Peyton was glad he’d retreated to his bedroom for this discussion and wasn’t sitting near Trevor for the man to overhear. “I will not deliberately put Ken in harm’s way, Dewi. I swear to you, not just as your big brother, but as the Pack Alpha. I can’t cover all possibilities, but I will do my best to keep him safe. If I thought he wasn’t, I’d personally put him on the next plane back to the States as soon as he wakes up.”
He could almost picture her exasperation. “Fine.” She sniffled, and he felt horrible that she’d cried. Relieved tears now, sure. Still, he hated being the cause of it.
“Where’s Hamish?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. I know he mentioned flying back to St. Louis to take care of business before returning to Florida, but I don’t know if he’s left the compound yet.”
“I need you to take notes on your tablet or computer. Something you can easily delete. Not on paper. We cannot risk it.”
“Okay. Hold on.”
Peyton waited until she was ready, then he listed things he needed to happen ASAP.
All under the guise that he was still missing.
“Wait a minute. You mean I can’t even tell Hamish you’re alive?”
“No. If he’s somehow intercepted before he reaches London, he won’t be able to give up that information. In fact, I’ll have Trevor come up with a secret signal for whoever meets him at the airport, so Hamish knows it’s safe.”
“And you don’t want Aisling to travel with him?”
“No. I want her left right where she is, for now.”
Dewi paused. “Can I speak freely?” she asked a moment later.
“Yes.”
“Is this related to what you told me about her skills? Wouldn’t someone like her be better going into the lab?”
“We’re nowhere near ready for that operation. I don’t even know where the lab is. Jake, Ken, and I will work with Trevor’s contacts to see if we can pinpoint it on satellite photos. That’s one of the reasons I want Ken here instead of playing phone tag. There’s a greater chance of electronic surveillance finding me if I’m doing that.”
“When we locate it, let’s send a fuckton of well-armed shifters in there and destroy it. Or are we rich enough to buy a bunker buster from a failed former Soviet state?”
“I love your thinking, sweetie, but we don’t know what we’re dealing with. And we don’t know if anyone might be tipped off if we do. The world needs to believe I’m still missing. The people at the lab will likely be hunkered down right now since I didn’t make it there and the team delivering me likely didn’t, either. Then they couldn’t immediately find me. Ideally, we’ll pick up one of the lab workers and Prime them for details. I will not risk lives by going in there half-assed.”
“And, obviously,” she said, “we have to stop hunting Faegan, for now. We don’t know what’s true or disinfo.”
He stretched out on the bed. “Oh, we’re not stopping. We’re taking the fight to them.”
“How?”
“Because another ‘tip’ was phoned in to a wolf pack in Italy today. They passed it to Trevor a couple of hours ago. We’ll set up a reverse sting and see if we can catch anyone.”
“How do you know it’s not a real tip?”
“We don’t know. If it is legit, no harm, no foul. If it’s not, we stand to capture someone with information. Faegan wasn’t at the house where the family was murdered, so we know it wasn’t him on-site. Trevor and his men, however, have scented that person. Meaning we have an advantage.”
“I don’t get it. What if the guy who killed the family was one of the guys at the barn who might now be dead? You wouldn’t know who that man is because you didn’t go to the house and scent him. They were obviously expecting to get away with this bullshit because they didn’t even bother moving the bodies or going through the trouble of killing the family elsewhere. They just left them in their house.”
Peyton rubbed his forehead. He honestly hadn’t considered that, thanks to his own exhaustion. “There are a lot of moving parts. Stuff I haven’t and can’t tell you, about this and other things. Pack Alpha business,” he quickly added when he sensed her impending protest.
“I don’t like being kept in the dark. Especially now.”
“I know. I don’t like keeping you there. Hopefully, I won’t have to keep you there much longer.”
“Why do you want Hamish in London?”
“Because there are likely things about the house Hyacinth doesn’t know,” Peyton said. “I want Hamish on the ground in case there are secret nooks Faegan kept hidden. Hamish grew up in the house. It’s a long shot, but it’s something we can immediately act on. As tricky as the bastard is, maybe there’s something we’re missing, as simple as a wall safe, or a false drawer in a desk. Short of hiring a crew to literally take the house apart nail-by-nail—which we don’t have the manpower or time to do—we don’t know what we don’t know.”
