“Either is a possibility, and there’s a lot of potential threats from either direction.” Forte clenched his jaw. “I don’t plan to leave Sophie open to further ‘accidents.’ If we can convince her to leave town for a while, that’d be a good way to take her out of harm’s way.”
“She’s not going to like that.” Rojas sighed. “Not arguing with you. It’s just that Sophie will listen and comply in an emergency. Now that there’s time for her to make decisions, she’s going to need to understand and agree with you before she decides to disappear, even if it’s only temporary.”
Forte nodded. “We’ll make a case. In the meantime, we should probably talk to Elisa and Lyn.”
“Or you could include us in your powwow.” Lyn smiled to take the edge off her comment. Cruz leaned back in his chair and held his arm out. Lyn stepped into the curve of his arm and placed her own around his shoulders, leaning against his chair.
Elisa patted Forte’s shoulder as she circled around him. “Your meeting should include us today.”
She gave Souze a quick scratch at the base of his ears before she dropped a kiss on Rojas’s cheek.
Forte wasn’t going to argue. There would be times when he and Cruz and Rojas would need to speak privately, but this time it was more efficient to communicate with the ladies directly. They were all strong personalities, and he respected their judgment. Having their agreement would make protecting them much more effective.
“We’re going to ask you ladies to take extra measures to ensure your personal safety.” Or at least he was asking, though Cruz and Rojas nodded in time to his statement.
Both Lyn and Elisa were silent for a moment.
“I’m not going to ask the obvious.” Elisa started to knead Rojas’s shoulders. “But I do want to know what you think could happen and why.”
Watching Rojas’s guard ease at his lady’s touch, Forte was just a little jealous. Then again, both Cruz and Rojas were incredibly happy with their ladies. They were like new men. Still the friends he’d come through hell and back again with, but they were whole. They carried the scars on their souls from the various horrors they’d each been through, but they had healed in a way.
It was like the kintsugi pottery Sophie loved at the museums. The pieces of pottery had broken, and instead of being trashed, they’d been repaired. Gold had been used to fuse the pieces back together and fill the cracks. The broken pottery was whole and had become something more for having been broken.
Forte considered the situation. “More explosives are a possibility. Sophie’s car was parked in a public lot in broad daylight. It wasn’t left overnight. Whoever did it had brass balls the size of Manhattan.”
He bit down on the last comment. Shit, he tried to be more respectful around the ladies.
Lyn waved away his comment. “It’s okay. You’re worried about Sophie, and I’m inclined to agree with you even if I don’t know exactly what it would take to accomplish it. So what do you want us to do?”
Forte glanced at Cruz and Rojas. They both gave him a nod. They were taking his lead in this. If he proposed something they didn’t agree with, they’d interject.
“Probably best if neither of you drive anywhere on your own, especially if you’re going to leave your car parked for any length of time. Would you mind if one of us drove you, or if Gary and Greg brought you back and forth from Revolution?” It’d limit their outings for a while.
Forte looked at Elisa in particular. He hated to limit her freedom only a few months after she’d definitively broken free of her ex-boyfriend’s influence.
“I assume Boom will be asked to do the same.” Elisa looked from Forte to Rojas for confirmation. Rojas nodded. “That’s fair. Makes it harder to target one of us with the same attack, right?”
Maybe the ladies were picking up too much vocabulary from them. Guilt pinged in Forte’s chest and he struggled with it. He valued their presence at Hope’s Crossing Kennels and what they did for his friends. He didn’t want to be a darkening influence on their personalities. And he definitely didn’t want to bring more danger into their lives by association.
Forte sighed. “Most likely, the next time will be different, but there’s no need to leave any of you vulnerable to it. Atlas has some military explosives experience. Souze doesn’t. His training is specifically Schutzhund—search and service oriented.”
Atlas had been a military working dog for the Air Force. He and his handler had been assigned to various military units, including work with Navy SEALs. There weren’t many dogs like Atlas, with multiple skill sets. As excellent as many working dogs were, they usually focused on a particular set of training. Scent dogs could specialize in explosives detection, live human search, narcotics, and more. Training them to recognize more than one category of scent and differentiate enough to know what they were actually being asked to find in a given situation wasn’t standard procedure.
It was doable, though.