I sat up. I hadn’t heard anything about threats, although it would be nothing new.
“What’ve they come up with now?”
Ben looks at me, serious, his eyes piercing through the distance between us.
“They’ve mentioned places you go that are unpublicised. Sent photos. Made threats to your life. We don’t know who they’ve come from. Yet.” The last word is a promise.
Will you still defend me?
Always.
* * *
“I wasn’t aware of this.” Lennox is trying to make himself broader, puff out his chest. He’s done this with Ben sometimes when we were kids, and Ben was taller, bigger. And never rose to Lennox’s jibes.
Ben doesn’t respond. “I know there have been threats before that have been taken seriously, but these seem like an insider has passed on details.”
Lennox is looking irate now, pissed that no one has told him sooner and he’s hearing this from someone who’s worked for us for days.
“Insider?” Lennox stands up.
I don’t bother glaring at him. I know my brother. His fire rages for seconds, just long enough for him to try to exert some authority before he implements common sense.
“Possibly.” Ben takes off his suit jacket and undoes his cuffs, pushing up the sleeves. I try to stare at Micky instead who looks at me as if I’m a naughty child and he knows exactly what I’m doing.
“What are we doing about this?” Lennox’s face is turning red. It doesn’t suit him.
“Sit down.” I keep my voice calm. Firm. “It’s threats to me, not you, and I’m not freaking the fuck out.”
“Language, Blair.” He sits down.
I ignore his reprimand.
“We wait. We do our jobs. We keep everybody safe.” Ben’s looking at me as he speaks because I’m who this is about. I’m his job.
“Can I see the threats? I might know something.”
No one speaks. They just look at Ben.
“Yes. Later.”
He doesn’t tell me that they’re not nice, because that would be obvious. He doesn’t treat me like I’m a porcelain vase, because I’m not. He doesn’t treat me as anything other than a human, because at this moment in time, I’m not anything more.
“What about the ball at the weekend?”
Shit, I’d forgotten. Almost forgotten.
Micky glares at Lennox. “We do what we normally do. Ben’s got this sorted and I’m not dead yet.”
Lennox looks at me. “You need to listen to what they tell you to do. Until we make this go away.”
I look back. “Maybe you need to do what you’ve been told and tone down your speeches.”
Lennox shakes his head and says nothing.
We’re at an impasse.
Like always.
