I turned to Hunter, who always sat in on my meetings with Nick and offered him a wry smile. “You heard him.”
“Yeah, hopefully he’ll have something more exciting for me than protecting your ass.” Hunter leaned against the bookcase, arms folded, face sober. “We need to discuss the Ripper situation. I don’t trust that he’ll just back off when he learns where Maggie and the kids are staying.”
Nick nodded. “I’m concerned about what the warden said. It was specific, like the warden was repeating something he’d heard before. Not a summary for his wife. Do you think he knows about you?”
“No.” The word was a reflex.
“Maybe.” Hunter lifted a brow and his gaze moved between Nick and myself. “That threat was too specific for us not to at least consider the possibility that he knows. The number of people who knew where he would be is small.”
I took the lead, though. “In this world, if there was even a hint that me or Snow Enterprises was involved in Fred’s arrest, that would’ve travelled through the industry. It would’ve affected the bottom line in so many ways. If he knew, there’s no way he would’ve kept that to himself.”
Nick nodded. Not really satisfied, but confident that we had taken every precaution to hide our identity. “He could’ve got hold of the CCTV footage. That warehouse had been monitored. Every law enforcement agency in the country had a stake in that take down. They all wanted Fred to talk.”
“Which he never did.” The asshole chose to spend four years behind bars instead of giving up who his supplier was. “But Jared made sure that the footage had disappeared from all the servers.”
Hunter nodded at Nick and crossed his arms. “Unless they hacked your systems. The only copy to exist is on the servers at your office. Jared made sure of that.”
“Still. I want us to keep an eye out.” He looked at Hunter once more. “Are all the cameras working at the Snow house?”
“I’m right here.” I frowned between the two men. “You can ask me about the security measures at my house.”
Nick shook his head. “Please, you have a woman you’re attracted to and needs protection living in your home.” Before I could interrupt him, he held up her hand. “I don’t know ifeveryone knows. She doesn't, which just means she’s oblivious because it's clear as day to me.”
“And to me.”
“That doesn’t make me less competent.” In fact, I was more vigilant because of the trouble Maggie was in.
“Look, Theo, if that threat is taken literally, you are the real target.” Nick shoved his hands in his pockets and faced me head on. “Its not a bad idea to have someone else overseeing everything.”
“You make me sound like an incompetent lovestruck teenager.”
Nick let out a chuckle. “Look, when Hunter here finally lands the woman of his dreams, I’ll let you take point when she eventually finds trouble.”
Hunter snorted and rolled his eyes. “That’s never going to happen.”
“Oh, we both know that it will.” With that, Nick turned and walked through the passageway that lit up as he went.
I closed the door behind Nick and secured it once more, before moving over and unlocking the proper door to my office. I popped my head out and spotted my assistant. “Rina, when the Chief gets here, can you lead him to the conference room?” Then I turned back to Hunter. “You want to sit in on that one. They’re looking at securing protective gear for the county.”
“I’ll be there.” I wasn’t surprised. Hunter gathered information like some people collected baseball cards. “I want to get a feel for the chief to see if he’ll have our back if we ever need him to.”
It was not a bad strategy. We could use all the allies we could find. “Sure. We meet in ten minutes.”
While Hunter went off doing God knows what for ten minutes, I brought up the feed from the cameras at my home. Inside, there were only cameras at entry points. I used to havenanny cams when Zoe and Connor were younger, but out of respect for everyone’s privacy, those were long gone. I checked all the feeds and found Maggie and the kids walking out to the pool.
I turned up the sound. It wasn’t great, but I could make out some of what they were saying. Hayden was looking up at his mom. “—and I need to build a model of a type of natural disaster. I want to do an earthquake. But doing the quaking part would be hard.”
My lip twitched as I listened to them. Maggie giving Hayden ideas and him rejecting each one. A low chuckle escaped me as I watched her let out an exasperated smile. Her loose dark curls were piled on top of her head and that tank and cut-offs showed enough skin to make my mouth water.
Of course, my little Pop-Tart needed to give her input as well. “You could make a world with no unicorns and pink animals. That would be a dis … disa…” She looked up at her mother.
Maggie kissed the little girl’s forehead. “Disaster.”
“Yes, that.”
“We already live in a world with no unicorns. And pink animals do not exist.”
Jaycee frowned fiercely at her brother. “That’s not true. I have this many on my bed.” She held up a hand showing him four fingers.”
