Transparency by Charles Royce (children's books read aloud txt) 📕

of mine. We were standing in front of our condo building, and a totally different guy was taking pictures of us. Large guy, big round cheeks. And just now, when we came out of the building, I saw him again. Same fat-cheeked guy. When I stared back, he left.”

“Are you sure you’re not just being paranoid? Like the first guy coulda just been some peeping pervert lurking around your block. And maybe the guy this morning was just a tourist taking a picture of that building. It’s pretty iconic.”

“Maybe. That’s why I didn’t say anything to my cop friend.” Micah rests his head against the window glass. “I think I’m just freaking out.”

Haylee starts the car. “I think maybe we’re both just freaking out.”

She drives the black SUV out of the parking lot, onto the road. She stops at the intersection and waits for a green light.

“That’s where my windshield got busted.” Her finger brushes Micah’s chest. “Right there.”

“That’s the car wash. The car wash? Where you saw—”

“Ghost. Yes.”

C h a p t e r   2 5

THE ONLY KNOWN pictures of Bastien Morrell, aka Ghost, that have been taken in the past ten years are the two that are now front and center on Tracy’s computer screen—a blurry pic of him in a wheelchair photographed by a deceased drug addict, and a much clearer photo of him taken from what looks like a car with a cracked windshield. The latter was taken by Haylee Connelly, wife of Micah Breuer’s defense attorney, Shawn Connelly. Ghost is in profile, holding what looks like a dark jacket, wearing a dingy white tank top. Above his right shoulder blade is a tattoo of a ghostlike figure and fragments of cursive writing, the full transcript eaten away by a bullet-wound scar. Tracy zooms in on Ghost’s tattoo.

Since Josh chickened out of their plans to play amateur sleuth for the evening, Tracy has reclaimed the rest of her night to resume her latest passion project in defiance of company orders. Even though a Press-sanctioned article on the investigation into Ghost’s past was thwarted by her company, she has opted to do one anyway, perhaps for her blog, or maybe just some simple fodder for Twitter. What started as a regular edit job of her Élan-endorsed interview with Lilith McGuire, who was essentially crucified to a door by Ghost in a mad dash to clear his name, has turned into a crusade of sorts for her. She has taken on a personal mission to find out who Bastien Morrell really was—his background, his family, his life before selling drugs.

Working in editorial for Press magazine, Tracy has access to databases all over the world. Printouts of obscure articles surround her desk—old French newspapers, military photos of Bastien’s service in a Secret Ops division in the French Foreign Legion, the article on Lilith McGuire’s attack. As she continues reading the obscure Internet article on Ghost, her phone rings.

“What?” she answers.

“God. Such disdain,” Josh says. “You still mad?”

“No.”

“Then why are you so shorty short?”

“You ever seen this picture of Bastien’s tattoo?”

“What? You mean Ghost?”

“He has a name.” Tracy uses her shoulder to secure her phone, and then hits print. “We’ve talked about this.”

“Sorry, yes, Bastien Morrell. Are you still working on that article?”

“You remembered his full name. There’s hope for you yet.”

“The tattoo is the European symbol for an intersection, according to Jenna,” Josh says. “The words around it she doesn’t really know, can’t make sense of it.”

“Lilith McGuire thinks it’s an address. When we interviewed her, she said Bastien mentioned ‘home’ when he talked about it, but she doesn’t remember what else he said.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Josh says. “Bastien is gone now. Does it matter?”

“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that. You of all people should want to know more about Mr. Bastien Morrell. If the company hired him to kill Lennox, we need to know how and why so we can help Jenna.”

“You’re right, I wasn’t thinking,” Josh says.

“No one else thought about him either. Do you know there’s only one article that even asks the question Who was Bastien Morrell? And I had to dig for that little fucker. It’s from some obscure publication in the depths of LA, by a black woman of course.”

“Of course.”

“Your understanding is breathtaking.”

“Hey, I’m trying here. Look, I applaud anything that will help Jenna prove her case. We know she didn’t do any of this. Not one single part of Lennox’s death.”

“I know.”

“But is that what this is really about?” Josh asks. “Getting information that will help our friend Jenna?”

Tracy stalls. “Yes.”

Josh laughs. “I’ve known you for what, twelve years now? I can tell when you’re passionate about something. It blinds you. It’s okay, though; I love you for it. So let’s hear it. What else have you found out about Bastien Morrell?”

Tracy reaches for the Lilith McGuire Press article. “In our article, Lilith mentions seeing Home Schooling for Dummies on Bastien’s bookshelf, and a school photo of a child, maybe five or six years old. A police report lists contents of Bastien’s bedroom, and mentions a few items of children’s clothing, sized for a small child, maybe five or six.”

“Right. In his letter that implicated Bastien, Lennox mentioned that Ghost had a son.”

She picks up another sheet of paper. “But I’m looking at the child’s birth certificate. Name is Dennison R. Morrell, a boy, born January 7, 2009. Parents are Bastien L. Morrell and Dawn Elizabeth Gerard. There’s a handwritten note in French, which translates to ‘mother died during childbirth.’”

“I don’t get what you’re saying.”

“Lilith told us that just before he got suspicious of her motives and pinned her to the door, Bastien mentioned he’d just taken his son to the airport. At that time, Bastien’s son would have been ten. Ten years old. Not five or six. Do you know how much a child grows from age five to age ten?”

“Maybe he was short for his age.”

She stares at the photos on her