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"When did you last eat real food?"

"Define real food."

"Anything that didn't come out of a vending machine." She marched past me and set the basket on the table, beside the red-and-white checkered bags from Down Home Diner. "Oh, good, you do have a real breakfast. You're eating. Now."

Angelica leaned close as she passed, her whisper barely audible. "Chocolate is an aphrodisiac, you know."

I shot her a look. "You've always been trouble, Angie."

Her grin was pure mischief. "That's what you love about me."

The twins had already spotted my gaming setup in the corner. Lachlan tugged on Katherine's arm.

"Can we play Quantum Strike? Please? I've been practicing and I almost beat Tyler last week."

"Maybe later, buddy." Jase's hand landed on his son's shoulder. His tone had shifted. The kids recognized it immediately.

“Can I have the box of peanut butter M&M’s?” Lachlan asked as he picked it up from the mini-bar box.

“You just had three brownies, you can’t possibly be hungry,” Bonnie shook her head. “Now put that back.”

“What’s this?” Amber asked, picking up a different box from the mini bar.

“Uhm.” Bonnie’s voice sounded embarrassed. Jase and I both turned to see what had Bonnie flummoxed. Jase snorted, and I grinned. Amber was holding up the discreet pink, intimacy box that I had spotted earlier. It contained condoms, lube, and a mini vibrator.

“It’s for adults,” Jase boomed out. “Put it back.”

"Come on." Bonnie herded them toward Katherine's bedroom. "You can watch a movie on the iPad while the grown-ups talk."

Once the door closed behind them, Jase's expression hardened. He must have caught enough of our conversation from the porch.

"You've got a name?"

I nodded. "Russell Dunlap. Tech guy from Burbank. But he ran four days ago. Apartment's abandoned."

Jase moved to look at the monitors, studying the sparse information I'd compiled. His jaw tightened.

"Have you considered the possibility that he was hired?"

The question made me pause. I'd been so focused on finding Russell's personal connection to Katherine that I hadn't seriously considered the alternative.

"Hired gun?" I pulled up Russell's employment history. "Guy worked at Google for eight years. Got laid off, did some consulting. Nothing in his background suggests mercenary work."

"That's exactly my point." Jase crossed his arms. "Clean operation, professional execution, zero digital footprint connecting him to Kit. This guy's good. Maybe too good for someone working alone on a personal vendetta."

"You think someone in Hollywood hired him?" Katherine asked.

"I think someone with deep pockets and a grudge could have found Russell and paid him to do this. Kit never meets the real enemy. Russell takes all the risk." Jase shrugged. "Money. Blackmail. Maybe he owes someone a favor. Or maybe he's got his own reasons and someone just pointed him in the right direction."

"So we're looking at two possibilities." I leaned back against the table. "Either Russell has a personal connection to Katherine's world that we haven't found yet, or he's working for someone else entirely."

"Either way," Jase said, "you need to be careful. Someone with these kinds of resources and patience isn't going to give up easily. The fact that he ran four days ago means he knows you're hunting him."

I thought about last night. Katherine kissing me, her hands in my hair, the way she'd seen straight through my defenses. I'd promised her we'd stop this. Promised her she was safe.

But Russell Dunlap was still out there. With the deepfake files. With the ability to destroy her career whenever he wanted.

And I had no idea where he was or how to find him.