Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 110273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 551(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 551(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
His anger lessened as I spoke. His jaw wasn’t as tight and his scowl eased. He was almost thoughtful by the end. He didn’t respond right away, taking the time to rub his jaw once before letting a soft curse slip free. He turned, going through the apartment.
It was a simple layout.
Kitchen and dining room on our right. Living room straight ahead. Going past the living room, there was the bathroom. Two bedroom doors beyond. I noted the pile of blankets folded at the end of the couch. That must’ve been where Hoda stayed.
Tony tested one doorknob. Locked.
He tested the other; it opened to a bedroom.
Door number one it was.
Fitting his key into the doorknob, he paused before opening it. “If she’s as anal as Matt suggested, she’ll probably have an alarm on the other side of this door. You prepared for that?”
I wasn’t too knowledgeable about door alarms or security alarms, but I had my backpack of gadgets. I hoisted it tighter on my back. “I’ll improvise.”
He scanned my face. “Right.” A beat. Then, “And I hear you about Seraphina. I won’t encourage it. That’s my good deed for karma.”
I cocked an eyebrow up. “This isn’t your good deed?”
He flashed me a grin. “Matt owes me a surfing trip for this. We’re taking your dad’s jet next weekend.” He opened the door, and a blaring horn pierced the air right afterward.
“Okay. My job’s done. Lock up behind you if you don’t get caught.”
I didn’t watch him leave but I heard the door shut. A second later, as I had pulled my bag off my back and was rifling through it, Fitz moved around me. He went to a plastic box set next to the doorframe.
“What are you—”
I stopped talking. It was pointless.
He took a knife out, jimmied open the box, and yanked out a cord. Lovely silence filled the room next.
“Thanks.” I wasn’t going to question him on how he knew to do that, either. Only made sense that security guards Kash employed would have special breaking and entering skills. I had a feeling they had a whole lot more skills to go with that—more than normal guards would have.
“She could’ve rigged that to send an alarm to her phone. I’ll call Matt, see if he can play distraction from her phone, too.” He motioned to her computer. “I’d get working on that ASAP, because even though I don’t like Tony, he wasn’t wrong about Kash. He’ll be here in three minutes, and he’s pissed.” He paused. “At both of us.”
He stepped back, his phone in hand, and I hurried to Camille’s computer.
ELEVEN
Kash
Camille Story’s building didn’t have an elevator, and she lived on the fifth floor. I took two to three steps at a time, loping up. Josh was right behind me; so were a couple others. Fitz knew we were coming. He had called it in, and instead of reporting what was happening, he just put me on a different channel.
I listened to the entire conversation.
Fitz asked later for my orders, but I told him to let Bailey proceed. I intended to get here before she got inside, but I hadn’t counted on Matt calling in the building owner’s son, who would have a key and would have no qualm letting Bailey illegally enter an apartment. A call to their security staff reassured me that Tony had thought ahead and had the feeds pulled, so at least there’d be no record of Bailey even being present.
Fitz was waiting for us in the hallway when we topped the last set of stairs.
He jerked his head backward. “She’s inside, doing her thing.” He closed his mouth at the end, and I stopped.
I waited.
He looked at me, his eyes darting inside.
I grunted. “Say whatever you got to say.”
“She needs this.”
His words came swift and without hesitation once I gave him the go-ahead.
I settled farther back on my heels. “Explain.”
I was pretty certain I knew, but these guys were around us almost twenty-four/seven. They got time to sleep. We had the eight-hour shift set in place, but sometimes they chose to stay, and they did that because they worried, because they were almost family by now.
Just before Chrissy’s murder, I had started to wean some of Bailey’s regular guards and use them myself because their skill sets fit my purposes better for the path I was taking against Calhoun. But Fitz was one I kept on Bailey. He was one of her main guys. I trusted Fitz. He was good at his job, and his leadership was outstanding.
He was also a professional, and that meant a lot of his personal opinions, as with most of my men, were kept to themselves. So, hearing and seeing him wanting to express his own thoughts now, I was not foolish enough to not want to hear them. I welcomed it.