Chapter 16

The problem was that my brain was making it impossible to fall into a deep sleep. I tossed and turned, dozing between moments of wakefulness. When I eventually did sleep the dreams came with images of people and the sound of their words. I came fully awake, with a start, my heart going onto overdrive, when I was conscious of someone else in the room, sitting up quickly with my eyes wide open I was looking across the room.

I was surprised to see Ben stood there leaning against the door and slightly annoyed that he had come into the room uninvited.

"Xander was worried because he hadn't seen you for over twenty four hours"

Okay, he was checking up on me, so why was he still stood there? I continued to look at him with the cover pulled up to my chin. No way was I going to move because I was sure that I was only wearing a bra and panties.

"I'm sorry if I seemed to doubt what you found. That was a hell of a job that you did and to be honest I would never have looked in the direction that you did. We're setting up the teams now so we're looking at synchronized raids tonight"

The door closed behind him leaving me feeling a bit dazed with what he'd said to me. He must have finally believed the evidence that we'd collated if he was planning something for tonight. Another operation that would have different teams bringing down the bad guys. Maybe I wasn't bad at following my nose but then that had never been difficult before. What I needed to do now was to try and do that for myself.

Showered and dressed in new clothes I was feeling really hungry as I went down in the elevator. The room where the food was to be found was empty of people making me wonder where everyone was until I looked at the clock and realized that it was only 5 in the morning. Too early for office workers but it seemed the food was set out ready for them. The choice was a lot better, or I wasn't as fussy, so I'd soon devoured some pastries, cereal and toast then washed it all down with some hot chocolate. I wondered if the room that I'd worked in before was available so with a glass of juice used the elevator to go up to that floor.

I was surprised to see an empty board and Xander sat in front of the computer. Did that man not need sleep? Because I knew that I looked like shit. My skin was pale and I had dark circles under my eyes that no matter how much I cleaned my face didn't seem to disappear.

"Greg told Ben that we had another job to do for him so would need to use this room"

"Oh"

I hadn't expected to be thrown into another job because I wanted to find out about the problems that were personal to me.

"Don't look so worried. That was the excuse Greg gave to Ben. Greg knows that we want to look at who might be looking for you. He's given us full privacy, so I know that he won't ask us any questions"

That was good, wasn't it? Though I was pretty sure that even Greg would be curious as to what we would be looking at. I went and sat down next to Xander worried about what to tell him. I knew that if Xander was going to be helping me then he'd need to know exactly who I was and my history.

"Annie? Where do you want to start?"

My mind went back to a conversation that seemed from an age ago about who knew that I was in Hoquiam. Then the other issue raised its head, what exactly had been going on in Trenton. Were the two things related? I didn't think that they could be.

"Only five people that I know of knew that I was involved in finding Robert. You, Gregory, Jenson, Anya and Robert"

"It wasn't me and I'm sure that it wasn't Greg or Jenson. Could Robert or Anya have said something innocently after he got back?"

I raised my eyebrows because that was certainly one place to look. Robert would have a lot of contacts, especially being a journalist and he would be writing up his article by now looking to get it published.

"I'll pull up those searches that we did on phone calls and extend the search to the date when we left Hoquiam"

I nodded my head as I thought about what I would do. I didn't have the skills that Xander had to hack into systems, but I knew where I would want to look. I wanted to know exactly what had happened on that fateful day in Trenton becasue I was now beginning to doubt what everyone had been telling me. I found a pen and paper and started to make a list of questions that I wanted answers to.

Police report for when grandma had died.

FTA file that Connie had given to me.

Grandma's phone record.

That was enough to go on for now and once I'd looked at those then I could decide where to go next. If grandma had taken and driven my car, then how had she ended up down by the river. Was someone else in the car with her or was she following someone? I wasn't even sure that I'd ever be able to find that out. I also wanted to know what grandma had been up to the week before but again I wasn't sure how to do that, then it suddenly occurred to me, I was pretty sure that she had a Facebook page. She might not have been good with computers, but she was damn good with knowing what was going on in the neighborhood so why wouldn't she use it. I was pretty sure that Lula had mentioned my grandmother requesting Lula as a friend.

