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STAR
I’d wanted to trust him.
I really had.
Mostly, I was annoyed at myself for wanting to even try.
It seemed nuts to think I’d warned him about becoming the next Stalin, and here he was, already crazy enough that he thought he could… Hell, I didn’t even know what he intended to do.
Fuck with Britain, and Northern Ireland, then wage a war against them on the European Union’s behalf?
Maybe Aidan was right and he was trying to shore up the ‘motherland’s’ powers?
All it took was a spark in the right place to fuck with the delicate nature of the world stage… Why not start a war while he was in full despot mode?
I had no way of knowing his game plan, but whatever his logic, I was an American soldier to my core. I fought for freedom, not goddamn dictators.
As every instinct in my body pinged to life, outright screaming that I’d been dumb to trust him, a fucking fool , a helicopter landed in the Sinners’ backyard.
That was when my grandfather answered my message.
Me: Remember you told me that Belyaev died of a heart attack in his hotel room in Cincinnati? Who gave you the bad intel?
Anton: Why do you ask me now?
Me: It just occurred to me that you never told me who was behind it.
Anton: Yes, well, it’s an uncomfortable situation.
Me: Why?
Anton: You are friendly with her.
Me: Who?
Anton: Temperance Black.
Me: That goddamn bitch. Why is she still alive?
Anton: Because she’s your friend.
If I hadn’t already smelled the bullshit from a mile away, I did now.
Still, he’d walked into the trap I’d set, a trap that might not have worked but did, and which meant I could handle Temper without causing any raised eyebrows in the Brotherhood.
Me: I’ll deal with her for you.
Anton: I’d appreciate that.
With the go-ahead, I sent D a message.
Me: Temper’s a traitor.
Cin: What kind of traitor?
Me: The worst kind.
Cin: She’s too self-righteous to be a traitor.
Me: Trust me, she fucking isn’t.
Me: I’m about to pick her up. You want in?
Cin: Sure. But… I need to know what she’s done, Star.
Me: Remember Kembesh?
Cin: How could I forget that fuckfest?
Me: She’s the reason there were no medevacs that day. No backup. She sabotaged a fleet of Chinooks.
Cin: Are you fucking kidding me? How the hell do you know that?
Me: Got a letter from Bear.
Cin: Rex’s dad?
Me: Yeah. He’s a solid source, D. But you can always ask her yourself…
Cin: I’ll send coordinates.
Me: Send them fast. My helicopter just showed up.
As I tucked my phone into my pocket, I switched focus and watched as Sinners rushed out of their clubhouse to see what was going on, yelling until they realized the helicopter was for me.
The pilot jumped down onto the marshy turf, peering around the space awkwardly until I pointed at Hawk and shouted, “Hawk, take him back to the city and I’ll owe you one.”
Hawk, ever the generous grouch, merely hitched a shoulder in agreement and the guy jogged over to him.
Now that I knew the Sinners wouldn’t eat the pilot for breakfast, I leaped into the helicopter, quickly grabbed Conor’s hand in greeting, then got myself situated for the trip.
Along the way to DC, Conor coordinated on my behalf and we picked up D who, fortuitously or not, was in Hoboken doing only God knew what with God knew whom.
We’d been friends for too long for me to even consider asking her for details.
A short while later, when we touched base in DC, Eagle Eyes was standing in a small park on the outskirts of the district, an ominously still trash bag at his feet, phone tilted horizontally as he played a game.
Only when the helicopter landed did he look up from the screen and beam a grin at me.
“I remembered the Russians’ names!”
After the day I’d had, I braced myself because I had a feeling I knew who they’d be.
“They wouldn’t happen to be Kuznetsov and Belyaev, would they?”
Eagle Eyes pouted. “How did you know?”
While I clamped down on the urge to scream, D was the one who rumbled, “We’ve been suckered.”
Christ, understatement.
My grandfather had been pivotal in arming the fucking Taliban against the Americans.
If he was capable of that, what wasn’t he capable of?
Conor slipped behind me and settled a hand on the small of my back. “We weren’t to know. He gave us everything we asked for, so why wouldn’t we trust him?”
“Because we’re not total noobs on the job?” D grouched, shooting a disgruntled look at me. “At least we know who’s on our side and who isn’t.”
