Smoke and Sin (The Perfect Gentlemen 4)

“Is she sure?” Roman knew sometimes he forgot even habitual things.

Zack flushed slightly. “I’m sure. Trust me. I heard that sucker lock.”

Ah, she’d slammed the door in his face. Zack’s night hadn’t turned out as well as his had. If one didn’t count the fact that Gus refused to look his way now. “What did the security cameras catch?”

There might not have been one trained specifically on the room Liz was occupying, but there would surely be one in the hall.

“I’m pulling the feed right now,” Everly explained. “Zack wants us to handle this in-house. Secret Service knows something is happening, but they don’t know what. We intend to let them think this is a personal issue, some squabble going on between friends and staff that Zack has decided to fix. They’ll believe it.”

It was a smart play. There was a ton of drama going on between them right now, and there was no way the sharp, trained agents hadn’t noticed. This kind of late-night gathering wouldn’t come as a surprise, especially if everyone seemed calm and on the same page in the morning.

“Why aren’t we calling them in?” Liz wrung her hands again. “I should have gone straight to Thomas, but after what I read, I thought the president should see it first.”

Or more likely, she’d been scared and wanted to walk straight into Zack’s room so she could feel safe again. Poor bastard. Zack couldn’t afford to keep Liz as close as Roman intended to keep Gus. Liz’s safety depended on everyone believing she was merely an employee, nothing more.

Gus sent Roman a pointed look. “I would also like to know why the Secret Service isn’t involved. It’s almost as if you guys know something we don’t.”

Of course, keeping Gus close had its disadvantages, too. He cursed under his breath.

“What’s in the folder, Zack?” Sometimes it was best to ignore her jabs. If Zack was comfortable with Liz and Gus knowing what was in the letter, then he had to be as well. If the contents were as serious as it seemed, he had no choice.

The door opened again, and Connor strode through. “Well, I figured out how they snuck that package in.”

Gabe looked up from the screen. “Did someone have the key to her room?”

Connor shook his head. “Didn’t need it. I found a hidden passage. The whole place has been renovated a few times over the centuries, but those secret passages the servants used to get food quietly from the kitchen to the guests still exist. Liz’s room is easily accessible. No key required and no cameras recording. I would bet Everly’s going to come up with nothing.”

“Someone can come into my room at any time?” Liz asked, her voice shaking.

“Obviously I’ll have you moved.” Zack had his encrypted cell in hand. “I want a secure room and I want to know the name of every single person who’s been in this house today. There must be a security log.”

Connor held up a hand. “I can get that for you, but you should know one of the tunnels I followed went out to a storage shed on the grounds. It looks as if it was bricked up in the past, but someone took a sledgehammer to it. I crawled through the opening and only had a moment or two where I thought I might have to grease myself up to get through. That was a tight space.”

Everly looked up from the screen. “I’ll see if anything gets picked up on the CCTV right off the grounds. At this time of night there can’t be too many people milling around. If I can get enough to run through facial recognition software, we might get lucky.”

“It’s London,” Zack pointed out. “It’s always busy, but you should definitely try. Now that we’re all here, we should talk about what Liz found. This is a piece of blackmail intended to force me to change the way I negotiate with European leaders.”

Roman felt his heart squeeze. This was the drop of the shoe they’d been waiting for. “What are they blackmailing you with?”

Zack was quiet for a moment. “You, my friends. If I don’t downplay the transatlantic pipeline, the person who delivered this intends to ruin all of you. Every one of you in this room.”

“How?” Roman didn’t quite understand. He’d expected whoever was out there to come directly at Zack.

Then again, Zack would throw himself on the sword, but he would fight to the death to save his friends. The enemy was obviously smart enough to know that.

Liz sniffled. “I read it, but I didn’t understand it all. Some of it doesn’t make sense. I get the part about Gabe and the FAA.”

Gabe groaned. “They want to bring up that shit again? I thought we were done with that. I didn’t have a reason to kill Mad. I wanted him alive. And the NYPD now believe that Mad’s own employee brought that plane down because he was going to expose her human trafficking operation.”

“I’ve never quite believed that was the only reason,” Roman murmured under his breath, along with a curse. “How exactly do they intend to revive the scandal? What’s the angle?”

“They claim they have proof that I shut down the investigation and instructed the head of the FAA to rule that it was pilot error,” Zack replied.

“You didn’t do that. You merely requested that you be kept up to date.” They had been relieved when the agency had ruled the way they had—not because they agreed with their findings, but because it kept Gabe out of jail.

“This person claims to have documentation between my office and the head of the FAA,” Zack explained. “They’ll leak it to the press if the prime minister and I reach an agreement to bring American natural gas to Europe in the next ten years.”

“You said us.” Gus perched on the edge of her seat. “What exactly is he threatening the rest of us with?”

Zack opened the folder. “You apparently made a sex tape, Augustine.”

Gus scoffed. “Probably several. Let it out. I don’t care as long as my butt looks good.”

“Augustine,” Roman growled.

She shrugged. “Seriously, if that’s the best they’ve got on me, it’s no threat at all. I don’t give two shits.”

Roman clenched his jaw. “This isn’t a joke. It could hurt your career.”

“Or I’ll be the Kim Kardashian of DC and grow my Twitter following by millions,” Gus shot back. “Look, I’ll weather this just fine. Dax and my mom will be upset, but not exactly surprised. Kind of like you.” She addressed Zack again. “So take me out of the equation. What about everyone else?”

She was right, and once Roman stopped looking at a possible sex tape like a jealous lover, he realized it wasn’t a very strong threat. He shouldn’t be terribly upset by it. He didn’t like it, of course…but Gus had been a bit wild in her younger years. Probably now, too. Still, she wouldn’t be ashamed. She wouldn’t let a sex tape throw her for a loop. She would likely take a bow and wait for the spotlight to fade.

Because she was tough. Because she knew what she wanted and she didn’t let anything stand in her way.

Damn, he admired her.

“What about Connor and Lara? Do they know about Capitol Scandals?” Roman asked.

Liz turned to look at Lara. “Wait. Are you sincerely telling me that the biggest rag in the Beltway is run by Connor’s Disney princess?”

Connor folded his arms over his chest. “How do you know it’s not me? You immediately go to Lara. I can run a website, you know.”

A brilliant smile crossed Gus’s face. It was one of the things he found fascinating about her. She could find the absurd or ironic in almost anything. “She knows because you have no sense of humor whatsoever, Connor. You are the single dourest man in the world besides Roman. You couldn’t come up with even one of those headlines.”

“My favorite was the article titled If the President’s Penis Could Talk,” Liz said, putting her hand over her mouth as if to stop herself from squealing. “I’m fangirling so hard right now. You have a lot of fans in the press office.”

Lara had flushed a deep red. “In my defense, his penis had some extremely intelligent things to say about environmental law.”

“Could we s

top talking about my…junk,” Zack growled, then took a deep breath. “No, there is nothing in here about Capitol Scandals, but thanks for outing Lara.”

Gus flashed a superior smile. “I knew.”

“You did?” Liz groused. “Damn, I’m always the last to hear anything.”

“No one told me. I figured it out a long time ago and kept it to myself. Sorry,” Gus murmured to her friend.

Zack waved the conversation off. “Capitol Scandals isn’t mentioned at all. No, this is a different threat. It’s about Connor and an operation he was responsible for in South America that led to the deaths of three civilians.”