Free The Blue Room Vol. 5 by Kailin Gow Page B

am.
                I'm
not what I seem to be, Staci. To you I was a yoga teacher, a friend and a
patron. But I was more than that, I knew who you were long before the day I
appeared outside your car. I'm a private investigator, one of the top
undercover investigators in the country. And your father asked me to keep you
safe.
                Your
father had heard rumors of your existence. Long after you were born, he started
to piece together the truth behind the disappearance of the woman he loved:
that she had escaped him and his family to start a new life with the child that
was all that was left of him. And he realized that if he knew you existed, so
would his family.
                I
befriended you. I followed you. I looked out for you every step of the way. I
did my very best to keep you safe: or at least as safe as I could
                Remember
that person you said you thought was stalking you? The “hunch” you had the
first year we knew each other that you were being followed? We laughed and
dismissed it as a crazy feeling. But it wasn't, Staci. Someone was following
you: taking pictures, trailing you.
                And
I traced that someone back to the Blue Room.
                I
wanted to know more. But I couldn't – the security there was the tightest I've
ever seen. I realized soon that the only way I'd be able to get information at
the Blue Room was to become a Blue Girl myself.
                It
was an unorthodox job, to be sure. And for anybody else, I'm not sure I'd have
been willing to do it. But by then I'd come to really care for you, really love
you. Like a sister. And I knew that I'd do whatever it took to keep you safe.
                 I'd
used the skills I gained as a PI – spying, secrets – to start my own internal
investigation at the Blue Room.
                Here
is what I know.
                The
Blues cannot be trusted. Follow the money, and it goes all the way back to the
Tannenbaums. Your paternal grandmother recently lent an enormous sum of money
to Clarence Blue: the man she has always taken an interest in. They've been
financially entangled for years. Beware of them, all of them. They're
financially dependent on the people trying to kill you.
                The
man who was following you was my main client as a Blues Girl. Mr X. I never
learned his real name. He might be in the family himself; I wouldn't be
surprised. Be careful, Staci, be very careful. And never go anywhere near the
Blue Room.
                In
the family? Did she mean a Blue or a Tennenbaum?
                I'm
so sorry not to be able to protect you, Staci. If I lied to you all these years
it was only out of love. I leave you one more object with which you can use to
protect you.
                Stay
safe, my love.
                Your
best friend,
                Rita
     
    I open the box
automatically.
    Inside,
shining up at me, there is a gun.

 
    Chapter 10
     
     
    I can't
believe what I'm seeing. I can't believe anything is real. The past twenty-four
hours have been a whirlwind.
                Rita
is dead. Rita is not really my best friend. Rita was a PI, sent by my father, a
Tannenbaum. The whole time I've been infiltrating the Blue Room, I've been
thinking that I'm doing it for Rita's sake: to find out what's happened to her.
But now I realize that the truth is far more insidious than that. Rita was only
ever at the Blue Room at all because of me. And so it's my fault she's dead.
                I
don't even know what to feel. Part of me is devastated: mourning my best
friend. Part of me just wants to give up now, to curl up and die right here on
the bank floor. The girl I loved more than anybody else in the world is gone
for good. I've spent so much time and effort trying to track or down: and now I
know I'm too late. If I'd only found her sooner –