Page 15

15

CONOR

It was with actual relief that I boarded the commercial jet.

My tickets had been accepted at check-in, my permission to fly hadn’t been revoked, TSA hadn’t gotten a hard-on for me, and once I was settled in my seat, I had to reason that this was it—I was allowed to leave the States.

The CIA hadn’t figured out that I’d had a hand in storing their director in a shipping container in the Catskills, or if they had, then they weren’t going to hold a grudge against me.

Preliminary scans on several servers prior to departing for the airport had let me know I wasn’t about to get my ass arrested, and my penthouse was untouched when I arrived, my security measures still in place—both of the high- and the low-tech varieties—and the door hadn’t been knocked down either, but you never knew sometimes.

That whole shit at Langley had come as a complete surprise to me, so no source was perfect.

At the moment, I figured it was best to take everything with a grain of salt until I had more of an idea of what was going on.

Once I was buckled in, I stared over the concourse, not even turning my head when someone took a seat beside me.

I was probably the only person in my family who didn’t hate flying commercial. The rest of my bougie-ass brothers would have taken a private jet, but statistically, this was safer.

I’d done the math.

I’d also bought out the rest of first class apart from my neighbor’s seat which had been scooped up while I was busy reserving the others, so I’d be traveling pretty much alone anyway.

Refusing to admit that I was nervous, I checked my phone when it buzzed.

Goldstein: McClure’s got a sex slave.

Goldstein: Wait for it.

Goldstein: In the basement. Of his HOUSE.

Me: The arrogant asshole. These goddamn senators just think they can do whatever the fuck they want.

Me: Leave it with me.

Goldstein: Leave WHAT with you? I’ll collate the evidence and start putting together records for an Interpol investigation.

My eyes narrowed.

Me: Sure. Thanks for keeping me updated.

He replied, but I ignored his text channel and, instead, hit up Dead To Me.

Me: Senator John McClure.

Dead To Me: Doesn’t believe women have rights to their uteruses, thinks we should be stuck in a kitchen, and was pivotal in that deal that fucked Alaskan reservations up the ass and is going to turn it into oil soup…

Dead To Me: That the Senator John McClure we’re thinking of?

Me: Sure is.

Me: He needs to be gone.

Dead To Me: Any reason other than the above.

Me: Goldstein says he has a sex slave in his house. It would be wise to monitor his property.

Me: McClure has a wife. See if she’s in the know.

Dead To Me: If she is, she’s a goner too. Just warning you. I’ll do her for free.

Me: Don’t coordinate with Goldstein. He isn’t in the know about our sideline.

Dead To Me: He knows of me.

Me: How?

Dead To Me: Fucked him.

Me: Ah, shit. When? In fact, never mind. Did he make you?

Dead To Me: He knows what I’m capable of.

I rubbed my temples—this was an unexpected complication, but if they never came into contact, then there wouldn’t be an issue.

“O’Donnelly.”

That had my head whipping to the side.

I knew I’d be sharing the cabin with one other person but… fuck.

My eyes flared wide as I took in the weirdly angelic features of Temperance goddamn Black.

“What are you doing here?” I snarled, her mere presence triggering an earthquake in my mind.

She was worse than nails on a fucking chalkboard or one of those bastards who couldn’t chew pizza without keeping their mouths closed.

She studied her nails. “I’m keeping you company.”

“I don’t want your company.”

Her sniff told me that she really cared about my ‘wants.’ “I’m under orders.”

My throat tightened. “Whose orders?”

She arched a brow.

The United Brotherhood.

Great. Just great.

“You owe them.”

Anger flooded me. “I owe them dick. You’re the one who got me involved in this shit.”

“You’re the one who’d be dead if I didn’t.”

True.

Crap.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “What do they want?”

“You to take a trip on a plane.”

“Managed that without their input.”

“They decided you needed an escort.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“You’d have been heading to the wrong place,” was her simple reply.

Reaching up, I rubbed at my nape. “What’s going on, Agent Black?”

“Temper, please. We’ve already been introduced.”

I knew madness. I knew insanity. I’d seen it light up both of my parents’ eyes at some point in my life—Temperance Black hit differently.

Very differently.

She put me on edge in a way that few people ever had, and that set uncomfortably in my bones.

It was, I thought, her righteousness.

I’d seen that in Da’s gaze too many times to count. An inherent belief that what he was doing was right even when he was very, very wrong.

Temperance was worse, somehow.

Which, trust me, was saying fucking something.

She was a zealot, and I didn’t believe that was based solely on her being a ‘patriot.’

When Star had tried to describe her to me, I hadn’t picked up on that. Maybe it was a trait you had to uncover in the flesh.

At my prolonged silence, she huffed. “You want to find Star, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“That’s where I’m taking you. To her.”

