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By the time we got checked in and settled into our adjoining rooms, Jax was chomping at the bit to get back to work. I, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to get some food and some sleep.
Evan ordered room service while I got Sofia in the bath. A few minutes later, he came in and leaned against the wall, a slight smile on his face as he watched Sofia splash and giggle. When she was dressed, fed, tucked into bed, and our room service had arrived, we finally sat down to eat.
“What do you plan to say at the prison tomorrow?” Evan asked tentatively. “Have you thought about it?”
“I have, but I’m still not sure what I want to say. What I want to ask. Honestly, the most pressing question is what my mother could have possibly done to warrant her death at the hand of shifters. How involved she was in the shifter world. Is it too much to hope I might be able to find out more about my father and my heritage?”
“It’s never too much to hope for anything. It’s what gets us through.”
I nodded, still a little on edge about the whole thing. I might find out things I didn’t want to know, but the curiosity was too much to deny. I truly didn’t know who I was, about my father, and there was a bit of fear surrounding that, considering everything we’d come up against. I might end up walking away with no more information than before, but it was worth a try.
We were just getting ready for bed when there was a knock at the adjoining door. We opened it to find Jax with a mischievous grin.
“I’ve just sent out some more reports of a ‘sighting’ to Tomas’s security team,” he said with a laugh. “If they follow these breadcrumbs, they’ll be halfway across the country in the opposite direction before they realize what we’ve done.”
“Excellent,” Evan said. “Good job, Jax. If Tomas reveals himself, gives up his position, it will be all the better.”
Jax was still working on gathering as much information as possible for our connections through the FBI. As long as Tomas was still underground, we didn’t have much hope of having him arrested. But once we knew where he was, and with the dirt Jax was collecting, hopefully we’d have everything we needed.
Our plan hinged on Tomas, though, and the certainty that he wanted me. Surely, if he thought he had an opportunity, he’d take it, coming to get me himself because he was just that arrogant.
And then we’d have him exactly where we wanted him.
Chapter 15
Evan
“What if they see us?” Mariah hissed, peeking from behind the headrest of my seat.
Jax and I were in the front, slunk low, with ball caps and sunglasses on. We were in the parking lot next door to the hotel where we’d stayed last night, having left as early as we could once Sofia was up and fed.
She was in her car seat now, and we were ready to make a quick getaway if necessary, but we needed to wait and see if our plan had worked.
“These thugs aren’t the brightest, even if they’re deadly,” Jax said with a smirk. “I doubt they suspect we’re pulling one over on them.”
My eyes remained locked on the hotel's entrance. Jax tapped his fingers on his thigh, while Mariah was worried enough for all of us. Her knee bounced as she chewed on her bottom lip.
I reached behind and caught her hand. “It’s okay. We just need to make sure they took the bait, and then we’ll be on the way.”
We didn’t have to wait much longer to find out.
“There.” Jax leaned forward. “Three of them.”
“Are you sure?” I followed his stare. Three burly men in black suits were climbing out of a black SUV right in front of the hotel's sliding doors.
“Those are definitely my father’s men.”
I grinned. “It worked.”
After Jax sent out his fake sighting of Mariah last night, we hadn’t been sure it would, but it looked like our plan was right on track. Our attention remained on the hotel while the thugs disappeared inside, their grim expressions evident even from our vantage point. Adrenaline surged, my dragon itching to break free and confront the enemy head-on, but that wasn't an option. It was time to put some distance between ourselves and Hawthorne’s goons.
“Let's get out of here.” I cranked the engine. Jax nodded in agreement, with Mariah sighing and sinking back into her seat, the relief clear on her face.
“Now we just need to make sure Tomas is left chasing shadows.” Jax chuckled, flipping open his laptop as we pulled away from the hotel, leaving Tomas’s men to realize they’d been had.
Last night, Jax hacked into the hotel’s security system, putting all the cameras on our floor and in the stairwell on a loop. The actual footage of us leaving the hotel earlier had been replaced, meaning there’d be no evidence we’d been here.
“And that’s how you do it,” he said with a satisfied smirk. “I switched the feed back, and now I can take the real footage of us leaving and loop it into the security system of any other hotel we want.”
