Page 29 of A Man of Prestige

“We need to figure out who Mr. X is.”

“What if it’s Mrs. X?” Conner says, leaning in to speak against her ear.

Vivienne’s head whips toward his face. “Because women aren’t driven by their vaginas. That’s why.”

“Damn!” Sebastian says with a laugh.

Conner stares at Vivienne, but she doesn’t back down. She’s not even slightly intimidated by this man, and that is amusing.

“OK, so how are we going to find out who Mr. X is?” I ask.

Ella steps forward. “I could…try to find out.”

I step in front of her. “No.”

She raises a single, well-shaped eyebrow at me. “I don’t believe you get to make that decision.”

She looks past me at the others. “Do we have any better ideas?”

The room falls silent.

“I mean, she does work with the guy,” Conner mumbles.

“It does make sense,” Sebastian offers.

“We need a multi-prong approach,” Vivienne quips. “First, Ella can try to do some digging at work. Second, Alexis is going to use her insanely good research skills to dig up everything we can about who Admiral Blake has been friends with. Who did he serve with? Who did he go to school with? Who are his neighbors? Everything. And I will continue digging into Damien, Jared, and Adam.”

“And what are we supposed to do, sit around and look pretty?” Conner says.

Vivienne grins. “I mean, it’s not a bad idea.”

Conner’s hand twitches. “Don’t tempt me, curious cat.”

“We already have our marching orders. We need to figure out who we can trust in the brotherhood. We need to know who’s involved with all of this and we need to figure out those last two elite members,” I say as I look from Sebastian to Conner.

“Fine. Great. We all have a shit ton of work to do and limited time to get it done,” Sebastian growls.

“Remind me, uh, why do we have a deadline? And what is it?” Ella asks.

We all look at each other. “There are a few reasons. One, we need to bring this bitch down before Confervo and Halfagher can merge. Second, we need to stop these drugs from being used on girls, and we don’t know how or when that will be happening again. Third, we know that the longer we take to figure all this out, the more likely that they will catch us, and then…” Sebastian trails off.

“Dead. Like, they kill all six of us?” Ella asks.

We all nod.

“Shit,” she mutters.

“So that’s why we’re on a deadline,” I state.

“Well, those are pretty fucking good whys, but do you think they don’t have a clue, right now?” Ella asks.

“They have a clue. We just don’t know how much of one,” Conner interjects.

“Great. So we have an unknown enemy. We aren’t sure exactly how they are doing what they are doing or who is doing it and we have to figure all this out before they suspect too much or kill anyone else,” Ella summarizes.

“Uh, yep,” Alexis says with a frown. “That makes this all seem mighty impossible.”

“We are literally dismantling one of Washington’s oldest secret societies, so of course, it’s going to be mighty impossible, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” Vivienne points out.

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