Fall (The Ragnarok Prophesies) (43 page)

“Nice to meet you, Arionna,” she said, letting go of my hand to shake Ronan’s.

I couldn’t help but notice the way she raked her gaze up and down his body, a purely appreciative gleam in her eye. Her smile widened a little.

She liked him.

Ronan seemed to notice, too. He shook her hand briefly, his expression devoid of warmth. “Ronan,” he said, the pause before he gave his name full of reluctance. He took a step away from her.

Annette’s smile fell, her gaze darting back to me and then to Ronan, assessing.

I briefly considered lying to her and saying Ronan was my brother, if only to see him squirm under her attention. It would have served him right for getting on my nerves, but I wasn’t that person. Annette didn’t stand a chance with Ronan, and even if he did annoy me, giving her the impression he was available would be cruel. No one could compete with Dani’s memory for him.

I gave Annette a small, distracted smile instead, letting her draw whatever conclusions she wanted about my relationship with Ronan.

She apparently decided he was off limits, and eased herself back down into her high-backed chair without complaint. “Please, have a seat,” she said, motioning toward the posh chairs situated across from her desk. “Would you like water? Coffee?”

“No, thanks,” I said, perching on the edge of a chair.

“No,” Ronan said, refusing a chair. For someone who could look so relaxed, he was as uptight and rigid as Dace. He never sat in mixed company, like ever.

Annette didn’t seem offended by his decision to remain standing though. She merely set the calculator to the side and leaned back to look at us. “I have to admit I’m not real sure I’m the right person to help you, but I’ll try. What sort of information is it you’re looking for?” she asked.

I waited for Ronan to say something, but he didn’t speak up. Figures. Guess I had to talk our way out of this one.

“Well, here’s the thing…” I said.

“What is your company’s policy on unwelcome gifts?” Ronan asked while I wracked my brain for a way to start this conversation.

“Erm, excuse me?” Annette blinked rapidly, caught off guard by the question.

“Say someone is being stalked and the offender uses your company to send unwelcome gifts or threatening messages. How would someone go about requesting your company cease and desist?”

Annette’s expression clouded with confusion. “I’m not sure―”

“Would the victim require police intervention or could they simply call your offices and request deliveries be halted?” Ronan continued.

“Um―”

“Surely your company has some sort of policy covering this sort of situation. I understand sending flowers is a common form of harassment.”

“Exactly what kind of research are you doing?” Annette asked, her posture stiffening. Our window of opportunity began to close, Ronan’s bullish attitude putting her on guard. She floundered, either unable or unwilling to answer his ruthless questions.

Crap.

I dove into the conversation head first, trying to salvage the situation before she kicked us out without telling us anything. “Please excuse him,” I murmured to her, all apologies. “He has a tendency to get carried away ever since the incident.”

“The incident?” Annette’s attention shifted to me, her expression still steely. Ronan might have thrown her off, but not by much. Her gaze was sharp, intelligent. She definitely didn’t lack a backbone.

I sent up a quick prayer that Ronan not kill me for what I was about to do and leaned forward like I was letting Annette in on a big secret. “His girlfriend was murdered.”

“Murdered?” Annette’s mouth gaped open in an “o” of surprise.

I could feel Ronan’s eyes on me.

He was furious.

I ignored him. I didn’t have a choice.

“A few months ago,” I said, lowering my voice. I didn’t have to fake the way the words trembled on my lips. Every time I talked about Dani, I remembered how she died, and I wondered if she saw it coming. Did she know she was going to die when she saw Sköll and Hati? Did she try to run or cry for help? Did she die quickly, or did she suffer through everything they did to her? I hated those questions. I hated not being able to convince myself her death was quick and painless like my mom’s. And I hated that Ronan, and Dace, Chelle, and Beth battled those same questions every day.

Irritation morphed to sympathy on Annette’s face. The stubborn tilt to her chin relaxed.

Thank god.

“I’m so sorry,” she mouthed, looking between me and Ronan.

“That’s why we’re here,” I said, plowing ahead while I still had the nerve to do it. If I stopped to think about what I was saying, I wouldn’t finish, and we needed the information she had…. Information I
really
did not want to go to jail trying to obtain. “We could really use your help.”

“Um, of course.”

“See, not long after his girlfriend died, someone attacked me.” I stood and lifted the hem of my shirt, allowing Annette to see the mass of scars crisscrossing my side. My heart hammered.

Aside from the small army of doctors and nurses who treated me, no one else really looked at my scars. I didn’t want everyone to gawk at them, but if showing them to Annette and letting her see even a portion of what we were up against convinced her to help us… I could deal with the uncomfortable roiling of my stomach. Besides, the physical damage was a lot better than it was when I woke in the hospital.

She stared hard, her face paling.

