Page 89 of The Big Fix

Had he said what I— “You sent him pictures of me?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“You don’t think that’s weird?”

“No. Why?” he answered with a slight grin that told me he was repeating the why on purpose.

I shook my head.

When his phone rang with a FaceTime call, he lifted it so we could both see Darius’s face.

“I can get there so you can go home,” Darius told him.

“I run a B and B,” Dante reminded him. “You run a secret international operation that helps keep the world safe. Who do you think needs to be at work more?”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” I chimed in.

Dante scowled at me.

“Pardon me?” Darius was indignant on the other side of the world. He’d been called to Sudan on urgent business. “Are you still drugged up?”

“No, I’m not drug—”

“I thought you said he wasn’t all drugged up anymore,” Darius half yelled at Dante.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I groaned.

“He thinks he’s gonna be okay here with Owen, Arden, and Jing. He thinks that’s fine,” Dante told our friend, rolling his eyes. “After everything. He thinks he knows best.”

“If Dante goes, you get me or…I can send Lee,” Darius informed me with his lion grin, the one that was a little scary. “Your choice.”

“No, God.” I couldn’t take Lee or his fashion or his flash. “Please no.”

“Then leave Dante alone.”

I kept my mouth shut.

Long moments passed without anyone saying anything. Finally, I asked Darius, “Did you call with news?”

“Oh, yes, we got a hit on the crypto.”

“The money’s moved?”

“It is.”

“Can you track it back to its point of origin?”

“We can. We’re almost there. We know it’s in Hong Kong, which, of course, makes sense with this circling back to Ronan.”

It did.

“My people think I’ll be able to send you longitude and latitude as soon as tomorrow.”

Which was why Dante couldn’t leave yet. “So what now?”

“Cold-blooded murder is a filthy business,” Darius replied. “But you tell me what you want. I can send you a black-ops team if scorched earth is how you want to handle this.”

Part of me did. Part of me wanted to kill everyone who’d been involved in kidnapping Owen and trying to kill us. But I also wanted to know when and where in my timeline this cause and effect had happened. When had this all been plotted and why?