“They must have lost power,” I said. “I think I saw a flashlight in one of the boxes.”
“You wait here,” he said, stepping out into the hallway. “I’m going to go see if the attendant has a flashlight.”
“It won’t matter if he does,” I said with a sigh. “He had to buzz us in. The door is electric. I think they have a contingency set up if this were to happen. It triggers the manual locks to engage. We’re stuck in here.”
Chapter Fourteen
HUGH
This wasn’t happening. Not now. Not when he was so close.
“I’m going to search for a flashlight and hope the batteries still work.” Honor’s voice was calm and soothing across the room as if this happened to her all the time.
He followed the sound of her voice and rested his hand on her arm, making her stiffen beneath his touch. “Let me help.”
“I don’t need help.” Her voice was as strained as the muscles in her body.
She slipped away from his touch. The sound of her grunts and stuff hitting the ground were followed by light illuminating under her chin from the flashlight. She was trying to make a scary face.
“It still works,” she squealed like she’d won the lottery.
“We aren’t going to find anything until the lights come back on,” Hugh said.
“Ye of little faith,” she said, crossing the room. The yellow light bounced over the floor and then the boxes on the other side of the room, only stopping when she got to one labeled Never Again.
He could only imagine what she would have packed in that type of box.
She was lifting things out and depositing them at her feet. First, a clarinet. Then a delicate musical tinkling filled the air, only it wasn’t from an instrument but from a skirt.
“You tried belly dancing?” He couldn’t keep the smile out of his voice.
“Tried, conquered, and moved on when I discovered my love for tacos,” she teased.
“Ah…here we go,” she said, lifting a package out of the box. She tore into some plastic and pulled out a long cylindrical object. A crackling sound happened next, and then a neon glow lit her face.
“Glow sticks?” he asked.
She tossed him the lit one and pulled out more, cracking and placing them around the area, giving them light. “Better this than the glow-in-the-dark paint I once wore to a nudist community’s masquerade party.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I would have paid to see that.” He chuckled and took his stick back to the box he’d been search through. “So why did the glow sticks make your never-again box?”
“Sharks. Let’s just leave it at that.”
It was starting to make sense now why Teddy didn’t want Hugh and Honor to meet. He’d wanted to keep her for himself, and he almost had.
Some things never changed, and some things never stayed the same. Teddy fell on one side of the spectrum, and Honor fell on the other.
“What are you going to do with the ledger once you have it?” Honor asked.
“Turn it over to my boss and hopefully put Victor away for a long time.”
“They couldn’t tie him to Teddy’s murder, could they?” Honor’s voice was somber and quiet, but Hugh had heard it just fine. “You’re trying to get justice for him. Something he couldn’t do for himself.”
Hugh lifted his gaze and turned in her direction. “We were brothers, even if it wasn’t by blood. He gave his life for that intel to try and help me close a case I’d been working on for six long years.”
Hugh swallowed hard, biting back the memory that hit him like a ton of bricks.
She was watching him with her sharp gaze. Something flashed in the depths of her eyes as if she’d just put the rest of the pieces of the puzzle together. “You were trying to bring this Victor guy down for six years, and Teddy only showed up on the scene when? About two years ago?”
Damn. He hadn’t meant to let that slip.
“Something like that,” Hugh said, turning his gaze back to the box and hoping she’d drop it.
“You said you visited him in jail, but you started talking to him again long before that, didn’t you? You pulled him into your case. It was you who put him up into working for Victor.”
Hugh dropped his gaze and clenched his eyes tight. “I didn’t ask. He offered.”
“And you just didn’t tell him no,” Honor growled. “How could you do that? How could you let your brother go to prison for your case?”
“I begged him to let me help by telling my superiors. But he knew if the truth came out, my cover would have been blown, and then the work that we’d both done would have been all for nothing. He wanted Victor as badly as I did.”
Hugh was met with silence from his admission. Was she mulling it around in her head, trying to make sense out of it?
Damn, if Hugh could do it all over again, he would have never let Teddy play this game of cat and mouse.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?” Hugh asked, abandoning his box. He turned the full weight of his gaze in her direction. “Why did I let him? Why did he offer? Why not just come clean?”
She shook her head. “Why did he want Victor just as badly as you? What was his reasoning that he’d risk his freedom and put his life on the line? Especially, after you said, he’d kept running away. He didn’t owe you anything, so why was this so important to him?”
Honor Elizabeth Bennett wasn’t just beautiful; she was smart and not just book smart but street smart. He wouldn’t get away with brushing off her question, and she wouldn’t be satisfied until she got the truth, no matter how it would change her opinion of him or Teddy.
Hugh dug his fingers into the tension building in his neck before he answered. “Teddy’s mother died because of Victor. Back when Victor was working his way up through the gang hierarchy, he’d been tasked with collecting money from shops around town. They paid for what everyone was calling protection at the time, only Victor never did protect them. Teddy’s mother paid, though. She was smart like that. Victor had been there to collect the ‘insurance money’ when someone tried to off Victor, and Teddy’s mom died in the crossfire.”
Honor’s mouth parted, and she snapped it closed.
“Teddy wanted payback, and I was trying to get it for him. I wanted more than anything to give him closure so he could see that justice got served…but at every turn, I was cut off. It was as though they knew I was a cop.”
Honor pulled in a deep breath. “How did Teddy get involved?”
“Victor had been trying to look out for the kid. He’d offered him odd jobs, including some not-so-legal ones. So, when Teddy found out I was digging for dirt, he offered to help, and I tried to talk him out of it, but you know Teddy….”
“He would have done it regardless,” Honor said. Her gaze lost focus, as if tuning back into her memories.
“And he did,” Hugh said, clearing his throat and biting back the anger he’d felt when he found out that Teddy had inserted himself in with Victor’s league of goons. “So now you know everything. Now you know why this ledger is so important and why I need it.”