Page 22 of Home Again

“Gianna, here’s how it’s going to be. You go up to your room, I’m still going to come in and check on you every couple of hours. You have a nasty bump, and I want to make sure you’re all right, so what’s it going to be? Down here, or upstairs?”

She glared at him. “Fine. I’ll stay down here.”

He choked back a laugh. “I’ll go get you a glass of water and some ibuprofen.”

He was almost out of the room when heard, “Quit being so annoyingly nice.”

“You’re welcome.”

* * *

Gideon called him while he was getting the medicine for Gianna.

“I’ll call you right back.”

“Whatever works,” Gideon said easily.

When Sebastian got back to the office he called his teammate back.

“What’s up? Been watching the weather, you okay?”

“Yeah. But I need some information.” Sebastian leaned back in his grandfather’s chair.

“You came to the right place, always glad to be of service.”

Wasn’t that the truth? Gideon Smith was without equal as far as the men of Omega Sky were concerned when it came to anything to do with tech and information. Hell, the man had started playing video games when he was a toddler, and was making money hand over fist for his family selling gaming hacks in elementary school. When he was fourteen he dropped out of school and started working for a start-up gaming company in Silicon Valley. How in the hell he ended up a Navy SEAL was still a mystery to Sebastian. He figured only their lieutenant Kostya Barona actually knew Gideon’s entire story, but right now that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Gideon was a man who could help.

“So are you going to finally let me loose on that prick of a grandfather? It’d be fun to tank all of his political aspirations.” Sebastian grinned as he looked around his grandfather’s pretentious office filled with hundreds of pictures of him shaking hands with celebrities.

“Cool your jets. I need you to check out three names for me. Gianna Prentiss, she comes from a small town in Kentucky called Berea. She is really tight with a friend by the name of Jada Harlow. She sounded like she has a New York accent, I bet they have an NYU connection. Then there is someone named Etta Rose. Doubt that is her real name; she was running a high-end escort service out of New Orleans twenty years ago. I need all of this information as quickly as possible.”

“Am I allowed to ask why?” Sebastian asked, curiosity in his voice.

“Gianna is staying here at my grandfather’s place. I caught her breaking into my grandfather’s desk looking for information on Etta Rose. She won’t tell me why she wants the info, but I can tell it’s personal. I know I didn’t talk to you before I left on leave, but I got a letter from the old man that said he would give me answers if I came home.” Sebastian’s voice trailed off.

“Is this about your mom and dad?” Sebastian could hear the concern in his friend’s voice. Gideon knew about his mother’s murder and his dad’s death.

“That’s the only reason I would ever bother to breathe the old bastard’s air again. The fact that Gianna’s looking for something to do with Granddad that happened twenty years ago really has my senses tingling. But, for all I know, she could just be an opportunist who’s just trying to swindle an old man.”

“What does your gut tell you?”

“She isn’t a swindler. All of this is connected,” Sebastian said softly. He leaned forward and smoothed out the crinkled papers on the desk.

“All right, I’ll have something for you by the end of the day.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

After Gideon hung up, Sebastian looked at the old pages in front of him. They were handwritten letters, all on different letterheads. It took him an hour to read through all of them. They were all requests for Lazar to intervene on behalf of a prison reform bill that was coming up in nineteen ninety-six. They gave heartrending accounts on behalf of loved ones who had gotten ill or died in prison.

So far nothing in the drawer was getting him any closer to the answers he needed regarding his mother and father’s deaths or the mysterious Etta Rose. He shoved everything back in and locked the desk back up. It was eight in the morning and he had no idea when his uncle would wake up, but he couldn’t risk him finding him. There would still be tomorrow night to check things out.

Sebastian turned out the lights and went back to check on Gianna. When he got to the drawing-room, she was gone. There was no sign that she had ever been there. The kitchen was empty too. He went upstairs to make sure she was okay, but when he knocked on her door there was no answer. He tried the doorknob but it was locked. Apparently, she was well enough to get her ass in bed.

* * *

She should have packed her blow dryer. Instead, here she was trying to towel dry her hair with a baseball-sized bump on her head. No, this wasn’t making her cranky at all. Gianna took another look at herself in the mirror and grimaced—she looked like death warmed over. She was normally pale, but right now her pale skin looked albino white, and she was sporting some really dark shadows under her eyes. Too bad she hadn’t packed any make-up. Maybe she could just brush her dark hair forward and let it cover her face for the day.

She snorted, yeah, that so wouldn’t work. Hell, even Jada had said there was no hope for her when they’d Skyped at noon. She still couldn’t believe all the shit that Sebastian had been through as a kid. Then there was the stuff that Jada had been able to unearth about his military career. How in the hell she’d been able to pull up classified material was beyond Gianna, but she’d done it. Sebastian and his team were freaking scary. Thank God they were good guys.