Well, shit. I completely failed to remember taking them as soon as I arrived at Hallborough. In fact, the last one I’d taken had been at the station right before Ivan picked us up. Over four days ago. I counted pills. Six giant horse pills were still left. This was not good. My doctor at the emergency room had warned me to take them all until the last one was gone or the strep might relapse.

Please, God, no. I took a pill and put another one in my pocket to take in a few hours. I was just gonna have to be optimistic that I wouldn’t get sick again.

“Good morning, Lady Imogene.”

Nope, didn’t feel weird at all to be speaking to a woman in a painting. She felt like an old friend by now, and so it was only right that I greeted her properly. I’d really come into my sitting room for the purposes of charging my phone, but I simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity for admiring the beauty in the painting for a little minute or maybe longer.

I located the outlet beside the desk and plugged in the charger. I braced myself for the explosion of texts that were sure to happen as soon as it powered up in one… two… three—

Yep. Text notifications started pinging like clockwork. Three of them. Hannah, Elaina, and Benny. Of course, Ben had sent me a novel’s worth of texts over the past few days so… yeah, I’d have to be careful how I worded my response back to him. He was very intuitive and treated me like a sister, so it was logical he’d be my most difficult challenge in keeping my true reasons for being here a secret. I didn’t know how long I’d be able to hold up the charade with him. I’d have to discuss with Ivan in time and maybe we could come up with a solution. Ben was trustworthy and would never put me or anyone at risk, especially if he understood the seriousness of my situation.

The contract I’d signed mentioned family as cleared for knowing, and friends on advance approval by Ivan. Hannah and Ethan were family, so they probably already knew about the art and had maybe even seen it before. Elaina was about to marry Neil, the man in charge at Blackstone Security with Ethan out of the country on his honeymoon for the next three weeks, so there was a good chance Neil was aware of the valuable art and maybe even the drone breach by now. Ethan would know about it too, if he checked in with Ivan anytime in the next week or so, which he’d probably do from his honeymoon. There was no way I’d be able to keep everything a secret with this crew. They were already in too deep and too close to Ivan for that to happen.

I decided to send a group text to all three of them for consistency and kept it very brief and light.