“You know where she is?”

She preened. “I was recently let in on that secret.”

Secret?

“Why is it a secret?”

“Only top Brothers know.”

“Why?”

“She’s important to the Union.”

My nostrils flared at that. “She didn’t even know they existed until recently.”

“That doesn’t mean they didn’t know she existed.”

Eyes narrowing, I demanded, “She doesn’t know that you’re a Brother, does she?”

“Of course not,” Temper scoffed. “No one knows outside of the Union. And you, of course. You know now.”

“If that’s a threat?—”

“It isn’t. Yet.” She slipped that final word in like a knife through my lung.

My jaw clenched before I released it to bite off, “You betrayed her.”

“I did not,” Temper hissed, ducking back when the flight attendant came around with a glass of champagne for both of us, a hot towel, and some nuts. Only when we’d been served and were alone again did Temper lean over the armrest to rasp, “I have never betrayed Star.”

“You are now, aren’t you? Something’s clearly going on with her. She hasn’t spoken to her foster daughter in weeks and that would only happen if she physically couldn’t because Star wouldn’t let Katina down like that.

“For whatever reason, she’s incapacitated, and you’re in cahoots with the goddamn people who are holding her.”

Temper eyed me over the glass of bubbly. “This is a far deeper game than you know.”

“Doesn’t take a fucking genius to figure that one out.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Is she safe?”

“Of course. We’re not Sparrows.”

“You’re a secret society that functions outside the bounds of the law.”

“We protect the law.”

I hooted. “I’m sure Director Reinier agrees.”

Temper squinted at me. “Are you trying to tell me that you feel sorry for him? After what he put Star through? After how he betrayed her? How he betrayed our country? He should have been taken out sooner. I’m lucky that I got to be the one to bring him down.”

My brow puckered.

Lucky?

That right there told me a whole helluva lot about Temperance fucking Black and her goddamn Brotherhood.

Needing the fizz to overtake her poison, I sank back the champagne and let it hit my bloodstream. Then, I turned away to look out of the window again.

Finn said the United Brotherhood had been white hats back when they’d approached him, but he was dead-on when he said he didn’t know if they were now.

I didn’t live in a black-and-white world. I lived very squarely in the gray, and somehow, Temperance Black was the worst gray I’d ever come across in my almost four decades on this godforsaken planet.

Taking out the trash, human or otherwise, was one thing; feeling lucky to get that chore was just plain weird.

“Just make sure he stays alive for Star,” I warned, hands on the armrests, digging my fingers into the soft leather.

Around me, the plane readied itself for takeoff. The champagne glass was retrieved by a flight attendant and a bottle of water was put in its place. The doors were closed, and, for whatever reason, Temper left me alone as I kept my attention averted from her.

Only then did I reply to Dead To Me:

Me: If Goldstein contacts you, just do what you have to do.

Dead To Me: He’s a stickler but I don’t want to kill him.

Me: That’s on you. I don’t think he’d turn you in. Just be careful. It’s more than likely that you’ll never meet.

Dead To Me: Got it.

That didn’t allay my tension any, but at least that bastard McClure would be dead.

Though I should have conferred with Aidan, there was no way in fuck I could let that poor woman exist in the basement of some senator’s house, just waiting for the ax to fall. Which was exactly what’d happen if McClure thought his dirty little secret was about to see the light of day.

The woman would die to cover his sins up and…

Fuck.

It smacked too much of Star. Of the precariousness of her situation once upon a time.

Just thinking of what I’d learned about her, of what they’d put her through, was enough to make me want to kill someone.

While vengeance had always been my da’s preference and not mine, I understood his mentality at that moment.

Reinier was going to die in a shipping container, whether it was at Star’s hand or of starvation and dehydration and only God knew what else. When I thought about what he’d put Star through, I hoped he went full-throttle 28 Days Later on himself.

An hour into the flight, when I felt as if I’d managed to draw on a strong enough mask, I turned to her and, creepily enough, found her watching me.

It was like being studied by a scorpion. One wrong move and she’d sting me. The only difference was, on the outside, she was beautiful: golden-blonde hair, bright-as-a-button blue eyes, flawless skin, a neat figure that was destroyed by a bland, boxy, off-the-rack suit. If Barbie had developed a CIA agent doll, it would have looked like Temperance.

“Is your first cousin a Brother?”

“No,” she derided. Her head angled to the side. “Why?”

So, Dead To Me was a solid ally. I figured as much, to be fair.

“Why did you say ‘no’ like that?”

“Because my cousin has a side gig that wouldn’t wash in the Union.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that only the best are inducted into the Brotherhood.”

The best?

She was a psycho who had an in with a society of fucking nutcases.

