Brazen (B-Squad 1)

“Half a million.”

“Do I look like the kind of girl who can live off five hundred thousand dollars?” She laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. “One million, Taz, and I need it transferred over today.”

“I’m not giving you anything until I have confirmation those papers weren’t filed.” He picked up a black T-shirt from the suitcase and put it on.

Tamara shrugged her thin shoulders, her blue eyes never wavering. “If that’s how you want to play it, then I guess I’ll have no choice but to contest the divorce.”

She hadn’t always been this unfeeling. Selfish? Narcissistic? A mean girl? Yes to all the above. But blackmail and insisting the money gets to her today? It was desperate, and didn’t jive with the Tamara he knew—at least not with the woman he’d known five years ago. Of course, he wasn’t the man she knew back then either. The night he’d met Bianca, he’d told her he wasn’t one of the good guys. She’d shown him how wrong he’d been. Would he be as cold as Tamara if Bianca had never pushed her way into his I-only-look-out-for-myself life? It wasn’t a question he wanted to even contemplate, let alone answer.

“You’re a real piece of work, Tamara. This kind of shit is going to come back to haunt you one of these days.”

“Don’t I know it,” she said, a raw edge to her quiet words.

He grabbed his phone and punched in a text message to his accountant. “Look, it’ll take time for my accountant to get the money together. It’s not like I have it as cash under the mattress.” It would also give their freelance investigator, Isaac Camacho, time to look into her claims about the paperwork not being filed and what in the hell she was really up to while he and the team were at Indulgence. “As soon as I get back from this mission, you’ll have your cash.”

Her mouth pulled tight before her ice queen mask fell back in place. He was about to follow up on the change when his phone buzzed. Shoving the question about her reaction aside, he clicked on the new text message icon.

KEIR: GET DOWN HERE STAT. SHIT’S ABOUT TO BLOW.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said as he crossed the loft to the elevator. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Oh Honey Bear,” she said, following a few steps behind. “I’m not leaving your side until the transfer is confirmed.”

Chapter 4

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Bianca

Obviously sensing danger, everyone with a Y chromosome had vacated to the hallway. Bianca couldn’t blame them. Those guys might be brawny, but that didn’t mean they were dumb.

“Don’t you have something like a billion acres on your parents’ ranch?” Elisa asked, her big hazel eyes and button nose hiding the scheming heart of a girl who’d never met a version of the truth she couldn’t twist to her advantage. She was a born con artist, pickpocket and master of disguise who’d learned the tricks of the trade at her doting father’s knee before he’d died.

“White Willow is my Sutherland grandparents’ and yeah, it’s huge,” Bianca said, wondering where this was going.

Elisa gave her a knowing look. “Lots of places to hide a body on that kind of space.”

“Let me do a search to find the most hospitable burial spots on the property.” Lexie’s fingers flew across her laptop keyboard, no doubt hacking into whatever state website she needed to get that information from the land surveys, adding in some private corporate satellite imagery if needed.

“I’m handy with a shovel,” Vivi said from her spot by the door, where she was eavesdropping on the guys in the hall.

Even though Vivi had quit the agency, she was still too much of a DEA agent at heart to actually let anyone go on a murder spree…probably. Petite and delicate, she didn’t look the type to be drawn to violence, but her hair-trigger temper and take-no-prisoners attitude about anyone she’d put on her shit list coupled with insane fighting skills told a different story. Well, that and the fact that the girl loved a good dust-up.

If it had been any of them who’d just had their live-in boyfriend exposed as a cheating, scum-sucking, married asshole, she would be making the same serious-but-not-serious suggestions. Hell, she’d be throwing in the recommendation to start a Kickstarter for bail money just in case.

However, this wasn’t just some guy being a jerk. It was Taz. She couldn’t even joke about offing him while commiserating with her best friends. The invisible fingers pinching her lungs closed tightened. What the hell did that say? Something she didn’t want to hear right now.

Bianca swallowed past the bitter chunks of broken heart clogging her throat. “I’m not going to kill him.”

From her listening post, Vivi shot her a wicked grin. “Would have been my first plan of action”

“Whacking someone is always your first idea,” Lexie said, her laptop screen giving her green highlights an otherworldly glow.

“True.” Vivi shrugged her deceptively small shoulders, a snarky grin curling her blood-red lips. “That’s what makes me so damn charming.”

Now that was something only an idiot said about the four of them. Correction. The five of them. Gidget may not be in Ft. Worth, but she was still part of the original B-Squad. Their bonds had been forged at the living nightmare that had been St. B’s and those ties didn’t unravel—ever.

None of them had ended up at St. B’s because their parents wanted to make sure they were well taken care of at a 365-days-a-year boarding school. Enrollment there was the modern-day equivalent of getting rid of the family bad seed in a nunnery. It didn’t matter what happened to the rich’s misbehaving daughters as long as they stayed out of sight.