Chapter 5
“Who is your source?”
Ella’s lips pressed together mutinously.
He used to love seeing her get mulish, she always looked so cute when she was trying to evade something. But it wasn’t cute now - well, yes, it was - but this was a perilous time.
Ryan kept their gazes locked. “Your source.”
“I can’t tell.”
“We can go in circles all night, Ella. If you don’t tell me, don’t tell the feds, you are withholding information.”
The frustration was practically pouring off her. Those beautiful grey eyes were stormy, anger kindling in the depths. “Then maybe they should arrest me.”
“This is more treacherous than you know. High-up people are involved, the feds are trying to figure out who. They need to find these members, destroy this club before it sucks more young girls down into its pits.”
She glanced away, the internal war inside her so easy to see.
Easy to see because he’d always been attuned to her moods.
He waited, letting her conscious grapple with the decisions facing her. Knowing deep inside that she’d do the right thing, because his Ella always did the right thing in the end.
Abruptly, she shoved away from the bench, sliding off the stool to stride to the ‘fridge. Retrieving a can of Diet Coke, she popped the tab, took a long drink before rubbing the cold can against her brow. Another cold swallow before standing there staring at the fridge’s closed door.
It was a fight inside her, the tension blatantly obvious in her curvy body. As she struggled internally, trying to find a solution that didn’t go against her loyalty, Ryan studied her.
Man, she looked so good. So pretty. The thick golden hair was caught up in a messy bun, little tendrils falling down to curl around her cheeks, sweet little body so deliciously plump, all curves and silky skin. The scent of floral soap teasing his senses when he’d held her close to him. Big grey eyes, cupid lips, haughty little nose.
He remembered as clear as though it was yesterday how she felt against him, those soft lips pressed to his, those silky curves undulating beneath him. Remembered it as though it were yesterday instead of thirteen long years ago.
She’d been through so much and had come out stronger.
But he should have been there for her.
He would be there for her. This time he’d be there for his Ella. Whatever happened, in this she wasn’t alone.
Returning to the bench, Ella placed the soft drink can on the surface and leaned forward on her hands. “I need to sleep on this.”
“No.”
“I know I’m probably going to have to tell you. I just need to think about this.”
“No.”
“I’ve told you everything I’ve done. I’ve cooperated. All I ask is to that you give me until tomorrow.”
“No.”
“Damn it, Ryan, can’t you give me one bloody night?”
“I would, Ella mine, but I don’t have that luxury. You don’t have that luxury. Those young girls don’t have that luxury.”
“Then at least let me ring my source and give them the heads up.”
Ryan actually blinked at that. A slow blink, the only sign of his astonishment. “Seriously?”
“They deserve that much.”
“Time to fly the coop.”
Her laugh was bitter. “Trust me, they won’t be flying, running or hiding. They’re not that kind of person.”
Angling his head to one side, he studied her. “You admire them.”
She nodded.
“This woman.”
Ella didn’t bother to deny it.
Regarding her thoughtfully, Ryan mentally tapped his fingers.
“I think she deserves to know that I’m going to betray her.”
“I can’t allow that.”
“I’m not a suspect, remember? I’m a person of interest, an informer.”
“Who, in turn, has an informer we can’t risk slipping away.”
“Fine. You can listen to the call, trace it, get the address. You can do all that. But she deserves to know.” Ella’s lips tightened. “You have no idea what she’s gone through to get me this information.”
“She’s a victim.”
“Of sorts.”
“Ella-”
“I’ve told you everything. I’ll tell the feds everything. In return I want to talk to my source.”
He shook his head.
She grabbed his hand. “Please, Ryan, I owe her that. You’ll understand once you know.”
Jesus, he wished he could tell her not to worry, that he’d sort this without hurting her. But giving in would only lead to a whole world of hurt for everyone involved, including her. “I’m sorry, Ella.”
Face going blank, she released him.
