It was Monday, unless Kit had slipped into some weird time portal. Which would explain the harmonious family breakfast nonsense.
“Today’s lectures will all be online later,” Holden explained. “I can listen to them while we dismember bodies.”
“We’re not dismembering bodies today.” Darius flipped a page, then paused. “Probably.”
Holden turned his big brown eyes on Kit. “Please darling, can I dismember just one of them?”
Kit cradled his precious coffee. “Maybe, if you’re good. Guys, what the fuck is this cheerful family breakfast thing?”
“James is coping,” Darius explained.
“I’m coping,” James confirmed, sliding a full plate of pancakes, eggs, and bacon in front of Kit. “I woke up at five and needed something to do that wasn’t ruminating over murder. Shut up, Blondie, I know you can’t imagine that.”
“Sometimes I don’t ruminate over murder,” Holden said. A foot suddenly nudged Kit’s ankle. “Sometimes I ruminate over Kit.”
This was more food than Kit usually liked before he was caffeinated. Hopefully he didn’t have to eat all of it for James’s coping mechanisms.
James sat in the chair next to Kit and scooted the plate between them. Okay, good. Sharing made more sense. And it was funny how Holden glowered about it.
“Do you want to come into the office with me today, Kit?” James asked, snagging a piece of bacon.
The question was casual. Thoughtful. Any other time, Kit would be thrilled. He liked watching James at work, plus getting fucked over the desk on breaks.
Today, his curiosity led elsewhere. He wasn’t there yesterday, but he needed to listen to the echoes.
“I wanted to go to Lemon Beach,” Kit said, then paused, coffee halfway to his mouth. Because everyone else suddenly looked shifty.
What the fuck. So ‘take your boyfriend to work day’ was an excuse to keep him away from the crime scene. They wanted to shelter him. Sweet, but no thanks. Kit liked being protected from actual threats, not from reality.
“You killed everyone already,” Kit pointed out sternly. “It’s not going to be dangerous.”
To his surprise, that was that.
“Sorry,” James said, dumping syrup on their shared plate.
“We could use another set of eyes,” Darius added. “Felicity kept a lot of documents. Mostly dirt on other people.”
Holden moved some of his bacon to Kit’s side of the plate. “Let me do any dismembering, darling. You can watch, but I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“Thanks,” Kit said, grabbing the bacon gift before James took it and escalated things.
James wasn’t paying attention to the plate shenanigans, though. Gaze distant, he cut a perfect triangle of pancake. “If you find anything about my family, don’t tell me when I’m at the office.”
“Understood,” Darius said, and Kit leaned against James’s shoulder. Holden didn’t even look mad about that.
Felicity Carrow’s beach house was pristine. If not for the disturbed garden gravel and the bleach scent inside, Kit would never suspect a recent massacre.
His men were admirably—or disturbingly—strategic. Knowing this would be a multi-day cleanup, they spent yesterday on the essentials. Now there was no outward sign of the incident. Darius had even checked the neighborhood’s waste management schedule and taken the trash cans out for pickup.
James had disabled all the security systems, making sure that disabling them wouldn’t trigger any outside alarms. He also broke into most of the computers and other devices. Bishop found a couple new ones today that they would save for James tomorrow—though Holden might take a crack at them. He had learned a lot from his internship.
Most importantly, all the bodies got moved into Felicity’s massive, chilled wine cellar.
Bishop and Holden were in there now, cataloguing the bodies. They needed to identify them, figure out which security guards could disappear and which should turn up dead in mysterious other locations.
Kit was with Darius, in the living room that smelled like bleach. They were sorting through the first batch of Felicity’s sketchy devices. Darius had one of her laptops, and Kit had one of her phones.
“She was good about compartmentalizing,” Darius commented. “All her personal resources are separate from Nazario’s money-making ventures. Once we carve out what we want to keep, handing the rest to law enforcement should be easy.”
