IRENE - BLACKBIRD book 6

15. no comedown

The bed was covered with papers, rusting at every move Gillian made. They'd called it a night after Tanya's discovery, but Gillian knew she needed some distraction to be able to sleep. It was always the same after one of those nights of work at home with Brock. She needed a while to relax. It was just exhausting. She even missed the good old times when she thought he hated her. Now she was split in two around the clock. The irresistible pull of knowing he was waiting for her to make up her mind and give it a try with him—and her dirty mind suggested a thousand 'tries' she'd like to perform with him and on him. And at the same time, just as strong, the pull of her fears. That gut-born, irrational, instinctive fear whispering in her ear all the time. Telling her the thousand things that would go wrong if she 'gave it a try'. The thousand ways she'd get hurt if she ever gave in to Brock.

So every night, after he left, she found herself something both boring and distracting to do. That way she could give herself a break and finally fall asleep. To slide straight into her usual dreams of him, of course. But that was okay, because there was no fear in her dreams. Nothing could ever go wrong in that dream scenery. As it was supposed to be—opposite to real life.

After the shepherd's pie and the Earl Grey and all that, she decided to go to bed with Dawson's financial records. It was tedious, routine work that would help her let go of so many annoying emotions in constant fight to take over.

She meant to identify the man's expenses. Not like she expected it to shed any light on the case. But there was a snowball's chance of finding something that would give them leverage over him. Gambling, solicitation, too much booze. Anything would do.

So she went line by line down the credit card charges first, searching online to verify every company where the therapist had spent even ten cents. Two pages later, she checked the 2014 calendar. Next she grabbed her phone and texted Aldana. Two minutes later, Gillian jumped out of bed and strode out of her room to go knock on Connor's door.

"Come in!" said Tanya from inside, among a lot of grunts and interjections.

The girl lay on her belly on Connor's bed, joystick in her hands, her face close enough to Connor's massive LED to burn her optic nerves in under a minute. She finished an ugly beast, said, "BRB," and turned to Gillian, not the least bit surprised to see her there, wide awake and papers in hand.

"What d'you got?"

"Something funny," Gillian replied, sitting on the edge of the bed to show Tanya the papers. "See the highlighted lines?"

"The ones in orange or the ones in yellow?"

"Orange. Agent Brockner used yellow."

"Lemme see... Online purchases?"

"Yep. Well, turns out our Dr. Dawson made a purchase to the same online store every week."

"So?"

"You're not curious. You wanna get rid of me to go back to your gaming."

"Parenting me, Reg?"

"Someone has to." Gillian chuckled at Tanya's face. "Okay, lost youth, listen up. Looks like every Wednesday after Irene's session, late at night, Dawson spent four-figure amounts with his credit card on this online store. Which is registered as a distributor of washing machine spares."

Somehow Tanya sat up on bed in a single move. "What!?"

Gillian smiled at her sudden interest. "I'm not an expert, but this company looks like a cover-up for something else."

"Deep-web buss, yeah." Tanya stretched out to grab her computer and opened it. "This can be our leverage, Reg."

"That's exactly what I think. We need to find who's behind the company. A name and an address we can visit. Sounds easier than going around the deep web asking what illegal business uses this web store as a façade to get their payments."

"Exactly. What's the name of the company?"

Gillian gave her a page and stood up. "I should make some coffee."

"Absolutely."

"Careful. Gaming makes you abuse adverbs."

"Totally."

Gillian scoffed as she walked out. She went back to her room to grab a sweater before going downstairs. There was a new text in her inbox. She headed to the kitchen phone in hand. Maybe Aldana had forgotten to tell her something? She froze at the last step of the stairs, staring down at her phone as her face caught fire.

"Sorry to text you this late. Senator Graff and Irene's family live at the same building in DC."

Gillian's eyes widened at Brock's message. She saw he'd sent it not a minute ago, so she replied to it.

"Access?"

She was so excited that she just picked up when her phone buzzed, and shouldered her phone to fill the coffeemaker.

"Sorry about the time. Hope I didn't wake you up."

Gillian smiled, alone in the kitchen. Only Brock would apologize twice over a work call when it was hardly midnight.

"Wide awake, sir. Did you find anything else? Any idea how the place is?"

"I'm taking a virtual tour as we speak. It's an exclusive condo in Georgetown. Only one apartment per floor. Irene lived at the fourth floor, and Senator Graff lives at the fifth. Three different elevators. One for owners and tenants, which opens to the apartments' living room. One for visitors, opening to a hall outside the front door. One for domestic and maintenance staff, opening to another hall by the stairwell, to the apartments' backdoor."

"Jesus Christ! Sir, you just solved the access problem! Any person living in that building could take the service elevator to visit another apartment unnoticed, using the backdoor!"

"Yes, that's what I thought." Brock hesitated. "You were still up?"

Gillian smiled again and let her voice reflect it. "Not the only workaholic in town, sir, remember?"

Brock's scoff caused her a sweet chill and she closed her eyes.

"Of course. What were you working on?"

Trying not to think of you?I almost made it, y'know? But you wouldn't let me. And I'm glad you didn't.'Cause talking to you is always the bright high of my days.