Chapter Text
Duke was glad that he could repair the crack in the hull of the Cape Rouge in his sleep because his mind certainly wasn’t on his work. There was too much that didn’t add up about that incident and he was trying to turn it over in his mind. The hijacking was one of those things that tended to happen in his line of work, and while the guy being troubled and able to read his mind was weird, it at least made sense. No, what was nagging at him was Audrey. She had found one of his secret escape hatches. He’d had more feds, mostly coast guard, but a few other branches too, going over his boat with a fine tooth comb and no one had ever found any of the deeper secrets. He had enough secrets set up for them to intentionally find to deflect from the rest. She had found it though, which made him wonder how. And what else she knew. Only someone with their own deep secrets to hide should be able to think on that level.
Duke started watching her more closely after that incident and it was only a few days later when he noticed something that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t picked up before. Nathan was back on his case, digging around, and Audrey deflected him. That wasn’t anything new, or unexpected from a friend. The timing though…that was something that he hadn’t noticed before. It was always just in time for him to meet with a client or get a shipment. And she always managed to keep him busy long enough for everything to go off as planned. Almost like she had inside information. But that was insane…wasn’t it? It had him just on edge enough that it was Nathan that he went to when he was accused of stealing what was in the box and was on the verge of having a price on his head.
It was just after that when Audrey ended up holing herself up in her room at the inn, but thankfully she didn’t go so far as to stop working too because he needed answers before he drove himself insane. He waited until he was sure that she would be gone for a few hours and then picked the lock for her room at the inn. He was more than familiar with these locks, having used the same method to fleece tourists since he was a kid, so getting in was no problem. Duke didn’t even bother checking the stuff in plain sight. If she /was/ hiding something big, it would be hidden just as well as his own secrets and anything in plain sight or even easily found would be to deflect suspicion.
It took him about ten minutes to notice the slight difference in one of the dresser drawers, having taken everything out very carefully so that it could be put back in exactly the same way. The middle left drawer was about an inch too shallow at both the bottom and the back. It took him another five minutes to find the latch which was hidden under the lip of the drawer, made to seem like a nail that was slightly dislodged. He found a laptop computer hidden in the bottom compartment and a burner cell in the back. At least now he knew that she was hiding something. Now to see if he could figure out what. He didn’t bother with the computer. He was definitely no hacker and would be that it was wrapped up so tightly that it would be pointless to even try, and probably more than a little hazardous. The phone was a different story though.
He went through the phone, noticing that there were only about ten numbers and he grabbed his small pad out of his pocket and started writing them down to look into later before he moved on to the text messages. They were clearly in code, so he wrote them all down word for word too. Thankfully there weren’t that many. He checked the call log and noticed a few calls that were recent, and made note of which ones they were, but there were no names with the contacts to give him ideas. He also noticed a few documents that had been sent and made note of those, but couldn’t think how to get copies of them. Sure he could send them to himself and then wipe the logs, but she could have backup logs or some other kind of notifications set up. Instead, he just committed as much of them as he could to memory, not able to make sense of much but hopefully digging into the other things he’d found would clarify some of it. Once he had mined all the information he could from the phone, he put it back in place and secured both hidden doors, put everything back in the drawers exactly the way it was, and even made sure that the motel pen was back in the same place that she left it before letting himself out.
Once he was back at his boat, he started with going through the numbers. That would probably be the easiest part. It wasn’t until the fourth one that something dawned on him. Some of these numbers looked familiar. He pulled out his own phone and started comparing them. Sure enough, three of the ten were in his phone too. Some of his more illicit contacts. The ones at the top of the food chain of one of the main groups that he freelanced for. Just underneath the mysterious boss that everyone only knew as Fallen Angel.
Was she investigating them? Trying to get to the boss? But then why the secrecy? And why would she have quit the FBI and went to work for Haven PD if she was in the middle of an investigation like that. Unless…did he become the center of that investigation somehow? Did she think that he was Fallen Angel? Or that he could lead her in that direction and the whole job switch was a setup to get to him? That made him more nervous than anything else and he redoubled his effort to figure out what the hell was going on. It took him two days to crack the text message code, and then another two days to believe what he was starting to suspect, which was backed up by the two documents that finally made sense. It was the /only/ part of this that made sense.
He took one more day to consider how to handle this before he decided that he had to confront her. He couldn’t just let it go. He had too many questions about how much she knew about him and how much of their friendship had been manipulation. He had to know if she really was his friend or if this whole thing was just business to her. The fact that she hadn’t told him any of this would hint towards the latter, but he still needed to know, once and for all, where he stood with her and wherever that was he would deal. The most important question on his mind though was the recent business with Stoney. He knew that she knew about it, and his role in it, and he had to know what the consequences of that would be. He’d never been good about just waiting for the hangman’s noose.
It was with this thought in mind that he made his way to her room at the inn, knowing she would be there because she still hadn’t come out other than work. She had holed herself up inside right after the whole Stoney thing, which was part of what made him so nervous. When he didn’t get an answer at his first knock, he knocked harder calling out, “Audrey, it’s important. Can we please talk?” It was another minute before she let him in and he closed the door behind him, opening the conversation the way he’d planned, that could be brushed off if his insane conclusion was wrong. “You know…I always wondered what it would be like to meet a Fallen Angel.”
Only because Duke was looking for it did he notice the tightening of her shoulders and the brief look of shock and panic in her eyes before she plastered a nonchalantly amused look on her face. “Is that supposed to be some kind of come-on?”
Duke was completely convinced now. If the initial reaction hadn’t been enough, the speed and quality of her masks would have been. “I think you know it’s not,” he said with forced calm.
“Duke…” she started to say as she tried to figure out how to play this.
“How long do I have?” he cut her off. “And will you do the deed yourself or bring in someone else?”
“What do you mean?” she asked confused.
“I worked with the cops to get your agent arrested. I know you know that. And I know that I had a price on my head even before that, so…”
“And you still came here alone to confront me,” Audrey chuckled and shook her head, sitting on the bed and motioning for him to sit too. “That’s one of the things that I’ve always admired about you.”