Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I ignored the worried looks my teammates were doing a shit job of hiding.
The side-eyed glances started as soon as I’d entered the conference room with Cara still wrapped around me.
They’d intensified when Ivy came in and tried to coax Cara to go to her.
The looks became downright concerned when I shut Ivy’s attempts down instead of trying to persuade the girl to go to a much more fitting caregiver.
Now an hour later as I was sitting in a chair with a small child sleeping in my lap, her head resting on my chest while I kept my arms wrapped securely around her, the looks were straight-up irritating.
What the hell did they expect me to do, peel her little arms off me and hand her over kicking and screaming? I was dick, not a monster.
“You know this shit would go a lot faster if you all stopped staring at me and read the fu…freaking files,” I pointed out, catching my last curse before it slipped free.
“Holy fuck,” Kira breathed from behind Lore’s laptop.
Lore’s desktop was in Garrett’s office. He was going through her files and hopefully security footage while Theo, Easton, Smith, and Jonas were looking over her paper files from the boxes and I was doing nothing but holding a sleeping child.
Zane looked up from his tablet. “What’d you find?”
“You’re not going to believe this,” she started. “Have you ever heard of the McKnights?”
Whoever these McKnights were snagged Zane’s attention. “The financier?”
“The disgraced financier,” Kira corrected then added, “The one who was murdered, along with his wife, by a disgruntled investor.”
“Yeah, I remember the story about Percy McKnight,” Zane confirmed. “A few years later their daughter Blair wrapped her Bugatti around a pole while she was drunk and died on impact.”
The big, wall-mounted screen lit up behind Kira. A moment later a picture of a gorgeous young woman with long blonde hair appeared. She was wearing a tight red dress, showing off cleavage and lots of leg. But it was her dazzling smile that caught my attention.
“Or did she?” Kira asked, as she zoomed in on the woman’s face.
Holy fuck.
I had to blink a few times to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
But, nope, that was definitely a much younger Lore.
My gaze skidded back to her smile in the photograph. Open and carefree. It was so un-Lore-like I wanted to laugh.
“Well, that solves that mystery.” Zane casually tossed out.
“You know the world we live in is entirely fucked—”
“Yup,” I cut Easton off. “Language.”
His eyes dropped to Cara’s face. “She’s sleeping.”
“So?”
“Dude, she can’t hear me,” he pushed. “And if babies could learn how to curse through osmosis, Eric’s first words would’ve been—”
“My son’s first word was shit,” Zane supplied. “My wife nearly killed me. Lucky for me, I have ways to subdue her murdery moods.”
Normally I’d encourage Zane to continue down the rabbit hole and enjoy the mayhem. Maybe even mention the new cat his wife had recently purchased behind his back and sit back and listen to him spiral into a tirade.
Zane worked up was hilarious.
But I was more interested in Lore and putting together actionable intel.
“Minus the cursing, what were you gonna say?” I prompted Easton.
“All these files are ops she ran for a CIA officer named Michael. No last name.”
“Ops? She was CIA?” I asked.
“Nope. She was his asset. And her first assignment was taking down her father.”
That didn’t track.
The one thing I was positive about was Lore’s loyalty.
That knowledge had been reinforced after I’d spouted off at the mouth and called her shitty names.
Once I’d had a few days to digest what happened with Penny back at the farm I understood.
Lore wasn’t keeping something from me, she was trying to protect me.
Her anger toward my sister was in my defense.
She knew the pain it would cause if Penny told me who she was.
Lore’s loyalty had been to me. She’d even tried to get me to go outside with her before Penny dropped her bomb.
Not to lie or cover up her knowledge but to soften the blow.
I couldn’t see Lore turning on her family unless there was some serious…
Shit.
“What did her father do to her?” I asked. All eyes swung to me. “Lore would never burn her family unless—”
“Sorry it took me so long to get here. Traffic was a bitch,” Nebraska muttered as she barged into the room, making a beeline for her husband. But she skidded to a stop when she caught the image on the big screen. “Holy shit.”
“Baby, Cash has made a new rule.” Nebraska’s gaze went to Easton then he went on. “No cursing in front of Cara.”
Nebraska startled, as she would. I loved a four-letter word as much as the next guy.
