Page 123 of Convict's Game

All of which gave me nothing.

Exasperated, I tossed the yellow files down. “This is hopeless.”

Lovelyn watched me, hesitancy on her pretty features. “There is something else I considered, but I feel I need to couch it with a warning. Though your grandfather started this beneficiary role, he may not have been the one to set up the coding, so this might not be on him.”

My gut twisted with the same sense of wrongness. “What are you thinking?”

“I mean, I’m probably way off base.”

“Out with it.”

The air seemed to tighten around us.

“Those in the know and those not.”

A knock came at the door, a message arriving simultaneously on my phone to tell me it was Tyler and Kane. I informedLovelyn, and she grabbed a blazer from the back of the chair and slid it on over the cropped top that bared her waist.

I arched an eyebrow, glad for a break in the tension rising in me. “You’re fine.”

She shook out her sheet of long hair. “I don’t want to appear unprofessional.”

“There’s a nightclub of barely dressed people downstairs.”

She didn’t meet my gaze. “Not many of them are bigger girls, though.”

“Are you kidding? You’re gorgeous.”

Lovelyn flashed a quick smile that didn’t convince me she agreed. Someone had clearly done a number on her self-esteem.

I went to the door and let in the two men. Earlier, I’d asked Convict if there was any update, and he’d replied that Tyler would tell me himself. I hadn’t expected my brother to come with him, and when Kane took in the piles of paper on the floor, then pointedly retreated to play sentinel against the kitchen wall, a small flare of irritation rose in me.

At the counter, Tyler walked through an update on the hunt for Jacobs. There wasn’t much to say. No return home. No licence plate registered.

“In my experience, men like that don’t abandon all they’ve worked for without exceptional reason. If you believe he’s influencing your grandmother, our next play will be to stake out the meeting tomorrow.”

Strange relief had me breathing easier to know the skeleton crew would be around. Convict had assured me he wouldn’t leave my side. I needed that more than I understood.

Tyler looked at Kane. “Anything to add?”

My brother curled his lip. “My guess is he’s dead at the hands of whoever he crossed.”

I snorted. “Which helps us none.”

Kane inclined his head. “Agreed. If that proves true, we’ll take it out on that miserable sewer rat, Salter.”

“Any closer to driving said rat out of his sewer?”

Grouchy emotion flickered in his eyes. “I’ll tell ye when there’s something to say.”

Tyler’s phone buzzed, and he turned away to take the call. I directed my cool gaze back onto my brother. My feelings were all over the place, and for some reason, he appeared like an excellent target.

“Ready for tomorrow?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “We have no fucking clue how this vote will resolve. It’s pissing me off.”

The looming meeting had me so nauseated I could barely think about it. It was still a draw, two votes for, two against. Nothing I’d done in the past several weeks had made a difference, and the hope I’d held of finding and blackmailing Jacobs shrank by the hour. “I think the trusted company panel gets a vote in the event of a deadlock.”

“Ye think or ye know?”