Page 4 of Risky Passion (Wolf Security #5)

B

The Camry I’d stolen twenty minutes ago rattled as I drove it down the ramp to the underground parking lot beneath Rosebud Hospital.

I pulled into a dark corner. The car was white.

Basic. Forgettable. The kind of car that didn’t attract attention and blended seamlessly with the rows of tired sedans driven by underpaid nurses and janitors who worked long shifts here.

I’d swapped the plates on the Camry with ones I’d peeled off a worker’s van parked behind the Rosebud Tavern, and it could be days, maybe a week, before the owner even noticed.

By then, this Camry would be stripped and crushed at Anton's yard, where dozens of vehicles had gone to die over the years after serving their purpose.

Anton was a rare find. Clean work, no questions, always delivered.

Unlike his predecessor, Malcolm Holloway.

That greedy bastard. One gold bar in a wrecked car's trunk, and suddenly he thought he was entitled to a bigger slice.

His stupidity nearly blew the whole damn operation sky-high.

The last I’d heard, his disappearance was still a cold case gathering dust in Detective Parker Foster's drawer.

But nobody will find him. Sharks were damn good at making problems like him disappear.

Clean, quick, and thorough. Just like Anton.

He understood the rules and knew his place.

I made a mental note to slip him an extra grand when I brought the Camry to him for disposal .

Good help was so hard to find these days.

I killed the engine and wound down the window.

Waiting. Listening. The engine ticked as it cooled, mixing with the drone of cheap fluorescent lights overhead.

A familiar buzz coursed through my veins, sharp and precise.

Moments like this had kept me alive all these years.

Idiots mistook this pause as hesitation, but even the most vicious summer storms announced themselves with a whisper of wind. The calm before the bloodshed.

Most of the idiots who worked for me couldn’t handle this part. They rushed in, eager to get to the blood and the glory. That was when they made mistakes . . .sloppy, stupid mistakes.

And mistakes got them killed. Or worse, caught.

Murder wasn't hard. Any thug with a knife could end a life. The kill was just mechanics, a precise angle, a calculated dose, a swift motion. But getting away with murder was where the true professionals separated themselves from the amateurs.

That was where I excelled.

Like running an illegal shipment, it took timing, precision, and knowing when to move and when to wait. Every detail had to align perfectly. One misstep or loose thread, and everything unraveled.

In the rearview, I tucked a stray gray strand back into my dull brown wig. The synthetic hair felt tacky against my fingers, and I made a note to toss it out when this was done.

My pink lipstick had faded, and I pulled out the tube to reapply. The color was garish, and tacky. Not exactly what an aging woman like me should wear. But it was the only shade I owned. Alice’s favorite. My chest tightened as her face crept into my mind.

Alice. I could still feel her tiny wrists and delicate fingers in my hands and see her wide, bloodshot eyes staring up at me, full of love and fear in equal measure.

She was always so frail, so delicate. So scared.

Forty-five goddamned years of loving her, protecting her, keeping her safe from this cruel, filthy world. And in the end . . .

No! Focus.

Regret was a poison I couldn't afford to taste. Let the guilt in, and even drawing breath became a battle. In my line of work, weakness was just another word for dead .

I slipped the lipstick back into my purse, right beside my little insurance policy: a tiny white pill that promised to give me a quick exit in case my plan went sideways.

I hoped it wouldn't, since I wasn't done yet.

I still had names to cross off my list. The bastards who had taken my boys and Alice from me had to pay in full.

I gave the rearview mirror one final check before sliding out of the car and smoothing the crisp white nurses’ uniform over my knees.

As I scanned the parking lot, confirming I was alone, I strolled to the elevator, checking my watch.

Midday. My timing was perfect. It always amazed me how blind people were to danger when the sun was still high overhead.

I’d learned that trick over forty years ago, at Angelsong Orphanage. Target someone at midnight, and they are already suspicious, but in broad daylight they would return my smile, maybe even hold open a door. When they were relaxed, it was so much easier to slide the blade home.

Doctor Lurami wouldn't dare be late. Not after our little chat yesterday. Blackmail was like a well-trained dog, reliable enough, until it wasn't.

Plenty of fools had tried to slip their leash from me over the years. The smart ones learned their lesson. The others . . . well, they didn’t get a chance to make the same mistake twice.

At the elevator, I faked pressing the button for the security camera, just in case they’d finally fixed it after our Deputy Prime Minister, Mason Kingsman, redecorated the walls with bullet holes.

Mason Kingsman. I'd known him when he was just Mark Kincaid, back when he did his own dirty work: breaking fingers in the classroom hallways, burying evidence with his brothers under the moonlight. Then, he’d bought himself a shiny new name and an even shinier political career.

The elevator display ticked down from the fifth floor, known as the VIP ward by those media vultures, where our bumbling Prime Minister and his trigger-happy deputy had nursed their wounds, protected by beefed-up security goons.

