Chapter 26 #2
“I told her I have work I need to do. Pack business. I might have hinted I was taking point handling a few tasks that you and Trent normally do. She understood. Plus, if Dewi’s not around, it’s easier for me to relax while I’m working.
With Peyton gone, I still need to manage that… special project we’re dealing with.”
He glanced toward the living room and Gillian followed his gaze.
Tamsin sat curled up in one of the comfy chairs, her legs tucked under her, reading on her tablet with baby Maisie asleep on a quilt on the floor in front of her.
Tamsin also wore earbuds and gently tapped one foot in time to whatever she was listening to.
“Ah,” Gillian silently mouthed.
He nodded. “I told Dewi I’d catch up with her later,” he said in his normal tone. “Trent, Badger, and Duncan are holed up in Badger’s cabin, but if they need me, they know where I am. Besides, I’ll see everyone tonight at the barbecue.”
Gillian winced. “Shoot. I forgot about that.” Around forty people had been invited and already RSVPed, Enforcers and their families, who were either visiting the compound or who lived locally.
Peyton had sent out invites the morning before the day he left, only telling her after the fact and claiming he wanted it to happen before Dewi and the rest of the Florida contingent headed home.
After all, it made sense for them to have an Enforcer meeting while Dewi was there.
The families could socialize while the rest of them talked business.
Now Gillian wondered if Peyton knew he’d be leaving the next day when he sent those invites.
She shivered.
“What’s wrong?” Ken asked.
She didn’t want to give voice to the darker fears trying to claw their way to the surface. “I hate hosting large shindigs when Peyton’s not home,” she said. “It means I have to do twice the schmoozing, and I’m not great at it. Especially right now with everything going on.”
And she felt guilty about that, too.
I’m a sucky wife and Pack Alpha mate.
“We could cancel it,” Ken suggested. “I’m certain everyone would understand, given the circumstances. Dewi can do video chats.”
“No, I can’t do that. I mean, I can do it, but I shouldn’t.” It was tempting to cancel it just to piss off Peyton, but it wasn’t like she didn’t already know everyone who’d be in attendance. Was even related to some of them, too, either by marriage or blood.
And when she thought about cancelling…
Well, it was like there was a mental door there that she couldn’t open.
Like maybe a Prime order not to cancel it. One that she couldn’t remember.
“I can play dirty and pull the mate card and ask Dewi to schmooze more,” Ken teased. “She is the expanded pack Alpha, after all. Plus the Head Enforcer. This is all kind of her jam to start with. She should be the one to run it without Peyton here. Either her or Trent.”
“I might take you up on that,” she said. “Don’t suppose that rat bastard husband of mine’s replied to you yet, has he?”
Ken carefully supported Adair while he fished out his phone with his free hand and quickly scrolled through it. “Nope, sorry. No emails, either. Seriously, I wouldn’t worry. He told me he’d be out of contact for a couple of days.”
Still, Ken’s reassurance didn’t completely silence the insidious anxiety scratching at her mental doors. “If you want to take over Peyton’s office to work, feel free.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. He’ll be okay with it.” She forced a cheery smile she didn’t feel. “And if he’s not okay with it, then he should’ve been here to say otherwise, right?”
He didn’t look convinced. “Riiiight?”
“I’m kidding. Seriously, it’s fine.” When she started cleaning up the kitchen he tried to get her to take Adair back, but she waved him down. “No, I appreciate everything you’ve been doing. I can clean up after a meal.”
“But you just had a baby.”
“Yeah, and?” When it was obvious he didn’t have a rejoinder, she patted him on the shoulder.
“I’ll finish this and then take her and head over to Asia’s for a few hours.
” She lowered her voice and tipped her head toward the living room.
“I’ll take them with me,” she whispered. “Give you some alone time to work.”
His posture finally relaxed. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Anything new? With the…project?”
“That’s what I’ll find out when I download the latest data dump and go through it.”
Fifteen minutes later, she had the dishwasher filled and running, and what little else was left had been washed and set in a drainer to dry. Ken was amazing about cleaning as he cooked, meaning very little clean-up at the end.
“See? Was that so hard?” she teased as she took Adair back.
“I want to make sure I pull my weight. Cooking and dishes are something I can do to help out.”
“Hey.” She waited until he looked at her and she mouthed the next words, mindful of Tamsin’s proximity.
“Everything, and I mean everything you’re doing is a huge help, and it’s stuff no one else can do.
” She gave him a one-armed hug and turned, calling out.
“Hey, Tam? Want to run over to Asia’s with me for a little while?
We need to make up a shopping list for tonight to send Trent out for supplies. ”
The younger woman popped out one of her earbuds and smiled. “Certainly!”
