Gedeon took the pen from her mouth and handed her the bottle of water. “Not yet. He will. He knows that if they don’t answer us, they won’t be getting cooperation. I also made it clear I’d be coming back to cut their throats.”
She blinked at him. “When did you do that? Where was I?”
“Lotus Blossom.”
She sat up a little straighter. “Don’t you lotus blossom me, Leopard Boy,” she hissed behind her hand. “If you’re going to threaten our clients, especiallybratyaclients who might just decide to put out a hit on you, you’d better let me in on itimmediately. Sometimes I really need to know where you hid that Ming vase, Gedeon.”
He leaned close to her. “Do you know how much time has gone by since that child was taken? I don’t give a damn if Fredrick was scared out of his mind because he thinks Lospostos is involved in this. He could have called us. Hehad to have known I don’t give a fuck who’s involved when it comes to a child.”
Meiling’s eyes went soft. She reached out and laid her hand over his. “Gedeon, I’m not upset with you for threatening them. You have to let me back you up. We’re partners. If I did that sort of thing and didn’t tell you, you’d get a little hot under the collar.”
“I’d strangle you with my bare hands.” He didn’t bother to deny it.
She lifted her hand away from his and took a drink of water, narrowing her eyes at him.
“I’d revive you, of course. I like having you around, mostly for my leopard. He’s grown fond of your quirky ways.” He indicated her notebook with his coffee cup. “Show me what you’ve got.”
“It would make more sense if Harold answered you.”
“Youmake sense, Lotus. I never have trouble following your train of thought.”
For just one moment, her face lit up, and then she took another sip of water, the long feathery lashes, as black as her hair, veiling the expression in her eyes. He never liked it when he couldn’t read her, especially in moments when she was giving herself away. He had come to realize no one ever gave her compliments. She had been as alone as he had. She didn’t know what to do with accolades, but she needed to hear them.
Meiling made him feel as if he wasn’t alone. He shared his life with someone now—for the first time since his family had been destroyed. He told her things he knew he would never tell another soul. He laughed with her over silly things, and he’d never had that with another human being. He gave that to her. She had an incredible brain. She knew it, but no one in her life had ever recognized it or given her kudos for it until he’d come along. That had to count for something. She had to need that feedback fromhim just as desperately as he needed it from her. The world he moved in saw him as a vicious killer. She knew he was so much more. Just as he knew she was so much more than that shadow slipping in and out of homes returning items lost—the work she’d contracted to do before she was with him.
Gedeon knew, on some level, having Meiling with him made him even more dangerous than he’d ever been. He had something in his life worth keeping. Worth fighting for. He would be ferocious in his protection of her. Everything he’d learned in those years growing up in that treacherous, ugly world, when he’d been a child fighting for his survival and soaking up every martial art as if he were a sponge, he now knew why: Meiling. She had come to be the center of his world in such a short time. He had no idea why and he didn’t care.
“I don’t think our man Georgi is the one giving the orders, Gedeon,” Meiling said softly. “I think he was brought on board to take the money. The original bookkeeper most likely didn’t die of a heart attack either. Or he did, but he was helped along the way.”
Gedeon had had that fleeting thought himself. The idea of the bookkeeper just dropping dead and creating an opening for Lospostos to send Georgi Chaban in as bookkeeper for Atwater seemed a little too coincidental. And why would Lospostos do it? He didn’t need the money or the territory. Gedeon kept his mouth shut, letting Meiling explain her reasoning.
“SomeoneinsideFredrick’s home is feeding him drugs. They aren’t coming in the mail. Unless he’s taking them voluntarily, he’s getting them in food or drink. I’m surprised whoever is doing this hasn’t taken out Harold. And that is the next logical step, especially if they can’t get to Fredrick. By placing guards in front of his door and having a doctor attending to him, that’s what’s happened. You’ve cut him off from the person who orchestrated this.”
“A woman,” Gedeon said. “A lover.”
“Someone connected in some way to Chaban. Yes. If I’m right, Fredrick and this woman were lovers for a long while. Months, maybe even years. He trusts her. But he refused to put a ring on her finger. Or he took another lover. He’s leopard. He might need several lovers. I don’t know the way it works with you males. You’d know better than me.”
There was no accusation in her voice, only acceptance. Too much acceptance. She believed that whoever the woman was in Fredrick’s life might plot to exact revenge on him, but Meiling would withhold emotions so she would never care enough to do such a thing. Which was worse? Caring too much? Having the ability to love, or not ever loving? Damn it. Why was he even feeling guilty? She wasn’t his mate. He wasn’t cheating on her.
“The way it works, Meiling, is this,” he said, keeping his voice even and patient. “Fredrick had a mate. He’s leopard. His leopard and he both were mated to one woman and her leopard. By all accounts he loved her and was devoted wholly to her. There was no cheating. He was faithful to her. When she died, he was devastated. That didn’t mean as time passed, he didn’t still have the needs of a man. In his case, I don’t know what he was like, or what his leopard was like. I hadn’t heard that his leopard was difficult. But he most likely took lovers. More than one. He would never consider that being unfaithful, because none of them were his mate. He would only be faithful to his mate.”
She frowned, that adorable frown he often had the desire to lean forward and kiss off her face, especially like now, when she was tapping the pen on the notebook over and over. “Then you believe he would tell that to the woman up front. Make it clear to her that there was no relationship and no chance of ever having one.”
“Certainly a man of honor would do so.”
“The women in Fredrick’s house aren’t all leopard, but they’re all young. Did you notice that? All of them. He has twelve women working there. Seven are full-time. Five are part-time.”
“That place is enormous. Keeping it clean has to take an army.”
“Of women? Young women? The men he employs are for security, bookkeeping, groundskeeping, that sort of thing. The women have kitchen and essentially maid duty.”
“Fredrick is a dick. We’ve established that.” His phone vibrated and he pulled it out of his pocket. Harold had written what looked to Gedeon like a page out of a novel, the text was so long.
“Harold confirms that Fredrick has a very active sex life with the women he employs. He was in a ‘relationship’ with Lola Morales. He put the word relationship in quotes. They were sleeping together for eighteen months when she found out he was having sex with a couple of the other women. He fired the other two, but she ended their time together. It was an amicable ending. She’s never caused a problem, not even when she’s walked in on one of the women servicing him.” He winced when he read that to her. Put like that, it sounded bad. There was no good way to put it. He raised his gaze to her face.
Her dark eyes met his. Direct. His gut clenched. Knots formed. Yeah, she was thinking about all the women fawning over him at the club. The way they came to the booth and tore at his trousers to get at his cock. He rarely bothered to take them anywhere private. Hell, they’d line up if he let them. Did he have respect for them? No. The answer was no. Did he have respect for himself? No. The answer was no.
“Stop it, Gedeon. There’s no comparison. This case isn’t about you. It’s about Fredrick and what he did or didn’t say to set this in motion. We have to find out as much as we can about this woman. I did some research on my top threesuspects. She was one of them. She has to have a tie to Georgi and we need to find it in the next half hour.”