“Small consolation,” I ground out, as pissed as she was.
I’d shit the bed. Big time. Fuck, there was no bigger fail than this.
“I think I’m missing a piece of the puzzle here,” Eagle Eyes mumbled, gaze darting between the three of us.
“It doesn’t matter. I appreciate the intel and I appreciate you getting Black here to me now.
“Final payment will clear within forty-eight hours.”
He nodded. “Appreciate that.”
“Congrats on the sprog, Eagle Eyes,” D chirped.
He glowered at me but I just shrugged. “You asked me not to tell your mother-in-law. Not Dead To Me.”
“I figured that was obvious,” he groused before he booted the limp form on the ground.
Temper didn’t even groan when she rolled down the slight incline toward the idle helicopter.
“She’s unconscious?”
“Yup. Drugged. Should be waking up in two or so hours. Do I wanna know what she’s done, Star?”
“Betrayed me. Too many times to be forgiven,” I said flatly.
Betrayed our country.
Betrayed our people.
Betrayed everything we fought for.
God damn her zealous ass.
D cursed under her breath. “I’m ashamed to call her fucking family.”
Seeming to sense that was all the info he’d gain, he shrugged. “Godspeed the lot of you.” With a salute, he backed off then started sprinting toward the street.
As he left, Conor approached Temperance and hauled her deadweight onto his shoulder.
The sleek move had D whistling under her breath. “Didn’t know he had it in him.”
Her mood shifted more than the weather in Vermont. Mine wasn’t so swift. I didn’t even have it in me to joke that I was a lucky lady. All I could think about was Anton. What he’d done. His sins.
Fuck, his crimes against humanity.
She clapped me on the back, jerking me from my thoughts. “You got a plan?”
“When don’t I?”
D chuckled. “True. Okay, then it’s showtime!”
I grabbed her arm. “You sure you’re going to be okay with…”
“Torturing her?” She smirked at me, but I knew her well enough to read her expression, to see the hurt and the betrayal buried beneath. “She called Creed. Chad told me. Said I was okay with her reaching out.”
Knowing her ‘unusual’ feelings for both men, I mused, “Never did like her. That was before I learned she was a traitor.”
“Me neither.” Her smile was weak. “So, this’ll be fun.”
As Conor dumped Temper on the floor of the helicopter, we followed him and climbed aboard.
Five minutes later, we were in the air, and after a quick gas stop at a private airfield, and ninety minutes solid of flying, we were in the Catskills.
My mood didn’t improve any, but listening to Conor and D chat over the radio had a way of putting me in a less horrified mindset.
Part of me was processing having a genocidal warmonger as a blood relative, Kat too; the other part of me had accepted a long time ago that I was a monster in sheep’s clothing, but I’d found someone in my family tree who made me look like a fucking saint.
Silver lining?
It was either that or put a bullet in my head, and I’d already promised Conor that I wouldn’t leave him.
As I landed the helicopter in the clearing, it was obvious to see that the Brotherhood hadn’t been by recently.
D peered at the pits we’d dug for Foundry and Smythe who were no longer ‘there,’ but a few bones remained in residence. “I guess we can confirm that Kuznetsov doesn’t suspect anything or this place would be crawling with Feds who’d pin the crimes on us.”
“He wants me as his heir,” I rasped.
D chuckled. “You don’t have it in you to be Dr. Evil.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“It’s a compliment.”
Annoyed, I retorted, “You were angry with me for letting myself be conned by him earlier.”
She sniffed. “I just realized that he offered you everything you could possibly want. As much as we like to think that we’re not, we’re only human.
“If someone offered me my heart’s desire, how could I say no? Especially when the stakes were so high.”
My throat felt thick as I croaked out, “Thank you, D. I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”
She punched me in the bicep. “Don’t get sappy. No apology necessary. Walked into a hail of bullets for you before, Star, and haven’t brought it up that you got your ass imprisoned by a geriatric megalomaniac, either. By comparison, this is nothing.”
I’d done the same for her and would do worse still to protect her—that was how deep our friendship ran.
It must have been exhaustion from the day’s events that made me want to laugh and cry at her words.
“You know,” she mused, toeing her boot over the remnants of the two Sparrows. “I don’t want to be alive when it happens, but I think this is a good way to go out.”