Ken
After refilling his coffee, Ken collected his laptop and carried it into Peyton’s office, closing the door after him. He hoped what he’d said to Gillian had reassured her, because what he currently felt was anything but reassuring.
He’d lain awake that morning for over an hour before carefully climbing out of bed, trying not to wake Dewi, to head to the main house to work.
Just to find Gillian already awake.
Something wasn’t…right.
Everything felt off in a way he couldn’t put his finger on, and he hated that he couldn’t identify why.
Sort of like the way the air felt before a Florida summer thunderstorm kicked up, the sharp tang of rain on the quickening breeze, and the temperature dropping.
Only in a mental kind of way.
The spot at the base of his spine tingled. Faintly, but not a sensation he could ignore, either.
He popped in earbuds to listen to music while he browsed the newest data. What immediately drew his attention was Miranda’s recent search history on her personal laptop from the past couple of days.
Disconcerting combinations of phrases relating to Idaho, one of the pack’s shell companies that they used for real estate in Idaho and Florida, and searches for reports of any criminal incidents in Idaho around the time Manuel Segura and his men had invaded the compound.
She’d also searched Florida real estate records.
And searched for Carl, Mateo, and Brianna by name, including credit reports.
She’d also performed searches relating to the trip Manuel had made with Carl and Mateo to Florida, trying to find any mention of them in the press or in public law enforcement reports.
Dammit.
The three of them were already set up with new legal identities that couldn’t be connected to their old identities, but that they were still on Miranda’s mind worried Ken.
He opened his notes app, summarized the report and added it to their files, and then made a notation in his reminders to discuss it with Gillian, Peyton, and Trent.
Maybe we need to “kill” them off in a way she can easily stumble over.
It’d be easy to plant fake obituaries and stage some murder photos, and have one of their packmates who worked in law enforcement create a fake report about it.
Maybe call it a murder-suicide so it was a closed case.
He’d been slightly disturbed when he’d first learned it was a technique used dozens of times over the decades by not just the Targhees but other packs as well.
A way to effectively end a person’s trail and prevent others from searching further.
Now he got it. Sometimes it was enough to provide people with new identities, like the family of Aaron’s new mate, Lowri. Aaron was one of the Enforcers, but he wasn’t present that weekend.
Ken added another note to his list of topics to discuss.
That’s when something else bumped against his mental bulwarks, and he sat back for a moment, thinking.
Closing his eyes, in fact.
After a moment, it hit him, and he pulled up Duncan’s notes from when Aaron first met Lowri. There’d been a disturbance, and…
Shit.
Clueless human drug dealers mentioned that one of them had a cousin hooked up with a Mexican drug cartel, and they were on the lookout for ‘weird people’ to buy.
No further details available at this time.
Recommend admin run a trace on the men for familial connections to the Segura cartel if more information desired.
Not enough resources locally to conduct that investigation without potentially raising suspicions…
Ken mentally groaned and started trudging through some of the older data he’d gleaned from Miranda Segura’s personal laptop.
There, in a password protected notes app she used as a journal—and 1234 wasn’t much of a password in Ken’s opinion because it begged for someone to figure it out—he finally located a short note dated six months ago that, roughly translated from Spanish, indicated she wanted to pursue looking for the people with “strange abilities” Manuel had gone on about, even though her father thought it’d been nothing but wild ramblings Manuel invented to cover up whatever really happened in Idaho.
Ken sat back and tried to ignore the insistent warning tingle at the base of his spine. Miranda Segura looked legal on paper to the outside world.
But that members of her family had operated the cartel wasn’t something he could overlook.
Ken suspected she wanted to run a secret endgame around her elderly father to insert herself into taking control of the cartel in Manuel’s “absence.”
I’ll need to call Carl and have a talk with him and Mateo about Manuel Segura’s men, Abundio, and Miranda.
Ken made more notes for himself before refocusing.
He’d worked his way through approximately half of the latest batch of corporate data he’d skimmed from their servers when someone knocked on the office door.
Removing one earbud, he glanced at the time and realized he’d been working nearly two hours.
“Yeah?”
The door opened. Ken leaned back in his chair, instantly wary of the nearly identically grim looks Trent, Badger, and Duncan wore.
“What happened?” Ken asked.
Badger was the last one in, and he closed the door behind him, locking it.
Trent motioned for Ken to stay calm—and quiet. “We have to talk,” he whispered. “About Peyton.”
Ken found himself standing and rounding the desk, the sensation at the base of his spine now a screaming roar that echoed through every nerve ending in his body. “What happened? Is he okay?”
“We don’t know,” Trent said.