Chapter 35 Wesley
Wesley
What?
My phone buzzes, but I ignore it.
“She’ll come around.”
I close my eyes and drop my head into my hands, refusing to look at the open doorway and see the sympathy and pity on Mac’s face that I can hear in his voice.
“You heard that?” I ask, mostly for confirmation.
“I think the entire house did,” he observes with a quiet chuckle. “I’ll tell ya, man—she’s little, but she can really holler.”
I sigh as he enters the room and drags the red chair next to my desk, like he always does for our meetings. He kicks out his legs, crossing them at the ankle, laces his hands behind his head, and fixes me with a look. “Wanna talk about it?”
Yes.
No.
I sigh again. “She’s got a right to be mad,” I offer lamely. “I love that she wants to help, and I know that she can—that she’s capable—but…”
“You want to keep her out of it because it’s safer for her,” Mac finishes for me, nodding. “Been there.”
“You haven’t been here, exactly. Eleanor didn’t fight you tooth and nail to be involved,” I point out wryly.
His grin is easy. “Nope,” he says, popping the p. “And, if you’ll recall, when she wanted to help, I let her. Obviously, I was the better boyfriend.”
“You mean that time when she helped and ended up carjacked and nearly shot by the man we were after?” I return evenly, wiping the self-satisfied smirk right off his face.
“Well, that’s what happens when we go with your plans. People tend to get shot.” He shrugs after a second. “Especially Dimitri.”
Both our phones buzz—his making a sound that I know to be the notification from the gate when someone leaves—and Mac grabs his from his pocket. He swipes through, eyes flicking across the message. “It’s Eleanor leaving. She said something about grocery shopping earlier.”
“Can it be that simple?” I wonder. At Mac’s raised brow, I nod at his phone, indicating Eleanor’s departure and Mac’s ease. “She leaves the house and you’re just… all right with it?”
“Oh, I seem all right with it?” Mac asks, brows shooting up. “Nice. My poker face is getting better.”
As intended, I crack a smile.
“The only way I maintain any chill whatsoever about her leaving is that she wears a tracker in her watch, she’s got one in her purse, and there’s one in that cute little Mini Cooper she wanted so bad. If I could get her to swallow one every morning, I’d do that, too.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to offer to make a subdermal tracker that wouldn’t hurt too badly and would last years before the battery needed to be replaced, but it’s not really in the spirit of the current conversation. “But it works for you?”
He shrugs. “For now. I’m not stubborn enough to think it can be like this forever. I guess…” he rubs the back of his neck. “I guess that’s why I’m not too torn up about this. You know—taking down the General and everything. The end of it all.”
The end. I suppose that’s what this is—what it will be. I’ve been too focused to really think about it, but without the General, what’s keeping us together?
“It’s my out,” Mac continues. “It’s my chance. Our chance.”
I’m taken aback, but his words ring a bell. It’s been a while since he brought it up, but Felix got Mac thinking about his exit strategy at the restaurant all those months ago.
I wonder if Dimitri sees it the same way—that this is his chance to get out and start his life with Nicole properly, or if the threat of the remaining Bratva members who want him dead casts too long of a shadow over that possibility.
Then I wonder why I haven’t seen it that way. Has my single-mindedness, thinking only of my goal, eclipsed the potential for life after I’ve achieved it?
“This life has been great in a lot of ways. I… I got a family out of it. I got my girl out of it,” he adds, tone dropping with seriousness.
“But I’m not just me anymore. I’ve got Eleanor to think about, and she doesn’t want to be jailed here because some fucker out there wants to hurt me.
We worked it out as best we could, compromising until we were both happy enough, but I…
fuck, man. I don’t want to compromise on this anymore.
I’d rather just know she was safe and not go insane with worry every time she leaves the house.
” He heaves a breath. “If the choice is this life or her, it’s not a choice. It’s her every time.”
“Yeah,” I say softly, feeling it in my bones.
Mac leans forward and claps me on the shoulder. “It’ll be all right, Short Round. You and Mads’ll figure your shit out.”
My lips twitch at the nickname.
“Now, since I’m here, why don’t you give me an update? Whatcha got?”
“Fuck all,” I say, impossibly more miserable. It’s a reminder I didn’t need of the fact that if I just gave in and did what Madison wanted—brought her in, accepted her help—I’d probably be much further along.
“Really?” Mac asks, shocked.
“I’ve got all this data, but it’s difficult to refine. Unsurprisingly, my initial search combinations for ‘the General’ yielded nothing. Obviously it’s an alias, and there are plenty of people within the SmarTech framework who have some relation to the word.”
