Smoked (The Invincibles 5)

Byrne smiled. “Don’t play coy with me. You know very well that there’s something I need your help with.”

“There are far easier ways to ask. No need to hold my friends at gunpoint.”

“So amusing,” he said, motioning to a terrified-looking Gene. “Don’t you find her amusing?” Byrne said to Smoke, whose only response was a growling sound that emanated from his throat. It got louder when Byrne put his arm around my shoulders.

“Have you ever wondered why I recruited you, Siren?”

I shook my head. “Never. Perfectly obvious to me. I was the best in my class.”

Byrne laughed out loud. “Far from it. No, girl, it wasn’t that you were the best or even in the top ninety percent of your class.”

“Now you’re just being unnecessarily mean.”

He shook his head. “It was more that I had to keep my eye on you. I knew one day your curiosity would get the better of you, and then you’d lead me exactly where you have.”

I saw the safe I’d seen in the back of the antique shop sitting on my dining room table. “Are you under the assumption I have the combination to that thing?”

His fingers dug into the back of my neck, and he brought his face close enough to mine that I could smell whiskey on his breath. “I’ve grown weary of your feeble attempts at humor. You know goddamn well what was in that safe, and it wasn’t diamonds and emeralds. Now, tell me what you’ve done with it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He moved his hand to the front of my throat and slowly tightened his grip. “Willing to die? And for what? Ancient history that no one gives a shit about?” He released my neck and shoved me. “Stupid girl. So much like your father.” Byrne walked over, put his gun to Gene’s head, and cocked it. “Not so brave with someone else’s life. You have until the count of five to tell me where you hid it.”

I crossed my arms in front of me. “You can count to three and kill him, and it won’t change the fact I have no idea what you’re talking about. I never saw inside the safe, and I certainly never took anything from it.”

Byrne moved the gun from Gene’s head and pointed it at me. “If that is the case, you are worthless to me.”

From behind him, Gene began to thrash about in his chair, trying to scream through his gag. It sounded as though he was trying to say, “I know.”

“Untie him,” I demanded.

Byrne backhanded me, and I fell again

st the wall of muscle standing at my back. “You don’t make the rules.”

Gene continued to thrash about to the extent that I feared the chair would topple over.

“For feck’s sake,” muttered Byrne. “Untie the gag.” He motioned with his gun at me; the muscle shoved me at Gene.

“I know!” he screamed when I untied his gag. “I know where it is!”

“You better not be playing me, old man. If you are, I’ll make your last day on earth a living hell of pain.”

Gene frantically shook his head and looked at me.

“Your m-m-mother,” he stammered. “The b-b-box.”

“The box?”

Four things happened simultaneously. First, I realized which box Gene was talking about. Second, Byrne knew that I had. Third, when my eyes sought Smoke’s, I noticed he’d worked himself free and was waiting for the right time to strike. And finally, I saw that Byrne’s sloppiness in having his three goons on the inside rather than on the perimeter, meant Decker and the rest of our team had been able to get inside unnoticed.

While all eyes in the room remained focused on Gene and me, I saw Hughes creeping toward us in the hallway, along with Casper and Deck standing at the ready from two of the other rooms’ doorways. I had no doubt the others were standing ready to burst through the front door the second I gave the signal.

My eyes met Smoke’s one more time. He blinked thrice in rapid succession; I counted three seconds in my head and screamed, “Now!”

I dove, knocking Gene’s chair to the ground and covering his body with mine like Smoke had done to me before the ceiling crashed down on us.

I closed my eyes tight as bullets flew all around us, and prayed.