“Thank you.”
“Love you. Call me later. You need to meditate.”
“I will.”
This was one of the few times Jordan didn’t chastise someone for being on the phone. Anyone else, and he would have ripped it out of their hand and thrown it across the room.
“Why does he get to take personal calls and I don’t?” Lane asked.
“No one calls you who doesn’t live here,” Barrett stated.
“I could have friends. You don’t know.”
“Enough, Lane,” Jordan growled. “Sheldon, what did she say?”
“To stop what I’m doing. I think we should test it though. It can’t be just this?” I took a pen from the table and started poking the bag. That was when I saw something silver inside. “What the hell?” I muttered.
Standing to get a better look, I picked up another pen and started moving stuff around until what looked like a name appeared. “My love?”
“If this is a declaration, it’s fucked up,” Lane stated.
A knock on the door interrupted us. Rory stuck his head in. “This just came.” He handed me a letter and said it was a courier who dropped it off, much like I’d guessed with the box. Otherwise, Jordan would already have someone strung from the ceiling.
“Because putting it with the organs was too much to ask,” I said. I opened the envelope and withdrew a single sheet of paper.
You didn’t just kill him. You disemboweled him. He was the love of my life, and you gutted him and me in the process. I’m going to do the same to the man you love.
I re-read it, aloud this time then put my phone on speaker and called Forest.
He answered on the second ring. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Are you still in the apartment?” I asked.
“Yes, where else would I be? I haven’t left since I moved in.”
“Good. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” I hung up. I knew he was there, but had to hear it from him.
Jordan pulled his phone out and called Lawson on speaker.
“Yes?” Lawson asked.
“I need a list of people within the past decade who have been disemboweled on the coroner’s report. Look for any language around that.” I liked where he was going with that. Bodies were staged all the time by people on Jordan’s payroll. If we ripped someone apart, we didn’t try to put them together. Instead, they were placed in a made-up scene to coordinate with what we did.
“On it.”
Jordan ended the call, his eyes settling on me. “You need to go home and think really fucking hard about the people you’ve killed. I need a list of those you’ve ripped open.”
“Do you know how many men we’ve filleted? Even if I wasn’t the one to shred their guts, there’s no way this person knows that. It’s not like we kept a detailed report of who hacked what off or who pulled out an intestine.” We couldn’t either. In the wrong hands, we’d all be fucked. The less paper and digital trail, the better.
I tuned them out while I started racking my brain, trying to figure out who I’d done that too. I wasn’t lying when I said there were a lot of possibilities. Unless that person was in the room or had eyes on us, how would they know?
“Oh fuck,” I whispered. “The cameras. Did someone hack our video footage?” We kept archives but it was heavily encrypted and we got rid of it after a week, unless there was a reason to hang on to it, like to bribe a cop or an elected official.
“Jesus Christ,” Jordan bit out. He called Barry and started barking orders into the phone. Everything had to be locked down, with only essential people allowed access.
“We don’t know how far back this happened,” Barrett stated. “They could have hacked into it years ago and been spying since. They could have fucking worked here.”
We all froze, stopped breathing, and stared at Barrett. No one would be left alive if they were fucking Jordan over. Moreover, no one had a spouse that we cut up.
