Free Dangerous Dalliances (Maxwell Investigations) by Dawn Ibanez

saw that she was watching her.
    Tina
nodded slowly before turning her attention to her son. “I want you to take a
few days off and shadow Lily. I don’t want whoever’s doing this to get their
hands on another Horseman.” She frowned and the gem in her hand started to glow
in a soft yellow light. “Look through everything you can. I need to know what
Mathias knew.”
    Barry
and Lily nodded as Sloane came into the waiting room followed by Victor. Barry
gave the former monarch a puzzled look as Sloane gave Lily a cup of coffee.
“Victor,” he said slowly. “I didn’t think you would be here.”
    Victor
glanced at Jimmy before looking at the other people in the room. “Normally, I
would not be. But I believe young James has some information for me.”
    Jimmy
cleared his throat and stepped closer to his family. “Yeah, there’s an Oracle
named Tsukiko Himura. She’s had some insight into what’s happening.” He shook
his head when Tina sat up straighter. “She doesn’t know where Madison is, but
she did say that Victor has to be the one to kill the snake that’s behind
everything.” He looked at Victor and sighed. “Actually, her exact words were, now
would be a good time for you to tell the King that he will have to destroy the
snake. Otherwise all will be lost. I’m not exactly sure what that means,
but I think she’s talking about whoever is behind all of this.”
    Victor
frowned deeply as he thought. “I will take this under advisement,” he said
calmly. “Did she say anything in regards to Madison?”
    “Basically,
things are going to get worse before they get any better,” Jimmy rubbed the
back of his neck and sighed. “Madison’s going to come looking for the last two
seals, and we have to find them first.”
    “That
isn’t a lot to go on,” James observed.
    “It’s
better than what we had,” Tina sighed. She stood and started to pace across the
waiting room. “Before we didn’t know how many seals they had. There are two
still missing, and we can try and hunt them down.”
    Jimmy
reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out the small dragon
figurine. “I think this may be one,” he admitted. He glanced at Sloane and took
a slow breath. “My daughter gave it to me.”
    The
room froze. Tina slowly turned to her youngest son with a raised eyebrow.
“What?” she asked quietly.
    “When
I went to school in Osaka, I met Tsukiko. We hooked up, and she disappeared
from the school. I found out later that she was the Himura Oracle, and she left
Japan to come here. After I came home, I found her, but by then she had a
little girl named Midoriko. I did some math and figured out she was mine.”
    “That
was ten years ago Jimmy,” James said with a frown. When his son nodded, he
shook his head. “You mean to tell us that you have a ten year old child that
none of us knew about?”
    “It
was either tell you, or lose her,” Jimmy countered. He looked at his mother and
saw the heartbreak in her eyes. “Tsukiko is used to being used. She didn’t want
that for Dori, so we told everyone that she’s an orphan that Tsukiko is looking
after. I tried to explain that while I understood, it wasn’t fair to Dori to
rob her of my side of her family. But Tsukiko made it perfectly clear, she
wouldn’t stop me from spending time and seeing Dori, but I had to keep her a
secret.”
    Tina
slowly inhaled as she turned to her son. “This is the second time I have been
robbed of spending time with a grandchild,” she said quietly. “I will not be
cheated out of a third. I will deal with Tsukiko, and I will handle that mess
when this one is over. Now, is there anything else you need to tell me?” she
asked.
    Jimmy
looked at his mother and knew she was trying to keep her temper under control.
He knew she wouldn’t take the news well. But it wasn’t like he had a choice.
His two choices were his mother’s heart, or his daughter. Dori would always
win. “Tsukiko saw that she and I would