Mac chuckles, but it’s not with humor. “Sure. Makes sense.”
“And once I filtered out anyone with a history as a ‘general’ of some kind—post masters, general education, etc—I’m left with a handful of names who lead me down dead ends. People with no connection to the previous hits, or no access to the kind of resources the General would have.”
“You’re going through SmarTech’s client files?” he asks, scratching his jaw with his knuckles.
I nod. “And employee files. I think it’s more likely it’s an employee.”
“But you checked the client files for previous targets?”
“I did. They’re all in there, Mac,” I say, seriously. “Even the names we didn’t take. It’s still possible it’s a coincidence, since SmarTech is used by half the country, but the likelihood gets smaller and smaller with each confirmed name. We’re sitting at around 0.001%.”
He whistles. “So the General is someone working at SmarTech, finding hits from a database of people who use their software? Fuck, man. That’s bonkers.”
If he only knew… “It is.”
“He’d have to be pretty high up the food chain, right? To have access to all the data—everyone’s names?”
“Certain roles at the company would have access to more, but essentially yes. I’d expect so.”
He leans his elbows on his knees, threading his fingers in the space between. “You think someone is… executing a personal vendetta?”
I give a half shrug. “I must admit, I’d begun to agree with Felix’s assessment—I thought perhaps it was a criminal, paving the way to sit at the top.”
“Does that still fit if they work at SmarTech?”
I sigh and rub my eyes. “I don’t think so.
I don’t know. It’s clear SmarTech is somehow involved.
I just don’t quite know how. I don’t know who’s pulling the strings.
I don’t understand the motive. I feel like this investigation is all over the place—it’s not following normal patterns I’d expect to see. ”
“You’ll figure it out. I’ve got faith, man.”
“Thanks.”
Just at that moment Eleanor breezes down the hallway, bottle of water in hand, headed for the stairs. Mac throws her a fond look, then does a double take. I do the same.
“Wait, Eleanor? If she’s here, who was at the gate?” I ask, terror rising in my throat because I already know.
“It was her car,” Mac says slowly, connecting the same dots.
I pull my phone out. The notification I ignored a moment ago flashes across my screen—an alarm from Madison’s flat that the system was disabled and someone went inside. I pull up the feed from all the cameras I left in there ages ago and rewind to the time of the alarm.
Son of a bitch.
“Fuck!” I cry, shooting out of my seat.
“What?” Mac wants to know, moving out of my way then following me as I charge through the hallway, into the foyer.
“What?” Eleanor echoes from the landing of the stairs leading down to the gym, purely confused.
“Madison’s neighbor broke into her flat. Stole her computer.”
“What?! Fuck,” Mac says.
“What?” Eleanor repeats, panic rising and mingling with the confusion. “What’s going on?”
“Madison just left,” Mac tells her. “She got the same notification Wes did—probably went to go get her computer.”
“What?! With all those bad guys still after her?” Eleanor gasps. “Oh my God! Go get her!”
“I’ll take my bike; it’s faster. You follow in the van,” I bark out to Mac as I jerk open the front door. I don’t even stop to make sure he heard or confirmed.
I shove my helmet on, tear out of the garage and fly down the drive, only pausing long enough to enter my code and to let the gate swing open just far enough for me to slip through. Then I take to the streets. I’m going out of my mind, caught in a loop of horrible possibilities.
A hitman lying in wait, despite the job appearing complete.
A police officer stationed outside her flat recognizes her.
She gets into a fucking car accident.
Fuck! Worry twists every possible terrible outcome and makes it seem not only possible, but likely.
I drop my bike to the ground when I arrive, and I certainly don’t take the time to remove and store my helmet.
I’m up the steps and through the front door in moments, so pissed at needing a key to get through the inner door that I nearly break the glass.
I’m reaching for my picks when someone comes through the front, on the phone and blithely unaware as I slip in behind her.
I slow, considering Madison’s door. If I know her, she went right for Todd. So I do too, reaching for the gun I shoved into the back of my jeans on my mad dash out of the mansion.
The door is shut firmly, but unlocked. I creep in as silently as possible, my heart pounding so loud in my ears I almost can’t hear her voice.
“Oh, you really did it this time, Toddy-boy. Hot Toddy. T-bone. Can I call you T-bone?”
“It was my f-football nickname,” Todd replies shakily.
“Of course it was; your name starts with a T.”
Oh, thank God. She sounds unharmed. Almost bored.