The Elite (Romantic Suspense)

A Lovely Little Tweet (Jacob)

Marcus laughed, and Jacob felt his shoulders drop as he realized that his friend was joking. "Just seeing if you were paying attention. But surveillance footage is being reviewed as we speak."

"Witnesses?" Jacob hated to broach the topic but needed to know.

Marcus sighed. "Tougher to get a read on. They're going through everything with a fine-toothed comb, but..." he trailed off.

Unprompted, a litany of issues with the witnesses came to mind: Too many people in and out, including fans, press, and people working for the event. Of course, the best witnesses were also the most likely to be injured in the blast. He felt sorry for whoever was trying to identify and interview the dozens of witnesses and even worse for those who were injured.

"Motive?"

Marcus didn't say anything for a moment. "Unclear. They called in the ROS."

Jacob groaned. The Special Operational Group of the Italian police was a logical choice -- they specialized in counterterrorism and dealt with organized crime, among other things -- but it would make gathering information much harder. The Elite didn't have jurisdiction outside of Montrovia, and unless they could prove that Daphne was the target of the bombing, any hope of ROS officers freely sharing leads or evidence was rapidly diminishing.

There were literally hundreds of public figures on the red carpet last night. How could they be sure that Daphne was the target of any of this? Other than her fiancé being a total jerk, her presence could have been totally incidental. Maybe it was a group trying to make a political statement. Maybe one of the movie stars had a stalker who wanted a platform. Why assume that one very specific social media post be any more of a smoking gun than any threats other actors had received?

A few beats of silence passed. Finally, Jacob made himself ask the question on the tip of his tongue. "Do you think she was the target?"

"I don't believe in coincidences," Marcus replied immediately. "For someone else to be the target, a lot of variables just so happened to fall perfectly into place."

The weight of the last twelve hours suddenly felt crushing. "I'm going to try and get some sleep. Let me know if you hear anything about the surveillance footage." Jacob ended the call and slumped forward, put his head in his hands, and took a deep breath. He felt like some answer or connection was hovering just beyond his ability to grasp it. The more he tried to get a clear view, the faster it seemed to slip away again.

The truth was, no matter how much he wanted to control the situation, none of this would matter in the slightest if Daphne didn't agree to work with him to protect her family. If she said no, they'd be back at square one frantically looking for another way into her world.

No one had ever talked about what happened if members of the Elite were burned in the process of doing their job, but it had to have happened at some point in the last two centuries... right?

He walked into the bedroom, turned on the television, and flipped through stations until he found a morning show reviewing the bombing the night before. The panel of hosts were sitting behind a wooden desk and leaning conspiratorially towards each other as footage of the crowd on the red carpet turning and running played on a loop behind them. He muted the volume, watching the headlines scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

Jacob was finally relaxing into the mattress after a few commercial breaks when a new headline appeared at the bottom of the screen: ANONYMOUS TWITTER ACCOUNT BLAMES GUSTAVO BELLONE FOR PLANTING BOMB.

His phone buzzed beside him almost before the words finished crossing the screen. He reached down and grabbed it, knowing exactly who it would be. "What do you have, Pops?"

The other man's voice sounded perfectly pleasant, as though he were calling to double-check a tee time. "A lovely little tweet is making the rounds. It was posted a few hours ago while you were in the air." Jacob's phone buzzed and a screenshot of the tweet in question filled his screen.

I just want to know how Gus managed to pull off the bombing. Seems a bit too convenient that he got caught cheating on his fiancée moments before the bomb went off..."

Jacob sat up, willing the adrenaline that had carried him so far to kick back in. "What do we have on the origin?"

"Other than being tantalizingly dropped by an Adrienne Crane fan account, not much."

Jacob sighed. That seemed to be par for the course with this case. "No information about the owner? IP address?"

He could hear the shrug in Marcus's tone. "It was posted from an IP address in Brazil, but there are lots of ways to mask that."

Jacob made a mental note to see if they could get any more information about the initial post the king had shown them. He wasn't sure he could share that information, though. He'd need clearance from the king and from his commander. It seemed like another dead end.

He was just about to hang up again when a sudden flash of inspiration had him leaping out of bed and scrambling for his notes. "What do we know about Adrienne Crane?"