Page 18 of Pressure

Lance reached the gate and was relieved not to see anyone waiting with a camera.

"That's probably for the best sweetie. I'm on my way."

"Can you drive by the warehouse before you get here? It's on the way. I just don't want Garrett getting ambushed."

"Sure thing. I'll be there as soon as possible. In the meantime, I have Marissa digging into what the media knows and she'll have a plan for a diversion to get them out of your driveway for now."

"Thank you," she whispered. "We're keeping my sister's girls home from school today. There's no way to get them out the door without going through the throng of reporters out there."

"I need to hang up now, sweetie. But I promise I'm on my way."

When he ended the call, he flipped on a local news station to see if any of them were carrying a story. After ten minutes of listening, he heard nothing, so he called Marissa.

"I don't have anything yet. I'm looking through e-mails at the Gazette right now."

"I'm going to pretend you didn't just tell me that you hacked into a newspaper's e-mail server."

"Probably for the best. I always was a little more black-hat than you." He heard her fingers flying over the keyboard. The sound brought him some sense of calm as his thoughts were racing through every worst-case scenario that might play out.

"Shit," she whispered a moment later as the clacking noise stopped.

"What?" he asked as he rolled through a stop sign with only a tap on his breaks.

"I found the video. Let me see if I can trace it to the same account that e-mailed it to you. They definitely have it. I don't see any copy for a story in anyone's box yet. If there are multiple news vans at Isabelle's house my guess would be it got sent to several news agencies. I'll call you back."

The line went dead again.

"God damn it," he said into the empty car.

As he drove, he called Eli but got no answer. He was at Solitaire but him and Holly were probably still asleep. They did a lot of business with people in other time zones around the world and kept odd hours as a result.

Next, he called Russell.

"Morning. What's up?" the man asked between deep ragged breaths.

"You sound like you're running."

"Morning workout. What's going on?"

"It looks like the video that outs Garrett and Isabelle as a part of Solitaire got into the hands of the press. I'm on my way to Isabelle's now because the media is camped outside her house. They're also outside the Glenview and I have a feeling I'll find them at the warehouse too. Can you get security back on Isabelle? Garrett is asleep on a plane from Philadelphia so we can't get in touch with him yet."

"Fuck," Russell swore, sounding much less out of breath now. "Guess my run is over. I'll start making phone calls. She was going to stay at Solitaire starting tomorrow night, anyway, wasn't she?"

"Yep," Lance said as he switched his blinker on.

"Might have her pack a bag and just go ahead and plan to camp out there. We'll talk to Hunter about getting someone to fill in for her at the hotel."

Lance blew out a breath as he spotted a single news van in the parking lot of Garrett's Colorado warehouse.

"One news van at the warehouse," he said.

"I'll bring Isabelle to the club."

"Good deal," Russell said. "Talk soon."

He used his voice activated GPS to guide him the rest of the way to Isabelle’s. Instead of pulling into the driveway, he drove past the house and flipped around as he scanned the small crowd that had gathered. It all seemed to be local news stations so far, but it probably wouldn’t be long before word got out that one of the president’s advisors was involved which meant it would go national.

“Fuck,” he swore again as he slowed and pulled into the driveway. As he did, two black SUVs pulled in behind him and four men he recognized as bodyguards—two from each car—piled out. One of them knocked on his window and he rolled it down.

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