“She trusts me, I think,” Jared said to Piper.
“Why?” Jace asked. “I take it she doesn’t know you tried to kill her father.”
“She trusts me because I could have killed her, and I didn’t. Plus I have her secret now.” He still remembered her standing there, defenseless in the middle of the meadow, afraid of him but not running. Brave and innocent and beautiful. That was part of it, too—those things had stirred something inside him. Then she decided he was okay enough to come shake hands. It was a smart move, actually. Disarmed him completely and put him off his balance. Not that putting him off his balance was hard to do. Keeping tethered to reality was the hard part.
Besides, he promised he would see her again. He would hold up that much at least.
“Okay, how are we going to do this?” Jaxson asked. “Off the top of my head, I’m not seeing how you can get close enough to the Senator’s daughter to shout hello. Unless you’re planning on breaking and entering?”
“Garrison Allied does private security for the Senator’s estate.” This part Jared had already worked out on his own. “They owe us a couple favors. We tell them we have some intel that the daughter is messed up with the wrong kind of crowd. Say it involves one of our clients, and we’d like to put a bodyguard on her. Firstly, ensure her safety. Secondly, to get some intel for our client. We’ll say we’ve got credible evidence she’s under a specific threat as well, something that will convince the Senator that his daughter needs a bodyguard. That’s me. I work the daughter, trying to convince her to come to our side, to understand where her best interests lie in all this. Failing that, I get some inside knowledge on the Senator himself that might implicate him and take him down for good. Failing that, I’ll look for an opportunity to carry out my original mission.”
“Putting a bullet in his head.” Piper’s voice was flat. “There are still other options you haven’t considered, Jared. I can get into the Senator’s office as well.” Her counterintelligence experience had uncovered the Senator’s plans to begin with.
“All right, then.” He gave her a nod. “You work that angle, while I work mine.”
Jace was still shaking his head. “We’ve still got several options before you put that last one in play… as if that’s even an option. Which it’s not. Like Olivia going to the press. Or blackmail—I like that option. A lot. If you can’t get the daughter to come on board, then I say we put the pressure on to force her.”
Jared nodded, although he had no intention of letting his brothers blackmail Grace. She was an innocent in all of this—that much he was sure of. And he wasn’t going to let anyone ruin her life by outing her as a shifter. That was what he was trying to prevent—and if anyone was going to be sacrificed to the cause, it was going to be her asshole father. And Jared himself on death row. Grace would come out of this untouched if he had anything to do with it. He would fight his brothers to make that happen—because it was right, and they knew it, even if they were overly concerned about his life hanging in the balance.
“Lean on Garrison Allied to get me in,” Jared said. “Give me a week to work the daughter. After that, we’ll consider your other options.” Of course, what he really meant was that they could consider their options while he was considering the best angle to snipe the Senator.
“I’ll do what I can to find out if a week is enough time,” Piper put in. “I’m not sure what the Senator’s timetable is, but I think I can find out.”
Jared gave her a sharp nod, and he felt sure that she understood—there were really only two options in his mind.
Either he’d convince Grace to help them, or her father would have to die.
Grace’s small, red Fiat climbed the hill to the estate.
All things considered—including the fact that her life was going to implode within a week—the afternoon had gone well. The photo-op at the VA hospital couldn’t have been any more moving or perfectly pitched as PR. It was the best possible warm-up for next week’s launch of her father’s re-election campaign. Nolan did an outstanding job with the speech, per usual, and Kylie made sure all the right members of the press covered it—she even managed to include the veteran who was turned away. Grace hoped her ideas about new onboarding requirements for VA staff—lining them up with the best practices of top-rated hospitals—would gain some traction in the Senate. In truth, the administration could implement them right away, if they chose to—sometimes, it just took the right political pressure at the right time with the right photo-op to get the bureaucrats to do their job.