King Me (Forever Wilde 7)

If that’s what it took for me to prove to him that I trusted him—cared about him—then so be it.

I turned to Ziv. “Call it in.”

He hesitated, watching me for a second to see if I would change my mind. “Do it,” I said, the command harsher than I expected.

Ziv nodded and turned back to his keyboard, making the call from his computer. A robotic voice said something in Hungarian after the phone was picked up. I had to assume it was something about an intrusion into the parliament building.

I stared at the video feeds on the monitors, my eyes flicking between the screen showing King in the rotunda and Elek slowly approaching. Elek passed under a security light, and I noticed something in his hands. I frowned, leaning closer. “What’s he carrying? Is… is that a painting tube?”

What the hell was he doing?

Mouse said, “Why would he have that?”

“He’s not stupid enough to steal from the same place twice, is he?” I asked, squinting to see if I could make out any details.

I took the microphone from Linney again. “Texas, what’s going on?” I asked, using the same impromptu call sign Linney had picked after kitten was summarily rejected.

There was no answer.

“Texas,” I said again, more urgently.

Nothing. I looked to Linney.

She clicked frantically on her own laptop before shaking her head. “He cut the audio.”

Mouse leaned forward. “Maybe once he realized it was Elek in the building, he figured this would be a good chance to nail him.”

“Wrong choice of words, Mouse,” Ziv muttered, keeping a close eye on the camera feeds. They were all we had now, and Elek was finally in the rotunda, approaching the crown display case. My stomach knotted with both fear and anger.

How dare Elek break into the parliament building a second time. And how the hell was King going to react?

“But they’ll get King too,” I reminded them. “They’ll catch him with the crown.”

“Not if he puts it in place first and gets the hell out of there,” Mouse said.

Why wasn’t he doing that? King stood by the display case, not making any move to open it. Instead, he was looking right at the other intruder.

And it was clear as day that King didn’t display any surprise at seeing his ex which made my stomach fill with acid. He’d planned this. They’d planned this.

Was King Wilde double-crossing us? Had I just made the biggest mistake of my career again?

“Linney, get those comms working,” I barked even though we all knew if King didn’t want us to hear what was going on, there was nothing we could do about it.

I turned to Ziv. “Contact the other team and put it on speaker.”

A few clicks and then Agent Martin’s voice came over the speakers. “What’s the status of the asset?”

I ignored him. “I was hoping you could tell me. Do you have ears inside?”

“No. Your man destroyed the bug the minute he stepped out of the van. The tracker still works though. It shows him dead center of the rotunda.”

I murmured thanks before indicating to Ziv to end the call.

“Why destroy the bug and not the tracker?” Mouse asked.

Ziv groaned. “That’s what he was destroying. A bug. He wouldn’t have worried as much about the tracker unless he was planning on running away from us.”

Was he planning on running away from us? At this point, I didn’t know squat about what King Wilde had planned. All I knew was that he’d expected me to trust him, but he hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me anything.

What if this had all been planned? What if he and Elek were still together? What if…

“They’re talking,” Linney said, pointing to the monitor.

Sure enough, the two men were standing face-to-face in front of the empty crown display case. I could tell by their body language the words were heated. King tried to turn and walk away, but Elek grabbed him and pulled him back.

Okay, so they weren’t together. Or they were, but they were arguing.

“Should we go in there?” I asked.

“Absolutely not,” Mouse said at the same time Linney and Ziv said something similar.

“In fact, we need to go,” Ziv added.

“No,” I said evenly.

“He told us to go if something went wrong,” Mouse noted. “Elek showing up and the police on their way is definitely something wrong.”

“No,” I ground out.

I wasn’t leaving King.

Linney put a hand on my shoulder. “He asked you to trust him. And even if you didn’t trust him, you can’t think having an FBI agent caught in the Hungarian Parliament Building is acceptable. No matter what happens, we can’t be caught here. He was right before. We need to leave. The cops are coming.”

She was right, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave when he was clearly in trouble. What was I supposed to do?

King took the bag with the crown off his back and handed it to Elek just as the sirens finally began to scream.