Their Virgin Princess (Masters of Ménage #4)(10)

"I think that's a damn fine idea, Coop," Landon interjected. "Can you aim for his pecker?"

"Don't know, brother. I suspect that is a mighty small target, but I'm a damn fine marksman."

Dane hated it when he had to be the voice of reason. "You can't kill him. Not here anyway. I'll run a check on him, guys, but seriously, we can't go around assassinating every man who looks at her twice."

"I don't see why not. We're good at assassinations. If Tal had let us take out Khalil when we wanted to, we could have avoided a whole lot of heartache." Coop sighed over the line. "Are our 'friends' here yet?"

Lawson and Riley Anders were private investigators with the prestigious Anthony Anders firm. It was made up of the brothers, Lawson and Riley, and a badass named Dominic Anthony. They had come with the highest references from the two PIs who had tracked down Alea when she'd been kidnapped. Burke and Cole Lennox were good, but they also had married a really sweet girl named Jessa and now had one son with another on the way. They couldn't do the kind of twenty-four seven work that Dane had demanded after the death of Khalil al Bashir.

With the prime suspect dead, he had to know once and for all if Khalil had been the one responsible for Alea's abduction. In fact, he prayed that Khalil had been the guilty fucker. That would set his mind at ease. But it didn't add up.

The report the Lennox brothers had filed had stated plainly that Alea had been held for months in a state of "training." She'd been moved from New York to Colombia and housed in a brothel. Yet the physician who had treated her after she'd been returned to Bezakistan had said there was no sexual abuse evident. According to him, Alea remained a virgin.

So he feared the random act of slavery was bullshit. Dane's guess was that someone had paid for her to be taken. Someone had wanted her to disappear and suffer. Money had been on the line. Money and maybe something else. Revenge? Pride? He couldn't be sure until he had more information.

Once, Khalil had seemed like the best suspect, but Dane hadn't been able to connect him yet to the crime either via physical evidence or motive. He prayed that Law and Riley gave him the proof tonight. He would be thrilled to find out that Alea's abduction had been a random act or that the asshole who had sold her out was dead.



       
         
       
        

But it felt too fucking easy.

Dane shook off his suspicions and brought himself back to reality, answering Coop about Riley and Lawson. "I have confirmation that they landed about half an hour ago. They should be here any minute. It's bad timing, but this is the best window they could give us, given the tight schedule Dominic keeps." Plus, if the perp was still alive, he might well be attending tonight's event and wouldn't notice a few more visitors to the palace that might raise suspicion. "We're going to meet in Tal's office to go over what they've learned."

"Won't someone notice if the sheikh disappears from his wife's coronation ball?" Coop asked.

"Not for a few minutes. We're going to make this short and sweet. Rafe and Kade will keep Piper occupied." In fact, Tal planned to give Rafe the signal, who would then make sure their wife was occupied on the dance floor until the meeting adjourned. The goal was to keep the party rolling as normally as possible so as not to alert Piper-or Alea-that anything potentially dangerous might be going down. If the news was bad, as Dane suspected, they would need a whole new game plan.

"I'll keep an eye on Her Highness," Lan said.

"What the hell did she say to you, buddy?" Coop asked.

"Nothing I didn't already know," Landon grumbled over the radio.

Dane was getting a headache. Nothing was going the way he'd planned. From the moment he and his friends had made a pact to go after Alea as a team, Dane had been sure they would succeed. He'd told himself back then it wouldn't take more than a few months before she was surrounded by them, before they overwhelmed her. Over a year had passed, and he was starting to believe she would never be ready for a romance, much less one that involved three men.

And he was beginning to understand that he might never be complete without her.

The doors from the main hallway opened, and two tall, well-built men walked through. Law and Riley Anders hadn't bothered with tuxedos. They were dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts. One wore a blazer and the other a leather jacket. Even though the palace was in the heart of the desert, it got cold at night.

The brothers nodded to each other and turned toward Dane. He quickly sized them up. Lawson Anders was just a slight bit taller than his younger brother, but there was a coldness to his eyes that Dane recognized. Law had spent time in the military, likely in black ops, though his dossier claimed he'd only been a communications officer. Bullshit. The man in front of him had obviously seen and done too much. "Communications" was code for "too classified to discuss."