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“To be honest, I didn’t notice. Brad came into my office and mostly stood in front of my desk. When I went into the main area to show him the map where to go, he was behind me. I then turned around to give him the file of the person I wanted him to watch. I didn’t see him leave. Sorry.”
“Will you see him tomorrow?” she asked.
“Sure, but if he was only grazed, he might not limp. It’s not like I can ask him to take off his pants.”
The group chuckled. “I wasn’t expecting you to, but just pay attention the next time.”
Mason saluted her.
Zach’s cell rang, and he pulled it out of his pants pocket. “It’s David.”
She hoped it was about the kind of sedative on the bullets he dug out of Zach’s back. Her brother listened for a minute and asked a few questions. “Thanks for trying. And one more thing. Tawny wondered how close to where my heart should have been were the bullets?” He nodded. “Thanks.”
“What did he say?” she asked once he hung up.
“First things first. There was a paralyzing agent on the bullet, but it appears to be homemade.”
“Which means, we probably can’t trace its origin,” Mason said.
“Probably not. David did say that I would be dead if my heart had been in its normal position.”
Liam huffed. “I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I am quite accurate when it comes to hitting a moving target dead on. I’ve spent years training which means we might be looking for a military man.”
Tawny turned to Mason. “Did Brad strike you as a military person?”
“Are you kidding? Not in the least. True, he wore baggy clothes, but I didn’t detect a lot of muscles.”
“Too bad. I forgot to ask Dad if they found the bullet yet that grazed the shooter’s leg. If they did, it might have blood on it—or rather it would have blood on it. He could test it against Brad’s blood type.”
Mason held up a hand. “If he finds the bullet, that’s a good thing. If, and that’s a big if, Brad did shoot Zach and take a pot shot at Ethan, we might actually learn who is behind all of this. It can’t just be one or two people.”
They all seemed to agree.
“I know that Tawny and Mason want to plant some devices at her center tonight, but then what happens?” Zach asked. “Do you really expect to hear them discuss something important? Or can we bug Julia and Brad’s phones too? I know that is jumping the gun, but we have to target someone.”
“We can do both, but we can’t use anything we hear in a court of law if we bug their phones,” Mason said.
“Do we care?” Zach asked. “If they plan to attack someone else in the family, a little heads up would be nice.”
“I try to be on the up-and-up. You know Dad. He would not be pleased if I went the illegal route. It would reflect poorly on him.”
Hopefully, if they picked up some chatter via the bugs in her place then her brother might change his mind.
“Suppose we find out that this group is planning to attack another Granger. Then what?” Alex asked. “What’s our plan?”
She loved that Alex and Liam were all-in when it came to protecting the Grangers.
When no one said anything, Liam piped up. “I think it needs to be a wait and see thing. If we don’t learn of another attack, we might need to orchestrate one, like I mentioned before.”
“It shouldn’t be too hard to do that if they believe we don’t know about the bugs.” Tawny checked her phone for the time. “Speaking of which, if we’re going to the center, Mason and I need to head out.”
“We can’t say a word though,” he said. “They will be listening.”
That was true. “I can stay in the car. You know where the one bug we found is located. As far as planting our devices, I’d say put one under the receptionist’s desk, because that’s where Julia sits. The back room is mostly for Ariel when she works on the animals, but I can give her a heads up if you put one there.”
“I would suggest we add one more near the animals, but that’s only if two people want to talk where there is background noise,” Mason said.
Tawny nodded. “Sounds good. Let’s go.”
