Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
“Not war. Never that.”
“You’re wasting my time.” He started up the stairs.
“I know Romanov wants to use you against Colm.”
That brought him up short. “You seem to know a whole hell of a lot that you shouldn’t.” He might have tapped his brother’s phone, but there’s no way he could have tapped Jude’s. It struck him that he’d underestimated Aiden, and that didn’t sit well with him in the least. “I’m listening.”
“Romanov won’t take your double-cross well. There’s little he hates more than someone breaking their word. He’ll bring everything in his power to make an example of you.”
That was what worried him more than anything else. He could keep Sloan safe. He wasn’t worried about that. But Sloan was a woman who would crave roots—her time in Callaway Rock had more than proven that. It might take some time, but eventually she’d resent him for keeping them on the move and under the radar.
And that wasn’t even taking the kid into the equation. A life on the run was no way to raise a child. “You have thirty seconds to give me your pitch before I hang up.”
“I know that you do extensive research on both enemy and ally, and that you know things no one else can seem to pin down. I want what you have on Romanov—all of it.”
It seemed a small enough thing to ask, but Jude wasn’t the trusting sort. “I’ll pass it over with the condition that you tell me exactly what you’re planning—and keep me updated on the process.”
“Yes to the former. No to the latter.”
“Aiden, this isn’t a negotiation.” He needed warning if he was going to get Sloan out of wherever they were before Romanov brought his wrath down upon them. He paused at the top of the stairs. “Take out whatever Romanov has set up as a backup plan and we’ll talk when I deliver the information to you.”
“We’ll talk about my sister, too. We’ve reached the restaurant.” Aiden hung up, leaving Jude more irritated than he should be. His life had been so much simpler when he kept to the shadows and didn’t tangle with powerful men. Aiden and Dmitri might think themselves so different, but they were just two sides of the same coin. The only difference that mattered to him was that one had tried to blackmail him and the other was willing to work with him.
He took a careful breath, and then another, letting all that fall away. There was a fight waiting for him on the other side of the door, and he couldn’t afford to be distracted.
The door opened before he could move, revealing a man with tattoos crawling down his arms and up his neck, and whose face was marked with scars. His eyes went wide, but Jude didn’t give him a chance to call out a warning. He chopped him in the throat, grabbing his body as he started to tumble and shoving him into the loft.
The man hit the ground, gurgling, and Jude shut the door behind him and locked it for good measure. Someone could kick it down, even with the reinforced wood, but he’d hear them coming and have warning.
He kicked the fallen man, the force of it flipping him onto his back, where he lay still. He wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. Jude stalked farther into the loft, avoiding the creaky boards. There wasn’t furniture to deal with, because he’d never bothered to furnish the place, and so he had a clear line of sight to the second man kneeling before the window, a rifle in his hands, his attention on the building across the street.
“Stop.” The man didn’t look up, didn’t move, his Russian accent confirming what Jude already knew.
He slipped his hand behind his back, palming the .45 he had tucked into his waistband. “If you pull that trigger, I’m going to shoot you in the back of the head.”
“And you—”
Jude whipped his gun out and shot him in the back. He rushed across the distance and yanked the Russian away from the window just in case he got some funny ideas about trying to shoot Callista even with a bullet in him.
It turned out to be for nothing. His shot had aimed true. The man hit the ground, his eyes vacant with death. Jude walked back and put a bullet in the still-struggling second guy. He needed all his focus for what came next, and having some piece-of-shit Russian shoot him was not on the agenda.
He walked back to the sniper setup and knelt in the same place the man had, hissing out a breath when his bullet wound protested so much movement in such a short time. The rifle was an M4, which was fucking pathetic, but they didn’t need the range of a true sniper rifle. Still, there were a dozen better choices for this job. He took out his phone and dialed Aiden, putting it on speaker as he used the scope to scan the buildings across from them.