“I’m here.” MaeBe pushed through the doorway, a flush to her face. “Sorry. We were looking around.”
“Getting a lay of the land.” Kyle strode in behind her.
“They were playing around.” Boomer seemed to have found the snacks. He had a bag of chips in his hand. “Did you need to test the spanking bench to make sure it worked?”
MaeBe’s flushed deepened. “We were just joking.”
“Trust me when I spank her, she’ll know it.” Kyle had a smirk on his face like that day was coming and fast. “Did he ask about the cameras? Because I already told him you would say no.”
“I can’t go against the club’s rules.” Kayla was obviously standing firm. “Not even for an op. Now if you want to put this off and bring in your own crew, then we’ll allow you to use the facilities.”
“Byrne would know if we brought in a bunch of strangers,” Drake argued. “He already knows some of the members here. If he doesn’t see them, he’ll figure out something is wrong.”
“He’s aware that Josh and I are members. If we agree to take the chance that those tapes could get out in the public, would you bring in your own people?” Kayla asked.
Her offer was generous and would work, if not for one problem. “He’s expecting to come in tonight. I don’t think we have time to bring anyone in. Besides, I suspect he knows who plays here and who doesn’t. He’s got resources most people can’t imagine.”
“Yeah, like a couple billion of them.” Money could buy Byrne a lot of information, even the kind no one should be able to find. No matter how hard The Reef tried, there would be some people willing to talk about the membership for the right price. There were other ways as well. A very good PI would potentially be able to piece together a list.
Drake sighed. “Can’t we put him off?”
“He’s too smart. He’ll figure out something’s wrong.” He hated every day he sent Maddie into that building because he was more and more certain she was going to get hurt there one way or another. “We need to keep things running so there’s no question Byrne has that party come Saturday night.”
“What exactly are you worried is going to happen, Drake?” Kayla studied the CIA operative.
Drake shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve got a bad feeling.”
Kay nodded. “Okay, I understand that you need to trust your gut, but it’s hard because you won’t tell me what you think is going to happen, and I suspect you’re not willing to tell anyone else or you would have backup.”
Drake’s jaw tightened. “There’s nothing to tell. Look, I’m worried because I had an operative go bad a couple of years ago, and I think this is the group that turned her. We haven’t been able to get any ID on Byrne’s contact with the organization, and that could be bad. What do we know about Byrne’s girlfriend?”
MaeBe stopped trying to slap Kyle’s hands away and got serious. “It’s all in what I sent to Kay. Jane Adams. She’s thirty-three. She’s a consultant. She basically helps companies streamline their processes in order to cut back on payroll.”
“I bet she has a ton of friends,” Boomer said with a shake of his head.
“Not according to her social media,” MaeBe continued. “I’ve sent you all the relevant data—her birth certificate, social security number, where she went to school and so on. All of it checks out. I even called a guy I know at one of the main social media sites to make sure the timeline was clean.”
“What do you mean?” Deke didn’t always understand MaeBe’s methods.
“She wanted to make sure no one faked the timeline,” Kyle explained. “That the posts were made on the days reflected.”
MaeBe got the silliest grin on her face. “Oh, you do listen.”
Kyle shrugged. “Not according to my uncle, but I listen to you.”
Big Tag was right about the puppy love thing being a little nauseating. “So she’s on the up-and-up? What else do we know? Anything about an ex-boyfriend?”
MaeBe patted her laptop bag. “It’s all in the info I sent you. Her profiles are public, so you can go look at them. She’s had one account for twelve years, another for ten. She’s got a handful of friends and followers. She lost her mom when she was twelve and spent the rest of her time in the foster system. She managed to get a scholarship and some loans to go to college. She got an MBA in finance while she was working. From what I can tell she does almost everything remotely.”
That wasn’t surprising. The pandemic a few years back had changed the way people worked. It was much more acceptable to work from home now. It also might be far more comfortable for a woman who basically fired people for a living. “But nothing about the abusive ex.”
“Oh, she talks about him, but only in the past tense,” MaeBe said. “I can’t find any pics of the two of them. She either deleted them or she was extremely private. Most of her Instagram is about her cats. She had two and seemed very attached to them. She doesn’t talk about it but there’s a post a year ago that says her cats died and she’s heartbroken. She went dark for a couple of months and when she came back her tone’s been different. I kind of think the ex might have killed her cats.”
“The ex sounds like an asshole. Who would kill a cat?” Kyle asked.
Deke happened to know that Kyle was fond of cats, especially his brother’s. “Does she talk about her relationship with Byrne?”
“She does not mention him by name,” MaeBe replied. “But she has been talking about how positive she’s feeling lately and things might be turning a corner. She talked about living well being the best revenge.”
“What you’re saying is she’s got a deep enough footprint that we’re not worried she’s not who she says she is,” Kay said. “But she’s the one who wanted in The Reef.”
“We can ask her when she gets here,” Drake replied. “Or rather you can, Kay. I’d like you to stick close to her, and I’ll stick close to Byrne.”
It irritated him that Drake was trying to take over. He was responsible for these people. “You can play the dungeon monitor. Byrne doesn’t know you. He’s not going to relax around you. I’ll show him around with Josh, if that’s okay with Kay.”
“My man is ready for action,” Kay promised. “His last three films have been slow-moving Oscar bait. He wants to do some spy work.”
He hoped Josh was as good as Kay claimed he was. “All he has to do is follow my lead. My plan is to separate them right at the beginning. Let the subs walk Jane around and Josh and I will walk Byrne through. Then we’ll meet back up and watch some scenes. We just have to get through the night so we can get to Saturday. That’s the real op.”
“I’ve been studying up,” MaeBe promised. “I hunted through a bunch of recent articles on Byrne, and one of them features a shot of him in his private office. It’s got this gorgeous view of the ocean in the distance, but it’s also got a decent view of his whole system. I managed to isolate and refine that part of the picture. I figured out who makes his components, and I know exactly what I’m up against.”