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“Gabe, are you going to fucking pretend you don’t know what the team did?"
Suddenly, Gabe's voice was more alert. "It wasn’t Rouges, Rook. Intel report, now. How compromised are you?"
"Fuck. As far as I can tell, nothing was tripped in my room. I played it straight, and we went directly to a station to make a police report. Sorry Gabe, I really thought this was coming from you, so I punted back to the normal mission plan. Currently we are at the Mayfair safe house.”
* * *
My gaze flickered to the closed door of the loft bedroom where I'd put Nissa. When Lachlan and Saffron had gotten engaged, he'd bought her a house in Notting Hill, which made his loft in Mayfair empty and available. Rogues repurposed it for a safe house, and it was the first place I thought to bring Nissa.
All the progress we had made was shot to hell when Nissa hadn't said much on the drive over here. She just stared out the window. I'd put her straight to bed before coming down to raise hell in quiet whispers on the phone. Regardless of the secrets I was keeping, I needed this to at least appear on the up-and-up, so when we closed the door on the flat, we went right to the police to report the break-in. I had thought it was Gabe and a report was the best way to cover my arse to both Nissa and Julian.
I watched as Nissa spoke to the officers, giving them a basic inventory of anything valuable that was in her place and what we quickly had seen was broken. She hadn't been thrilled about me hauling her out so quickly, but the police had insisted that we did the right thing by leaving. Not that it cleared any of my guilt by having a break-in happen at all on my watch.
“Gabe, I need someone to collect my gear. I had a couple of sensors rigged, but nothing tripped. They were looking for something of hers and were really careful entering the flat. They tossed my room, but not in any real kind of way. It was the girl they were after.” Even as I relayed the information, my brain tried to sift through Nissa’s explanation for why she'd been in her father's room the other night. There had been truth in it, but there had been something else she was leaving out. Was that why she'd been targeted?
"Could it have been her father?"
"He's my next call. I assumed it was us because you couldn't be patient."
"You said you would get what we needed."
"But I hadn’t yet. That's why I thought you did this."
"No, it's not us. I'll assign you an extra man. Saint just came off mission."
"No, I don't think that's necessary, and Nissa is being really cagey. It's almost like she's aware she's being watched. That will just make it worse."
"Do you think it's her father? Or worse, Igno?"
"I don't know what to think right now. I need to figure out who broke in and what they wanted, or if it was random, which is very unlikely."
"What about your security tapes?"
"They upload to my cloud, accessible only through my laptop, which I cannot access right now, thanks to the police."
He cursed low under his breath. "If anyone finds out who you really are…"
"I know, Gabe, I know. They won't be able to. Even if they take the laptop to their tech team, they'll have a difficult time getting through my firewalls. Rogues are protected."
"They better be. Maybe you might get your wish after all and you'll have to come in."
"If I came in, that would leave her in the wind on her own. Or worse, she'd be brought in and would hate me when she knew everything."
"That might not be necessary yet."
“I'm just trying to keep the girl safe."
"And I told you, sometimes we have split objectives, and when that happens, what comes first?"
"Yeah, I hear you. Rogues. Rogues always comes first."
"Good. Then don't make it seem like you need a refresher."
"I don't. I just wanted to ask if you were the fucker who did this."
"I'm a twat and an arsehole. Occasionally, I've been called a dick. But I trust my agents. Despite what you think, I'm not actually the villain."
"Maybe, but you are controlling, and you do have a tendency to play both sides against the middle."
