It was necessary to give the man a significant role so he felt he was helping to get his child back. Gedeon wanted to get the bastards who had taken a child from her safe haven and not returned her. All he knew was, she had better be alive.
“Where was Lilith last seen and with whom?” Meiling asked.
“She went to the park with her nanny, Minny Tangra. Minny walked with her to the little playhouse and two men came out of nowhere, both wearing masks. One hit Minny hard, knocking her to the ground. The other took Lilith. They ran with her to a waiting dark-colored BMW.”
“Do you suspect Tangra as being part of the conspiracy to kidnap your daughter?” Gedeon asked.
Atwater shook his head. “No. Minny was hit so hard she had a major concussion. For a couple of days, we were afraid she wouldn’t come out of it. She still has some issues from the injury.”
Gedeon nodded, not impressed or sympathetic. That wasn’t his job. “We’ll need her address. We need an up-to-date list of everyone who has worked here in the past four years. That includes anyone working on the grounds. If they’re single; who they’re dating, if you have the information. We’ll need to know who your daughter’s doctor is and her dentist. Who takes her there and why she didn’t have bodyguards that day. Where were they?” He made the last a question, looking between Harold and Atwater.
“As a rule, I don’t use them,” Atwater admitted. “I stopped after I got married. My wife didn’t like the idea of having them. I got out of the habit, other than having Harold with me.” He lifted his pain-filled, very guilty gaze to Gedeon’s. “It was arrogance. I have a reputation among the other families. It never occurred to me anyone would dare to kidnap my daughter.”
Gedeon bit back a curse and turned away from the man. Everypakhanhe knew had bodyguards. The heads of the Italian families had bodyguards. It was arrogance beyond anything he’d heard of to think Atwater wouldn’t take a hit at some point. It hadn’t been him but a child who had suffered. Gedeon might come back and slit his throat if that child had been sold into a trafficking ring.
“We need to see the rest of the house. We will also send over a team to search for bugs. Someone planted two in this room. Your home, particularly your office and private apartment, is going to be lousy with them.” Gedeon was already texting Rene to arrange for the team to come in immediately. He wanted them in and out before sunup, and the mansion was huge. “How many square feet?”
Harold told him. Gedeon relayed the information to Rene. Meiling and he spent another two hours familiarizingthemselves with the layout of the mansion. The doctor showed up to help set up Atwater’s suite to look as if he was no longer functional and had to have around-the-clock care. Drake Donovan sent a team of bodyguards. He had men stationed in San Antonio and they arrived within minutes of the call.
Gedeon and Meiling gathered up the books and photographs and left the way they had come, trusting Harold to handle his boss and lifelong friend. Either Atwater would cooperate or he wouldn’t.
“Is she alive?” Gedeon asked Meiling. “What does your gut say?”
“It says that man is an idiot. He wanted to find whoever was taking money from him and make an example out of them. He’s been so long at the top, always handling everything with his own set of rules, it didn’t occur to him that someone could come along with a different playbook.”
“Lotus Blossom. That tells me nothing. Do you think she’s alive?” Gedeon needed the kid to be alive. If she wasn’t—he was going to go insane and burn down the city until he found every one of the fuckers responsible for taking her. They wouldn’t die easy. Slayer unsheathed his claws and raked cruelly, adding his ire and need for violence.
She nodded. “They need her alive. Atwater may be an arrogant ass, but he’s powerful, and if he finds out who has her, they’ll need her in order to bargain their way out of a very bad situation. He looks like a sweet man, but he didn’t get into that position by being nice. I could smell the rage in him.”
The relief was tremendous. That had been his assessment as well, but it felt good to have Meiling’s logical conclusion match his.
Gedeon opened the passenger door for her, keeping his smirk to himself as she slid in. She had really balked at him being the driver and called him a few choice names.He agreed with every name she’d called him and took his place behind the wheel. Now, she was so intrigued with the books Atwater had turned over to them, she paid no attention that he was the driver. He liked her smart mouth and had to suppress the childish urge to taunt her just to get her going. In the end, she always laughed. He could use the sound of her laughter after hearing Atwater’s admission that he’d waited to call for help even after his daughter had been taken.
“Leopard Boy, Atwater is supposed to be this brilliant mathematician. I read all about him online. Numbers don’t lie. If someone is stealing and doing it consistently, eventually there is a pattern to it. Even if they try to hide that pattern, it will come out. Harold said Atwater checked the books of every business deal weekly. He knew those books intimately. I don’t see how it’s possible he couldn’t figure out who was stealing from him.”
She ran her hands over the cover of the top book again and again as if she couldn’t wait to delve into it. “Did he seem particularly brilliant to you? He could barely speak on his own. Harold did most of the talking.”
“Clearly, he was on some substance. I got close enough to him. It wasn’t alcohol.”
“Harold was covering for him, you think? Or do you believe Harold is part of the conspiracy and that’s why the bugs were in the conservatory?” she asked, leaning her head back against the seat.
Gedeon tried not to notice her silhouette as he drove toward the heart of the city. He had become just as possessive of Meiling as Slayer was. She brought him so many different emotions, all very strong. Some overwhelming. She kept Slayer under control, which gave him peace. There were times when he did wonder if she made the ferocious burn for sex even worse.
When they were in New Orleans, he went to the club every night and hooked up with a woman to see to hisneeds. One woman had usually been enough for the night, but it wasn’t any longer. He couldn’t make his cock stand down and the sex was getting rougher and more violent. Slayer protested each time he found someone else to try to take that terrible edge off, yet it was Slayer who often seemed to drive him with his sexual needs as well. The protests were ugly and frightening in that the leopard would wait until the moment Gedeon finally managed an actual release. At that moment the cat would throw himself at the man, determined to take over their form in order to kill the woman. Each time Gedeon was with a woman was dangerous, but if he tried to go too long without, he became dangerous. It was a vicious circle. The only time he got any real peace was when he tricked Meiling into sleeping in his bed. Slayer subsided, and even if Gedeon lay awake all night with his cock as hard as a rock, he was content.
“Harold Brinks is totally loyal to Fredrick Atwater. He knows the man is being drugged. Someone is slipping him something to mess him up just enough to interfere with his ability to make decisions,” Gedeon said decisively. “Harold called us in. He wouldn’t have chanced calling us if he was guilty. I have that reputation, babe.”
She winced when he called herbabe. He didn’t do it often, but she didn’t like it and sometimes it got her going. “I might die if don’t get coffee, LB. Seriously. Even a very bad cup of coffee will do in a pinch.”
He raised his eyebrow. “LB? You’re going to shorten your nickname for me to mere letters? No. I draw the line.”
“What does that mean, exactly? Where do you draw the line? There’s no sand. There’s no dirt. We’re in a car. You don’t have a pen or a pencil to draw with. You don’t even have a crayon. There’s no logic in that.”
“I was taking you to a bakery that has amazing coffee, but you don’t deserve it, so I’m heading to our hotel. They have coffee, but it’s terrible.”
She groaned and set the books on the console betweenthem. Both hands went to her hair to pull the ribbon from it. She’d left it down, tied with a ribbon at the nape of her neck, something she rarely did. She lifted the silky mass up with a little sigh of relief.
“I have an atrocious temper, Gedeon,” she suddenly confessed. “Sometimes I don’t think I’m a very good partner for you. You knew Atwater was under the influence of drugs and someone had most likely administered them to him. You came up with a plan to keep him safe and at the same time buy us time to find his daughter. I didn’t care that someone had screwed with his so-called brilliant mind. I wanted to bash him one for being an arrogant ass and taking a chance with his daughter’s life.”
