My Addiction (Club Desire #2)(65)
Dex ran his hand over his jaw. “So you called Fretwell to report on everything you learned? Minus Ralston’s extracurricular activities and your suspicions around the attacks on The Dungeon members?”
She nodded. “He didn’t think too much of your arrival, and left me with the same instructions. But after the incident with Kate and Mark Stanton, I sent Mr. Fretwell the pictures, and…”
Dex jerked in his chair. “You took those pictures?” He remembered the flash of a camera and scanning the crowd to try to see who had taken it.
Her brow furrowed and a few fresh sobs broke through. “I wanted to get him something more concrete so he would keep me on his payroll. It wasn’t even about the money at that point. I liked knowing everything that was going on behind the scenes. It was addictive.” She dropped her gaze to the can in her hand. “I sent the pictures of Stanton to him, and he seemed happy with the progress of the case and asked me to find out more information about you.”
Dex’s stomach clenched. The same pictures that were found scattered around Mark Stanton’s body. “So you passed them to Fretwell. How did you send them to him?”
She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, as if to help her continue to calm herself. “He didn’t want any email trails, so he asked me to drop them in the mail, first class, but not high priority or next day since those are tracked.”
Dex filed the information away to add to the growing puzzle. Fretwell was smart. Email or uploading to digital cloud storage could be easily tracked. “So you don’t know for sure if he ever actually received them?”
She shook her head. “He said he did. He said he was upset about Kate doing something like that in front of a crowd, but he sounded oddly proud of her, especially once he heard why she’d done it.” She swallowed and licked her lips. “But he still pushed me to find out more about you. He said something about you showing up when you did and capturing Kate’s interest so completely didn’t ring true.”
Dex thought about those pictures. If Fretwell had hard copies, then either someone had taken them and copied them to scatter around Stanton’s body or Fretwell had done it. Or, the originals were still with Fretwell, and someone had gotten them off of Opal’s phone. He would leave that last part to his analyst team. He knew they would be checking her backups and any cloud storage, as well as any unauthorized access to her device.
“So what information did you find out about me?” The other agents had already filled him in on the fact that Opal overheard he was FBI and had shared that information. But she wouldn’t tell them who she’d shared it with.
That’s when she had asked to speak to Dex.
She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “One of the janitor’s closets sits next to Ralston’s office and shares a wall with his private bathroom. It’s always locked, but several weeks ago, I lifted his key ring and had duplicates made of several of the keys. I found out that if I edged behind the storeroom shelves and listened near the mop sink, I could hear into his office. Even when the bathroom door was shut, sound carried easily.” Dex smiled as another puzzle piece fell into place. He remembered being in Ralston’s office and thinking someone might be listening.
“What did you overhear?”
She took a drink of Dr. Pepper before answering. “All kinds of things, but most of them of no interest to Mr. Fretwell or my other client. But then I saw Balkins and Stanton going into his office and figured something interesting might be going on.”
She pursed her lips. “That’s when I heard him tell them both that he couldn’t kick you out of the club because you were FBI, here on a case. They had gone to Ralston to demand you be stripped of your membership, or they would leave The Dungeon and take with them most of the members, who would demand refunds.”
Dex thought of his last meeting in Ralston’s office. “Did you send copies of those pictures to Stanton?”
She paled, and Dex let the heavy silence sit until she started to fidget.
“Yes. I sent them. But only to scare him. He found out Ralston and I were seeing each other. He also somehow found out I was a PI.”
She took another can of Dr Pepper off the tray and popped the top before chugging half of it. “Stanton was going to tell the members that Ralston was paying me to spy on them so files could be built on each of them, in case he needed any leverage in the future. It would’ve ruined him.” She made a chopping motion with her hand. “And there were a lot of very powerful people who could’ve made my life a living hell. Stanton started blackmailing me, but when the incident with Kate happened and I snapped the picture, he decided to turn the tables.”
“What was he blackmailing you for? What did he want?”
She shook her head. “Small investigation jobs to check up on his subs and other members of The Dungeon, and then he started asking me to have sex with his associates. Billing me as a kinky sub who could take anything they could dish out.”
“Wow.” Dex was surprised she would admit to that, since it gave her a very large motive for Stanton’s murder.
As if she’d read his mind, she added, “Look, Stanton was a scumbag. The world is a better place without him. What he did to me was innocent compared to what he has done to others. If you ever catch who bashed his head in, there will most likely be a line to buy them a drink.”