“Being kibble for wild animals?” Conor sputtered.
“Yeah. Seems natural.”
Grateful for the less sentimental direction in our conversation, I hid a snort at Conor’s horrified look. “Less talking, more action.”
As I watched him set up the piece of tech that killed any and all incoming and outgoing signals into the area, D queried, “Why are we even here?”
“Seems a shame not to grace Temper with the same fate as she gifted Reinier,” I said simply.
D high-fived me. “I like the way you think.”
“You don’t hold much loyalty for family, do you?” Conor asked.
“Some family you make, you’re not born with.” She hooked her arm around my neck. “Star’s not blood, but she might as well be. Then, throw in the fact that Temper’s chasing after my man, she’s fair game.”
“Don’t ask, Conor,” I quipped when he seemed set to pepper her with questions.
Releasing her hold on me, D loped over to the shipping container with the key I handed her and Conor’s super-bright flashlight.
“Get ready for a stink,” she warned cheerfully.
I grimaced when the scent of death immediately flooded the clearing. Not even a brisk wind swept it away, and the coffin flies that buzzed out didn’t travel far either.
D popped her head into the container and shouted, “This is both gross and cool, Star. You need to come and look.”
“I’m assuming you’re not excited about the corpse?” I mocked as I stepped into the container with my go bag in hand.
By comparison to what I’d smelled in Afghanistan after a battle, this was practically pleasant, but I still withdrew a jar of Vaporub from my gear and swiped it under my nose.
“Jesus Christ,” Conor rumbled from behind me, immediately spinning on his heel and heading outside.
Though I knew she pricked her ears for the sounds of him vomiting because I saw the disappointment flash over her expression, D still teased, “I’ll tell Troy, Conor. She’ll go back to calling you Glitter?—”
When Conor stepped inside, he had Temper over his shoulder. “Fuck off, Lucinda.”
After he dumped Temper, I tossed the jar of Vaporub at him. “Heads-up, love.”
He grabbed it, swiped it under his nose, but still gagged while D, totally unoffended with his banter, chuckled and waved a hand at the wall. “Reinier was an artist with a grudge.”
I hummed at the mural of dried shit then stared at the corpse which was, no nicer way to describe it, seeping. “He can’t have survived long after I dealt with him.”
“So this was his last message,” Conor mused around a retch as he bowed over, hands on his knees as the virulent stench seemed to grow stronger now that fresh air was streaming and not trickling into the container.
D and I shared a look but didn’t comment.
If anything, I wished I were like him and wasn’t accustomed to these kinds of horrors.
“Maybe apply some more?” I suggested.
He waved a hand over his head. “Don’t worry about me. Nothing to see here.”
D snorted but mused, “Reinier’s penmanship could do with some work but it’s definitely an address.”
“He claimed he had an estate in Florida.” I studied the address. “Can you look it up for me, Conor?”
“Yeah,” he choked.
“Go stand by the door,” D ordered.
He didn’t argue.
Once he was over there, he said, “Tell me the address then I’ll disengage the signal blocker. Don’t speak until I have the location pinpointed. I’ll tell you when the blocker is re-engaged.” D nodded her understanding as I called out the address. After a short pause, he stated, “Okay. We’re free to talk. The address is in the Keys.”
“That’s our next port of call then,” I rasped.
“Nuh-uh,” D argued, grabbing my arm as I made to move toward the door. “I think it’s time you told us what this Bear guy said in his letter.”
With a shrug, because I had nothing to hide, I shoved my hand in my coat pocket and retrieved the note so I could pass it to her.
Star,
We’ve never had the opportunity to meet but I know you’ve been fighting the Sparrows for longer than I have, and seeing as I know my time is near, I figure I should pass the baton onto you.
We’re both fighters in this hidden war and I salute you for your sacrifices. That’s how the Sparrows get you—by those sacrifices—and I can’t imagine what you’ve had to endure because what they did to me was hell. Living hell.
I truly wish you well in your fight and I hope you won’t stop until they’re no more. Until we’re free from their taint. Because wherever they establish a nest, they poison paradise.
To help, Rex, my boy, should have shown you the motel room I’ve been working out of. Everything I know about the Sparrows is in there, and I hope it can be of some use to you.
But there’s info that isn’t safe to be left in that room.
