THE COMPUTERS WERE ACTIVELY SCANNING, but it felt wrong not to work alongside them and check for leads as they were split into the backup folders and categorized. If the Maliks posed any kind of threat to Dess, every second could be of the essence.
For every twenty potential leads my searches had turned up so far, I found that only one seemed even semi-relevant, and it led to a dead end that had nothing to do with Damien Malik or his family. I didn’t know whether to be frustrated or relieved that I was turning up so little.
Could anyone really be that clean? There wasn’t even a speeding ticket on his records, and no more than vague murmurs of overstepping his role or hypocrisy with nothing to back them up—by all appearances the disgruntled rumblings of political opponents.
I was definitely frustrated that I’d made no headway into deciphering the symbols on the document Dess had taken a picture of in Damien’s home office. They didn’t match any language or code I’d encountered before, and apparently the internet had never encountered it either. I scowled at the empty folder still waiting for a real match.
As for the Hunter himself, I’d found nothing tying any government agent or otherwise suspicious personality to the number he’d given Dess or the house his signal had led us to. Unless Belinda Mitchener, 92-year-old grandmother of six and great-grandmother of nine, was simply wearing an old lady suit and faking her severe arthritis, the owner of the house definitely wasn’t our man.
Finally, I pushed myself away from the hotel room desk with a restrained growl. I was failing the only job I could do to keep Dess safe—failing miserably, even.
I glanced across the room at where Garrison sat by the large window, tinkering with the miniature-sized telescope that he’d insisted on bringing with us. On the other side of the room, Julius had laid out a few of his army figures on the suite’s dining table. I couldn’t tell what exactly he was trying to strategize as he moved them back and forth across the top of it. He’d just completed his meditation for the day moments before, and Julius liked to follow his meditation with plan-making.
Talon sat on the other end of the sofa, knitting what was either the sleeve of a sweater or a very puffy scarf with brisk motions of his needles.
“You look pissed off, man,” Garrison said, and I realized with a start that he’d abandoned his telescope to join me and peer at the blinking screen of my laptop.
“It’s just…” I paused. I didn’t normally like to show any weakness around Garrison, since the guy took every opportunity he could to heckle me about stuff, but after seeing him with Dess, I knew better than I ever had how much the snarky persona was for show. I didn’t really care if he took a jab at me. Maybe that would even jostle my mind out of this gloom. “From the start, everything around Dess’s situation has been nearly impossible to crack.”
He leaned against the nearby sofa. “Couldn’t that just mean there’s nothing to crack? I’m not one to trust any politician, but I trust weirdos who give silly code names and lead us on wild goose chases around the city even less.”
I took a deep breath, but that didn’t stop my knee from starting to bounce of its own accord. “Maybe there’s nothing on Malik. Maybe he really is that clean. But I haven’t been able to piece together anything all that useful about the organization behind the household. I still have no idea why they kidnapped Dess or what beef they had with the Malik family. Or who hired us to attack them. And now I’m coming up empty with this Hunter prick and the crazy secret code too.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘we,’ not ‘I,’” Julius said from across the room without looking up from his army men. “None of us have been able to come up with any answers. Including Dess. She’s not going to blame you.”
I’d blame me. I balled my hands to stop them from fidgeting, grappling with the emotions coursing through me.
Garrison shrugged. “From where I’m standing, things are looking pretty good. Maybe we don’t have all the answers, but we’ve made progress. We found her birth family. She’s managed to reunite with them. We got all those mercenary groups off our backs. The rest is just a matter of time.”
How could he be so confident? But then, that was his constant persona, all cocky assurance. He might have been just as torn up as me underneath and simply choosing not to show it.
Sometimes I might have envied his carefully constructed masks just a little.
“But what if I’m missing something?” I said. “What if the Maliks are a threat, and she’s walking straight into some kind of trap?”
Garrison arched his eyebrows, and I immediately felt how ridiculous that idea sounded. Dess’s birth family had been nothing but welcoming to her. Why would they have an evil agenda against their own daughter? It made no sense.
“I mean, I don’t think she should go mentioning the whole criminal career thing to them,” Garrison said. “And she probably shouldn’t bring us around while publicizing that we make a living offing people. But as things stand, she’s been pretty happy with them. She wouldn’t keep spending time with them if they were rubbing her the wrong way.”
That was true. She was off at her family home right now for another visit. And something about that fact niggled at me just as much as my lack of progress.
