Page 58 of Justified Fear

“Hello, Autumn.How are you?”

“I’m fine.”Then nothing.For a long, damned time.“Are you waiting for me to ask you how you’re doing?”

“Never.”

“Fine, how are you?So sensitive.”

“I’m fine.I have a new job.Protection for Keely Templeton.”

There was a long beat of silence.

“So, her fatherdidtake the advice Seth gave him.Good.”

“I’ll need the info on those Yakuza bastards.”

“I might be able to get that for you.For a favor.”

“What?”

“I would love to get to chat with Keely more.”

“About the case?I thought Bravo was handling it.”

“Like Bravo could handle it on their own.”

A male murmur sounded like his soon-to-be brother-in-law.His sister was on Alpha and never missed a chance to mess with her fiancé.

“Fine.First, though, I just want to chat more.She’s one of my YouTube crushes.”

Not in the romantic sense.His sister had spent her childhood in a cult, which did not always feed them that well.Now, she obsessed over food, and her favorite things to watch on YouTube are cooking videos.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.Now here is Seth because he wants to talk to you.”

“Hey, Mix.”He bit back the growl.From the moment another agent had given him that nickname, he had hated it.If there were a way to get back at Emily, he would.“You’re guarding Keely?”

“Yeah.Have you found out anything else about those men?”

“Not much, and that’s with Hammer here helping Charity.”

That tingling got worse.If these bastards were regular Yakuza, there was always a trail.It might be buried, but with Charity, a genius, and her husband, who worked on cybercrimes for the FBI, working on it, it should be easy to find.

“How’s that bartender doing?”

“Okay.He wasn’t much help.In fact, I would say that Keely was a little more helpful than he was.Well, other than they were intent on finding Keely.Nope, that’s wrong.They were looking forthe chef.We still don’t know if they wanted to eliminate witnesses or if they were looking for her in particular.”

When he didn’t say anything, Ian picked up on his mood.“What is bothering you about all of this?”

“It’s odd, right?They kidnap one of them but leave him in a house after beating the shit out of him.Why not kill him on the spot?And now the three guys that did the deed are gone.”

“Emily is digging, but I wanted her to have a jumping off point.She can do some things you can’t.”Meaning Emily would skirt the law more easily than Charity or her FBI husband would.If Emily thought a woman was in trouble, she would even step over the line.

“Cool.How’s Keely?”

He looked back at the house.From what Conner had said, Ian had been ready for her to fight them.Sometimes, people were dumbasses.The threat to her safety was definitely real, and until they knew exactly what was going on, Ian wasn’t sure she should be alone at all.He had been surprised that a former NFL player’s daughter didn’t have better protection.Add in the wealth on her mother’s side of the family, and she was a sitting duck.

“Seems okay.We appreciate that you all recommended us.From what Conner said, her father was ready to head back to Hawai’i the moment he heard about Brothers.”