I first came across a second secret society called the ‘United Brotherhood’ via a woman who went by the name Temperance Black. She approached me and offered me intel.
My case against the Sparrows had stalled. I’d bought this docket of information from a dark website nine or so months before, managed to get hacked in the process, and lost the docket as well as everything I’d uncovered about the NWS over the years.
(After that, I took printouts of everything. That’s what you’ll find in my motel room.)
So, by that point, I was depressed as well as desperate for anything that’d help me move forward with my investigation, and I dove in too deep.
Looking back, she promised me the earth, and, in some instances, she gave it to me.
But everything comes with a price.
I trusted her.
I was a fool to do so.
If you ever meet her, back the fuck away.
She’s one of them.
The United Brotherhood is as corrupt as the New World Sparrows. When I uncovered details about the leaders—a bunch of amoral motherfuckers I’ve yet to have the misfortune of researching, by the way—it was purely by chance.
I didn’t know who they were, and when I approached Temper about them, she was quick to reassure me that they’re the ‘good guys.’
They’re not.
I realized where I’d heard one of the names from—Kuznetsov. Whispers abound of this asshole close to the border with Mexico—the shit he deals in makes me wish the Sparrows were more powerful than the Brotherhood.
Organ harvesting, fentanyl-running, child exploitation, arms-dealing (and we’re not talking AKs here, but uranium, for God’s sake,) you name it, he’s got his hands in that pie.
The more I investigated Kuznetsov, the more I uncovered the links between the Sparrows and the Brotherhood.
They might be separate entities, just like two siblings are, but they’re from the same family.
That was when I knew I didn’t have long left.
Temper was supportive when I was working to take down the Sparrows, but after what would become our final meeting, I knew I’d pushed things too far.
There’s a Sinner who’s like a son to me. Name’s Maverick. I know you know him. He served in a battle in Kembesh. I believe you were also deployed there at the time.
I happened to uncover intel from a veteran who was living on the streets in Houston who claimed ‘someone’ had paid him to help them ambush a fleet of Chinooks that would have been pivotal in the battle.
At first, I thought it was bullshit. Then, I asked him who that ‘someone’ was. The name Black is a common one, but fuck if it didn’t make me look at her differently.
I asked her if she was behind the lack of medical support in that battle which had taken too many of our men, and I knew it was her no matter if she denied it.
Because I didn’t feel like dying, I pretended to accept her bullshit story.
That was the beginning of the end.
We returned to business as usual, then I came across this Sparrow called Bogdan Belyaev who I learned sourced the women they ran as sex slaves in the Baltics. That fella, Kuznetsov, dealt with the logistics of getting them over here. Which was when I learned there were two Kuznetsov guys. A father and son. A team .
That’s how I know these assholes were in this together. How I knew the Brotherhood was as bad as the Sparrows.
So, I went on the hunt for more information. Spoke with a cop on the take in Cincinnati. He told me that it’s known among ‘certain’ officers Belyaev and Kuznetsov Jr. perished in car crashes, but their death certificates showed they both died of heart attacks at the same fucking time of day as the other.
I brought it up to her; she dismissed it. I shouldn’t have pushed, but I was angry, and fool that I was, I didn’t let up until it was too late.
I might be wrong, but I’m tying up loose ends just in case.
Do not trust a CIA operative by the name of Temperance Black.
Do not trust the United Brotherhood.
My motel room is as up-to-date as I can make it. However, I’ve tried to keep most things Brotherhood-related out of there. What I have, you can find in the envelope attached.
I hope you can do what I couldn’t—take down the Brothers and the Sparrows—our world will surely be a better place without them.
We never met, Star, but a seeker of answers knows a fellow soul even from afar.
I’m a Satan’s Sinner to my core—so if God can’t help you get the job done, maybe the man downstairs can.
Wishing you success in your investigation,
Bear
When D stopped reading, she turned to me, saw my clenched hands, and rumbled, “You can leave Temper with me.”
“Sweet fuck, I can taste that stench.” Conor coughed around a splutter as he pinched his nose and strode deeper into the container. “She’s awake,” he rasped, surprising me by grabbing the plastic bag and tearing into it. When his booted foot landed on Temper’s throat, D and I shared a glance. “Black,” Conor greeted, sounding only partially nasal.
