“Talk to me Gianna, maybe I can help.”
“Look, nobody’s heard from Etta Rose for at least fifteen years, so what makes you think this has anything to do with me? I’m just trying to track down some old information.”
Her gaze slid sideways to look at the far wall. Sebastian growled with frustration. “Fine, it has nothing to do with you.”
Gianna flinched, and Sebastian sighed. “Look, just get some rest and keep the ice on your head. I’ll come back and check on you, okay?”
Her lashes fluttered shut. “Okay,” she murmured.
What in the hell was going on?
6
It was only zero four hundred in Virginia; it would be a pretty shitty thing to do to call Gideon at this hour. Still, he could shoot him a text to have him call him when he got his ass out of bed. Sebastian sent the text before he went upstairs to his room, then he rifled through his duffel bag. He grinned when he found what he was looking through in his Dopp kit. Landon would be so proud that he was finally using the birthday gift that he’d given him.
Sebastian peeked in on Gianna and saw that she was still sleeping before heading back to his grandfather’s office. The desk and credenza were old and all had pin tumbler locks. He unfolded the leather billfold with the lock-pick tools and pulled out the snake rake tool. It took less than thirty seconds to unlock the first drawer.
“Damn, Granddad, just how old are these files?”
Sebastian tried not to sneeze as he pulled out the discolored manila file folders. He set them on the desk. When he got all of them up on the desk, he pulled the drawer out even farther, not all that surprised to see that there were more papers stuffed farther in the back. Lazar was nothing if not predictable. He pulled out those crinkled papers as well, he’d save those for last.
Each file folder had a man’s name on it. He only recognized four names, all the rest meant nothing to him, so he had to google the others on his phone. Almost all of them had at one time been associated with the Louisiana state government, or they were extremely wealthy Louisiana businessmen.
“Let’s see what’s inside.”
Sebastian started with a name he recognized. The man was now head of the National Environmental Protection Agency. Turned out he’d started out as a lowly state senator in Louisiana about the time that his dear old grandfather had started his political career.
There were a lot of letters going back and forth between the two men, all perfectly above-board, mostly ass-kissing types about how they would support one another on upcoming pieces of legislation. Sebastian quickly flipped through the remaining pages and saw nothing but the same thing. Then he went onto the next file of a name he recognized. Same thing.
By the time he was done with the thirty files, he found nothing. Not one damn thing. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to alleviate the headache he felt building. Shit, he needed to go check on Gianna. He glanced at his watch. An hour and a half had passed since he’d sat down. When he went down the hall towards the drawing-room, it sounded like he was in a wind tunnel. The hurricane had to be right on top of them.
Gianna was still asleep. He crouched down in front of the sofa; the fact that she was sleeping through such loud noise was worrisome.
“Hey, Beautiful, can you open your eyes?”
“Go away.” she slurred.
“Gianna, I need you to look at me,” he said a little louder. He tucked a lock of her dark hair behind her ear.
Her eyes opened. “Not you again.” Sebastian grinned at her surly attitude.
“’Fraid so. How’s your head feel?”
She scrunched her brow. “Depends. Is there a lot of noise in the house, or have Irish river dancers decided to use my head as their new stage?”
Sebastian threw back his head and laughed.
“Stop that,” she grumbled. “I don’t need more noise, it hurts.”
“Are you always such a complainer?”
“You’re the one who injured me. So my complaining is your fault, so you just have to deal with it.” Her eyes narrowed. “And another thing. If you didn’t want me to complain, you shouldn’t have woken me up.”
“If you weren’t so damned funny, you would be pretty damned annoying, you know that?”
“That’s what Jada always says too.” Gianna pushed at the blanket and sat up before Sebastian had a chance to stop her.
“You need to lie back down.”
“Nope, done with the invalid portion of the evening,” she said as she put both of her hands up to press against her temples.
“I’m serious, just go back to sleep.”
She put her hands down in her lap, her expression calm. “And I’m serious too, Sebastian, I’m fine. The ice helped, so I’m going to bed.”
Her pupils were dilated, and there were white lines of strain around her mouth. She was hurting.
“I’m going to get you some ibuprofen and more ice, and you’re going to lay your happy ass back down on the couch,” he grumbled.
“Do these caveman tactics work much?” When she went to swing her legs off the couch, he stopped her.
“Gianna, here’s how it’s going to be. You go up to your room, I’m still going to come in and check on you every couple of hours. You have a nasty bump, and I want to make sure you’re all right, so what’s it going to be? Down here, or upstairs?”
She glared at him. “Fine. I’ll stay down here.”
He choked back a laugh. “I’ll go get you a glass of water and some ibuprofen.”
He was almost out of the room when heard, “Quit being so annoyingly nice.”
“You’re welcome.”
Gideon called him while he was getting the medicine for Gianna.
“I’ll call you right back.”
“Whatever works,” Gideon said easily.
When Sebastian got back to the office he called his teammate back.
“What’s up? Been watching the weather, you okay?”
“Yeah. But I need some information.” Sebastian leaned back in his grandfather’s chair.
“You came to the right place, always glad to be of service.”
Wasn’t that the truth? Gideon Smith was without equal as far as the men of Omega Sky were concerned when it came to anything to do with tech and information. Hell, the man had started playing video games when he was a toddler, and was making money hand over fist for his family selling gaming hacks in elementary school. When he was fourteen he dropped out of school and started working for a start-up gaming company in Silicon Valley. How in the hell he ended up a Navy SEAL was still a mystery to Sebastian. He figured only their lieutenant Kostya Barona actually knew Gideon’s entire story, but right now that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Gideon was a man who could help.
“So are you going to finally let me loose on that prick of a grandfather? It’d be fun to tank all of his political aspirations.” Sebastian grinned as he looked around his grandfather’s pretentious office filled with hundreds of pictures of him shaking hands with celebrities.
“Cool your jets. I need you to check out three names for me. Gianna Prentiss, she comes from a small town in Kentucky called Berea. She is really tight with a friend by the name of Jada Harlow. She sounded like she has a New York accent, I bet they have an NYU connection. Then there is someone named Etta Rose. Doubt that is her real name; she was running a high-end escort service out of New Orleans twenty years ago. I need all of this information as quickly as possible.”