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“This won’t be forever. I’m going after them. The way I should have a long time ago.” Anger and bitterness vibrate through his words and I’m suddenly rocked by the secrets I’ve kept from him about his mother. Things I’ve already decided I have to tell him but not now, when those things could be triggers.Not until this is over, I think. I don’t dare. So I focus on just how this ends.
“What comes next?” I ask, aware I won’t approve, but I’m not sure it matters anymore. It feels like someone is going to die, and I don’t want it to be Eric or my mother.
Chapter sixty-seven
Harper
“There are two Navy sayings I live by. No plan survives first contact. In other words, have a backup plan to your backup plan. We need to go downstairs and meet with Blake and his team and figure out what comes next.” He stands and takes me with him.
“What’s the other saying?”
“Don’t run to your death. It’s the one that kept me alive tonight.”
It’s those words that shoot a biting chill down my spine. This isn’t just a family soap opera filled with drama anymore. It’s combat and there are bullets coming at us from all different directions. I hug myself with the impact of that reality, and remain that way as we walk side by side, down the stairs.
Once we’re in the living room, we locate Savage and Blake hanging out in front of the fireplace, flames licking at the glass cover, between them.
“Ho, ho, ho,” Savage says, greeting us. “I came back bearing gifts. Or one gift.” He motions to Blake. “I brought the hacker extraordinaire. I tried to put a bow on him, but he refused.”
“He’s not fucking joking,” Blake grumbles. “He tried to put a bow on me because he’s a crazy person.”
Savage’s phone vibrates with a message and he glances down at it. “Duty calls. Too bad it’s not a woman.” He eyes Blake, and they exchange a look I can’t read, before Savage heads for the door.
I’d laugh if I wasn’t still reeling a bit from my conversation with Eric upstairs. I’m on edge and it’s all I can do to force myself to sit on the couch while Eric perches on one of the arms.
Blake surveys me with concern. “You okay?”
“He’s okay,” I say, motioning to Eric “and that’s all that matters to me.”
“That wasn’t an answer,” Blake comments, “so I’ll take that as a ‘no’ and after what you’ve been through, I get it. I don’t like it, butI understand.” He doesn’t press me, and shifts his attention to Eric. “You really think your father wanted to have you killed tonight?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. My father isn’t stupid enough to send someone that beneath my skill level to kill me. He knows who I am. He knowswhatI am.” His cellphone rings and he pulls it from his pocket. “Speak of the devil himself.” His lips press together. “My father.” He declines the call.
“You’re not going to take it?” I ask.
“Let him wonder what I’m doing right now.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I say. “I agree with your assessment. He’s too smart to be stupid, but if he wasn’t trying to kill you, then why attack you tonight? It makes no sense. That action puts us on guard. It keeps me, and us, here. You’d think that they would want me back in Denver with you by my side. That’s how they get to me and blame you.”
“He doesn’t believe I’ll let you go back to Denver,” he replies. “The playing field has shifted, and it’s now New York.”
“But how can he believe he can get to me or you here?” I challenge, holding out my hands. “We’re well insulated.”
“Baiting me,” he replies. “Somehow, someway, he plans to bait me into doing something that backfires. He knows that emotional stress used to set off the savant in me, and it would become debilitating. I think he came here to trigger me which used to be a lot easier. If he made me breakdown, and need intervention, I’m an easy mark to blame for all their sins. Hell, he might have even hoped I’d kill the guy he sent after me.”
Everything he just said, I believe. This assessment fits what I know of his father and how he operates, but I’m still left trying to pull a few pieces of the puzzle together.
“So at this point,” I say, “do we believe Gigi called my father, because they’re working together? Or not? Maybe Senior is negotiating with her now.” I hold a hand up at Eric. “I’m not saying she’s a good guy, but rather self-serving. She was cut out. She acted because of that, but she might even be back in the circle now.
Eric and Blake exchange a look, before Blake says, “I don’t think we have the real picture yet which is why we need to talk about the unions.”
“The unions?” I ask. “You think this is somehow connected to them?”
“I do,” Blake says. “I have a bit of data that points me in that direction, I’ll email to Eric, but nothing I could hang my hat on yet.”
Union involvement makes sense, considering Isaac tried to link me to them.
“That said,” Blake adds, “the union’s involvement is not good news.”
