King Me (Forever Wilde 7)

Out of love.

That experience had borne my brother West’s favorite line. “She’s not a bitch, she’s a mom.”

I made my way into the kitchen and took the seat next to Ziv, pulling out the GoPro to get to work. After cracking open my own water bottle, I smiled a hello at Linney. “Good job on comms.”

She smiled back and nodded. “The person with the loudest voice gets the job.”

“Mm.” I thought about it. “I think it’s the person with the loveliest voice.”

Ziv shook his head. “Are you ever not flirting? I swear you could seduce a gravy boat.”

“Have you ever seen the curves on one of those things?” I asked seductively. “And they live to serve. They’ll give you what you want. All you have to do is bend them over.”

Ziv and Linney hooted with laughter until the three of us settled down and got back to work.

“He okay?” Ziv asked softly after a minute.

“I think so. Falcon’s with him.” I turned to face him and Linney both. “What happened when he went to the house?”

Linney’s eyes softened. “They said they didn’t order flowers, which we expected. But when Mouse stammered his apology and asked if they knew where Santos Marinakis—the neighbor—lived, the men insisted he come in the house. He was standing on the doorstep already, and one of the security men grabbed his elbow and pulled. Mouse dropped the vase of flowers and it shattered at his feet. The man holding him shoved him against the side of the house and aggressively patted him down.”

“Jesus,” I said, surprised by the story. “Paranoid much. What the hell?”

Linney shrugged. “Thank god we’d been thorough and given him proper ID. All they found was his student ID and local driver’s license along with a few euros. And it was to Mouse’s benefit he was a stammering, shaking mess by that point. I would imagine that’s what helped convince them he was the poor unsuspecting floral-delivery man.”

“Poor Mouse,” Ziv muttered. “After everything else the kid’s been through.”

I thought about why Elek would have such thugs at the front door. At our apartment in Paris, he’d had one man, and he’d referred to him as a butler. Not that I believed that’s all he was. Tibor had been muscled and huge. The guy had never cracked a smile. At the time, I’d wondered why Elek needed someone like that, but then he’d explained that Tibor had been in desperate need of a job and Elek had been in desperate need of someone to keep his life and home organized.

Tibor had been in charge of Elek’s security because even then Elek had owned plenty of precious artwork. He’d also been our driver. Since Elek had had Tibor since before we met, I hadn’t ever really questioned it.

But now… now I did. Because Tibor hadn’t ever confronted someone aggressively in my presence. And I’d lived under the same roof with the guy for two of the three years I’d been with Elek.

Ziv said, “I’m sure they’ve stepped up security since bringing in the crown.”

Mouse and Falcon joined us at the table. Mouse looked much better, but I noticed Falcon took a seat close to him anyway. The leader of the group practically oozed protective alpha male, so it was no surprise he wanted to keep a close eye on the younger agent.

Linney made a few group announcements such as the tuxedo tailor coming the following morning and the success of the fingerprint capture test. I got the sense she was giving Mouse some time to recover before we started the debrief on the mini-op we’d done.

I continued to think through the things I’d learned both from the tunnel surveillance and the story about what had happened with the flower delivery attempt. Suddenly, I remembered something.

“Hey, were you able to plant a bug?” I blurted. I was dying to know what these security men were up to and whether or not the heightened security was because of the undercover agent or some other reason.

Linney stopped talking and glared at me. Falcon sighed and closed his eyes. But Mouse’s face lit up with triumph.

“I almost forgot, but yeah. I actually planted all three of them. One when the guy pushed me, another when the second guy turned away to use his radio, and the third when I leaned down to gather the flowers up.”

Falcon turned to Mouse with a burgeoning grin. “Special Agent Mickey for the win. Well done. I knew you could do it.”

The baby agent beamed under everyone’s praise. Which was great, but I wanted to get some intel.

“Any way we can turn on a receiver or something?” I asked. “So maybe we don’t miss what they’re saying…”

Falcon’s proud grin dropped and his “King is a selfish bastard” glower returned. Which suited me just fine. I didn’t have any room in my life for thinking this man was anything special. I was there to nail an art thief.