Chapter 188: Arrival of the Agents: Hannah
She sat there and listened to all the details and only nodded along. By the end of it, she gave me a little frown.
"Thank you for letting me know," she breathed. "I hope that things are finally solved once and for all. I would have thought they would have caught all of the guys by now."
"Marcus and Ed say they think it’s a rogue person left over. Just trying to seek their personal revenge," I said with a frown.
"That’s sick," Lori huffed. "I mean to think that people could be hunting you down because why? They can’t get rich off selling women any more? That’s just vile. I mean, really."
"People will do about anything for money," Roman chimed in.
I nodded. "Yeah, but we are going to try not to let it get in the way of our happiness. I mean, of course we are going to take all precautions to protect ourselves. However, I just don’t want to go back to how things were before. Where I was just sitting around, miserable and afraid. So we are going to live life as safely as we can. They may be able to limit what I can do, but they cannot control me entirely. I’m not there anymore."
She smiled at me and placed a hand on her chest. "That really warms my heart. I’m so glad that you’ve had this shift in perspective."
I gave a shy look and a one shoulder shrug. "I just don’t want to live my life on pause for people who aren’t important to me. People who want me to do that to leave me feeling vulnerable and easily manipulated. That’s not going to be me. I have people to help."
She held up her mug with an ear to ear grin. "Cheers to that."
We all raised our mugs, gave a weak chuckle, and took a sip of our coffee. Just as the conversation started to shift and we tried to go about our morning with all of that behind us, the sound of footsteps stopped at the door. Looking over, I was surprised to see Ed and Marcus there.
"You guys made it early," Roman stated, the first one to greet them.
"Our captain managed to pull some strings and get us on an earlier flight," Ed explained.
They moved into the room and sat down onto a loveseat across from us. "I guess we should skip the pleasantries and get right into the information," Marcus suggested. "Seems like something is going on that we need to get a jump on before it gets the jump on us. Are you two ready to talk about it? Everything since last time we spoke. In as much detail as you can give, for our official records."
Roman and I looked at one another. Lori moved over and sat on the arm of the couch next to me, looping her arm around me in her way of showing silent support.
Turning back to the two agents, I nodded. "Yeah, I’ll do my best."
"If you need a break at all, just let us know. We are going to record this interview for our records," Ed stated, pulling out a tape recorder and placing it on the coffee table. "Ready when you are."
I sucked in a shaky breath.
It was a bit of a whirlwind to have to jump right into an interview with the FBI again. I knew that it was going to happen that day, but not that early. And without warning.
I had to gather my thoughts, thinking back to the time spent since they had left before. There were many things that came to mind, but I really think were innocuous. It had been my own tender mind being paranoid about things that weren’t really a concern. Like that scuba diver, obviously.
I filtered through my memories, collecting the ones that had been in town. Ones where I very clearly and distinctly had that feeling of someone watching me. Or that I had spotted the car. All of the information I had on that bodyguard, Nick. I went over every little detail I could recall. Down to the street names and time of day I could recall the instances being on.
When it came to recount the attempted kidnapping, I felt my breath catch in my throat. I swallowed, or tried to. My hands were trembling. Just like that, I was right back to that day. Outside of the charity, the wind blowing, the leaves crunching under my feet. The panic. The gloved hand over my mouth. The struggle.
Lori’s grip on me tightened, and I took another breath. I didn’t realize just how close I came to crying.
Taking those moments to compose myself, I tried to remember what I had just told Lori. That I wasn’t going to let the Auction House be in charge of my emotions. They didn’t have ownership over me - only I did.
I continued the recounting. I got through it all without shedding a single tear, and for that, I was proud of myself. I was taking ownership of myself. I was taking the power away from the Auction House and that was a great feeling.
"Thank you, Hannah," Marcus breathed once I was finished.
"We will definitely get on the case about this car. We’ll talk to the local police to try and get that partial license plate you remembered at the time. We do... Have some news from our end. It’s sort of the way that we were motivated to get here as soon as possible."
"Okay," I breathed. "What is it?"
The two looked at each other and leaned forward. "That Nick guy, the bodyguard? We did some digging... That wasn’t... Nick Greene from the agency Roman listed."
Roman and I looked at one another, alarm and confusion settling in over our features. Looking back to them, I asked, "What does that mean?"
"Nick Greene is missing. After doing some more digging, it appears that whoever you were working with was not him. We are guessing that it was our rogue agent that was waiting to get an opportunity to do something," Marcus explained.
His hands clasped together, and his eyes looked grave. "It’s assumed at this point, because it’s been so long, that the real Nick is dead."
I blinked. My mind couldn’t even seem to wrap around what they were saying.
Not only was it awful to hear someone had passed, but he had likely passed because someone wanted to get close to me. I didn’t allow my mind to wonder how he had passed and if he had suffered. I only hoped he hadn’t.
There were so many questions and uncertainties rising in my being. And the realization I had been riding around in a car and being alone with a person that was lying in wait for the perfect opportunity to do me harm - and, I guess, get away with it - was enough to cause a shiver to roll through me.
"I know that this is a lot to lay on you all at once," Ed stated slowly. "However, we want to be as transparent as possible."
"Thank you," I muttered.
"Where does this leave the Honda Civic?" Roman asked, referencing the car I had noticed following me around and had been at the gala.
Marcus shrugged and sat back. "We can’t be sure. It could be an accomplice, it could be something completely and totally unrelated, you know?"
"How could it be unrelated?" I asked.
I could hear the doubt and disbelief in my own voice. I couldn’t really wrap my head around the thought of something else, completely unrelated would be happening at the same time. And the thought of it being something unrelated, was nerve wracking.
He shrugged. "You are in the public eye, you know? There’s a lot of weirdos out there. It’s possible it’s a random guy. But it’s hard to say. That doesn’t mean we aren’t going to do anything about it."
"Oh," I breathed.
My stomach flipped. That wasn’t something I had considered and something I couldn’t really accept. What if it was? A stalker AND the Auction House at the same time?
"I don’t mean to rattle you. Like we said before, we just want to be transparent," Marcus stated.
Nodding and frowning, I looked over to Roman. He was staring at the two of them. "What do we need to do, then?"
"Well, the security is great. Don’t go anywhere without them," Ed stated. "Stay alert and aware. I think you guys are already operating like you should be. Just be assured, we are looking into both. It’s still not certain who it is and what their intentions are," Ed explained. "We just need to be proactive and such."
I nodded and bit the inside of my lip. "So are you guys officially back around?"
Marcus nodded. "For the time being, yes. If it’s okay with you guys, we will work from here for the day. Just to be near in case we need anymore information."
"Of course," Roman nodded.
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