Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Kane
I finished hooking up the camera, testing its Wi-Fi connection, and I tapped my screen on my readout, frowning at the source, and going back to fiddling with the angles.
“You almost done?” Kingston asked and I nodded, still frowning at the thing.
“Yeah, but I don’t like this angle.”
“We knew it was going to be a difficult one in the schematics. Do you need help?”
“I’ve almost got it. Then we can do a full reset and we should be ready to go.”
“Sounds good. The customer’s inside, I’ll go talk with them.”
“No problem. Let’s get it done.”
This was one of the boring parts of the job, but I liked it. After everything that happened over the past few months, we needed boring. Something like setting up a security system for the small business that had vandalism issues in the past. They were across the street from a vampire café that our cousin Lake co-owned. It was one of those places that sold sangria and other red drinks in fake blood bags, and the whole place was vampire related. I had been a bit skeptical when I first heard about it, but now it was becoming a franchise within the city, and I had a feeling would continue outside of the state if Lake had anything to do with it.
Maybe I would bring Phoebe here later, as I figured she needed a little bit of a pick-me-up.
I didn’t know what exactly was going to go on between her and her siblings. It wasn’t really my place to know everything, but I knew they would figure it out.
Big things were on the line, things that surprised even me. I didn’t even think Phoebe had really sat down with anyone other than Ford outside of her immediate family. Nor did I know if she had talked to her mother yet. Mostly because I hadn’t seen her in two days. I’d had to go out of town, and Phoebe hadn’t wanted to talk about her family that morning when we met for breakfast at my place. She had only wanted to talk about my trip and her upcoming project. And then we had gone down on each other because we could.
I fixed up the last of the angles that I wanted, and then got down off the ladder, fixing a few more things on the app before Kingston closed out the account and we headed back to the office.
“You still up for that gala tonight?” Kingston asked, and I sighed.
“Not really. But I’m there. It’s part of the job.”
“I know you’d rather be hanging out with Miss Phoebe.”
My lips twitched. “Please call her Miss Phoebe to her face. I just want to see what she does.”
“No, thank you. I accidentally called Claire ‘Miss Claire’ once, and I had to deal with that.”
I glanced over at Kingston. “You seeing a lot of Claire?” I asked, a little curious. The first time Phoebe and I had dated, Kingston and Claire hung out a bit. I had thought maybe something would happen, but Kingston had started dating someone else, and Claire hadn’t seemed interested. Then again, I’d had my head up my ass in more than a few ways during that, so it wasn’t like I could really tell.
“What? Claire? No, she’s like my baby sister.”
I raised a brow. “I realize that our family tree goes through vast sections of this state, but Claire isn’t actually related to us.”
“No, but she’s like Phoebe’s sister, and I feel like Phoebe is a little sister because she is with you. There’s nothing there.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
“She’s sweet. She really is. And she’s funny. Sometimes you’re allowed to just be friends with someone.”
“That’s true. And I like that you guys get along.”
“Yeah, that would suck if I didn’t get along with Phoebe or Claire, considering when we’re not dealing with work, or things we haven’t solved yet, we do hang out a lot.” I scowled as we pulled into the parking lot.
“I don’t like the fact that the guy left no trail. It’s like he poofed.”
“You’re still not blaming yourself for that, are you?”
“Of course I am. I’m the one who talked shit to him. Then he put his little vendetta on us, and tried to take our contracts, and it turned into this.”
“It’s not your fault. You don’t get to take responsibility for their actions, even if you feel like you should.”
I ran my hand over my head. “Well, I can’t help it. I’m a fucking Montgomery and a Carr. Of course I’m going to blame myself for what happened. But still. It was my fault at first.”
My cousin glared at me. “Don’t you go blaming yourself when we both know if I tried to do the same, you’d kick my ass. Don’t make me kick your ass. I’m not in the mood.”
“You’re always in the mood to kick my ass,” I said, trying to ease the tension since I felt like a shit for even bringing it up. I didn’t need to put my burden on Kingston’s shoulders. He had enough on himself as it was. If I thought I was bad when it came to holding blame, I was nothing when it came to Kingston and his own complex.
Hell, for a well-adjusted family, we sure had fucking issues.
