“What did they find?”
Brady raised his eyebrows. “Why do you think they found anything?”
Brett rolled his eyes, something he rarely did. “They’re going to want to be seen to be doing something. Even if whatever they’ve found doesn’t mean shit.”
Brady exhaled. “Money. A burner. And…a rifle.”
Trying not to react to the rifle comment, becausewhy the hell would Felix leave his rifle at his home, he frowned. “All the royal guards have burners for if they need them. It’s a safety precaution in case our phones are tapped. As for the money, Felix didn’t like banks. He preferred keeping his money where he could see it.”
“And you don’t think that’s strange for someone as tech savvy as he is?”
Brett glared at him. “Why would that be strange? If anything, I think he has the right idea. Almost anyone can find out how to hack from the internet nowadays.” He changed the subject. “Can I go in?”
Brady shook his head. “Not a chance. I have my guys following theirs around, though. We don’t want anyone planting anything. This is already a shitstorm, even when Felix is found to be innocent.”
Brett relaxed a little at Brady’s “when” comment, glad the Commissioner didn’t believe Felix had anything to do with the allegations, despite his earlier questions. He stared at the house.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” he muttered, mostly to himself.
“What doesn’t?” Owen asked.
He paused for a second, letting his thoughts align as much as possible. “Right from the beginning, we’ve been running from pillar to post. The alley, this house, the castle, that location with his phone, this house again, and so on. Now the media is involved, which has brought the police in. The allegations willmostly likely bring others to look into it. We all know that when different departments are involved, one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing until too late. It’s almost like whoever is doing this is trying to bring in so many people that it gets confusing.”
“They’re trying to wind everyone up so they aren’t thinking clearly,” Owen said.
“So the bad guys can get away easier,” Colt added.
Brett stared at Brady. “I don’t know how you’ll manage it, but you need to make sure there is onlyoneperson who is overseeing all of this. If this gets too convoluted, things will get missed, and we won’t find him.”
Brady nodded. “I’ll do my best. I only have so much pull, but I’ll do what I can.”
Brett spoke to the detectives, giving as much information as possible without compromising their own investigation, including that Felix kept all but the gun he kept on him at the castle, as did the other guards. Brett could prove it was there from the records Maddox had done, and then he took one last look at Felix’s house and climbed back in his car, calling to Owen and Colt that he was heading back to Sec HQ.
“Brett! Thank god you’re back. We’ve just received something through Felix’s email address,” Sam said. “It came in like two minutes ago. It has an attachment.”
“Put it up on the big screen,” Brett said, stepping towards it. He crossed his arms and waited.
The sound crackled for a second and then a dark room came on. There were two men standing on either side of a knelt one. The two standing men wore dark clothing, almost military like, but he couldn’t see well enough. Then he moved his gaze to the man kneeling between them.
Felix.
His hair was messed up, and he looked like he had some scrapes on his face, along with the bruise that had been in theprevious photo, but the video quality was poor—on purpose or not didn’t matter—and there were lines regularly running across the screen, distorting the images and making it difficult to get a decent look. But he was alive, and Brett breathed clearer for the moment.
The man on Felix’s right started talking.
“We have one of your men, and you need to understand that he’s not coming back to you. You have been warned over the last few months, but you have not listened. You have continued to make the wrong decisions, and because of this, you will pay the price.
“Number four is no more,
Are you scared to your core?
Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock,
No more time on the clock.”
The man covered Felix’s head with the bag, stood straight again and shot him, blood exploding from the opposite temple.
Brett stared at the screen, even as the picture disappeared. His pulse pounded throughout his body, becoming a loud rapport in his head. His head swam as he blinked to keep the screen in his field of vision, hoping the pictures would reverse. Someone stood in front of him, and he moved his head to see the screen again, but the person moved with him. Hands touched his cheeks, and the person said something, but Brett couldn’t hear him. The pounding in his head and chest increased, and the person said something else, then frowned. One second later, a sharp pain lanced across his left cheek, and he sucked in a breath. Rapidly, the noise filtered back into his ears and shouted conversations reached him.