“No cursing in front of Cara…” she trailed off when her gaze came to me—or more accurately to Cara in my arms.
With a smile and wide eyes, she retraced her steps and stopped next to my chair, her eyes still locked on the sleeping child.
“She’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Do you want me to take her and—”
“No.”
Nebraska nodded and thankfully, without any further questions, found her seat next to her husband. “What’d I miss?”
Kira started to fill her in. “Lore’s real name is Blair McKnight.
Her father, Percy McKnight, was a well-known financier.
He had his hand in everything from Hollywood to tech.
In the early nineties his portfolio expanded to hotels and real estate overseas.
He started in Thailand. Quickly moved into Malaysia and India.
It wasn’t until he started investing in Saudi that the reg flag was raised. ”
“Meaning the CIA started watching,” Nebraska surmised.
“Correct. He was flagged and watched,” Kira confirmed.
Easton slid a stack of papers in front of Nebraska and picked up where Kira had left off. “At seventeen, Lore became a CIA asset. Approximately nine months into her working with them, right after her eighteenth birthday, her parents were murdered.”
Nebraska glanced back at the image on the screen.
I knew what she was thinking—Lore working with the CIA and her parents’ murder coming right after her eighteenth birthday had all the makings of an Agency hit.
“Did she—”
“No,” Kira cut her off. “According to court records, Thomas Jenkins was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to ten years for each crime to be served congruently. He got out in eight. I have a search running now for his current whereabouts.”
Kira wouldn’t find Thomas Jenkins.
But if she dug deep enough, she’d find a trail of money.
The CIA were masters of the fall guy.
“Who was her handler?” Nebraska inquired. “Seventeen is young. As far as I know, minors are off-limits.”
Before I could open my mouth and demand we move past history and focus on the present so we could find the woman in question, Easton answered. “Michael. No last name.”
Nebraska straightened in her chair. “Michael. That’s her friend’s name I couldn’t remember. The one who called her Lolo.”
“You’ve met this guy?” Zane rejoined.
“Yeah, sh—” Nebraska’s gaze snapped to Cara.
“Shoot, a long time ago. I’d have to check my records for the year, but at least ten, maybe more.
I was in France with Charlie. Organized crime was significantly growing.
Smaller crews were coming in trying to infringe on territory.
A family coming out of a café were killed during a drive-by followed by an explosion that killed four more innocent people.
We stepped in to moderate a resolution to end the spillover.
” She paused to shrug. “Bad guys killing each other is to be expected. But the fallout was unacceptable.”
Sometimes it was easy to forget that not too long ago Nebraska was deep into the underbelly of society fulfilling her role as the Dove—the person who went in to negotiate with scumbags to stop their illegal businesses from taking innocent lives.
There was a hierarchy that needed to be maintained to contain the loss of innocent lives.
Her mentor Charlie and her mother, known as Pidgeon, had stepped back into their roles as the mediator and largely took care of negotiations now.
Not that Nebraska was fully out, she still waded into the grey when she had to.
But now that she was pregnant, I had a feeling Easton was going to pull her completely out once and for all.
“Was the meeting prearranged?” Zane pushed.
“At the time I didn’t think so,” Nebraska replied.
“I didn’t know Lore very well; she looked almost uncomfortable to see us.
But the man she was with, Michael, seemed…
pleased. They joined us at our table.” She paused again and shook her head.
“Charlie didn’t seem surprised they were there. I wonder if they knew each other.”
Charlie was former CIA. There could’ve very easily been a connection.
A sudden rush of jealousy spiked. “Were they together?”
“Together?” Nebraska asked. “They walked into the restaurant together. But if you’re asking if they were…
together together I don’t know. They didn’t touch each other, but there was familiarity.
It’s a guess but Michael looked to be at least a decade older than her, not that that matters but again, I didn’t see anything that would suggest they were lovers, just close. ”
That did nothing to calm the irrational envy that Lore had a close and familiar relationship with the man whose child I was holding. Which was insane, because of course they’d be close, otherwise the man wouldn’t have left his child in her care.
“Lore believes her brother, Damion, is behind Michael’s murder,” Theo announced.
Her brother?