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)
“Anybody else inside Bellamy knowingly help you?” I asked.
“No.”
“Try that again without deciding how much truth I deserve.”
“I worked alone inside the company,” Len spat, blood bubbling briefly at one nostril. “Nobody else knew what I was doing.”
I watched his face rather than his mouth. Nothing in the answer shifted his eyes or changed his breathing. “Credentials.”
“I used the shared operations account, copied two supervisor badges, and kept the rear-door code from being updated.” Len swallowed, wincing when the movement jarred his broken nose. “I could see dispatch, schedules, transfer requests, and final inventory.”
I pulled the knife from my belt and opened it with one hand. Len’s eyes dropped to the blade, and the first honest trace of panic widened them. I caught his right wrist, cut the restraint only long enough to drag his hand across the chair arm, then pinned it there with my palm.
“You put a device beneath her fucking truck,” I reminded him, bending his index finger backward until the tendons pulled tight. “You left her tied inside a building with a timer running. I’m gonna ask once more, and this finger is only the start if I hear hesitation. Is there another active device?”
“No,” he gasped. “There isn’t.”
“What did you divert during the last round of thefts?”
Len listed the inventory, and it matched enough of what we had recovered to make the answer believable. With some incentive, he admitted to compromising the rack and shutdown at the fundraiser, and placing the secondary device the crew had built for him. He also gave me the details on the warehouse fire.
“The bomb under her truck?” I asked.
Len’s eyes shifted toward the crew leader. That single movement told me where the order originated, but it did nothing to reduce his responsibility.
“I gave them her schedule and vehicle information,” he admitted. “One of their men placed it.”
I sliced off the tip of one finger, and his breathing came fast and wet through his broken nose while I folded the damaged hand back into his lap.
“That was for making me ask twice.” I wiped my blade clean against his shirt before closing it. “Lie again, and I’ll start choosing things you need more.”
The crew leader had watched the exchange without moving, though the muscles along his jaw had tightened. He was older than most of the men we took at the range, with the battered face of someone who had mistaken surviving violence for being good at it. His attention moved from Len’s ruined finger to Stryker when our president stepped in front of him.
“Where’s the backup stock?” Stryker asked.
“Don’t know what you mean,” the man replied, settling deeper into the chair.
Stryker looked at me. “He needs encouragement.”
The crew leader’s gaze snapped back to mine before I had taken a step. All that hard-man bullshit vanished beneath the memory of Len’s scream. “There’s a lockup off Henshaw.”
He gave us everything we needed, identifying a small backup containing material taken during the latest thefts. He confirmed that there were no other devices and the range was their last planned job.
Wraith and Breach headed outside, engines firing moments later while the rest of us remained with the two men who had used Tamsin’s company as an armory. We did not need a history of every generator, tool, or case the crew had stolen over the years. We needed to know whether another device was waiting somewhere in our territory, whether another Bellamy employee had been compromised, and whether the range attack was the final move they had prepared before we broke the operation apart.
My hand closed into a fist at my side. Every second spent in this room belonged to Tamsin, which meant these men were going to give us what we needed quickly or stop breathing even faster.
Len twisted toward the crew leader as much as the chair allowed. “You planned the truck.”
“You gave us her routine,” the other man shot back. “Don’t start acting clean now.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Trigger advised from beside the table. “Nobody here is confused about either one of you.”
I stepped between the chairs and looked at Len. “The device at the range. You place it?”
“Yes.”
“Build it?”
“I helped the crew leader assemble the trigger and positioned the case.” His broken hand trembled in his lap while he spoke. “The remote started it early if we needed. The timer handled the rest.”
I believed he was finally too frightened to gamble. The crew leader confirmed the same thing after Stryker questioned him about his remaining men, recent movements, and the last material they intended to sell. He knew almost nothing about Bellamy’s internal records beyond what Len handed him, while Len knew little about which businesses the crew had pressured after the stolen components changed hands. Their arrangement had been built to keep each side useful without sharing more than necessary.