“I want to make sure I pull my weight. Cooking and dishes are something I can do to help out.”
“Hey.” She waited until he looked at her and she mouthed the next words, mindful of Tamsin’s proximity. “Everything, and I mean everything you’re doing is a huge help, and it’s stuff no one else can do.” She gave him a one-armed hug and turned, calling out. “Hey, Tam? Want to run over to Asia’s with me for a little while? We need to make up a shopping list for tonight to send Trent out for supplies.”
The younger woman popped out one of her earbuds and smiled. “Certainly!”
Ken
After refilling his coffee, Ken collected his laptop and carried it into Peyton’s office, closing the door after him. He hoped what he’d said to Gillian had reassured her, because what he currently felt was anything but reassuring.
He’d lain awake that morning for over an hour before carefully climbing out of bed, trying not to wake Dewi, to head to the main house to work.
Just to find Gillian already awake.
Something wasn’t…right.
Everything felt off in a way he couldn’t put his finger on, and he hated that he couldn’t identify why.
Sort of like the way the air felt before a Florida summer thunderstorm kicked up, the sharp tang of rain on the quickening breeze, and the temperature dropping.
Only in a mental kind of way.
The spot at the base of his spine tingled. Faintly, but not a sensation he could ignore, either.
He popped in earbuds to listen to music while he browsed the newest data. What immediately drew his attention was Miranda’s recent search history on her personal laptop from the past couple of days.
Disconcerting combinations of phrases relating to Idaho, one of the pack’s shell companies that they used for real estate in Idaho and Florida, and searches for reports of any criminal incidents in Idaho around the time Manuel Segura and his men had invaded the compound. She’d also searched Florida real estate records.
And searched for Carl, Mateo, and Brianna by name, including credit reports.
She’d also performed searches relating to the trip Manuel had made with Carl and Mateo to Florida, trying to find any mention of them in the press or in public law enforcement reports.
Dammit.
The three of them were already set up with new legal identities that couldn’t be connected to their old identities, but that they were still on Miranda’s mind worried Ken.
He opened his notes app, summarized the report and added it to their files, and then made a notation in his reminders to discuss it with Gillian, Peyton, and Trent.
Maybe we need to “kill” them off in a way she can easily stumble over.
It’d be easy to plant fake obituaries and stage some murder photos, and have one of their packmates who worked in law enforcement create a fake report about it. Maybe call it a murder-suicide so it was a closed case. He’d been slightly disturbed when he’d first learned it was a technique used dozens of times over the decades by not just the Targhees but other packs as well. A way to effectively end a person’s trail and prevent others from searching further.
Now he got it. Sometimes it was enough to provide people with new identities, like the family of Aaron’s new mate, Lowri. Aaron was one of the Enforcers, but he wasn’t present that weekend.
Ken added another note to his list of topics to discuss.
That’s when something else bumped against his mental bulwarks, and he sat back for a moment, thinking.
Closing his eyes, in fact.
After a moment, it hit him, and he pulled up Duncan’s notes from when Aaron first met Lowri. There’d been a disturbance, and…
Shit.
Clueless human drug dealers mentioned that one of them had a cousin hooked up with a Mexican drug cartel, and they were on the lookout for ‘weird people’ to buy. No further details available at this time. Recommend admin run a trace on the men for familial connections to the Segura cartel if more information desired. Not enough resources locally to conduct that investigation without potentially raising suspicions…
Ken mentally groaned and started trudging through some of the older data he’d gleaned from Miranda Segura’s personal laptop.
There, in a password protected notes app she used as a journal—and 1234 wasn’t much of a password in Ken’s opinion because it begged for someone to figure it out—he finally located a short note dated six months ago that, roughly translated from Spanish, indicated she wanted to pursue looking for the people with “strange abilities” Manuel had gone on about, even though her father thought it’d been nothing but wild ramblings Manuel invented to cover up whatever really happened in Idaho.
