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Madison stood and walked straight to Taryn so swiftly that it almost cut Taryn off mid-speech.
“What’s ghrelin?” Lexi asked.
“What is that?” Taryn asked, nodding at Madison’s open hand, which held a small black-and-silver item. The item was flat, a quarter-inch thick, and shaped like a teardrop.
“That is the smallest key fob I have ever seen,” Lexi chimed in.
The item was still flat on Madison’s extended palm, and all five women stared at it.
“I know what that is,” Addison told the room. “I absolutely know what that is.”
The other four women stayed quiet, which gave Addison the cue to spill the beans.
Addison reached out, grabbed the small item, and held it close to her face. “This isn’t a miniature key fob. This is a tracking device. A damn tracker.”
Hanna inhaled loudly and sharply in surprise.
“Wow!” said Lexi.
“What do you mean?” Taryn snapped. “What do you track with that?”
“Anything, really,” Addison answered. “This tracker comes with an app you put on your phone or tablet. The app tracks where this tracker goes. Stick this in your child’s backpack, your wife’s car, or your truck that you let your employees drive. It’s purposely small and magnetized. Stalker-types and perverts stick these things on other people’s cars all the time.”
“Let me see that,” Taryn asked sharply.
Addison handed the tracker back to Taryn, who held the small item as if it were radioactive. “Go back to planning,” Taryn told the room. “I’ll be sending more food and wine. I will be back shortly. I need to talk to somebody,” Taryn added with a curt and stiff voice.
Taryn turned on her heel and left the room. She went straight to Declan’s office on the other side of the palace.
She walked briskly and was just short of breaking into a run. Her breathing was shallow, erratic, and her face was hot. She heard footsteps behind her but didn’t look back because she knew it was the enforcers who had been following her these last few days.
Declan’s door was closed. She didn’t care. She opened the door and burst right in. The interior door was also closed. She burst right through that one, also.
Declan was behind his desk, eyes wide. His laptop was off to the side and clearly in use. Papers and forms surrounded the laptop. The center of the desk was clear of anything except a large day planner.
Taryn stepped up to his desk and slammed the tracker down in the center of the day planner.
“Hello. This is going to be important, isn’t it?” he asked her.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Forgive me if I sound slow, babe,” he answered. “That looks like a tracking device. You obviously know it’s a tracking device and are clearly upset.”
“I want to know why this kind of thing showed up in my purse?” she snapped.
“And you came storming in here because you think I put that thing in your purse?” he asked.
“I thought we were past this kind of thing,” she stated.
“You thought right,” he told her. Declan picked up the tracker, gave it a brief glance, and reached his muscled arm forward to give the tracker back to Taryn.
“Really? Putting a tracker in my purse is not the way to keep tabs on me, Declan.”
“I had nothing to do with that tracker getting into your purse,” he told her flatly. “Consider it this way, I have had enforcers on you twenty-four-seven. What do I need a tracker for?”
“Why do I get this sense that even though you didn’t put that tracker inside my purse, you know way more about this than you’re telling me?”
Declan sighed and then looked down into his hands that were folded on the desk. Then he looked back up at Taryn with bright, somber eyes. “Sit for a minute,” he told her, gesturing at the leather couch that ran along the wall and bordered his desk and the chair he was sitting in.
