Total pages in book: 211
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
“She’s on a plane to Europe.”
“I know, which is my point. She’s running when her son, the man you said is her life, could be dying. We need to know what she knows. Why would she run?”
“The mob is every reason she needs to run, sweetheart. I guarantee you, she doesn’t believe Isaac put a hit on my father. She believes it’s the mob and that means she thinks they’ll come after everyone in the family.”
“Or Isaac needs everyone dead to inherit and pay them off. We need her to just tell us, Eric. She’s scared. I think she’ll tell us.”
“When she’s on the ground, if we can reach her, we can try.”
“Can we just go to her?”
“We should have stopped her from leaving, but we didn’t. And we need to be right here, in front of the police, and the problem.”
“Can Walker just get someone to confront her? Do they have resources to do that from Europe?”
My cellphone buzzes with a text and I snake it from my pocket, glancing at the message and then at Harper. “We may not need Gigi. Isaac can tell us when he gets here. He’s about to get on a private jet on his way here.”
“He’s not going to talk to you.”
She’s wrong. He will. I’ll make him. “I’ll handle my brother.”
“Why is he coming here now?”
“He looks bad if he doesn’t show up.”
“And my mother. Doesn’t she look bad, too?
“Blake’s handling law enforcement. He’s protecting her. She’s sedated. They know. Walker is respected and known to only support those they believe to be innocent.”
“I kind of got that feeling.” Her gaze falls to my arm and then lifts. “Who knows what your ink means?”
“No one, and yet, I get where you’re going with this. The message on that card was on my arm.”
“And just before I told you about your mother, you were searching your ink for clues.”
I huff out a breath. “I always radiate toward a puzzle and that leads me to my ink. I need to sit and think. That’s not how I come up with answers.” I cup her face and kiss her. “I need you, sweetheart, but I also think independently. It’s a savant thing. It’s a singular process.”
“Yes, okay. I’ll try every way possible to reach Gigi.”
She won’t reach her but I don’t say that. I brush my knuckles over her cheek and I walk toward the couch, where I sit down and somehow end up with a cube in my hand without consciously picking it up. My mind is already working, tossing around numbers, but at the same time, going back to the same place I went to when I was talking to Grayson. “What does the message mean?” Grayson had asked.
My answer had been “It translates to a saying we had in the SEALs. If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying. It means to win, you have to break the rules.”
“And you think that means someone knows what rules you were going to break with Kingston?” he’d asked.
“Don’t you?” I’d challenged. “It’s a fucking threat. They want me to do something for them, pay them off in some way, or they’ll tell Harper.”
It was a threat.
Or was it a warning?
The more I think about the messages, the less likely they feel like they’re from the mob. The mob isn’t warning us. That’s not how they operated. They’d just get in our fucking faces. I stare down at the message on the back of the business card and look down at my wrist where the saying is inked in letters and numbers.
Gigi is back in my mind.
She’s at the center of all of this.
She told Harper I get my brains from her, and while I don’t believe that, not for a minute, someone like me, another savant, could see the random codes in my ink. That particular saying that was on the back of the card, and anything to do with the Navy is about honor, courage, sacrifice, and brotherhood to me. The SEALs are my brothers. Isaac is not my brother. Years ago, I remember telling her as much. They are my brothers. Isaac is not.
Could Gigi be warning me about Isaac?
Did she pull me into this because she knew he was going to try to kill her son, his father, my father to inherit and pay off the mob? Of course, Gigi would know that I’d never save my father, so she’d need Harper to get me involved. That theory would assume that she knew about me and Harper, but again, there could have been cameras from the cottage. And Harper could have given off signs about me that she didn’t realize she gave off.
Gigi tried to save the family by using me to do it. Isaac thought it was Harper. He came at her and me. Maybe, and this is reaching, my father did come here for help. It’s far-fetched, but I have to set aside the personal baggage between me and my father and look objectively about all of this. If Isaac tried to end our father, he’ll try to finish him when he’s here. He’ll try to finish me and Harper.