“I will ruin your life. I will make your life so fucking miserable,” he threatens as we step out into the hallway and I hesitate.
There are two bodies in the hallway. One is a man whose throat appears to have been slit open. The second is a tall man slumped over into a pool of his own blood. I take my foot and slowly push his head up until I can see that he has suffered the same fate before being stabbed multiple times in the head.
An eerie feeling creeps through me. There’s no way Jackson or Henry would do this. And Tavish and Everly don’t strike me as the type of men to sneak into the hallway, slit the men’s throats and then not swing by to say hello.
“Get back in the room,” I order, pushing Sophia back.
“What?”
“My men didn’t do this,” I say.
“What the fuck do you mean your men didn’t do this?” she asks.
I shove Teo back into the room and have Sophia watch him as I quickly call Jackson using the fancy earpiece that Cassel had gifted us. It keeps my hands free for when I need to choke out a man and hold a gun at the same time.
Jackson responds almost immediately. “Was that gunfire from you?”
Well, that answers that question. “No. Vacate the building. There’s a third party here. They’ve killed two already.”
“We are closing in on the room that Cassel has identified as the one Cam is in,” Jackson says.
“Get out,” I tell him, having a horrible feeling about all of this. “Something’s wrong. Whoever this person is, they’re not someone to be fucked with. Jackson, please get out.”
“Okay. Be careful.”
“I will.” As soon as the call ends, I turn to Teo. “Do you have access to any surveillance feeds?”
“Not from here.”
“Do you know who this third party is? Were you not as sneaky as you thought, and your father sent someone to dispose of you before you disposed of him?”
Teo shakes his head. “No, he has no idea what I have planned. This is the first I’ve spoken of it out loud.”
“I don’t care about any of this bullshit with this selfish asshole. I need to get to my son,” Sophia says.
I can send Sophia to get Cam alone, let her take the risk, but I know my husband far too well. There’s no damn way that he’s turned around, even though I’ve asked him to. There’s no way he’d leave a child in here and go home. If he’s that close, he’s going to go for the kid because he’s such a good person.
So I guess that’s my only option too.
“Sophia, we are heading out. In the hallway, we’re going to take a right and then another right once the hallway opens up. That should lead us to the others. We’ll grab Cam and then we’re leaving.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” she says, relief washing across her face. She seems happy to deal with me for the first time since I met her. We’ll have to fix that once we’re out of here. I’d be more than happy for her to never wish to deal with me again. She can merrily exit my life and leave me to go back to being Leland the PI.
I slip out, not planning on letting go of Teo until I have to.
“I’ll let you go,” he says. “Just let me free, and I’ll tell my men to stand down.”
“You really need to start doing standup if you think I’m going to trust a single word that comes out of your mouth. Hilarious. Sophia, did you hear how funny this man is?”
“I even cracked a smile,” she says. “Thought about chuckling, but it seemed a bit excessive.”
“Ha.”
“Ha,” she mimics.
Teo’s scowl deepens.
“Do you not like being used as a bullet shield?” I ask. “You didn’t seem to mind when you were trying to coerce me into being a bullet shield for you.”
