Page 71 of Forced Into Your Arms
Unknown:You need to leave this alone.
Sam’s response sat directly beneath it.
Sam:Too late for that.
I sat up straighter and scrolled through the thread, but there was nothing else. Either the earlier messages had been deleted, or those were the only two messages ever exchanged from that number.
I picked up my work phone and tried to call the number, but it was no longer in service, letting me know it was a burner phone more than likely.
I took a screenshot and sent it to Mace.
Me:Find out who this number belongs to.
He immediately responded.
Mace:Where you get it from?
I stared at the question for a second before responding.
Me:Sam’s phone.
The dots appeared, then disappeared.
A few seconds passed before his response came through.
Mace:You got in it?
I frowned.
Me:Yeah. Why?
This time, it took him longer to answer.
Mace:Just asking. I’ll see what I can find.
I looked at his response for a second.
Something about the exchange felt off, but Mace hadn’t been himself since Sam died. None of us had. I wasn’t about to turn every strange response into something it wasn’t when there were already enough questions I couldn’t answer.
I continued through the phone until the time forced me to stop. There was too much on it to rush through, and I wasn’t about to miss something because I was trying to handle two things at once.
I locked it inside my desk, grabbed my keys and headed for the door.
My assistant looked up when I walked past her desk. “You’re leaving?”
“For a little while.”
“You have the contractor coming back at three.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Where are you going?” I stopped and looked at her. She raised both hands. “Never mind. Not my business.”
“Now you learning.”
I heard her laugh as I walked off.
The apartment building Milan sent me was about ten minutes away from the restaurant and sat near downtown. By the time I arrived, she was standing outside with a woman in a fitted tan suit who looked like she’d been checking the time every thirty seconds.
