Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58752 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 235(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58752 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 235(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
We recovered part of the fundraiser shipment and smaller amounts marked for jobs years earlier. Other cases held components matching the records-room incendiary and the device beneath Tamsin’s truck. Every piece tightened the circle around the insider without giving us his name.
The man who had reached for the controller sat tied to a steel chair in the small office near the loading bay. Blood ran from his nose onto his shirt, one eye had begun swelling, and the arrogance he had worn before the raid was losing ground to the sound of Black Crowns moving through every part of the property. I set the controller on the desk in front of him and pulled another chair close enough that my knees almost touched his.
“You know what that would’ve done?” I asked, tapping one finger against the plastic.
He looked away. “I moved cases. That’s all.”
“That case was surrounded by stolen pyrotechnics.” I leaned back and watched his throat work as he swallowed. “You hit the switch, everybody on the property burns. And that’s only if the fire doesn’t spread through the canyon and kill a fuck of a lot more.”
“I didn’t build it,” he muttered, as if that would help his cause.
“You fucking reached for it.”
His mouth tightened, and the last bit of defiance crawled back into his face. He tried to sit straighter despite the blood slipping over his lip. “I follow orders.”
I held out a hand, and someone dropped a tire iron into it. Before the asshole even realized I was swinging, I’d broken his kneecap. His scream bounced off the office walls, but I waited patiently until he looked at me again.
“Let’s try this without the bullshit,” I asked. “Who gives the orders?”
The answers came in pieces at first, dragged out between breaths. I encouraged him to keep talking whenever he tried to hold back information. The insider had been supplying the crew for years, slipping out small amounts that nobody noticed and larger loads whenever the company’s schedule created an opening. The fundraiser was supposed to cover one final shipment big enough to keep them working for months, but the insider disappeared, and the Black Crowns reached the warehouse before they moved everything.
“The fire?” I asked.
He licked blood from his upper lip and glanced toward the men outside the office. The pause lasted just long enough to make me narrow my eyes.
“Insider insisted the records had to go,” he blurted out.
“And the device under my woman’s truck?”
His gaze shifted toward the door. Trigger, Wraith, and Smoke stood beyond it, close enough to hear and far enough to let me work. None of them had moved an inch.
I leaned forward, and he flinched. “Answer.”
“He promised he’d clean up the girl problem before she found the original paperwork.”
Everything inside me went still. My easy grin shifted into something dark and lethal. Calling Tamsin a problem had shortened several lives. Promising to eliminate her meant their remaining time would be particularly unpleasant.
Smoke glanced at me, then back at the prisoner. “Well, that was fucking stupid.”
The prisoner must have seen the change in my smile because the rest of his blood drained from his face, and he started talking fast as if getting me the information quicker would save him from his fate. He didn’t know the insider’s name because the crew leader handled those meetings, and he’d never been told where either man lived. What he knew was that they still had access to another Bellamy property, and the crew leader had been waiting for the insider to deliver the remaining material and destroy whatever records had survived.
“Which property?”
“I don’t know.” His voice cracked as he shook his head. “Swear to fuck, I don’t. Range, storage yard, somewhere the company uses. They never brought the low guys in.”
I held his gaze until the fear settled into something real. He had reached the bottom of what he knew, and that meant he was no longer needed. I drew out my pistol and put a bullet in his head.
Trigger looked down at the body, then back at me. “Damn, brother. After that ‘girl problem’ shit, I thought you’d take your fucking time. Shooting him that fast was almost merciful.”
I holstered the pistol. “My woman is waiting.”
I stood, left the body with Trigger and Wraith to deal with, and walked outside to call Tamsin with my blood still cold in my veins.
She answered on the first ring, fast enough that I suspected the phone had already been in her hand. The concern packed into my name reached me before anything else.
“Gavin?”
The sound of my name in her voice loosened the pressure in my chest without touching the anger. I looked across the yard at brothers securing cases and prisoners beneath the portable lights, then turned toward the darker edge of the property where no one else could hear her. “We recovered all the Bellamy property. Site’s secure.”