“I sent you the address,” Blake says. “I hope like hell this isn’t a mistake.”
I have to save us and them, I repeat in my mind, and another situation claws at me, that I can no longer ignore. Not when it’s now landed in Blake’s lap. I lean in closer and soften my voice. “Her father.”
His eyes narrow. “What about him?”
“I ran a lot of bloody, questionable missions for Tag. And I took the jobs because he asked me to do it. Because I respected him. The orders that came to Tag read GM which I believed meant General Marks, but they could have easily stood for Gabriel Manning, I don’t know what came from who, when, or where.”
“You think the general knowingly broke laws?”
“All I know is that the general and Gabriel knew each other well enough for Gabriel to fear him. What if he thought he could control the general because the general had just as much to lose as he did? But then the general saw Gabriel’s true colors and decided his daughter was too high a price to pay?”
“But he’d still have secrets to hide,” Kara assumes.
“Exactly,” I say. “And I’m not sure where that leads us but you need to be careful with him. I don’t know what he’s capable of or even who else might want him silenced.”
“I’m ready,” Candace says, hurrying down the stairs.
I straighten, ready to head into the lion’s den that is the rest of this day, while breathing dragon fire right the fuck all over Ted Pocher. Right after, or before, either way, no preference on timing, I rip out Alejandro’s throat.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Savage
A few minutes later we’re in an Escalade with Memphis behind the wheel. “Surely if we walk into the cigar club, he won’t just kill us,” Candace says.
“Sounds like the beginning of one of Savage’s bad jokes,” Memphis calls over his shoulder.
He’s right. It does, but I have no punchline in me. “No,” I agree. “Pocher won’t just kill us.”
“Then why invite us there at all if he wants to kill us?” Candace asks. “What does he want?”
“In our heads, to milk us like cows about to go to pasture. He wants any information we have that might hurt him. It’s all his own self-preservation. He’ll try to make us feel like we live if we ride and die with him.”
“And then he’ll kill us.”
“And then I’ll kill him.”
“Houston, we have a problem,” Memphis says. “Looks like our destination road is blocked off.”
I lean forward to eye the blockade created with wood horses, yellow tape, and cops. Obviously, Lilah wasn’t bullshitting about this being a bad time but I’m going to make it a good time.
“Just pull us over,” I instruct. “We’ll walk.” He cuts to the curb and halts. I open the door and climb outside, offering Candace my hand, helping her out of the vehicle.
“Can we get past the blockade?”
“We don’t have to get past the blockade,” I say. “We just have to convince Lilah Love to do it for us.”
“And how do we do that?”
I wiggle a brow. “I have my ways.” I catch her hand and lead her through a gathering crowd, toward a portion of the blockade. I pinpoint a target, a plump, red-cheeked, police officer standing guard while lookie-loos hang about in front of him left and right.
I use my linebacker-ish figure to push us to the spot directly in front of the cop. A petite little woman pushes up next to us. “My husband! My husband. I need to see my husband!” She starts to sob and then it’s all hell breaking loose. She tries to go over the barricade. The cop catches her arm. She slaps him.
“Ouch,” I murmur, feeling that sting, and she didn’t even touch me. I also see an opportunity where it presents itself and I duck under the yellow tape, taking Candace with me.
“This seems like a bad idea,” Candace says as we walk in between two parked patrol cars.
“We’re good, baby. We’re good.” We clear the hoods of the cars and I eye the tape set up around a building doorway. That’s where we’ll find Lilah Love and I head in that direction, with Candace in a reluctant tow.
We’ve just reached the edge of that tape, when a brunette no more than five-foot-four, wearing jeans and a blazer, steps from the building, with an officer on her heels. She whirls on him. “Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth?”
“Agent Love—”
“You contaminated the scene. Leave.”
“Agent—”
“Do you know the difference between an apple and an orange?”
The cop bristles. “Of course I know the difference between an apple and an orange.”
“Then one such as myself can assume you know the difference between stay and go. Go.” She motions to another cop. “Get him out of here.”