Hollywood superstar Neon Bloom had also recovered from his attack on the fifth floor, before his face joined the field of missing person’s posters on the waiting room walls of police stations.

Now another prize asshole occupied those antiseptic halls: Grant Hughes, master money launderer turned double amputee, which was his own damn fault.

He should've known better than to try escaping in that chopper of his. He was just lucky those bastards at Alpha Tactical Ops hadn’t put a bullet in his brain like they did to my sons.

Though maybe he would have preferred a swift death, rather than what I had planned for him.

I read the elevator display. Why has it still stopped at the third floor?

For decades, Hughes had made Scorpion Industries' blood money vanish into thin air. Now he, too, was about to disappear . . . if Doctor Lurami delivered my special package.

Making people vanish was my specialty, something I’d been mastering since I’d killed the first man who’d raped me .

. . the school principal Mr. Fucking Whitmore.

His body had never been found. It would have made headline news if it had.

I chuckled. I was fourteen years old when I killed him in broad daylight.

The devil was in the details: timing, cleanup, and the necessary evil of accomplices.

But these days, my back screamed with every dead body I moved, and everything was getting fucking harder.

Sixty was not the new forty, no matter what those pathetic lifestyle magazines claimed in my doctor's waiting room.

My phone buzzed with a message, shattering the silence.

"Damn it." I pulled my phone from my purse.

The number on my screen belonged to a select list of people who only called with triumph or disaster. This was several hours too early for good news.

Scowling, I swiped to read the text:

BF marked us. Plane came in for closer recon. Bags dumped overboard.

Clamping my jaw, I punched a message. WTF! Get those fucking bags!

Can’t. Bigger problem.

“Fucking imbeciles!” I scanned the parking lot. Still alone.

The elevator groaned back to life .

Second floor.

I dialed the number, and the boat captain in charge of my precious cargo answered on the first ring.

“You better get those fucking bags, Diego,” I said.

I glanced at the elevator display. First floor.

“That plane took photos of us. They have our faces.”

“I don’t give a sh?—”

“We shot the plane down.”

“You what?”

The elevator doors swept open with a soft whoosh, and Doctor Lurami stood before me. His dark skin was ashen and sweat beaded his forehead. Hughes was sprawled in the wheelchair beside him like a dead man with his head lolling against his shoulder.

“What the hell did you do to him?” I hissed at Lurami.

Lurami's hands shook as he wheeled Hughes out. His black eyes ping-ponged across the parking lot.

"He . . . he started fighting me and screaming. I had to use Midazolam." His words tumbled out between rapid breaths.

"B?" Diego's voice crackled through the phone. "What do we do?"

I grabbed Lurami's sleeve. "How long will he be out?"

"Fifteen minutes. Thirty at most." Lurami's voice quavered.

"Goddammit. Get him to that Camry over there." I jerked my thumb toward the shadows.

"But . . . but you said we were just talking to him." Lurami's body trembled like he might collapse or vomit, or both.

“Well, I can’t now, can I?” I slapped Hughes' cheek. He didn’t move. Not even a twitch. “Fuck!”

I shot Lurami a disgusted look.

Fucking idiot.

"B! What do we do?" Diego's voice through the phone was loaded with panic.

I followed Lurami toward the car, and as he inched forward like a man walking to the gallows, each squeak of the wheelchair wheels echoed off the concrete walls.

I pressed the phone to my ear. "Where's the plane?"

"Ditched in the mangroves. Quarter mile from here. "

"Then make sure the pilot's dead. If not, finish him off."

The wheelchair stopped with a screech. Lurami spun toward me with his mouth frozen in a perfect O and his eyes wide with horror.

Goddammit . I pulled my gun from my purse, glad that I’d screwed on the silencer earlier. As Lurami bolted, a scream tore from his throat. I shot him in the back.

The weapon coughed softly. Not quite silent, but close enough.

Lurami crumpled to the concrete mid-stride, his scream cut short.

"Christ." One more mess. Always one more.

In the quiet aftermath, every small sound was amplified: the humming fluorescent lights, a distant drip, the drone of traffic outside. Someone probably had heard that scream. A security guard, workers changing shift, or patients taking a stroll. This place was never truly empty.

The damn loose ends were getting messier by the minute.

And I’m getting too old for this shit.

"B!" Diego's voice barely registered through my pounding pulse. "You there?"

I pressed the phone to my ear again. "Kill that pilot. Get those bags. That shipment is everything."

I ended the call.

Blood spread beneath Lurami in a widening pool, seeking the rusted drain two feet away like a crimson snake. Thankfully, Hughes still had his head slumped forward in his wheelchair.

My knees cracked as I crouched by Lurami. No pulse. Clean shot through the heart. At least my aim was still true after all these years.

I plucked his phone from his pocket and, clutching the wheelchair handles, I forced myself to move. The sedative that had knocked out Hughes wouldn't last much longer, and a man crying for help from a car trunk tended to draw attention . . . no matter what time of day it was.