to you, but I am doing my best to help your boys any way I can."
I pursed my lips, weighing his sincerity. Kody and Archer had filled me in on James before we called this meeting. I knew that he'd spent the better part of the last twenty years in the marines, in some highly classified division. He'd been upfront with the boys when he took the job as groundskeeper, and they'd hired him because they liked the idea of having an extra layer of security in plain sight.
"Okay," I said with a sigh.
James nodded, then frowned. "Except now I'm wondering why your stalker has drawn your attention to my relationship with Deb. It was so brief, barely a couple of weeks. Deb would have—no offense—undoubtedly had other affairs over the years, ones that lasted much longer than mine. So why point the finger at me?"
"Maybe just because you're here, right under our noses? If you hadn't been so forthcoming with your military records and locations of deployment, then maybe that would have caused us to be suspicious of you." Kody seemed to be mostly thinking out loud. "Or he thought we would shoot first and ask questions never."
James hummed a thoughtful sound. "It'd strip one more layer of your defenses away, even if you just fired me and didn't kill me."
"He laid low while Danny and Leon were here, too," Archer commented. "Like he knew we only had them for a short time period and that he was no match for their skill."
"Who were the other guards the mercs flagged as suspicious?" James asked.
Kody flipped a few pages to check. "Grant Silas and Niell Grosmon. Both had doctored their employment history in some way. Sampson released them from employment yesterday and is already interviewing replacements per Leon's list of possible candidates."
"So one of those two could have still been feeding info to my stalker," I murmured, frowning.
James shrugged. "Or they're totally innocent and had something embarrassing to cover up. Did all the other guards check out?"
Kody grunted. "What few were left, yeah. Nothing hinky about any of them. Sampson, Gill, and Dave all trained with Phillip when he ran the camp, then went on to law enforcement or private security. Ryan and Adamson both came from the marines, same as you. All aspects of their files are squeaky clean."
James let out a sigh and scrubbed his hand over his face. "So much for a nice, quiet retirement pruning roses," he muttered with a short laugh. "I knew I should have taken the job for Mrs. Greenborough instead of this mess."
Archer huffed a laugh. "Except we pay you double and let you use the mountain shooting range on your days off."
James grinned. "Good point."
"Just one more question before you go," Archer said, his fingers tightening on my knee. "Did you ever suspect that maybe Samuel wasn't MK's biological father?"
That question was delivered with the impact of a Mack truck, and James looked like he was about to fall off his chair.
"Wh-what?"
"Did it ever cross your mind that you might be MK's biological father?" Kody elaborated, his hands linked on the table in front of him and his gaze intense. "It must have, when you worked out her birthday and counted backward..."
James winced, then shook his head. "No. I mean, yes the thought crossed my mind. Of course it did. But aside from the fact that I was meticulous about using protection—"
I cringed, thinking about my mom having sex with James. Come on, no one wanted to picture their mom getting fucked.
"—I ran a DNA test."
Wait, what?
Shrugging one shoulder, James gave me a sheepish look. "You were born almost exactly nine months after your parents got married. Yeah, it occurred to me that you might be mine. It's part of the reason I stuck around when Samuel showed up with his new girlfriend."
"So..." My voice was rough and dry, forcing me to clear my throat. "So, you did a paternity test?"
James nodded. "Just using hair from your brush. Results were negative; you're not my kid." He offered a small smile. "Although I admit I was a bit disappointed. I see a hell of a lot more of me in you than I do Samuel."
Archer was frowning hard, his fingers still gripping my knee. "What lab processed the test?"
James's brows shot up. "You think the results could have been tampered with?"
Archer shrugged. "Anything is possible with Samuel Danvers. Especially if he thought he was still going to bleed more money out of