He swears, tells them to back the fuck up before he answers my question, “The one in your button.”
“They know I’m wired?” Panic resonates in my tone. I’ll be kicked out of the Bureau if they discover I went to a fellow agent’s house wired to the hilt. I’m not worried about the loss of salary, I have enough money in my bank account to keep me living comfortably for two lifetimes, but I’m worried about how I will occupy my time. The Bureau is all I have. Excluding my mother, I have no contact with the rest of my family. I’m pining over a girl who’s going to marry a billionaire for fuck’s sake. I’ll have nothing if I’m kicked out. I don’t even see Grayson hanging around if I can’t help him with his quest to find Katie. It sucks, but it’s the truth. I’ll have nothing. I have nothing.
I suck in a relieved breath when Grayson responds, “No. They haven’t gotten that far in yet. Fuckers. They’re seeking any electronic devices in the area.”
“Do you think it’s Alex’s team?”
Grayson starts his reply with a grunt. “No. I got tabs on him. He’s nowhere near Izzy’s apartment.”
“You’ve got tabs on your brother?” When Isabelle pivots around to face me, my voice too loud for her to brush off as a weirdo who talks to himself, I point to a well-known gossip magazine on her entryway table. “Royals these days. Can’t even have a conversation with your grannie without someone listening in.”
“Or go on a fucking date. This is Isaac. It has his murky fingerprints all over it,” Grayson hisses on a growl.
I wait for Isabelle to shift her focus back to scrounging up the sauce not burned to the bottom of the pan before twisting away from her and lowering my head to the microphone in my shirt. “How do you know it’s Isaac? His hacker never leaves a trace.”
“Exactly. That’s why I know it’s him.” Grayson waits a beat before disclosing, “The timestamp is also very telling. The instant the guy sitting at the front of Isabelle’s apartment ends his call, my surveillance is infiltrated.” Another handful of keystrokes sound down the line before Grayson says, “He’s in.”
“He’s in?” I move away from the mirror I’m standing in front of before lowering my hand to cover the camera I rigged into my shirt this morning.
“Not your feed, dipshit. I forced him into the camera in the hallway. When you leave Izzy’s apartment, be sure to give Isaac a real show.”
“A show?” I slowly float toward Isabelle when she requests for me to join her at the dining table where she’s laid out the meal she prepared for us. “What kind of show?” When Grayson makes noises not suitable for a fellow agent to do to another agent, I whisper, “I’m not doing that. You know my thoughts on that.”
“Jesus, Brandon. Are you sure your dick end has ever been wet? I’m not asking you to sleep with the girl. Just give me the chance to back trace the data. If you do something invigorating enough to gain Isaac’s attention, I guarantee he’ll watch it. All the sadistic ones do. When he watches it, most likely on repeat, I’ll have a chance to follow his feed back to the source. It could lead us to his real residence.”
His suggestion has many valid points—regrettably. Isabelle is under Isaac’s skin enough to have his security team monitoring her twenty-four seven, so who’s to say how he’ll respond if he thinks he has competition.
“Can I at least enjoy my meal before I’m sent to slaughter?”
Isabelle returns to the dining room and gestures for me to take a seat at the same time Grayson replies, “Of course, because from what I’ve heard through the grapevine, this could be your last meal.”
His laughter doubles when I grumble under my breath, “Shut the fuck up.”
14
BRANDON
“Shut the fuck up, Grayson!” My roar is so loud, I hear it twice when it bounces off the brickwork in the alleyway siding Isabelle’s apartment. “There was nothing wrong with my kiss. Isabelle said so herself.” It’s also been a while, but I sure as fuck am not disclosing that to Grayson.
Grayson told me to do something drastic to force Isaac to respond. I racked my brain for the two hours of our ‘date’ striving to think of something profoundly moving. I thought a kiss was the ideal solution. It would have been if I didn’t have Grayson in my ear, egging me on. Have you ever tried to kiss someone with a thirty-three-year-old man catcalling and wolf-whistling in your ear? I got stage fright. Kill me.
Luckily for me, Isabelle was cool about my sudden desire to lock lips. She even jested about how she would have dragged me into her apartment if she didn’t have a three-date rule. Did I believe her? Not really. I may have if she hadn’t mentioned chasing an unattainable man. If that wasn’t a flashing alarm alerting me to just how deep Isaac has crawled under her skin, I don’t know what will.
While jabbing my finger into the key of my BMW, I tell Grayson to shut the fuck up for the third time. My ego is already blown to shit, I don’t need his laughter.
“I’m not laughing at you, dipshit. I am terrified about how fucking hard I am. That was almost as good as porn for a saint like me. I have precum seeping into my pants and shit—” His chair popping into place drowns out his words. It’s quickly chased by his fingers tapping the keys of his keyboard. “It fucking worked.”
I yank open the driver’s side door of my car and slide into the driver’s seat. “Isaac is watching the feed?”
“No.” Grayson’s one word shoots out of his mouth so fast, it replicates the crack of a whip. “He’s in Izzy’s apartment.”
My jaw quivers with annoyance more than excitement. “You rigged Isabelle’s apartment?”
“No,” he fires back again, his voice extra loud.
“Then how the fuck do you know Isaac is in her apartment?”
He jabs at his keyboard another three times before a voice I’ve heard on surveillance many times the past eight-plus months filters through the device in my ear. “No more men in your apartment, Isabelle.”