“You know that if you pull this shit with Noah or Ford, they’d dress you down. It didn’t matter that you might have been a cocky asshole for a freaking millisecond with that guy. He’d have gone off on anyone . It’s in his nature. Not yours. And I don’t think you were a cocky asshole, by the way. You were just being yourself.”
I snorted despite myself. “That sounds like I was being one anyway.”
Kingston’s voice sobered. “We both know you’re not, Kane. It’s not your fault any of this happened. It’s theirs. They’re the one who hurt our family. They’re the ones continuing to break the law and hurt people. It’s not you. You keep trying to save everyone and keep forgetting to save part of yourself. Don’t do that, okay? Don’t make me, like I said before, kick your ass.”
We sat there in silence as I tried to figure out what to say. The problem was that there wasn’t anything to say. I might not have led us down this path, but I’d been part of it. There would always be could have beens and should have beens and I didn’t have the answer to that. I didn’t have anything. But I had to figure out how to make it stop.
All of it.
“So, you ready for your assignment tonight?” he asked, and I was grateful for the change of subject.
“Yeah, it’s just three hours that I have to be in a suit and be a bodyguard for someone who doesn’t really want us there.”
It was part of the job, something our team did well. Gus had been scheduled to be on duty tonight, but he broke his leg falling down the stairs at another event the day before. Jennifer, his wife and partner, was beside herself over the accident. It was nobody’s fault. Just a faulty step that ended with a broken bone. But that meant Gus was going to be on desk duty and cyber duty once he got back to work. Not that we needed him in anytime soon. It was good being the bosses so we could make sure our team actually rested. Though they, like the rest of us, didn’t rest as much as they probably should.
“I’d handle it, but I have that other assignment across town.”
“It’s okay. It’s part of the job. The fact that I haven’t had to do too many overnights recently has been a blessing.”
“And Phoebe knows the drill. Plus, you guys are in a better space.”
“We are. I just don’t like the fact that it’s gotten so quiet.”
“You know there’s something wrong with us when I totally understand what you’re talking about and agree with you.”
“You’re supposed to make me feel better.”
“I will, but still, I don’t like the fact that we haven’t heard from Tim, or Phoebe’s stalker.”
Noah and Ford were in the office when we got back, Kate was on the phone up front, rolling her eyes at whoever was on the other line. I smiled at the woman, once again grateful she was there to handle that stuff so I didn’t have to, then headed to my desk.
“Oh good, you’re here. We got another call from the agent on our case,” Noah grumbled.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Am I going to want to hear this before I have to go out on assignment and be attentive?”
“Now they’re thinking he stayed in the US.”
My head shot up as Kingston cursed under his breath.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Nope. They don’t have any documentation of him leaving the US. They had originally thought he used his contacts to get out of the country, but now they’re thinking he’s just laying low here. We were fifty-fifty on what he was doing anyway, but it annoys me that they spent time and resources on a trail that’s completely cold.”
“I don’t like this lead weight on our shoulders when it comes to him.”
“I don’t either. But you know it’s not your fault, right?” Noah put in.
I glared at my cousin. “What do you mean?”
Then I looked over at Kingston, who rolled his eyes and went back to his paperwork.
“It was never your fault. All of us have had to deal with the Sherman Group. All of us in this room and those out on assignment right now have had dealings with that man and other security branches who just haven’t liked us. It’s not your fault that Tim is a corrupt murderer. You work hard as hell and you need to learn to take a fucking break. And to give yourself a break.”
“You say that, but he could have hurt Phoebe. He did hurt Daisy and Hugh.”
“And we’re going to catch him. I know that sounds trite, but we have to. We’re keeping our family safe.”
“Even if the trail runs cold multiple times on both of these cases,” Ford put in.
I sighed, worried.
Because we hadn’t found who had done this. We didn’t know who had written weird notes and made calls and sent flowers to Phoebe. We didn’t know where the man who had tried to kill us had fled to.
But there were things we did know. Like that I had a gala to go to tonight. And we had put up countless security systems in the last week, our business was doing well, and we were doing our best.
I just hated that it felt like I wasn’t doing enough. That we were missing something.
I had just gotten Phoebe back, and I didn’t want to make a mistake and end up losing her.
I tried to put that out of my mind as I focused on my paperwork, listened to my team around me as they worked, and tried to figure out where Tim could have gone.
And how the hell we were going to keep each other safe.
Except it felt like I was missing something.
Something big.