The stench was getting stronger with every passing moment.
Sluggishly, Temper slapped at his feet, her body wriggling in an attempt to escape.
“The moment I met you,” Conor ground out, loading more pressure on her throat, “I knew you were trouble. As for the moment I heard of the Brotherhood, I knew they were asswipes, pretending their shit didn’t stink, pretentious and self-righteous. Nothing worse than someone claiming they’re perfect when they make pond scum seem saintly.”
“N-Not! Wrong woman. Wrong. Woman,” she croaked.
He released her then snagged her hair in his fist and dragged her over to a chair.
This time, the look D and I shared was bemused.
“Damn, this is hot,” she whispered.
“You should have seen him torture that Byrne guy.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “He’s yours. I can only drool from afar.”
Though I snorted, I didn’t argue.
She was fucking right.
He was mine.
All goddamn mine.
As Temper shrieked and cried out, Conor hauled her onto the chair. By that point, she was a shaking mess.
“What are you doing?” she cried, the words still faintly slurred.
“How did you know Munoz was hunting Star?”
Her head rolled on her shoulder but she started snickering until Conor backhanded her. “ That’s what you’re asking?”
“What should he be asking?” I queried, stepping closer to Temper.
Her eyes peeped open. “Funny when you try to stop something from happening and you make it happen anyway.”
“Stop with the bullshit, Temper,” D growled. “Answer the question.”
“Own flesh gonna kill me. What would Uncle Gene say?”
“He’d say you’re a traitorous cunt.”
“Doubt it.” Temper groaned. “He likes me. Never liked you. Everyone always likes me, Lucinda. You’re the one everybody hates.”
“She’s wrong,” Conor groused. “I like you, D.”
D sniffed. “I like you too, Conor. We vibe.”
“Can anyone join this ‘vibe' party?” I mocked, but I nudged D in the side too.
“Throat. Hurts.”
“Well, let’s try to take your mind off that.” Conor kicked the chair with his foot so she tipped backward.
Right onto Reinier.
“Oh, my God! It fucking touched me!” she cried, scuttling over the floor, away from the rotting corpse, like the spider I supposed she was.
That was when I had a ‘eureka’ moment.
Alessa had told me that the Kuznetsovs were like spiders. That they had webs in every corner of a person’s house.
A pauk in English was a spider.
Why had that only registered now?
With my mind elsewhere, D proved she was focused on her target. Her hand slid out to snag Temper in her hold. The moment she had a grip on her wrist, Temper was shrieking and clutching the now-broken joint to her chest. “Answer Conor’s question. Or I’ll stop playing nice.”
“I knew Star wouldn’t forgive me for betraying her! I-I figured that would make her cut me some slack,” she growled.
“You put Munoz on her tail?”
She sniffed. “He owed me one.”
“He was a Sparrow.”
A burst of laughter fell from her. “You’ve no idea, have you? None at all.”
“Do you know how I killed Reinier, Temper?”
She grimaced at the corpse. “I can smell it. Electricity.”
“I have the same toy in my go bag.” As she tensed, I nodded. “Exactly. You don’t want to fuck me around. You want to answer what I ask or I will make sure that you suffer?—”
“We’re sisters-in-arms! We served together!”
“And I should never have trusted you as far as I could throw you.” My problem here was that she was as indoctrinated as I was from breaking under force. Faced with that, I knew I had to lean on her passions, of which she had many. “I thought you were all about America. All about serving the Land of the Free.”
“Yeah, your self-righteous ass used to be the only decent thing about you. Now I’m learning that’s a lie too,” D grumbled. When Temper didn’t reply, D yanked on her hair. “Answer us.”
“I am not dirty. I serve the people. I act for the people. I protect the people,” she spat.
“You’re more deluded than I first thought,” Conor rumbled.
“Deluded? More like deranged. Anyway, cut the bullshit, Temper. What happened? How did you get involved in this mess?” D demanded.
“Mom got sick and Kuznetsov promised he’d help us. Plus, he told me I’d get a promotion.” Spite flashed over her expression. “At long fucking last.”
“D? Is that true about her mother?”
She rasped, “Shelly needed an organ transplant. A new liver.”
