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"He is on the approved visitor list, but we can take him off.” Pierce winked at me. “I never liked him anyway."
Lakewood just grinned at Pierce as he led us both into the study. Gavin, Micah, and Rowan frowned when they saw Lance, but none of them questioned him being there. Micah actually looked slightly entertained by the whole prospect.
"Well, the gang is all here." Lakewood said.
Gavin sat back and took a sip of his scotch. "Hell, if I knew we were adding one more to this boy's club, I would have brought more brownies."
Lakewood immediately went to the plate in the middle of the coffee table before even going for his scotch. Damn it, I'd hoped to save more brownies. But the way this lot ate, there wouldn't be any left.
And Gavin, that fuck, as good as he was at baking, he rarely did it. Only when he had his daughter, Emery, with him. And he and Emery's mother were still working on that custody agreement. At least one that he could live with.
Lance just made himself right at home. I ignored him and turned my attention to my brother. "Micah, can't you hack your way into this information?"
"Asking questions like that, I’d swear you don't run a multi-national tech corporation,” he said with a chuckle.
"I may run it, but I don't own it anymore, remember? The real juice is in the other room."
Micah muttered under his breath, "Shall I go and ask her what we do next?"
"As much as you know she'd love that, the answer is no. This is on us. We fucked up somewhere, so we fix it,” I reminded him. “This isn't for her to fix."
Micah nodded. "But to be fair, she did save us from Dad twice. So maybe this is the time to ask."
I hated that I had to tell him the truth. "Well, she's still miffed at me for pulling back all her tasks at Pendragon, so she's deliberately teaching me a lesson and trying to catch up on all the work she missed. You know how Gwen loves her job."
Lakewood shrugged. "If you’d asked, I could have told you not to take her team away from her. It's the number one way to have her dive right back into everything. She once went on vacation for a whole four days and came back early just because she was afraid I was fucking things up."
"Yeah, that sounds about right,” I agreed.
"But I know a trick, if you want it. Should I be so bold?" he asked.
I crossed my arms and leaned back against my desk. "Are you telling me you know my wife better than I do, Lakewood?"
He gave me a shit-eating grin, bit into the brownie, then deliberately tossed the remainder of it in his mouth. "Well, she did run to me in London, didn't she?" he asked around a mouthful of chocolate.
I was off the desk in a second, but Micah planted a firm hand on my chest. Pierce stepped into the pathway too. None of them were going to let me kill him. "What the fuck did you say?" I snarled.
"Oh, easy does it. She married you, asshole. I'm just saying, I do know her well. But by all means, keep carrying on this way. It's entertaining for me when you fuck up."
I could still feel the pressure of my brother's hand on my chest, and I glowered at him. His silent, long look told me I needed to settle down and stop letting Lakewood get to me. I knew he was right. I'd been on edge, and nothing was going the way I had planned or the way I wanted it to. We still had no answers, and Gwen was still in the crosshairs. If I didn't figure out the answers soon, I was going to have to send her away again.
Oh, great. Lakewood is right. You never learn your lessons.
No, this time I'd be going with her. We'd take an extended honeymoon. Somewhere quiet and remote. Somewhere no one knew about. Not even my guys.
She won't like that.
No, she would not. But if we didn't have something actionable soon, it might be the safer option. Because I knew her. She couldn't live with constant security for long. Constant attention on where she was going and who she was going to be with. It made her sad, and I didn't like that.
"If everyone has settled down now, we need a plan of attack," Rowan said. He also grabbed a brownie, and it was all I could do not to snap at him.
"Where are we on the kid the security guard saw?" I asked.
Rowan nodded and then clicked the remote to the big screen monitor on the wall. "That is Philip Mangles. He works at the garage down the street. His dad owns it, so he's got a little freedom. He got into trouble a while back, nothing major. A couple of possession charges. His crew though, if you can call them that, have all been in and out of jail, a bunch of real lay-abouts. It’s a shame too. I hear this kid is a half-decent artist."
I frowned at the kid with scraggly brown hair that looked like it was in desperate need of a cut at the very least, or maybe a shearing to get some of the mats out of it. And was that a face tattoo? "Where do I find him?" I asked Rowan.
"Well, that's the bet. You’re as likely to find him around the garage as anywhere else. While he technically lives at home, he never seems to spend any time there. Sven and I tried to pay him a visit there."
