“You guys have a great setup here,” she admitted. “I’m sure it keeps out potential thieves and ne’er-do-wells. But now that we know someone is killing off our witnesses, I think it’s better if we take Miss Meadows somewhere windowless and, most importantly, anonymous. All it takes is a quick internet search, and anyone can find out this is Eliza’s known residence.”
“Someone is murdering the witnesses? Does that mean—” Miss Meadows left the question dangling.
Julia frowned. “Didn’t your father tell you?”
“No.” The woman’s inky-black ponytail swished over her shoulder when she shook her head. “Dad just said you two were coming to get me, and that I needed to decide whether I wanted to come to him or go with you.”
“I got a call from the coroner a little over an hour ago. Neither Senator Chastain nor her husband died of natural causes.”
For a beat, Miss Meadows remained silent, letting the information set in. And no doubt thinking about how she was now the lone survivor of the shooting. Then, she asked, “How were they killed?”
Once again, Julia balked at the idea of sharing information with a civilian. And once again, she reminded herself that there was no such thing as acivilianwhen it came to the chief of staff’s one and only daughter.
“Traces of cyanide were found in the professor’s lungs,” she conceded. “We’re assuming whoever got to him used the vaporized form of the poison.”
Miss Meadows’s hand jumped to cover her mouth. “And the senator?” Her voice was weak.
“Someone hacked her pacemaker,” Dillan grumbled.
Tears welled in the woman’s dark eyes but they didn’t fall. “Why?Why is someone doing this?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out. But first, we need to make sure we get you somewhere safe.”
“Wait a goddamn minute!”
Julia turned to the voice that boomed behind her. She found Mr. Movie Star, aka Fisher Wakefield, standing in the doorway.
If Miss Meadows was looking better than the last two times Julia had seen her, then Mr. Wakefield was looking decidedly worse. His hair stuck up in all directions. His five-o’clock shadow looked more like it was coming in at about midnight. And his pretty mouth was pulled into a thin line.
“I thought we agreed Liza is safe here.” A muscle ticked in his square jaw.
“There’sthe scruffy-looking nerf herder I call my best friend,” Rollins said, and Julia whipped around to find Ol’ Blue Eyes smirking at her. “I’m catching on.” He gave her a wink she would swear she felt down to her toes.
22
Fisher listened to the reasons why the feds were now determined to move Eliza to a safe house, and he didn’t like any of them. But what could he do? They were the FBI and he was simply a lowly motorcycle mechanic.
Supposedly.
“I’ll go pack a bag,” Eliza said.
“I’ll pack one too.” He’d been tentatively sucking on coffee in the hopes it would quiet the men operating large machinery inside his cranium. But now he set his mug aside and stepped around the kitchen island to follow in her footsteps.
“What?” She twirled on him. “Why?”
“Ya didn’t think we’d let ya go without a bodyguard, did ya?” He lifted a challenging eyebrow. “The Knights stick together.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wakefield.” Agent O’Toole shook her head. “That’s not protocol.”
Adrenaline tore away the dusty cobwebs of his hangover at the same time the danger to Eliza snapped his hold on the violence that lived inside him.
He slowly turned to face the agent. It was the deliberateness of his move that should have warned everyone he’d let the affable Fisher Wakefield’s mask slip to reveal the side of him that’d risen through the ranks of The Unit.
“I don’t give a good goddamnabout your protocol,” he said bluntly.
“Hey now.” Britt darted forward to give Fisher’s shoulder a squeeze. It was meant both as a comfort and as a warning for Fisher to keep his shit together. “We all want the same thing here.” The former Ranger’s tone was overly convivial. “For Eliza to be safe. Surely there’s a compromise.”
“What did you have in mind?” O’Toole asked, coolly eyeing Fisher.
