“That’d make it a little difficult for you to grill him, wouldn’t it?”
King arched a brow, clearly not missing my defensive tone. He never missed anything. I guess Theo had been smart to take a couple of hours. Maybe I should’ve too.
“I suppose it would. Which raises the question, where is he?”
“Home, is what he told me.” I stepped around King and headed toward the large meeting room in the catacombs. “But if you want to double-check, you could always pull up his tracker.”
“That won’t be necessary,” King said, his voice following me into the room. “But I’d hoped to see him as soon as he arrived?—”
“Yeah, he gets that,” I snapped, turning on him. “But he wants a minute to change and…stuff.”
“Stuff?” King frowned. “Well, I wish he would’ve done that here. A new message has come to light, and we need to?—”
“A new message?” I said, wondering if the video that had been hand-delivered to Theo had now been emailed to the restof the Kings. I hadn’t seen anything in my inbox before boarding the plane, but I hadn’t checked since landing.
I pulled out my phone and went to open my email, but King shook his head.
“It wasn’t an email.”
Oh fuck.Did everyone receive a box, then? A flash drive?
“This was a handwritten message. Delivered to me, personally. It was waiting on my desk when I came in this morning.”
What the hell? Now this fucker had beeninsideLibertine?
“I don’t understand. How? What did it say?”
“I can only answer as to what it said. Thehowis still a mystery. It arrived with the rest of my mail, and Alessio has gone back through all the security footage and found nothing suspicious.”
This personwasgood. Too fucking good.
“What did the message say?”
King reached inside his jacket and pulled out a black envelope. “Read it for yourself.”
I opened it up and pulled out a narrow piece of paper inside.
You have a snake in your midst. Cut off its head…or I will.
Mother. Fucker.
“I’m assuming this is referring to Theo.”
King took the message back and looked over it again, but all I could think about was how it was a direct fucking threat to Theo’s life.
“Shep?”
“What?”
“I’m assuming this is about whatever is going on with Theo. What have you learned since the first email? Has he told you anything?”
He told me everything.
I wasn’t about to tell King that. It wasn’t my place. But if Theo didn’t get his ass over here, and soon, King was going to start drawing his own conclusions about all this.
“I think it would be better if he talked to you. Secondhand intel is never as reliable?—”
“Yours is. I’d never doubt you.” King’s voice softened around the edges as he studied me, and I found myself looking away. He had a very good eye for bullshit, and the last thing I wanted was to be under his microscope when discussing Theo.
