Russian Roulette - Family secrets - Draft version!

Ch. 114: You know I can't

"I don't think we should show our hand yet," Phoenix stated in his usual grumpy way.
"I would agree with that."

Gareth was sitting at the end of the table in one of the dining rooms at The Mansion, which they had made into their investigation headquarters.

Since they had begun digging into the Giovanni Campo angle of King's surveillance of Mackenzie and her father, they had gotten a lot of interesting information.

Jace, who were still not quite good at the walking thing, had taken it upon himself to set up a workspace for him and Phoenix in the smaller dining room not too far from their rooms, mainly as a convenience for himself. As soon as the others had found out they had invaded that space and made it the base for all of them. It was much easier to have everything set up at one place.

They had notice boards, white boards, folders, computers and everything they needed to keep track of the information they gathered. Mackenzie had refused to sit that one out, it was her right to know. She was in there most of the time organizing everything.

Her way of systemizing and organizing the information in categories and subcategories had impressed them all. It was no wonder why she was as good at her normal job as she was. Mackenzie was not showing off, she did what she was best at and though the guys had their ways and usually did things very differently from Mackenzie's approach they adapted and found her systems impressive and easy to follow.

"I think it's best if we keep our cards close to heart for now," Mackenzie agreed scooting in to sit on Gareth's lap. It had pretty much been her seat in the house whenever he was there. Being close to him when they went through the details of how King had been keeping track of her her entire life, kept her from spiraling. She needed Gareth to keep calm. To feel safe.

To not spin into an abyss of fright.

It was scary how all her day-to-day routines had been logged in her bank account for King to follow. Every time she had moved, her deposit for her apartment had been paid from her account, her salary from the companies she worked for had been deposited there too.

They had spent hours with Horse telling them all how he, from reading her account statements, could figure out her routines. Which days she went shopping for food. When she went out to eat, her favorite restaurants, her favorite night clubs. Where she bought her clothes and which pharmacy or beauty salons she used.

Horse had been able to pinpoint her menstrual cycle from her purchases of ibuprofen and naproxen, ice cream and wine. That made her realize that King had known when to kidnap her every time. Not once had he taken her while she had been on her period.

Her existence had been an open book.

And she had thought she had been sneaky with moving often and not socializing too much unless work related. It had never occurred to her that King would be able to know.

They had been brainstorming for a while turning all the information upside down to know how to proceed. Vasili had suggested Mackenzie went to talk with Giovanni to get some inside information. In theory it had been a good idea, but like Phoenix had stated, maybe they needed to keep King in the dark of their discovery.

Horse was still trying to go through logs to find out if it was Giovanni or somebody else at the bank snooping into Mackenzie's affairs. When he had gotten that information, it was time for them all to go through the tedious process of looking through security tapes.

"So, we're in agreement that for now we play it cool and look for more information?" Gareth was looking at them all in turn while he was soothingly rubbing Mackenzie's back.