I turned to the computer and powered it up pleased to see the program that Xander had shown to me before. I just hoped that grandma had used her own name and hadn't decided on an alias. Edna Mazuur, Trenton existed, and I smiled as a photo of her came onto the screen. It wasn't a recent one, in fact it was an old black and white one and looked to be when she was maybe in her thirties. She'd been a beautiful woman in those days, long wavy hair, and some features that I could see that I'd inherited from her. A cute nose and a cheeky smile.

I went into the posts, sighing deeply when I saw all of the posts that told a story from grandma's life as a way of saying goodbye. I didn't want to read those because they brought too many memories back to me. Maybe in the future I could read them and appreciate them for what they were. I scrolled down to the last comment that grandma had written noting that it was a comment replying to something that Mabel had posted. Mabel's post was an advert for a bingo session at one of the local halls and was proclaiming how great the prizes were. I remembered going to one of those places with grandma and walking out with a cooking pot, not that I had ever used it. Grandma had replied to say that she was seeing her new honey which had me wondering who that was. It was written five days before the fire.

I continued to scroll down to her previous comment which was a week before and mentioned a viewing that she'd been to. Her comment that the brother was better looking than the man in the casket had me groaning at visions of her prying the lid of the casket off to get a good luck. Was the brother her new honey? I made a note of the date for the viewing and minimized the screen. Any viewings and funerals would be advertised in the paper so that was where I needed to look next. I wanted to avoid anything that had been written in the paper after grandma had died so did a search according to the date of the viewing. I found the column for deaths so started to read down the different announcements. Trevor Peralta and Sylvia Sutton had been laid out on the night in question at the funeral parlor where grandma frequented, so I was going with Trevor as being the brother who grandma was referring to.

A search on Trevor had him being eighty two when he'd died and as having a younger brother called Lawrence.

"Annie, have a look at these and tell me what you think"

Xander was sat back looking at the screen of his computer that had rows of numbers on it. He'd rearranged the data so that phone numbers that were the same were together and where possible it gave the name of the number called.

"What am I looking at?"

Xander pointed to a group of calls that had been made and received by Anya both before Robert got back and then afterwards. There was no name against the number, which was strange.

"Could the number be blocked?"

"No, the search would still pick it up. It could be a burn phone"

I knew that I was wary of Anya but that was because I thought that she didn't like how her father had taken me in but then her visit to Jenson's house came to my mind. She'd said that Jenson had said that I needed help and that whatever I needed that she'd very much like to help me. I had taken her saying that as her being sincere but thinking about it now why would Jenson tell her that I needed help? Was she fishing for information about me? Hoping that I'd suddenly see her as my new best friend and talk to her about myself?

I looked again at the spreadsheet thinking that maybe it was Robert's sister or parents that she had called but their names were already there against numbers.

"Leave it with me. I'll try and track where the phone was bought and when. What are doing?"

"Tracking my grandma's latest honey"

The searches on Trevor and Lawrence came back pretty quickly so I decided to print them and use a highlighter to fully internalize what I was going to be reading. The two brothers were actually step brothers, with the same father. Trevor's mother had died and been replaced with Lawrence's mother five years later. A year after that Lawrence had been born and the family had lived together in the area of Hiltonia in Trenton. Even I knew that was an expensive area so wondered what their father had done to be able to afford to live there.

Another search had me looking at the history of Albert Peralta, the father. He'd been a lawyer and it seemed a very successful one. Strange that I'd never heard of him but maybe he was before my time. Reading down the search though I was surprised at the cases that he was famous for. It seemed that Albert Peralta wasn't adverse to defending some of the more infamous characters of Trenton. Maybe that was how he was so well off because he charged a fortune.

A look at Trevor and I noticed that he'd followed in his father's footsteps and had taken over the family business. His clients weren't as notorious but were still in the rich and famous category. He had married but with no children, in fact he'd retired at sixty five. Maybe it was to look after his wife because she'd died not long after from terminal cancer. He'd then spent the next few years travelling on his own and on his return had lived a very reclusive life until he had died at the age of 83.

