”
“But it could be. Someone fucked up, Luke. Roman very much has a daughter in the living. She showed up at the house today right before I was scheduled to meet with the bosses.”
“This daughter, you said you saw her again. Who is she?” Luke asks, finally taking a sip of his piping-hot coffee.
“Do you remember the night we went out before I went under? The girl from the bar?”
“The one you went home with? Yeah, I remember,” he says as a hint of a smile crosses his lips at the realization of what I’m implicating. “Are you kidding me?”
“I wish I were. She was standing there when I walked into the room.”
“What’s her association to Roman and the organization, besides being his daughter?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, I got the feeling that something was completely off with her presence there. She was tense and seemed completely caught off guard. And that was before she saw me sitting there.”
“So, what are you thinking?” he asks.
“I don’t know yet. I’m going to her place tonight to talk. I’m going to see what information I can get out of her.”
“Is it just information you want to get out of her, big brother?” he asks with a full smile stretched across his smug face.
“Shut up. This is one big-ass mess, Luke.”
“Oh, I don’t disagree with you there. But can you still do this job knowing that she might be involved?”
“Yes,” I defend, but instantly know that deep down I’m not sure if I can. Can I let her go down with her father when this whole thing goes south? The look Luke gives me tells me he doesn’t exactly know if I can either. My brain suddenly hurts as I run my hands over my face.
“Listen, Blake. Something doesn’t quite feel right here, so I’m going to head in to the office and do some digging. I want to keep this between you and me for now. I’ll bring everyone else in on it as soon as we have more details. If–and that’s a big if–someone on the inside is altering the investigation, I don’t want to show our cards just yet. Let’s see how this plays out. You go meet this girl tonight and see what she knows. Do you think you can do that without slipping your dick in?”
“Don’t be an ass. You know I can do this.”
“I know what you were like for a few weeks after you spent the night with that girl.”
“That was the investigation, asshole. It had nothing to do with Carly.”
“If that’s what you need to tell yourself,” he adds smugly before grabbing his coffee cup and standing up.
“I’ll be in touch. Let me know how it goes tonight. Be careful,” he says before slipping quietly out of the coffee shop. I scan the room, registering every face in the room before I follow suit and slip out of the booth.
I walk back to my apartment, keeping my head down and my eyes open. It’s almost four o’clock, which means I have six long hours before I need to be at Carly’s apartment. Six hours to dissect this damn case again piece by agonizing piece. Something isn’t right. Two plus two doesn’t equal four suddenly. The bureau is missing a big piece, and I’ll be damned if I haven’t spent two years undercover to watch it all crumble around me.
* * *
Carly said after ten, so I wait down in my car for an extra fifteen minutes until it’s quarter after. Of course, I’ve been in the lot keeping watch since eight like a creeper. The living room light is on, though I can’t see anything through her thick curtains. The building is quiet with a few residents coming and going throughout my two-hour stakeout. Finally, it’s time.