Jeff didn’t hesitate to give a report. “Once a week we got together in a dream state. She would dictate her notes on Daniel and file them in her office in the dream. I would ensure she was safe in the dream. Then we would come back.”
“Who guarded your bodies while you were in the dream state?”
“We were locked in the psych room together. We both had messages to send to a guardian if we didn’t report back in half an hour. Lily had one that would go to you, and I had one that would go to Jonas. We never ran into trouble, nor did I feel it was likely we would.”
“You were taking a chance with Lily’s life.”
“I was following Lily’s directive, which I thought was your directive,” Jeff corrected.
“In all those weeks, or months, you never once asked me,” Ryland pointed out.
That was the flaw in Jeff’s reasoning. Jonas knew it. Kyle knew it. Camellia knew it as well. Jonas felt both Kyle and Camellia holding their breath. Waiting.
Jeff sighed. “I realized after a few weeks that it was possible you weren’t aware, Cap. I asked Lily several times, but she refused to give me a definitive answer. When I told her I was uncomfortable continuing and couldn’t without talking to you, she reminded me . . .” He broke off, shaking his head, clearly hesitant to tell Ryland what his wife had said.
Ryland’s gray eyes appeared to burn through Jeff to the point Jonas took two steps in Jeff’s direction. When he did, Ryland held up his hand. “Don’t you move.”
Jonas halted. “I’m sorry, Cap. I didn’t realize I was interfering.”
Ryland continued looking at Jeff, clearly expecting him to continue.
“Lily reminded me that she saved my life when I had brain bleeds from the stroke that paralyzed the right side of my body. She pointed out that she was the one who hadn’t given up on me and that she worked with me every day and found the right people to help me.”
“My wife guilted you into keeping something important about my son from me, even though you knew I didn’t want it done,” Ryland stated. His tone was back to that soft, threatening predatory sound.
Once again, the predatory as well as protective instincts in Jonas were triggered. He knew this was getting nowhere. Ryland was furious with Lily and Jeff, and Jonas couldn’t blame him. The bottom line was, they still had a traitor to ferret out.
Kaden’s sigh was deliberately overly loud. “It sounds like Jeff was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Loyalty to you and Lily. All of us feel that to both of you. If we’re loyal to one, we’re being loyal to both. I can’t imagine being put in that position.”
“Whoever was paid to betray your team had to be someone who only had access to this team, Jonas,” Camellia said, using a very soft, speculative voice. “The person had to know Jeff very well. And Lily too. The person had to know their movements in the household. You know it isn’t a member of your team, but it has to be someone who is around Jeff and Lily. Someone they both trust.”
She spoke as if she were thinking aloud. Jonas knew she was directing Ryland’s attention away from Jeff, just as Kaden had done, but he didn’t have to like it. Ryland immediately turned those steel eyes on her. Camellia didn’t look at him or appear to notice. She frowned, her small teeth biting into her lower lip, long lashes veiling her blue eyes. “There has to be someone, Jeff.”
Ryland’s gaze moved from Camellia back to Jeff. Jeff pushed his chair back and unfolded his frame. At one time, he’d been a champion surfer. He still moved with that grace and balance in spite of the stroke he’d suffered, leaving him with a slight weakness on his right side even after all the hard therapy he’d put in. He worked out hard, trained even harder, determined to be an asset to his team and never slow them down. He began pacing, his sun-bleached hair falling around his face as he went from one end of the room to the other.
“I’m still in therapy for my legs and arm,” he said aloud to himself more than the others. “Lily comes in to oversee what Lydia is doing most of the time.”
Ryland lifted his gaze to Kyle and nodded his head. Kyle used his phone to text someone. Jonas would bet his last dollar it was Flame, Gator’s wife. Raul “Gator” Fontenot was a member of their team, and Iris “Flame” Johnson, now Fontenot, knew her way around a computer. If she was coming after you with her keyboard, there was nowhere to hide.
“That’s Brandon Adams’s assistant,” Jeff continued, muttering under his breath. “I’m such a great case with my brain, you know.”
“What does that mean?” Kaden interrupted before Ryland could.
Jeff scowled at him, not liking his train of thought to be intruded on. “Brandon Adams was the brain surgeon who saved my life. He’s a good friend of Lily’s. He’s followed up to make certain I don’t continue to have problems, which I sometimes did in the past before Lily taught me to develop shields.”
“They aren’t doing a study on you to present in some medical journal, are they?” Ryland snapped. “I’ll strangle that woman.”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Jeff said. “But now that you mention it, I’d better ask. He sends his assistant, Lydia Fenamore, to oversee my therapies because there are multiple therapies for brain injuries. She actually studied molecular and cellular biology as well as brain biology at MIT before she decided she was really interested in the workings of the brain and she transferred to another school.”
Ryland flicked his gaze once again toward Kyle.
She’s the mole, Camellia said. Without a doubt, she’s going to be the one the banker paid to find out whatever she could. She’s intelligent, she’s with him often, she’s interested in the things he is. She built up a relationship long before she ever betrayed him.
Why her?
Camellia was silent for a moment. Her blue gaze met his. There was pain there. I know what it feels like. What it tastes like. He knows it’s her. When he said her name, it was there. She did something to give herself away. He didn’t realize it until just this moment, but he knows. It hurts. Deep down. It really hurts. It’s going to hurt Lily as well.
Lily had hurt Ryland. Really hurt him. In some ways, what she’d done was a betrayal. Jonas wrapped his arm around Camellia’s waist and drew her to his side. Betrayal seemed to be all around them. How was he ever going to persuade her that relationships were good? That family really did have one another’s backs? At the moment, they weren’t giving her the best examples.
11
You really have no desire to see Marigold Norton?” Kaden asked, handing Camellia a bottle of water as they walked down the hall toward the dining room. “I would have thought she would be the first person you would want to see.”