Page 7 of Oath

This time when the phone rang, I answered it. “Yeah?”

“I want to talk,” Declan O’Rourke said. No hello, no buildup. Just that voice, like concrete grinding under a boot.

“Course you do,” I muttered, stepping away from the warehouse gate.

“Just you and me.”

I paused. Looked out over the water. Tankers floated out there like sleeping giants, waiting for orders. Just like the men in this business. Just like me.

“Not real fond of private meetings with people who leave bodies behind.”

“You think I’d waste a bullet on you?”

“No,” I said. “But I think you’d let me bleed if it made your point.”

He didn’t argue.

I exhaled through my nose, rolled my shoulders. “Fine. We’ll discuss a spot. Somewhere I can see every damn exit and don’t have to check my six.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“Like you’re surprised.”

He chuckled, low and humorless. “You always this charming?”

“Only on special occasions.”

Call ended.

I stared at the phone for a second too long before sliding it back into my pocket. Thought about Grace—how she’d asked earlier if she could come with me next time. Said it like it wasnothing. Said it like she didn’t see the weight in the spaces between the words we didn’t say.

Not this time. Not with O’Rourke circling like a shark who smelled something familiar in the water. Not when the danger stalking the Vandals promised bloody retribution. Not when we still had to find her sister and deal with the rest of the sick system trafficking in people.

Bones arrived after midnight with coffee and a grim expression. At my raised eyebrows, he just shook his head. “SITREP?”

I sipped the black coffee without complaint. It was fresh and he’d brought it from our apartment so at least it was good quality. “No external movement. If anyone is watching them, they are doing it from a distance. Did two internal sweeps. No activity and no bugs. The cars are clean. We did have a couple parked a little close out here, had them moved after I swept them for explosives.”

Overkill? Maybe. But our job was to anticipate what could go wrong in order to make sure it didn’t.

“O’Rourke called.”

Bones frowned. “What does he want?”

“To talk.” I downed more of the coffee. I could go back to the apartment with the boys and Grace or I could crash here as backup for Bones. Part of me just wanted to see Grace, but O’Rourke’s call made me leery.

Was he watching us? Not out of the realm of possibility. If anything, it was likely. O’Rourke dealt in intelligence. A lot like we did. Making a move with too many unknowns on the board was just not good for business. Either he knew exactly where I was or the location didn’t matter.

Both made me antsy.

“I don’t want to lead him back to Grace.” It should go without saying, but she’d already been in close proximity to the son of a bitch. I’d prefer to keep her out of his crosshairs.

Bones’ grim expression tightened further. “Agreed. We may need to reorganize her security.”

No may about it. “We should. Take her off the board entirely, send her back to base with one of us.” Alphabet would be our best choice. Most of what he did he could do remotely and we had the setup for it at base.

“We might need him on site and base is too far in an emergency.” Bones grimaced, likely tracking possible outcomes from multiple scenarios. None of them were the best. How could they be? Of course, this was why he made captain first, not that I cared. If they promoted me, I’d have been off the team to lead my own.

I liked where I was.