“Did you visit him often?”
“I tried to visit him twice a week. We played chess every time I visited. Merriweather was a sly chess player. I never beat him at a game.”
“Wonderful memory to have.”
Seth studied Dutch for a moment. “If you want us to provide security, we need to know where we’re going. Z taught us to plan, scope out the place, and have many plans at the ready when the earlier plans failed. So, what’s the location of the meet?”
Dutch shook his head. “Doesn’t matter now. We have to find another location.”
That confirmed what Elias had suspected. Dutch had planned to use Merriweather’s place as the site for the gun sale.
He sighed. That meant their only clue, shaky though it was, was now dead in the water.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IONA AND HERteammates worked together to prepare the evening meal. Good thing they’d planned. They spent much of the day chasing down fruitless clues. No matter how much they dug into anything remotely connected to Dutch King, they came up with nothing, as if he didn’t exist.
She froze. Wait a minute. What if Dutch wasn’t his real name? Was it possible that he was using an alias? Buying excellent papers was a cinch if you had the right connections and money. Dutch might have both things necessary to reinvent himself.
Elias walked into the kitchen and breathed deeply. He groaned. “What smells so good in here besides Iona?”
The rest of her team laughed while her cheeks burned.
“You can’t smell Iona above all the other scents in here.”
“That’s what you think, Rayne.” He wrapped his arms around Iona from behind and nuzzled the side of her neck. “I’d know Iona’s scent anywhere.”
“How’s the shoulder?” Iona murmured as the other women talked.
“Better. You were right. I needed to lie flat for a few minutes.”
She held up a hand. “Hold it. Let me get my calendar so I can write this down. I can just see it now. In bold print, I’ll write in large letters that I was right.”
Elias laughed. “Go ahead. This will become a regular occurrence. I’m a guy. It’s second nature for me to put my foot in my mouth.”
She grinned. “Guess I need to purchase a large calendar.”
“Ha ha. Seriously, is dinner almost ready? I’m starving.”
“You’re in luck, Mr. Knight. Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.”
“Thank goodness.” Seth walked into the kitchen and mooched a piece of lettuce from the salad bowl. Teagan scowled at him. “Hey, I need food. Adding more cameras is hard work.”
Teagan snorted. “Right. You added five more cameras. Between the five of you, that should have taken ten minutes, tops.”
“Maybe. I didn’t check my watch.”
The women laughed.
Teagan eyed her husband. “If you’re going to be underfoot, the least you can do is set the table.”
“That I can handle. Come on, Elias. You’re not exempt from kitchen duty simply because you have a bum shoulder.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, sir.”
Together, the two men made quick work of setting the table for the evening meal. When they finished, Iona removed two large pans of baked spaghetti from the oven.
The scent filled the kitchen, drawing Elias and Seth to the counter where the pans rested on hot pads. Soon, the operatives gathered around the dining table and dug into their meal.
