Chapter 5

Aiden clasped the door handle with his trembling hand, took a deep breath, and entered Private Investigator Kyle Deverson's office.

"Good evening, Mr. Kesley," Kim, the receptionist, greeted him, peeking out from behind her holographic computer screen. "Mr. Deverson expects you. Please go right in."

He nodded and rushed toward the carved oak door at the end of the narrow corridor. PI Deverson's text from earlier meant he'd finally stumbled upon something to do with Claudia's case and Aiden was buzzing with the need to know what it was.

"Come in," the PI said when Aiden knocked.

"What do you have?" Aiden demanded, bypassing any and all small talk. Six months had passed since he'd last seen the PI, and in those six months, the man seemed to have made more progress than Aiden had in almost two years.

PI Deverson offered a tight smile and invited Aiden to sit. He ran his fingers through his short dark brown hair, the hue matching the tone of his skin, then produced a small data chip and slid it to Aiden over the luxurious wooden surface of his desk. "It took some maneuvering and a lot of favors, but I managed to get a copy of the autopsy recording."

"How?" Aiden had gone after the video himself in the first months after Darren Howe's private trial, but the most he'd gotten was a big nothing and a police warning for misconduct.

PI Deverson rubbed his beard and let out a satisfied hum. "I have my ways, though unfortunately, this is the best I can offer right now, Mr. Kesley. I watched it once already and… I have to say that I couldn't find any clues." That didn't mean Aiden wouldn't, but he tried not to get too optimistic. His desperate efforts to get the authorities to tell him anything had led nowhere, after all. "As for the court proceedings… Those are proving a lot trickier. But I'll keep trying."

Of course. They were most likely to shed some light on this entire thing Aiden had been trying to solve for so long. He was used to disappointment though, the panic and rage that had once consumed him nowadays dulled down to a pang of irritation and a tightening of his chest.

Still, this was a giant step compared to the endless dead ends, even if Aiden didn't know whether it would yield anything useful. Maybe it would, or maybe it would just raise more questions like that phone call between Liu Zhihao and Darren, which the police had never made public.

Just like the investigation and the trial proceedings that the authorities still refused to comment on.

Before his murder, Liu Zhihao was the Head of the Huangsin Conglomerate, a competitor to the DuLaurent Corporation. He was also one of Darren's clients. The supposed phone call incriminated him as the one who'd ordered the assassination of Aiden's fiancée, Claudia, but according to the police reports, he'd canceled the hit a few days later. Darren Howe had gone through with it regardless, and then murdered Liu as well.

As for the motive… There wasn't one because Darren Howe apparently suffered from borderline psychopathy and thus didn't need one.

Aiden squeezed the data chip, thinking back to Darren's indigo eyes. A shiver racked his chest. They'd been sharp, following him like a hawk stalked its prey. Alert. Intelligent. Impossible to miss even in a crowd; hard to forget even when he tried to. They hadn't seemed like the eyes of someone with a sick mind.

"Mr. Kesley?" PI Deverson's hoarse baritone snapped Aiden back to the present. "A piece of advice. I'd leave watching the autopsy for a good day and headspace. It's not an easy thing to see."

There was a hint of concern in the man's voice, though Aiden didn't need it. Whatever was on that video wouldn't break him. Couldn't. He didn't have the luxury for that or to wait for a day where his mind would cooperate.

"I will be fine." He stood up, pushing the data chip into his pocket. "I hope to hear from you again. Soon."

"I'll keep you in the loop, Mr. Kesley."

Aiden left the PI's office and headed home, grabbing a takeaway dinner from the Asian place nearby. He ate some of it, but his stomach was too queasy to let him enjoy the sweet-sour curry, so he gave up. Chills crawling across his back, he settled on the couch in his lounge with his laptop and the data chip.

As much as he wanted to, he couldn't bring himself to start the recording immediately. He stared at the play button, his mind racing. Hope fluttered in his chest that maybe there would be something in the video that the police and his PI might have missed. A clue, a hint, as to why Darren Howe hadn't stood down, and maybe an explanation about the weirdness of the entire case.

Because there had to be a reason for it. For why the justice system had let a murderer live when he should've been given the death penalty like everyone else who committed such crimes. Aiden had tried and tried to make sense of it, but his countless pleas to the authorities had failed to get him the closure he needed to move on from this, so he was done waiting and playing by the rules.

Aiden thought back to his call with Rick, a pang of guilt stirring within him. He toyed with the idea of calling his friend and confessing everything he had been up to so he could poke Rick's mind, but he quickly shut it down. Rick would worry and try to convince him this wasn't the way. That he needed to let his obsession with the truth go, say his goodbyes once and for all, and move on. And he would be right to do it, too.

Stroking the amber stone without taking it out of his pocket, Aiden took a deep breath. If he let go of the hunt for answers and revenge, his connection to Claudia would really be gone. And he couldn't have that, not before he'd gotten to the bottom of her death and made the murderer pay. Then and only then could he allow himself to move on.

After blankly staring at the laptop for close to an hour, the visceral need to know what was on that data chip won, gluing him to the screen. The video was thirty minutes long, consisting of a coroner examining Claudia's body. Aiden's stomach churned at the first pass of the camera over her beautiful face. It was so much like her father's—her brow, her straight nose, even the cut of her jaw. She was the spitting image of Marcus DuLaurent, aside from her gold-like eyes.

Maybe if Aiden had been the Aiden from two years ago, he would have lost it the moment the camera focused on her blank stare. But he wasn't. He rarely felt anything other than numbness these days, didn't really know how to anymore, and so he just sat there and watched, searching for anything that could shed some light on why Claudia had had to die.

She had been shot in the chest. The wound was dark against her beige skin, but other than it, nothing stood out. The same was true for the rest of the recording at first glance. Before Aiden could watch the video again, before he could scrutinize every second of it and reevaluate it, he ran out of time. Night had shifted to morning at some point without him realizing and his phone alarm was going off next to the laptop.

He grunted, but he didn't really have a choice. As much as he wanted to stay home and find whatever missing piece was hiding in the recording, he had to catch the space shuttle to the Horizons Space Prison Station and pretend he was just a warden doing his job.