“I know,” I said. “I like seeing her happy.” When she came back to the hotel after a visit with that new light shining in her eyes, when she talked about her father or mother or brother with that hint of excitement she couldn’t totally hide, the thrill of having that family at all… I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her that delighted before. She was usually so serious. “I just don’t want her to get hurt.”
Garrison cocked his head at me. “Is that all? You’re not at all bothered by the whole her-family-would-hate-our-guts thing?”
I scowled at him. Of course he’d pick up on the emotions I was trying not to feel as well as the ones I was talking about. “It’s a reasonable concern. If he finds out everything about her, he could turn his back on her and break her heart.”
“Oh, so it’s her heart you’re worried about?”
“Of course,” I grumbled. “Whose are you thinking about?”
To my surprise, Garrison’s mouth twisted at an angle that looked genuinely conflicted. I rarely saw him drop the confident front. I didn’t totally know what to do with a glimpse of vulnerability from him.
“Look,” he said. “I’ll make it easier for you just this once. I think we’re all aware that the more entwined she gets with the Maliks, the harder it’ll be for her to stay close to us. I’d love it if you dug up some dirt on these pompous pricks that shows they’re not such a model of familial joy after all. But if it’s not there, it’s not there. Dess isn’t the kind of woman who’d let anything get between her and something she’s set her mind on. If she wants a family…”
Then she’d stick with that family. Yeah. He’d laid it out more clearly than I’d let myself even in my head.
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. “I know that too. But there’s nothing wrong with making absolutely sure that she knows what she’s getting into, right?”
Garrison snickered, back to his usual obnoxious self. “Nothing at all. Just don’t blow a circuit trying to make it happen.”
Maybe he was right to hassle me about this. How could I say that all I wanted was for Dess to be happy when at the same time some part of me was desperately hoping I’d come across evidence that would destroy the image of the happy family she’d thought she’d found? Just so that we wouldn’t lose her.
So that I wouldn’t lose her. I sure as hell didn’t know where I’d find another woman to match her. But I’d let her go if I had to. I just wouldn’t like it.
My laptop dinged twice with an alert I hadn’t anticipated. It had nothing to do with my searches for information but instead the temporary security systems I’d put in place in the neighborhood of the hotel.
I snapped to attention, leaning close to the screen. My fingers flew across the keyboard as I checked out the movements it’d picked up on nearby streets. A group of men had walked by one of my surveillance cameras, half of them with obvious guns protruding from the backs of their jeans.
They didn’t appear to be heading in our direction. Who the hell were they that they’d saunter around so casually while armed? With those tattoos and piercings, they definitely didn’t look like cops. Normally regular citizens were a little more discreet.
Furrowing my brow, I dove into the data further to try to trace their path into our neighborhood and figure out where they’d come from while still keeping an eye on their path through the city as they passed us by.
Garrison stepped closer. “Why so serious?”
“Serious gets the job done,” I retorted.
“Not for you. You’re usually cracking a million jokes a minute while all our lives hang on the line.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Seeing you all somber is kind of scary.”
I rolled my eyes without meeting his and confirmed that the armed men were still heading in the opposite direction from the hotel. Whatever they were up to, it definitely didn’t appear to have anything to do with us.
But we couldn’t be too wary. I had to be strong to protect Dess properly, and maybe that did mean I should let go some of my usual carefree approach. Jokes weren’t going to deflect bullets aimed her way.
Whether she stayed with us or moved on, I’d never forgive myself if something happened to her that I could have prevented. Even the thought of her taking another wound, physical or emotional, made an ache form around my heart.
The men with the guns had shown up on one street cam outside my private surveillance network. When I tried to trace their path farther back, I didn’t spot them. It appeared they’d gotten out of a vehicle hidden somewhere within a gap in coverage.
They’d gotten out just a couple of blocks from the area I was monitoring, and then walked right through the edge of that area with weapons on full display before sauntering on out of that area again.
My instincts twitched with apprehension. That didn’t feel right at all. It was almost as if they’d purposefully come through to catch our attention…
And draw it away from what?
Panic flashed through my nerves. My hands leapt across the keyboard. In a matter of seconds, I’d brought up the feeds closest to the hotel building.
Just in time to spot several forms in normal clothes with no overt equipment that would have alerted my systems converging on the building with a purposefulness that had me jumping to my feet. Even as I opened my mouth, all those feeds blinked out into static.
“We’re under attack!” I hollered.
The words had barely left my mouth when the windows along the side wall exploded with a hail of glass shards and intruding bodies.
