But where Keira was concerned, over the past week I’d been on excellent behavior. No more heated looks. Minimal touching. Absolutely no kissing. I’d been all business. Which probably explained the dour mood I’d been in.
“And there’s Phelan. Huh. Look atthat.” Keira held up the screen for me to see the camera feed.
It looked like Woodson was giving Phelan a lecture. The podcaster had his shoulders slumped, head down as he nodded at whatever Woodson was saying.
River’s access to the security feed lacked any sound, but from what we’d seen, it was clear Phelan wasnota fan of his bodyguards. Every time he was around them, he cringed away. Natasha, his assistant, also gave them a wide berth.
Supposedly, Crosshairs Security was working for Phelan. But the podcaster acted liketheywere in charge.
Made no damn sense.
“Do they have something on him?” Keira mused. “Or…”
“Or there’s something very weird going on,” I finished.
“Too bad we can’t see every room in Phelan’s mansion. Like the room Woodson and his friends were sitting in when I overheard them talking about the shipments.”
I nodded. But the security cameras were only fixed on the entrances and main hallways. Enough to see the comings and goings of people there, but no eye-in-the-sky to see these mysterious shipments. Or whatever else Phelan and Crosshairs might be doing there.
We now had profiles of several more Crosshairs Security employees, but no match with the Ryan name. One face had also been conspicuously absent: the man who’d offered to buy Keira a drink at the roadhouse the night of the shooting. He’d been wearing a Crosshairs ring.
All these pieces, and we were nowhere near fitting them together.
“I’m not even sure we can call Phelan a suspect anymore,” I said. “If he was pissed off at you, why would Crosshairs agree to risk exposure by trying to kill you in the first place? They had to know you’re a cop. Maybe Phelan would be that stupid, but Crosshairs doesn’t seem to be. Especially with an ex-Special Forces guy like Harris Medina as their leader.”
“But then whydidWoodson go after me? I’ve never met him before in my life.”
Exactly what bothered me. The attack on Keira seemed personal. Not random. Woodson and his buddy had wanted to killherspecifically. But if Phelan hadn’t been behind it, what was the motive?
“Okay, Woodson’s on the move,” Keira said. “Heading toward the exit.”
I checked the clock. We’d timed out how long it would take for someone to drive past this spot after leaving the Phelan residence. About six minutes.
I set my stopwatch.
Six minutes and five seconds later, headlights swept past us. I gave Woodson another 30-second head start.
Then I turned over the engine and pulled out onto the highway, following the direction Woodson had gone. His taillights were just visible on the straight stretch of road ahead.
Keira put the tablet away. “Have you done anything like this before? Tailing someone?”
“Sure. Never in the USA, but I sometimes had to track my targets overseas. Study their movements. Figure out how they were most vulnerable.”
“Want to share with the class?”
I heard the smile in her voice. I didn’t know how she managed that. Being so unaffected by the details I confessed about my old life. I was talking about assassinating people, and she always shrugged it off. Maybe because Keira and I had been plotting to destroy the men who’d shot her.
But the things I’d done? They were different. There was no way she’d ever understand it fully.
Keira would never be a cold-blooded killer deep down, and thank fuck for that.
“You don’t want to hear about this stuff,” I muttered.
“Are you kidding? Yeah, I do. I want to learn. And it’s fascinating. You were like a spy.”
“I wasnota spy. I didn’t gather information or develop intelligence assets. I murdered people, Keira.”
“You didn’t kill them because you enjoyed it.”
