I turned to the table in the middle of the room with a sheet over it.
Nigel walked over to it and pulled off the sheet…revealing a printer that looked straight out of the 90s. It even had the little holes on the sides of the paper that needed to be ripped off.
“Oh, wait! Now what is this!?” Nigel said and clapped his hands. “Is that a…fax machine? Oh my, I know you don’t like those. But wait!” He pulled out the sheet of paper that had just printed. “What’s this? Evidence?”
I reached for it, but he pulled it back, almost tripping over his trench coat.
“But Master Matthew doesn’t believe that fax machines are a good source of communication. So I guess he doesn’t want what’s on this paper. He’ll have to make do with the trivial things in the folder I prepared.”
“Give it to me, Nigel.”
“Then say that fax machines are still on trend.” He lowered his sunglasses to stare at me, like he really wanted to soak this in.
I just stared at him. “Nigel, they’re really not.”
“Very well.” It looked like he was about to rip the sheet down the middle.
“Wait!”
He just stared at me. “Well then.”
I sighed. “Fax machines are on trend.”
“Anda reliable and quick way to communicate.”
I shook my head. “And a reliable and quick way to communicate.”But not as reliable and quick as freaking emails.I put my hand out.
“Andbetter than electronic texts,” he said.
“Are you referring to normal texting or is that something else?”
“The usual kind I think. On the cellular devices.”
I laughed, but he looked serious. I cleared my throat. “Fine. And better than electronic texts on cellular devices.”
“More secure too,” Nigel said. “So very secure.”
I really didn’t think that was true. Nigel said he didn’t want a paper trail. And he’d literally printed out thousands of papers and set up a weird fax machine in the center of an abandoned warehouse to print out more of them. “Yup,” I said. “More secure too. So very secure.”
He handed me the sheet of paper that he’d just faxed himself.
There was an image of Poppy Cannavaro putting a car bomb under a car. Nigel had circled the spot and labeled it. And a newspaper clipping was photocopied at the bottom about a young man who’d died in a car explosion.
“She’s amurderer,” Nigel whispered.
I thought I’d be happy. This was exactly what I wanted. But I wasn’t happy that an innocent man was dead. Or that Poppy’s daughter would have to grow up without a mother. I keptscanning the article.Wait, not an innocent man.Apparently this guy was in the mafia too. Why had Poppy blown up another mafia member?
“Thank goodness for faxes,” Nigel said. “Operation Murderer complete. I’d actually already named it, but I didn’t want to ruin the big reveal.”
This would get me out of my fake relationship with Poppy. It would keep Scarlett safe. But it would ruin another family in the process.
“I knew you’d be devastated when you found out fax machines are better than texts,” Nigel said as he pushed his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose. “It’s okay. We’re all wrong sometimes. But we must be going. This warehouse has a rat infestation problem that gets significantly worse at dusk. Grab the fax machine for me, will you?”
“Sure.” I folded up the sheet of paper and slid it into my pocket.
“Oh I love the old models,” he said, tenderly caressing the machine. “They get all warm when they print. I’ll put it with me in the trunk to keep me warm on the way back home.”
“You can sit up front,” I said.