Coming up with the ‘leave the asswipe to rot in a shipping container’ plan was something even Da wouldn’t have rolled with.

Didn’t mean I wasn’t glad about it.

I’d once watched a horror movie where a serial killer left his victims to rot like Reinier would and, back then, it had freaked me out. Enough that Aidan had gotten sick of me waking him up with my nightmares and he’d told my very young twelve-year-old ass to research what would happen to a person left like that because, in his words, to know was to control .

Looking back, it wasn’t a standard way to deal with nightmares, but what in my family was standard?

He’d probably amplified a toxic trait of never being able to leave any stone unturned, which had undoubtedly put me in my current position, but hey, every step I’d taken down this path had led me to Star.

That was something I could never regret.

“Is someone going to check in on Reinier? Make sure he doesn’t die?” I questioned. “I can’t imagine Star would be okay with him wasting away before she can get her hands on him.”

I intended on bringing her home sooner than it would take Reinier to die, but I wanted to keep our bases covered.

She nodded. “He’ll be monitored. Star would want to be involved—you reminded me of that back at Langley. I shouldn’t have acted as impulsively as I did.”

I studied her. “ Was it impulsive? You said I should be glad you were there because it stopped me from getting my ass killed, but were you there for me? Or for Reinier?”

A smile danced on her lips. “Couldn’t I have been there for both?” I watched as she accepted a drink order I hadn’t heard her make, and only when the flight attendant had left did she continue, “Reinier had the entire building evacuated. Triggered a whole protocol as if we’d had some kind of accidental spillage in one of the labs just to make sure you and the coders were on your own there.”

“Was Riggs in on it?” I rasped.

“No.”

“Why was she there?”

That smile I detested made another reappearance. “She was your handler.”

“Was?” Fuck. “Meaning you are now?”

“That hasn’t been decided by my higher-ups yet.”

I grabbed my water bottle and nearly ripped off the cap in my haste to drink some. Mind racing as I gulped it down, I emptied it before I realized it. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’ve been told that I can answer any questions you ask of me.”

“By whom?”

“People with far more authority than the director of the CIA.”

“Who?”

“Leaders of the Union.”

As annoying as she was, this was good.

I could get answers and that would help Star.

“What is the Union?”

“A group older than the Freemasons who serve the people.”

I wanted to scoff, but I didn’t. Her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree with how ardently she believed that BS.

“How do they serve the people?”

“They bring neutrality and non-bias where politics does the opposite.”

“People vote for politicians,” I pointed out, to which she snickered.

“It’s cute that you believe that. Politicians get into power through super PACs which are funded by companies that don’t give a damn about anything other than the policies that will keep their businesses intact and running on low taxes.

“You think our current method works when the so-called popular vote means nothing if the electoral colleges don’t sync up? The population and its wants are irrelevant. Elections are fodder for the masses.

“The Union makes sure that people are protected.”

“It functions only in the US?”

“No. It’s a global endeavor, one that I’m proud to be a member of.”

I could smell her pride from over here. She was practically creaming in her panties over each goddamn word.

“Star was CIA. Why wasn’t she invited to be a Brother?”

“Star bent the rules. The Union doesn’t allow such people to be a member.”

“And you don’t bend the rules? Aren’t you as dirty as she is?”

In less than a second, she’d knocked the stand of the champagne flute in her hand against the armrest. The sparkling wine arced in a neat spray over the aisle before the jagged tip of the stem was pressed into my carotid.

“I am not dirty. I serve the people. I act for the people. I protect the people,” she spat. “Do you understand?”

“I’m one of the people,” I retorted calmly. “You’re trying to stick a piece of glass in my throat.” I reacted as she placed more pressure on the stem, and with one hand on her wrist, the other on the flute, I jerked it from her grasp and pressed the broken stem into her palm and sliced downward. “You’re not the only one who can fight dirty.”

Her mouth tightened. “You’re a mobster.”

“So that means I deserve to bleed out in first class?” I mocked, digging deeper into her palm.

Her lack of suffering at what had to hurt told me she’d been reared as I had. Whichever side of the path she believed herself to be on, we both knew pain.

“It means that you can’t possibly understand what the Union does.”

Because I was used to death threats and dealing with insane people, I retracted the stem and, as I handed it to her, drawled, “I’m certain your leaders wouldn’t appreciate it if you killed me seeing as I’m so important for this next phase of whatever plan you’ve concocted.”

She sniffed. “You are correct.”

“When Star asked you to help her, who were you serving?”

From her hesitation, I had my answer without her having to utter a word.

“So, it was betrayal.”

“No. Her purpose aligns with mine.”

“The United Brotherhood wants the Sparrows taken down?”

She dipped her chin. “They do, and they’re willing to help her if she’ll accept their aid.”