“Guess we know how she got one of those.” I blew out a breath as Conor and I shared a look. “Why did the Sparrows kill Belyaev and Kuznetsov?”
Temper’s smile was like the dawning sunlight in the morning. I didn’t know until now that that could be sickening.
Then D broke her nose and she stopped smiling—thank fuck.
“Don’t forget, Temper, I’m the only one who ever made you cry,” she gibed.
Temper drew away. “DeLaCroix wanted to hurt Kuznetsov.”
“Anton or Aleks?” I asked.
“Anton,” she rasped, shooting me a hate-filled glance. “The Brothers have always been more powerful. DeLaCroix got too big for his station.” Her laughter was faintly manic. “Look who showed him.”
“You slipped him the cyanide?”
“Ten points to you.” She whistled. “Been helping out with a little sniper problem we’ve been having too. Got so many running around, they’re becoming a hindrance.” Before I could wonder why she admitted to that, Temper cackled. “I’ve almost killed you twice, D. Family ties stopped me.”
“ You are the reason so many snipers have been killed over the last couple of years?” D shouted, kicking Temper in the gut until she was coughing blood. “I can promise you this. Family ties won’t stop me.”
“You’re Anton’s pitbull, huh?” Conor rumbled softly. “Who he sends in to fix his problems?”
She bared her teeth—they were bloodstained, one had even worked loose, revealing a gap that made her whistle with each breath. “Sounds about right. Been serving him for a long time. He trusts me.” God, she sounded proud of being trusted by a fucking genocidal maniac. “I’m the reason he’s in charge of?—”
She stopped before she finished the sentence. But I figured I knew what she was going to say.
Since I’d waded into Anton’s life, he’d become the head of the Brotherhood without a council to keep him in check.
And, no matter what he was promising me with the Sparrows, that didn’t mean he couldn’t bring their trade under the Brotherhood’s umbrella.
Christ, maybe that had been the end goal all along?
“Oh, yeah, he trusts you so much that he sold you out to me. Told me you were the one who gave him bad intel on Belyaev’s death. Told me you were the one who said Belyaev died in a hotel room in Cincinnati and not in a road accident. Some trust he has in you,” I sneered, “when he sanctions your death.”
She coughed up some blood and let it spatter on the floor. “He’s wrong. H-He must have made a mistake. I never told him that.
“The Belyaevs and Kuznetsovs have been close friends for decades. Anton took Bogdan’s loss personally so he must have gotten things muddled. He’d lost his heir too. Made things worse. Yeah, that has to be it. That’s why he’s mistaken. I could clear it up if?—”
“Wasn’t my mom an heir?”
Her laughter was, in a word, manic . “You can fry me until I sizzle like bacon, Star, but that’s the one thing I’ll keep from you. I’ll never tell you what happened to her. It’s too damn satisfying knowing the truth will haunt you until the day you die.”
“Bitch,” Conor growled, kicking her in the gut and watching as she curled up in a ball on the floor to protect her torso.
“Conor,” I appeased. “It’s all right.”
His nostrils flared but he backed off.
“That’s it, little boy. Let the women talk,” Temper taunted until D was pressing her knee onto her sternum and placing her whole weight on the other woman’s chest.
As his hands balled into fists at his sides, I stared at the woman who was willing me to never have any peace. Who was never going to let my mom’s memory be at rest.
Jaw clenched, I stated, “Reinier is the reason I was enslaved.”
“If you say so,” Temper slurred.
I gritted my teeth. “Anton told me Aleks was searching for me.”
“Why seek out something you know where to find?”
That news had nausea swirling around my gut.
So, he had known my whereabouts.
“Why did you bring Bear into it?” Conor demanded.
When she didn’t answer, D moved aside and I grabbed her already broken nose, then twisted it.
“Don’t ask me how the old bastard did it, but the only reason he was on our radar was because he’d managed to infiltrate a meeting of our council. He thought they were Sparrows.” She sniffed. “I was told to keep an eye on him, to help him, even. The Sparrows have been dying a long death, Star. Your input was minimal.” She swallowed. “Anton really sold me out?”
“He did.”
“I-I don’t believe you.”
Not willing to waste time on this, I opened the conversation with Anton, turned my phone so she could see the screen, and let her read the message thread.
Her eyes widened. “You faked that!”
“Why the hell would I?”