Near on broke his bloody heart. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
She sat there while he rang Edward, listened to him talk to the fed. Mobile still at his ear, he looked at her. “You tell the feds everything and they will let you ring her before they pick her up. But they’ll already be at the house.”
“Ryan…”
“It’s the best I can do, Ella mine.”
“They can’t go to the house. It’s dangerous for her. It’ll tip off the members.”
“We’ll let Edward know. He’ll sort it.”
After several seconds, her shoulders slumped. “Okay.”
“Edward’s coming around to talk to you.”
“Guess I’d better get dressed then.”
“Ella-”
“Don’t. Just don’t.” She walked out.
The next couple of hours weren’t pleasant for her, though Edward and the female fed who accompanied him were polite, but there was no doubting their brisk efficiency.
Marcia sought to put Ella at ease. They sat at the kitchen table, Edward and Marcia opposite her. Ryan leaned against the wall behind them, putting himself in direct line of Ella’s sight so she could see him.
She repeated what she’d told him. Hands clasped loosely on the file Ryan had retrieved from the coffee table, Edward asked questions while Marcia took notes. When she finally revealed the name of her source, he and Marcia looked sharply at each other.
“Mind repeating that?” Edward requested.
“Rose Carlisle,” Ella said.
“Rose Carlisle, daughter of the judge that sentenced the men who attacked you?”
“Yes.”
“His daughter is giving you the information on the club members?”
“Yes.”
Edward studied her while Marcia tapped the screen on the iPad. Within seconds she brought up a photo and slid the iPad over to Ella. “Is this Rose Carlisle?”
“Yes.”
When Marcia pulled the iPad back, Ryan studied the photo from his nearby position against the wall. Rose was pretty, dark-haired, dark-eyed, no more than nineteen. Sitting in the wheelchair, smiling gently at the photographer, sweet was his first impression. But why Rose? Why would she help Ella?
It was the exact question Edward asked. “Why help you? How did you meet?”
Ella rested her folded arms on the table. “Like I said, I’m not that good at researching things on the internet, I get derailed I guess you could say. I’m not tech savvy. So I researched as best I could. Apparently Rose was already doing research of her own, and she’s very tech savvy, she’s one of the smartest people I’ve met. She knows her way around the internet. Somehow she was alerted to my presence, what I was looking for. She checked me out - background, where I lived and work, what happened to me, who was involved. Not hard to do, apparently.”
Definitely the internet made it a very small world, not to mention perilous.
“She contacted me, we talked. Turns out we both had an agenda, only she was able to get more information and had more knowledge than I.”
“Explain that.” Edward watched her closely.
She met his gaze levelly. “Her friend was worried and Rose w
as able to get out of her what was wrong, and it was very, very wrong. Apparently her friend suspected that her fourteen year old sister was seeing an older man but refused to reveal who it was. The friend found some disturbing things in her sister’s school bag - a wig, some slutty clothes, high heels, you name it. A DVD with porn on it involving what looked to be young girls about her sister’s age. She demanded her sister tell her what was going on but she still refused to talk. The friend threatened to go to their parents and the fourteen year old ran away. Or that was what everyone thought until her body was found a week later naked and beaten. Tortured, with signs of rape and worse. There was no evidence though, the killer or killers had been careful to wash her, use condoms, I don’t know what else, but they were thorough enough to leave no trace. Rose’s friend was distraught. She told the police about what she’d seen but everything was gone, there was no sign of anything in the sister’s room or laptop, no letters, no diary, nothing. It was like it had never existed. Time passed and then Rose’s father gave her a gift. A beautiful necklace with a little unicorn on it. Rose wore it, her friend saw it and freaked out. Turns out Daddy’s gift was the necklace that the little sister had worn when she disappeared. At first Rose wouldn’t listen, refused to believe, but then her friend turned it over and showed her the little gouge in the back. That gouge had happened when they’d gone trail walking, the necklace had snapped and while searching for it the friend had accidentally stepped on it, gouging it against a rock.” Ella shook her head. “Sucks, doesn’t it? Rose asked her father about it, where the gouge in the necklace had come from, the similarities in the flaw. By nightfall the friend had disappeared. Body never found. Meanwhile Judge Carlisle never wavered from the jeweller story.”