The brother, he was totally different. Not a lawyer to continue to take over the family business in fact quite the opposite. It seemed that the two brothers were strangers with where they lived, who they knew and how they'd lived. How was it that grandma could never sense when a man was on the darker side of the law? Was she like me and attracted to the bad boy persona? Because from the look of Lawrence he had been linked into all sorts of activities in and around Trenton. He'd never been arrested though, but fraud, smuggling and drugs were all areas that could be associated to him. He had a son from a marriage that ended in divorce, Anthony. I hated to think what he might be involved with.

"Annie that phone, it was bought from a convenience store in Trenton New Jersey"

Maybe it was the shock that came over my face. I mean surely that being a coincidence was too high, wasn't it?

"Did I say something wrong?"

I shook my head as I collected my papers together and went and sat down next to Xander. Shit, I didn't want to do this, but maybe it was time that Xander knew exactly who I was.

"I, err. I'm from Trenton"

That caused a few swear words to come from Xander, followed by an apology.

"I suppose you need to know who I am, but please Xander, this is between you and me"

I waited until he was looking me in the eyes and nodded his head. Okay, now to reveal me to him.

"My name is Stephanie Plum. I was born and raised in Trenton. I worked for Vinnie Plum, bail bonds, as an apprehension officer"

"So what's so bad about that?"

I closed my eyes not knowing what to say. I mean it could take hours for me to try and explain everything that had ever happened to me, and I wasn't sure that I could face that. It would mean that he'd know what an excuse of a person I was and all of those feelings of guilt and insecurity would come back.

"Do a search on me"

That way he'd get a good idea of who he was working with. The disaster that had been my life, how I was constantly broke and always getting into trouble. I turned and went back to sit against the wall not daring to look at Xander because I was already feeling embarrassed at what he'd find.

I went back to reading about the Peralta family wondering if they had anything to do with why grandma had died. I discovered that Lawrence and his son skirted the law but couldn't find anything that might suggest that they would want to hurt grandma. I mean she'd got involved with other ex cons in the past and survived. Hell at her age they'd usually retired anyway and were wanting a quiet life.

"Do you know that you have one of the best capture rates in New Jersey?"

No, I didn't. But then again, I'd never looked it up. I suppose there were very few people that I hadn't found. I looked over to Xander who had a big grin on his face which made me frown.

"What?"

I asked because I was slightly annoyed at the idea that he was laughing at me.

"Girl, you certainly have a talent for trouble finding you. I hacked into your police records. You've been assaulted, shot at, firebombed and had your apartment broken into too many times to count"

"I know. I'm hopeless and a disaster"

"No, you're not. All of those incidents were when you were getting too close to finding someone or inadvertently came across something worse that was going on. How was it that no one kept you safe?"

Tears came to my eyes as he said that because there was someone who had helped to keep me safe, well physically safe maybe not emotionally safe. Look what happened there. Okay we helped each other out but the one time I really needed him he wasn't there and then he disowned me by leaving town again.

"No one supported what I did Xander, well except for one person and he wasn't there at the end"

"Is that what you meant by saying that people weren't around to help you?"

"My mother hated my job, she hated that she'd get calls from other people telling her when I'd got into difficulties. She wanted me to be a Burg housewife and mother, so she never supported me. My father and sister just went with what she said so all I got was being nagged at. Then there was a man who was supposed to be my boyfriend. I mean who tells a woman that they're engaged to be engaged and goes out and buys a pool table? We were constantly arguing but he was the man that my mother wanted me to marry"

"The cop?"

"Yeah. He said that my job gave him indigestion, so he was constantly berating me. I'd told him that we were over the week before the accident. After everything that he'd put me through it hit me that I couldn't marry him. The night before the accident I was summoned to dinner at my parents, where Joe turned up. I had to leave because they were wearing me down. The only person who ever understood me was my grandma and they told me that it was because of me that she'd died"

"There were other people that supported you, there had to have been"

I wasn't sure that I wanted to mention Ranger but if Xander was good at research then he might have worked it out.