I dropped my shirt, covering the jagged, healed wounds again. I settled back down into my seat, avoiding Ronan’s gaze. I didn’t have the nerve to look at him and finish this whole thing, too.

“While I was in the hospital, someone started sending me flowers,” I continued. “I left town, but the flowers kept coming. The police think I’m overreacting, but I
know
they came from whoever killed Dani and attacked me. We can’t prove it though.” I hunched my shoulders, not so much feigning dejection as playing it up. If I never had to put on this performance again, it would be too soon.

Waves of anger and revulsion rolled from Ronan, searing into my back as if branding me with his fury at my one woman show. I couldn’t stop now though. We had to find out who sent the flowers, and I didn’t know how else to do it but tell the truth, as much of it as I tell could anyway.

“What―” Annette licked her lips. “What do you want from me?”

“Your help,” I said as simply as I could. “We need a name. Just one name, Annette, and we can tell the police who to look for. They can put a stop to this, and I can sleep at night.” My breath shuddered from my lungs. I met Annette’s gaze, pleading with her to break whatever rules her company had and give us that name.

She licked her lips again, and looked at Ronan. “Just a name?” she asked.

“Just a name,” I said, nodding.

Annette took a deep breath, and shifted in her seat. “Okay,” she said.

My entire body went numb with relief.

’m not sure what I’m looking for,” Annette confessed a few minutes later, looking up from her computer screen. “We take thousands of orders a day. I need search parameters.”

“Can you search destination history?” Ronan asked, the first words he said since I took over trying to convince Annette to help us.

“We can review delivery history,” Annette said.

“Is there a difference?”

Annette nodded, chewing on her bottom lip. “Destination location will pull up any florists within our network in the specified area, and which florists deliver to which areas, but that won’t tell us where a specific delivery ultimately went.”

“Okay. Cross-check deliveries to Beebe, Arkansas with deliveries in Smyrna, Tennessee,” Ronan said, stepping closer to her desk. He didn’t try to peek at the screen though.

Annette’s fingers flew across the keyboard, typing in the information he requested.

I held my breath, afraid if I so much as breathed, she’d decide helping us wasn’t worth the risk. I dug my fingers into the leather arms of my chair, anxious and nervous and a thousand other things. We were so close. So close.

“There are four matches,” Annette said, and then she frowned, “but these are all old.”

“How old?”

“The first was two years ago, and the last was in mid-December.”

“That can’t be right.” Ronan’s eyes narrowed.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

Ronan and Annette both turned to look at me.

“My mom died in December.” Those deliveries weren’t from Sköll or Hati. They were from my dad.

“Do you know Alexander T. Jacobs?” Annette asked, reading something on her screen.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “That’s my dad.”

“Damn,” Ronan said.

Annette looked between the two of us, waiting for further instruction.

“I never got the flowers at home,” I said, looking up at Ronan. “They were sent to the hospital in Jacksonville.”

He nodded. “Try deliveries to Jacksonville, Arkansas in the last three months.”

Annette typed in the new search parameters. “963 matches,” she said, still typing. “A little over 400 if you discount Valentine’s Day deliveries.”

“Can you cross-check those with deliveries to Smyrna?” Ronan asked, crossing his arms over his chest to wait.

Annette typed in the request.

Time seemed to drag.

“No matches,” she said.

No matches, which meant no answers. Our long shot was exactly that after all, a long shot. My head drooped forward, defeat coursing through me. We were never going to find Idun, or Sköll and Hati.

“Any other suggestions?” Annette asked, shooting me a sympathetic smile.

I shook my head.

“Ronan?”

He thought about it for a minute and then he shook his head too. “I’ve got nothing,” he admitted, looking at me. “It looks like we were both wrong.”

“Yeah,” I said. I wanted to cry. I’d been so certain we would find what we needed here, so sure this was our best shot at getting a step ahead of Sköll and Hati for once. Turns out, we were no closer now than we were weeks ago.

“Maybe not,” Annette said.

“Hmm?”

“The search parameters for this system are pretty narrow. If your guy used different credit cards to make the purchases and doesn’t have an account with us, the system wouldn’t find a match when cross-checking because the purchases wouldn’t be grouped together. They would be listed as individual purchases.”

“Okay… so how do we check that?” I asked.

“We pull up all orders from the two locations, and compare them to one another,” she said.

“Let’s do that then,” Ronan said.

“Even if we narrow our search to the last few months, we’re talking thousands of orders. This type of search will take time.”

“How much time?”

Annette thought about it for a moment. “Two or three days.”

Ronan whistled.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking like she genuinely meant that. “That’s the best I can do without risking more than my job.”

“Thank you, Annette. Really.” I cleared my throat, climbing to my feet.

Annette grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and held it out toward me. “I’ll give you a call if anything turns up.”

I jotted my phone number for her, beyond grateful for her help. Even if it led nowhere, we owed her huge for taking this risk for us.