Page 41 of Juan

Callie made a face. “I doubt the DEA would take this on at this stage. Stella and Hunter, the owners of HICC, have connections and, more importantly, good relationships all over. I’m guessing they can convince the local police to hand over evidence for testing. Assuming there is any.”

Grace considered the answer, then nodded. “I wish that weren’t the case, but it is. No way will the DEA invest resources in something so seemingly unlikely.”

“Even if HICC finds something, how would we tie that to Anthony?” Juan asked. “We’re back to my original question. How would he get his hands on any of those drugs?”

Amber looked up at him and grinned. “I don’t have an answer for you yet, but Callie and I have a possibility.” Damn, he loved the glint of happiness and mischief in her eyes.

She looked to Callie, who shook her head. “You found the thread, girl,” Callie said. “You get to tell them Anthony’s little secret.”

Chapter twenty

“We started with the money, as Callie suggested,” Amber said. “We assumed he’s not making the drug himself for all the reasons we talked about earlier, which means he’s acquiring it from someone. Whether he’s paying for it or has convinced someone to give it to him, we didn’t know, but we started with that question and looked for any suspicious outgoing expenses or ones out of sync with the rest of his spending.”

She paused, marveling at how much easier it was talking about Anthony now. He’d been this mythical beast who inflicted real terror in her life for a long time, but now he was just a man. A man doing terrible things that she was going to help stop. She glanced at Spencer and smiled. She’d come a long way in the past year, but even in her wildest imaginations, she never would have considered she’d be here. Surrounded by friends, her daughter playing happily on the floor, and in a real relationship with a man she trusted and respected. A man she likely even loved, though she hadn’t used that word in so long it felt rusty in her brain.

And it felt so damn good.

“You found something?” Spencer asked.

She draped her arm along his thigh, her fingers curled over his knee, the denim warm under her touch, as she turned back to the group. “We did. Anthony hates bed-and-breakfasts. I mean hates them. He hates the chitchat that happens between guests and owners, hates the decor of every one he’s ever been to. And he really hates how it feels like he’s staying at someone’s house, which he never does because he loses control when he’s out of his own environment for any period of time. He’ll go to parties. He thrives on those. But if anyone invited him somewhere for a weekend, that never happened. Not unless he got a hotel—a real hotel—room.”

“Which is why the charge on his credit card to a B&B in scenic rural Virginia caught Amber’s attention,” Callie said.

“You have access to Ely’s credit card statements?” Grace asked. Everyone looked at her. Amber’s heart stuttered. So caught up in the breadcrumb trail they’d found, she’d forgotten that Grace was bound by different rules than the rest of them.

Grace sighed. “Never mind. I was never here. Not for this part anyway.”

“We don’t want to put you in a bad spot,” Dulcie said.

She waved him off. “Considering some of the shit that goes down in the DEA, this is child’s play. If something comes of it, we’ll just need to strategize on how to protect the prosecution,” she said with a meaningful look to Callie, who nodded. With a regal wave of her hand, she said, “Please continue.”

“It turns out that that’s not the only B&B he’s stayed at in the past year. There were two others,” Amber said.

“Why a B&B and not a hotel, if he’s so particular?” Hawkeye asked.

“Because B&Bs don’t usually have CCTV security systems would be my guess,” Scipio replied.

“You’d be right about that,” Callie said.

“But some of the local businesses do,” Amber added with a grin. Never in her life would she have thought she’d enjoy investigating so much. Then again, she had a personal stake in this. And she wasn’t so blind as to not recognize that a part of her glee was more about taking the power back that her ex had stolen from her.

“He might be willing to stoop to staying at a B&B, but he’s not going to skimp on food. We found dinner charges on his card for each stay, all at, predictably, the most expensive restaurant in the area. Two of which do have CCTV.” She looked to Callie to continue.

“Leo did some quick work for us. It helped that we had the date and time of the dinners, and he pulled some footage. In both, Anthony was enjoying the company of Johanna Milvela. A researcher at Bios Therapeutics,” Callie said.

Kara and Juliana straightened. “What drugs do they work with?” Kara asked.

“They work with several,” Callie said. “But their most successful product is a postoperative anti-nausea.”

“Scopolamine,” Kara said. Juliana nodded.

“Which one?” Juliana asked. Callie rattled off the name, and Kara started typing on her computer.

Less than two minutes later, Kara nodded. “I can confirm it’s a scopolamine-based medication. Not controlled.”

They still had a long way to go, but a bolt of excitement coursed through Amber’s body. Even a day ago, the thought of being able to discover, let alone prove, Anthony’s role in any part of the story Clara and Adrian brought to them seemed impossible. But now, with the pieces coming together, hope glimmered around the edges.

“If it’s not controlled, does that mean it’s easier for it to go missing?” Spencer asked. “Grace said it’s about a gram to cause an overdose. If there have been eleven murders, that’s only eleven grams over the course of a year. Not a lot.”