Page 47 of Last Resort

Brax grinned. “Exciting, terrifying stuff, isn’t it?”

“You better believe it.”

Weston wasn’t paying attention to any of the baby talk. He was zoned in on the footage in front of him. “The stalker has been inactive for too long. Something’s not right. He’s going to strike soon.”

Chance met eyes with Brax, then Luke, behind Weston’s back. Weston was definitely the quietest of the four of them, but his intuition was generally spot-on.

If Weston was saying the stalker was going to make another move soon, all of them were willing to believe him.

“I’ll get on the phone with LeBlanc and Dorian. Make sure the security around Stella is tight.” Luke was already walking out of the conference room, phone in hand.

“She’s still in Europe, right?” Brax asked, all traces of tiredness gone.

Chance nodded. “Switzerland, unless they’ve moved her again.” It was possible. Stella didn’t like staying too long in one place.

Chance looked over at Weston, who was still studying the footage. “Is there something in particular that has your spidey senses tingling?”

He shook his head without turning from the screen. “No. It’s less this footage and more talking to Maci about the guy in the apartment. Do you remember what she told us he said at the apartment?”

“That he knew she wasn’t Stella?”

“Actually, the part about battle and honor. That there was honor in staying when Stella had run and hid. It tells us something about his mindset.”

Chance rubbed the back of his neck. “That he sees this as some sort of war or competition.”

Now Weston turned to look at him. “Yes. All this time we’ve been searching for the stalker as someone who’s obsessed with Stella. And honestly, he may be. But I also think he’s obsessed with theprocessof stalking.”

Luke came back in the room. “LeBlanc has Stella on lockdown. Guards have eyes on her and will be preparing for a possible attack.”

“Did you talk to Dorian?” He had enough experience to understand that sometimes a gut feeling was actionable intel.

“Not directly. He’s handling some other business for right now. But I did talk to his second-in-command, and we should be getting a call from Dorian soon to provide any info we can.”

“We have reason to believe the stalker might be former military or even law enforcement. Let’s run guests at Stella’s past events based on that filter and see if we can come up with anything useable.”

For the first time they didn’t feel like they were looking for a needle in a haystack.

They were maybe thirty minutes in when Chance’s phone buzzed. He looked down, expecting a text from Maci or maybe Dorian. But it was from an unknown number.

Are you particularly attached to your office’s front window?

“What the—”

“I just got some sort of weird text about the front window,” Brax said. Luke and Weston had gotten it too.

“Sales promotion?” Luke asked.

“From an unknown number?” Brax responded. “Not going to get much business that way.”

This wasn’t right. All of them knew it. They moved into the office lobby, but the only things there were Maci’s empty desk and a few other pieces of furniture.

The window shattered in front of them as a bullet struck it, a sea of glass flying everywhere.

All four of them dove to the ground—Chance behind Maci’s desk, Luke and Brax behind a couch, Weston at the corner of the room.

They paused, waiting for another shot to come, but there was nothing but the sound of tinkling glass.

“I have a feeling the stalker just brought the war to us,” Luke said.

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