“The next thing, Austin Tomlinson,” Brett said, and Felix snapped his head towards him.
“What? Why Austin?” His stomach churned. What did they know that he didn’t?
Dominic passed over one photograph that had been found on Felix’s phone when they had retrieved it. “Austin is holding the same roses that have been used in all these incidents.”
Felix shook his head, his body releasing some of the tension. “He couldn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Why?”
“Because that rose was never actually in the photo.”
Brett frowned at him. “What?
“That photo was one I superimposed a flower onto to show Austin how it could be done. We were talking one day about the photographs in the media and how it was so easy to manipulate what is seen. I told him it was easy to fake photographs, and he didn’t believe me, so I used a photo of us both and put that rosethere to make it look like we were romantically involved just to show him how easy it was.”
“Why was it on your phone?” Dominic asked.
Felix shrugged. “No idea. As far as I knew, that photo was never on my phone, only Austin’s laptop.”
“Do you think he was pulled into this as a diversion?” Nick asked.
“It makes sense. But I’m more concerned that if they got that off Austin’s laptop, what else did they get? And when?” Felix said.
****
Chapter 23
Brett
Brett wasn’t so sure about Felix’s certainty about Austin, but he was willing to give the guy a breather for the moment. There was too much riding on it for him to put it aside completely.
“Okay, put Austin to one side for the moment, then. What about the locations where we found Felix’s stuff?”
“The industrial estate we found his phone in was derelict; however, after a little digging, I found something,” Sam said, bringing up a map of the area. “This particular estate was investigated when Carlos’s gang was done.”
“That was part of Addams—sorry, Carlos’s domain?” Dominic asked.
Sam nodded. “They found a stash of drugs there. Worth almost a million. But they also found traces of DNA that pointed towards the trafficking we thought they were involved in. The police emptied it, and it was never used again.”
“So that links us back to Dominic’s ordeal. What about the field?” Brett asked.
Sam shrugged. “I haven’t found any correlation between that location and anything in our past, sorry.”
“Let’s have a look at it again and see if there’s anything,” Brett said.
They grabbed a map and spread it across the table. Sam pointed out their location and where the field was. Brett didn’tsee it so much as feel it when Felix froze. He glanced at him, but Felix’s eyes were glued to the place where they had found his clothes.
“Felix?”
He rose from his seat and paced to the window, crossing his arms over his chest and staring out. Brett moved over to him.
“Are you okay?”
Felix rubbed a hand over his mouth and sighed. “That field… That was one of the few places Uncle Frank took me to. To practise shooting. How did they know that?” He met Brett’s gaze. “This is madness,” he whispered.
Brett felt for him because it truly was madness, and it just kept coming. Whenever they felt like they’d caught a break, it would turn into another dead end or a long winding road before hitting a brick wall.
“Felix? Rico’s wife is here.”