The Line Begins To Blur

Chapter Eight: When Desmond Calls

Declan

It had been two days since I last saw Scarlett. I slipped out of her apartment in the early morning hours when the sun was just starting to break up the night sky. I'd been keeping myself busy the past couple of days stalking Alex around Portland. Despite him being the nephew of the Pakhan, he still had to pay his dues and rise up through the ranks before he was given any part of their syndicate.

He's been tasked with doing their grunt work. Mostly selling drugs and soliciting young women. He tells them stories about how he can help them become a model or a social media influencer. Anything they want to hear all to get them to agree to come to some meeting place so he can drug them and kidnap them.

I'll give the kid this, he was pretty good at covering his tracks which was making it annoyingly difficult to try and pin point where their possible warehouse is. I need to find where they were processing this shit. The faster I find that, the faster I can find out where they're getting it from and burn their shitty little kingdom to the fucking ground.

It was late, maybe midnight. The first snow flurries of the season were starting to fall, leaving a light coating of white on the city. Alex was still making his stops around the city. I followed behind in my Jag trying to be as inconspicuous as possible; not following too close, parking a far enough distance away when he made his stops.

Fortunately I was able to have Tommy, one of my guys, hack his phone so that I could track him. I know this city so well I could follow him from parallel roads, keeping buildings between us so he wouldn't notice a blacked out car tailing him. Putting my car in park I looked out of my tinted windows at the lanky boy.

He was tall, probably five foot eleven with black hair. He was much skinnier than me, he had some lean muscles but it looked like he would snap if he lifted anything over fifty pounds. Looking both ways he jogged across the street and up to the front stoop of an old brick apartment complex in midtown. Trotting up the stairs he again looked both ways before he knocked on the door and then immediately walked inside. If it was anything like his other stops, he'd be in and out in ten minutes.

My head flung back against the headrest of the seat, an exasperated sigh leaving my lips. Another ten minutes staring at the door waiting for something, anything. My hand shot up to pinch the bridge of my nose before I started massaging it in frustration. Mindlessly, my other hand snuck into my pants pocket and removed my cell phone, unlocking it before I brought it up to my face. I tapped a couple of times on the screen until I brought up my profile for Scarlett Murphy. I stole a picture from her instagram of her laying on a patch of green grass surrounded by autumn leaves. Her eyes were squinted from how wide her smile was as more leaves were falling from above. Her blonde hair lay spread out around her smiling face, no doubt a staged photo. I found myself scrolling her instagram more than I'd like to admit over the past few days.

Scrolling down some more, I tapped on her text messages bringing up a list of people she's contacted over the past couple of days. Reading through the names I don't see anyone out of the ordinary, her delinquent step brother, the stoner who lived below her and her Uncle. Backing out of that screen and onto the main profile I tapped on her call log, again going through the list of names which was the same as her text messages. Backing out again I tapped on her internet search history. A sarcastic laugh escaped me as her top search had been 'How to un-hack a phone'. Her second search had been of my name. Good luck, little one. She wouldn't find anything. In the era of social media, I don't exist.