“You’re just not as important as you like to think you are,” D rumbled.
Chuckling in agreement, I informed her, “Cin’s right. You’re expendable.”
“He made me the deputy director of the CIA!”
“And? Clearly, he’s got someone else ready to jump into the position. You’re nothing to him, Temper. You mean dick to him.”
“SHUT UP!” she screamed, surging upward, fists raised.
I saw her coming from a mile away. So did Conor. He was there first. He grabbed a hold of her hair again, slammed her face into the floor, and didn’t stop until she was a bloodied mess.
“Conor,” I soothed. “Let her go.”
His face was red with exertion, but he stopped at my request. Breathing heavily, he retreated.
Conor, I knew, was slow to commit violence unless someone had hurt a person he loved.
If I left him alone with her, I knew Temper would die at his hands today.
Torture wasn’t everyone’s idea of a love language, but it was mine.
Temper rolled to the side and spat out blood-stained saliva. “You won’t kill me. You can’t. I’m one of you.”
D choked out a bitter laugh. “You’re trash. That’s what you are.”
Before they could start arguing, I rumbled, “Bear wrote me a letter.” She stiffened. “Said he had reason to believe that you fucked with a bunch of Chinooks so there was no support for the battle of Kembesh.”
I didn’t even need her to answer—I saw it in her expression.
She had .
I stormed over to her and kicked her in the head. “ You were the double agent. I fucking knew someone was over there, screwing shit up, but I didn’t know it was you.”
“You’d be amazed how much you failed to notice,” she jeered even as she tried to shield herself from my attack.
Twisting her arm behind her back, I hauled her next to Reinier’s corpse and shoved her face into his guts which were split open from cuts and sores that had festered and torn apart.
“Why would you betray our brothers-in-arms like that? Is it because of Dost Mohamet Khan? Is that why?” She shrieked and heaved and retched until I dragged her away from the mess of empty pupae from the coffin flies in Reinier’s putrefying flesh so that I could hurl at her, “Answer me!”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Bullshit!” I rammed her face back into the corpse. “Tell me, Temperance. Fucking tell me.”
“YES,” she screamed, spitting out gore and pupae. “The Brotherhood was sending arms across the Pakistani border into Afghanistan. Dost Mohamet Khan was the only one who knew about our involvement. He was the go-between?—”
“All these years, I believed you were a fucking zealot. A patriot so short-sighted that…” D’s mouth worked. “How could you, Temper? How fucking could you?”
“Because she is a zealot,” Conor growled. “But her morals are for hire.”
With that, I shoved her face back into Reinier’s guts. As she passed out with a mouthful and a noseful of Reinier’s rotting flesh, I turned to Conor who asked, “We head to the Floridian estate, then what?”
I sucked in a breath that was soaked with the flavor of death. “Then we make moves to take over the Brotherhood.”
“You make it sound so simple,” D drawled.
“He’s an old man. How hard can he be to kill?”
She fist-bumped me. “You deal with one treacherous old fuck and I’ll deal with this young one. Then we meet in the middle?”
“No.” I swiped at my hands with a wet wipe I retrieved from my go bag. “I think I’ll need you over in Europe.”
I reached for my cell as a thought occurred to me.
Me: What drug did you use on her?
Eagle Eyes: Sodium thiopental. You’re welcome lol.
Truth serum.
Mostly bullshit, but the anesthetic did lower inhibitions and made people chatty. That explained a lot.
“Star?”
I blinked at D. “What?”
“Europe?”
“Europe,” I confirmed.
She huffed. “Informative.”
“D?”
“Yup.”
“When you’re done with Temper, do not start a fire.”
She sniffed. “Spoilsport.”
“Arsonist.”
“You see, you think that’s an insult…”
“I know it is.” I arched a brow at her. “Agreed? We don’t need emergency services flying over here when a wildfire starts, and we sure as fuck don’t need them snooping around our kill zone, now do we?”
“No, I guess not,” she said with a huff. “You want me to clean up the place, though? Just in case Kuznetsov catches wind that you’re onto him and he uses this crime scene against you?”
“We have people we can send in to do that,” Conor informed her.
“Make her suffer, D.”
“She betrayed us, Star. Don’t you worry—” D drawled as she cracked her knuckles. “—I will.”
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