Chapter 83 Kellan
Chapter 83 Kellan
Kellan's POV
Morning light filtered through my window, but it was barely noticed. In front of me, on the desk, my laptop sat with its screen full of all the documents and reports Thomas sent over in the last days: copies of bank accounts, police records, cameras at important junctions. The jigsaw of grains formed one enormous confusing puzzle.
My phone rang right next to my head. I lifted it-the name across the screen glowed. It was Thomas.
“What have you got?" I said, cutting to the chase.
“We need to act fast, Carl is growing paranoid,” Thomas said. “We’ve noticed him destroying files, moving assets around. He knows someone’s digging into his business, but he doesn’t know it’s us.”
Good. That gave us an edge, but not much of one. Carl was too calculating to let his guard down for long.
I later met Thomas and the rest of the team that afternoon in a nondescript café on the outskirts of town: functional in as much as it was well out of the way of prying eyes, and even farther out of reach of Carl.
Thomas spread a sheaf of papers before him across the table. His face was molded into a mask. "Here's what we have so far," he began. "Carl's illegal dealings span about ten years. He drew Eleanor in, probably an unsuspecting accomplice to begin with. Then she started to ask some questions, and Carl took her out.”
My hands were already in fists as I flipped through the pictures and reports: pictures of Eleanor-smiling, free-next to crime scene photos of bruises, blood, and a lifeless body.
"And now he's doing the same to Olivia," I growled.
Thomas nodded. "The patterns are too similar to ignore. But there's something else.”
He pulled out a sheet of paper and slid it toward me. “These are financial transactions linking Carl directly to Eleanor’s death. Payments to a fixer, someone who specializes in making problems disappear.”
I stared at the paper, the blood draining from my face. “You’re saying he paid someone to kill her?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Thomas confirmed. “And the same fixer has been receiving payments again. Recently.”
It weighed and weighed in my mind, heavier and heavier, an anchor against me. "You think he's gonna do something to Olivia?"
Thomas seemed to hesitate; then his words came forth: "It's possible. She starts doubting him, trying to get away from him, he's not going to let her go easily."
The thought that Olivia was to get harmed, or worse, just because of Carl's obsession weighed upon my chest, heavy as an anchor of pure, molten lead.
"I won't let that happen," I firmly said. "We gotta do something before it is too late."
\---
It took the team several hours for cross-checking every shred of evidence we had: Mapping out Carl's operations, finding associates and displaying potential weak links.
"We need more leverage," Thomas said, rubbing his temples. "Something that connects him directly with his crime-something we can use with the authorities."
“Leverage won't matter if Olivia's dead," I snapped. The words came out harder than I intended, but I couldn't catch the frustration spilling over.
Thomas looked at me then, his face softening. "We'll get her out, Kellan. But we need to be smart about this."
I nodded then, taking a deep breath to steady myself. He was right. Charging in without a plan would only make things worse.
But every minute that Olivia was in Carl's grasp counted as eternity.
\---
Night began to fall, and Thomas whisked me aside. "There is something else, still," he whispered.
"What?
Fussing for a while, he produced a folder. "I didn't know if I should show this to you at all, but you have got to see this.
I opened the folder, and my stomach just fell right away. Inside were pictures of Olivia-outside, walking in the garden of the mansion; inside, sitting by the window; always under the watchful eye of Carl or his guards.
But what really disturbed me wasn't the pictures, but rather the notes lining the margins. Things like "obedience training" and "behavior modification" gave me the heebie-jeebies.
"He threatens her as if she belonged to him or something." I whispered.
Thomas's face was grim. "He doesn't think of her as a human being, Kellan, but rather as a replacement for Eleanor."
Upon utterance of those words, I shut the folder, my hands quivering with the anger burning inside me. "Time we speed things up, what is to be done, we take her out from there.
By that time as we reached that wrapping-up conclusion, Thomas' cell began shaking. He looked at the screen and furrowed the skin on his forehead.
"What's it?" I asked.
"It's another transaction," Thomas said, his eyes narrowing down. "Carl just wired a huge sum of money to the same fixer he used for Eleanor."
I felt my blood turn cold.
"It's happening again," Thomas said. "He's planning something for Olivia.
The words hung over me like an angry storm cloud. Carl wasn't a threat anymore-he was preparing to strike. And unless we did something about it soon, it might be too late. for Olivia.