The feds might not betray by a twitch what they thought, but Ryan could see that the necklace was something they could use. Start with a small item and trace it back. They’d have to do it carefully, discreetly, but they were experts in their job and they’d succeed.
“Rose never told the police,” Marcia stated.
“It’s her father. Who wants to think their father could be involved in anything like that? Rose clung to the hope that it was just a flaw in the necklace, just a coincidence, but deep down she knew it wasn’t. She started checking her father’s study when he was away, but it’s not easy for a wheelchair bound person to search on top of bookcases, underneath things.”
“Does anyone help her search?”
“No idea. I don’t think so. There doesn’t appear to be anyone she trusts enough, her mother died years ago, and she has never mentioned anyone else to me. But she finds things. It takes awhile, it’s not as though everything is laid out neatly for her. Sooner or later things come down, get left on the desk. Slowly she started piecing things together, and when she found a thumb drive with disturbing pictures on it she finally had to come to grips with what her father was tangled in.”
“She chose not to go to the police with the evidence.”
Ella gave Edward a distinctly unfriendly look. “Rose isn’t stupid, she’s grown up around lawyers and judges, she knows proof needs to be efficient enough to get someone taken in and charged. She didn’t want to dob her Dad in, both because he was her Dad and because he knew others and would alert them, and then what would happen? They’d close things down, go under, and there would be no chance of ever finding them and putting a stop to everything permanently. She had to have proof of involvement, proof that couldn’t be denied. She got that from reading the odd document, from going into the Dark Web…” Ella halted, sighed. “Shit.”
Obviously hadn’t meant to let that out. Ryan gave her a small smile. It’s all right, Ella mine.
“If Rose is as tech savvy as you say, there’s no doubt she knows places to look,” Edward reassured Ella. “It doesn’t surprise us that she’d access the Dark Web. There’s a lot of twisted stuff on there, things no person should have to see or be involved in. That she did it to find these scum is admirable, but high risk. Dangerous. So, she looked in the Dark Web…?”
Taking a mouthful of tea now gone lukewarm, Ella thought about her next words as she took a brief respite from talking. Placing the cup back down, she looked up at Ryan.
Did she even realise that now and again she glanced up at him, seeking reassurance however unknowingly? When she faltered, when she looked guilty, when she felt particularly bad, she’d look up at him. Each time he’d give her a slight smile, a nod, give her that steadiness she needed to continue.
Ah, Ella mine, I’m here for you.
“She found a website with photos, but she traced further, dug more. I’ve heard the Dark Web hides IP addresses, things like that, so I have no idea how she does it, but she slowly traces back. God, she looks at all this twisted shit and somehow traces things back. I don’t know how, I only know it takes awhile. It has to leave a mark on her, a stain on the soul, right? You can’t look at the perverted things out there and not be marked by it.”
Marcia nodded. “She’s a brave girl.”
“Yeah.” Ella rubbed her thumb on the side of the cup. “Braver than me. She’s a good kid.”
They sat in silence for a short time, Edward not pushing, everyone waiting.
Finally, Ella continued, “When she finds something, gets all the proof she can amass, she contacts me. I fly over to Melbourne, meet with her, she gives me names, places, areas to find the incriminating evidence. I buy a burner phone, ring the information through to the AFP, wipe all prints off the phone and ditch it. In fact, I beat the living crap out of it with a hammer.”
Ryan couldn’t help an inward smile. His Ella might not think she was very smart, but she had no idea.
“Will Rose clam up when we appear?” Edward asked.
