Page 57 of The Queen’s Shadow

“I have a bunch of them. Murder pays well; what can I say.”

Jeremy pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head.

“This is insane. You’re insane.” He muttered and Rycon grinned.

“Sanity is relative.” He hit ‘enter’ on his keyboard and a loading bar appeared on the screen. He reached over behind me and unhooked a headset from the wall, putting it over my ears and positioning the mouthpiece for me. He then grabbed two earpieces, handing one to Jeremy before sticking the other one in his own ear.

“Okay, after you shadow walk us in, come back here and keep us posted on what’s going on using this headset.” Rycon instructed and I nodded.

“What can I do?” Cerenah asked, clearly fascinated by the equipment. She was examining the monitors with wide, curious eyes.

“Help Raven watch the monitors. If anyone comes into the armory, get us out of there ASAP. Somehow, I don’t think Pops is going to be thrilled if I have to kill one of his cop buddies.”

“You better not fucking kill anyone,” Jeremy snapped, and Rycon grinned at him.

“Hey now, Pops, watch your language.” He snarked, winking at me. He bent down and grabbed two large empty black duffles from underneath the table that held all the hacking equipment. He turned to Jeremy, still grinning.

“Ready?” Rycon asked, tossing him an empty bag. Jeremy swallowed but nodded.

“Good. Let’s go.” He said, and I stepped forward. I called my shadows before shadow walking us directly into the armory, using the image I had seen on the monitor as my mental guide.

Rycon

We materialized in the armory, and Jeremy looked like he was going to have a nervous breakdown. I chuckled softly at the slight twitch in his jaw.

“Don’t worry, Pops, we have fifteen minutes before the sensors come back on. That’s more than enough time.” I turned to Raven, who was glancing around the space with mild curiosity. Unlike her father, she didn’t seem to have any qualms about stealing firearms from the Toronto police.

“Thanks for the ride, Kitten. Let us know if it looks like anyone might walk in on us. I’ll call you through the headset when we’re ready.”

She nodded at me, eyeing her father warily before shadow walking back to the van. I took a moment to observe our surroundings. Most of the guns were lined up in cages surrounding the perimeter of the room. I immediately made a beeline for the wall of semi-automatics.

The cage was locked, so I slipped my lock picking kit out of my pocket, making quick work of the industry standard mechanisms.

“The NYPD armory has a whole card system access check that they use to secure their semi-automatics,” I informed Jeremy, pulling the cage open. “These flimsy locks clearly don’t do shit.” I grabbed two Colt M4 Carbines and slipped them into the empty duffle. “Do you want to fill the other bag with ammo? We’re going to need a shit ton of 5.56×45mm NATO for the Carbines. I see we have a few MP5’s over there. I’m going to grab us some of those too, so get some 9x19mm Parabellum cartridges as well. Then we can decide what we’re going to do for handguns.” I said, rubbing my hands together. There was a lot of good shit in here, way more than I expected from Toronto.

I scanned the cages for any other goodies that might come in handy and paused in front of a rack of high-powered rifles before I realized Jeremy hadn’t moved. I glanced over at him to find him frozen in place, that muscle in his jaw still pulsing. Taking a deep inhale through my nose, I quickly determined the man was on the cusp of a panic attack.

For fuck sakes, I didn’t have time for this.

I should have had him keep watch in the van and done this with Raven, even if she didn’t know shit about guns.

“Hey, Jeremy.” I snapped my fingers at him, “Snap out of it, what are you freaking out about?”

His gaze shot to me, and his face flushed red. The sharp scent of anxiety quickly morphed to the burning stench of rage and I nearly growled in frustration. We were losing minutes here because Jeremy had chosen this moment to work through his moral qualms over committing a felony.

“What am I freaking out about?” He snarled at me, and I sighed.

Here we go.

“I’m stealing from my place of work, which just so happens to be the fucking Toronto police force, with a murderer who has kidnapped my daughter twice.” His fists clenched at his side, and his breathing was getting increasingly agitated. I glanced up at the clock on the wall and hissed. We were already five minutes into the job, and all I had to show for it was two Carbines with zero ammo.

If I had been doing this for The Ironclad Company, I would have just killed Jeremy to save time and then collected his half of the payment.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think Raven would be too thrilled with me if I iced her dad after she had basically risked the life of both her mate and Kasha to save his human ass. So, killing him was out of the question.

I moved before he knew what was happening and threw him up against one of the cages. His eyes widened in shock.

He hadn’t expected me to touch him, which I found funny, considering he had just called me a murderer.