Billionaire Happy After

A Detective

"So any reason why you wanted a background check on a heroine addicted prostitute?" Christian Harvey asked as he sat down across from me.

Christian , or his people at least were fast.

We were sitting in a cafe in New York, a little over twenty four hours after I had asked him for the information, and I was already holding a thin file containing everything on Reil.

I glanced down and flipped open the cover, pretending I didn't hear him, even though that would've been basically impossible, since the cafe was pretty quiet. Maybe he'd get the signal that I didn't want to talk and leave me alone.

But, of course, it was Christian Harvey and he rarely ever makes my life easy.

"I didn't think you would be friends with her," he remarked.

I ground my teeth together. "She's not a friend," I muttered. "And you don't know anything about me."

He took a long sip of his coffee, taking his time to respond. For a moment, when I heard the quiet slurping sound, I thought he was done asking questions, and would let me read through the file in peace.

But, we're still talking about Christian Harvey 

"You have a habit of stalking strangers or something?" he asked.

"You have a habit of running people over?" I shot back. If I had known he would see and hold it against me forever, I would've never Googled Christian Harvey . All I found out was that he liked fries with Mayo and it wasn't like I ever use that information.

"So if she isn't a friend, then who is she?" Christian continued, ignoring my jab. "Former enemy, secret lover, someone who stole your boyfriend-"

"Does it matter?" I snapped.

"Considering I'll be asked why I told our family detective to run a background check on a dead heroine-addicted prostitute, yeah it does," he said.

I gulped. "Just say it was for a friend."

"And when they ask who?"

"Someone you don't talk to anymore." I glanced at him. "I doubt we'll talk much after this anyway."

His jaw set, his whole expression becoming a little colder. "No, I guess we won't." And with that, he picked up his coffee and walked away.

"Thanks for the fil-" I started, but he was already out of the cafe.

Well, it's not like I liked him anyway.

I shook my head and turned back to Reil's file, flipping through to try and find some kind of connection to Lucas. She had been born in some small town in Arizona that I had never heard of. Her dad was unlisted and her mom died from cancer a year and a half after she was born. From there she'd been placed in the foster care system.

Lucas had been in and out of foster homes for most of his life too, but he had told me he had lived in California all his life and Arizona was pretty far from San Bernardino County. Since the file said the same for Reil but with Arizona, that also ruled out schools, or meeting randomly at a coffee shop or party or something.

There was the possibility of vacation, but given that the longest Reil had been in a foster home for was a couple months and Nik had admitted to never leaving California, that option seemed unlikely.

Then again, who knows if I can trust anything Lucas told me.

I dug deeper into her file, trying to find some other connection. The idea of school trips crossed my mind, but there was no note of that on any of the papers (because it didn't exist or because it probably hadn't seemed important I wasn't sure). Lucas was not the kind of person to join clubs and go on overnight school trips, so that was an unlikely theory.

Reil didn't have any arrests or convictions, the only time she had been involved with the police was when she had ran away a couple months ago. There had been a search, but they hadn't really been able to do anything since she was eighteen.

The page after that was a report of her death, the time her body had discovered and the cause. Then that was it.

There was no connection to Lucas anywhere.

All I got from the file was several things it couldn't be, and with those ruled out, I wasn't sure where else to look.

There was nothing on the time between her disappearance and her death.

Had she dropped off the radar completely? Changed her identity? That would explain the change in her appearance. The thought made me freeze.

It wasn't hard to get new clothes and change your hair colour, but boob surgery? Not so simple. And I was almost a hundred percent certain she had done something, because it couldn't be possible for your boobs to grow... develop... whatever that much in a couple months. Especially since she had looked a lot skinnier at the mall, and if you added being strung out on heroine to that...

That was another thing.

If she had been hooked on heroine, how could she have afforded something like that? I looked back down at the file. And they couldn't have found a single thing on it? Reil's file now looked suspiciously clean for how she had been found.

I glanced towards the door even though Christian had left a while ago.

I had no idea if Christian knew Reil, he hadn't said anything about it. It seemed like a pretty unlikely coincidence that my road trip buddy would just happen to know about this mystery chick in Lucas' life.

I was probably just reading too much into it. Maybe Christian's detective just wasn't that good. Or maybe there just wasn't that much on Reil. She had run away, so she'd probably used a different name, and it would've taken a lot longer than a day to track all her movements. Maybe she had just ended up in California after leaving and met Lucas at the shop or a cafe or someplace. There were a million more likely explanations as to why her file was as sparse as it was than Christian having to do something with it.

But something about it all still left an uneasy feeling in my gut.

You're being paranoid, Gigs. And it could be for nothing.

Christian had decided not to book a hotel room for tonight. Which weird, since I had figured he would've wanted a room away from me with our fight in the cafe. He was in the shower now, and the file sat on top of my closed suitcase.

I picked at one of my nails as I sat on the pull-out couch, my makeshift bed, debating whether or not I should confront Christian about it. What if it was nothing and he took my accusation the wrong way? Well it wasn't like what he thought of me really mattered... And it wasn't like we were friends or anything.