Page 7 of Dangerous Command
“We could send someone to protect you,” I offered.
“And have an Adler shadow following me until I die? Thanks, but no thanks. I’m good.”
There was something that made me pause. It wasn’t Kiley’s distrust of Muro, but of the situation itself. There was no evidence of Muro breaking into the Adler House; the property had been left untouched. And with the security gone on the day that my father was killed, it meant that someone had let him in. Maddie, hiding behind a fake name, was an obvious choice. But she hadn’t been around in months.
But there was a chance that the five men I had just killed were part of it,orthat they could have been oblivious. Either way, they were dead now.
So who was it?
“We’ve got a rat,” I said to Kiley. “I might need you to look up the rest of our staff for any association with Muro.”
“I can start investigating, but once I poke anything that smells like Muro, I’m out,” she said.
“Fine.”
“I’ll bill you,” she said. I hung up.
I headed back to the Adler House and made sure that my mother was all right. She was still, her back turned to the door. I closed it quietly behind me. Then I met my brothers in the study. They were sitting on the couches on either side of the coffee table; their women on the other side of the room, sleeping in the loveseats. I sat next to my brothers and spoke in a hushed voice.
“Did you know Madeline Vela is a fake name?” I asked.
Wil cocked his head at me. “You mean Maddie?”
“Who else would I mean?”
“How’d you find that out?”
“Kiley told me,” I growled. “She worked for you first.” I stared at Wil. “You didn’t do a background check on her?”
“Of course I did.” He crossed his arms. “But she’s a cleaner. I never keep anything at the penthouse. I didn’t think I needed to be that thorough with someone who was scrubbing my toilets.”
I clenched my fists, and Wil whistled to himself.
“Slow the hell down. It’s not like she cleaned our father to death.”
“You?” I turned to Axe, glaring at him. “Did you know?”
“A hunch I never confirmed,” Axe said.
“A hunch you never told me about,” I said.
“I was watching her,” he said. “If she was an issue, I would have spoken to you. But she disappeared, and I had other things to think about.”
His eyes fell to the back of the room to his girlfriend’s pink and purple hair. I grit my teeth. We had been having an easy time these last few months while Muro was leading us into his trap.
Why hadn’t I seen it coming? Had I been too distracted by setting up the new arms deals? By my blue balls from Maddie?
And Maddie was hiding something from us. What could it be?
“Damn it,” I said, pounding my fists into the table. The women startled awake. I ran a hand through my hair.
“Whoa there, big chief,” Wil said. “Why are you upset?”
“We’ve got a rat.”
“And you think it’s Maddie?”
I shook my head. We didn’t know anything about her. The only thing we knew was that she wasn’t who she said she was. Madeline.Maddie.Her name could be Christine for all I knew. But she had been gone; she wasn’t the person who had let Muro inside of the house. I would have noticed if she came back. Would have felt it.