Anxiety slipped across Ella’s face. “Edward, you can’t just go to her place, she lives with her Dad, the judge, and he’s involved. The feds turn up and he’s going to hit every alarm he can.”
The fed raised an eyebrow. “I’m well aware of that. In fact, the lawyer and psychiatrist being taken in have probably already rang alarm bells.”
“I thought you only had a certain time to keep them?”
Edward didn’t reply.
“Then how do you mean to just ‘show up’?”
“That’s where you come in.”
“Huh?”
“You’re going to contact her, tell her what has happened, and then pass the phone to Marcia. She is going to organise a contact place and time. This won’t be done at the house. Her father won’t know.”
Ella chewed her lip worriedly. “If he finds out-”
“He won’t, Ella. The AFP isn’t stupid. We do surveillance, we’ve got informers. We protect. It’s what we do.” His eyes narrowed. “And we wipe out these scum no matter how long it takes us to find them.”
“You think we’ve been stupid. You think we should have come to you a long time ago.”
“I think you both should have come to us. But I understand Rose’s reasoning and yes, I understand your need to get some revenge.” His eyes softened slightly. “You went through hell, Rose is going through her own hell, and you found each other, found a way to cope, to help others however misguided.”
Ella scowled. “I think we found out a whole lot more than you did!”
“There’s no denying that, and what you gave us was appreciated, but now we can move quicker.” At her unhappy expression, Edward added, “You’ve helped us a lot, Rose’s information has brought down two people in this club already and that wouldn’t have happened so soon without her help. But with Rose cooperating with us, we have other angles we can pull, look at, other people to help her work through the Dark Web. We have the means and qualified techs to accomplish so much more. Rose can still help us a lot.”
Only slightly mollified - Ryan suspected she felt a lot of guilt - Ella nodded.
“Phone Rose,” Edward instructed.
“She’ll be asleep. It’s two in the morning over there.”
“Is
her bedroom close to her father’s?”
“No. She’s on the other side of the house. It’s a mansion.”
“Phone her.”
Jaw tight, Ella got the phone, sat down, dialled. After a couple of seconds she said, “Hi Rose. It’s me, Ella. Sorry to ring you so early. No, everything’s okay. Kind of.” She glanced at Edward and Marcia. “Well, not really.” She relayed what had transpired, what the feds wanted. At the end she went quiet, nodding before handing the phone across the table to Marcia. “Rose’ll talk to you.”
Marcia spoke softly, reassuringly, setting up a time and place to meet two feds in Melbourne before handing the phone back to Ella.
“I’m sorry,” Ella said into the receiver. “Yeah, I know. Guess we both did. Okay. Bye.” Turning it off, she set it down on the table and looked at Edward.
“Thank you.” He stood. “We’ll be in touch.”
Ryan knew the judge’s house would be watched to ensure Rose or her father didn’t flee.
Marcia handed a card to Ella. “My number’s on the front, Edward’s is on the back. Anything you think of, anything you think we need to know, ring us. Anytime.”
“Okay.”
Ryan waited while she politely showed the feds to the door. When she returned he noted her pale features, the suspicious glimmer in her eyes. Pushing away from the wall, he walked over to wrap his arms around her and draw her in against him.
Earlier she might have shoved him away, but after a brief second of standing stiffly, she suddenly melted against him, her arms going around his waist as she rested her head on his chest and drew a shuddering breath.
“Rough night, Ella mine,” he said softly.
There was no answer, but he felt her burrow in closer.
Leaning his chin on top of her head, Ryan closed his eyes, let the quietness lull her, there for her if she cried or ranted. Anything. There to bear the brunt of whatever she was feeling.
He thought of what she’d been doing, everything she’d revealed in the last hours, and marvelled that she would choose to work at night. Many people who’d been attacked would have chosen to stay in the daylight and be locked in tight by nightfall. But Ella? No. And he suspected why. It was a big, fat “f-you” to those who had shaken her world and nearly taken her life.
Echoes Page 12