"Lula did and even some of my skips thought better of me than my family or Joe did. The cops at the station placed bets on me so they had no respect for me, anyhow they just believed what Joe told them"

I stopped there and was looking down at the floor so worried what Xander would say next.

"Carlos Manoso believed in you"

How the hell did Xander associate Ranger with me? Though I suppose there might be reference to him in some of the police reports.

"Did, past tense. Even he questioned what had happened and implied that it was my fault. Hell, his men said as much"

I looked up not sure why Xander had gone quiet because I had an awful feeling that he knew something else.

"I wasn't sure if this had anything to do with you and to be honest it happens all of the time"

I know that I was frowning because I had no idea where Xander was going by saying that.

"I don't follow Xander"

"We're always getting people who think that they can hack into our systems but the firewalls I have are too good for them. The thing is, I've been keeping a check on those since we left"

I nodded wondering where this was going.

"They might be good, but I'm better. I backtracked the latest one and it seems that a company called Rangeman was trying to get into our systems"

I was shaking my head at hearing Xander say that name.

"No, he can't be, he shouldn't be. Why is he doing that? Oh, god does that mean I'm being arrested for murder? He can't find me"

That I was stood up surprised me, that I was hyperventilating didn't. I couldn't stop shaking or shaking my head back and forth. Words just tumbled from my mouth as the impact of what Xander had said hit me.

"Annie, sit down"

Hands were on my shoulder pushing me down onto a seat and my head was lowered onto my knees. That Ranger was looking for me terrified me.

"I let Greg know what I'd found out. Greg wants to talk to you, listen to what he has to say"

Why Gregory wanted to talk to me confused me or had he more bad news for me, did he know who I was now? Would he be regretting ever asking me for my help?

"Annie. I'm so sorry. It's all my fault"

I lifted my head slightly to see Gregory's face looking out from the screen, hoping that he couldn't see me. But how was this his fault?

"Xander told me who had hacked into our computer systems. To be honest I'm pissed that he even tried to do that. I know Manoso so brought him in when we took down the group who was transferring that toxic waste. He used to be a partner here but sold out but we still keep in touch. We needed the teams, but he asked me how I'd managed to work it out. I told him that I had this amazing researcher, that had an uncanny intuition for finding leads. I never told him your name or anything about you, honestly. I have no idea why he would have picked up that it was you or why he would be interested"

I closed my eyes hearing what Gregory had said and realized that maybe Ranger had recognized the way that I used paper and highlighters. Maybe it was unique to me because most people worked from a computer screen.

"Annie he's on his way down there with a team, to help Ben close down the trafficking group"

I sat up then totally horrified at the idea that Ranger was coming here. He couldn't find me, and I was so worried what it meant that he was looking for me. Was he wanting to find me because of grandma's death or if he'd identified me then to warn Gregory and Xander of how much trouble I couId be? Did that matter now seeing as Xander already knew my life history? Whichever it was I had to get away from here before he arrived.

"Xander, head up to the Chicago office. I'll threaten Ben with death if he mentions Annie to Manoso. All that anyone will know is that it was you, Xander, who did the research. Annie, I'll try to find out why he's looking for you, but he can be closed mouthed so be prepared that he may not say anything"

The screen went blank as I watched leaving me panicking as to what to do next. To move was instinctive and I was soon collecting my papers before heading to the door.

"Annie, go pack your rucksack, and I'll meet you outside your room"

Fifteen minutes later I had rammed some clothes in the rucksack along with my papers and was pacing back and forth waiting for Zander. Why was he taking so long? I jumped toward the elevator as he emerged from his room and then willed for the elevator to move faster.

"He'll enter the building through the other entrance. I've called an uber to take us into town and then we'll walk to the bus station"

Okay, maybe I couldn't be annoyed with Xander when he'd obviously been planning where we were going. Me, I would have just walked out of the building with no idea of where to go.