Dirtiest Secret (SIN 1)

"No," he said. He looked at Quince. "You work. I'll watch."

Quince tilted his head in both acquiescence and respect. Dallas knew damn well that his friend understood what the decision cost him. "All right then."

"I need to fill you both in on something first, though," Dallas added. He paused to gather his thoughts and present what he knew about Darcy as succinctly as possible. "I talked to Jane. She's the one who told me WORR had Ortega in custody."

"How'd she hear?" Quince asked.

"Must've been her ex," Liam said, eyeing Dallas for confirmation. "He heads up a division there now."

Quince aimed a steady gaze at him. "You okay, man?"

Dallas nodded. All of the men in Deliverance knew about his kidnapping. Knew his sister had been with him. Knew she'd been freed and he'd been left behind to suffer.

And they all knew that Jane and Dallas didn't see much of each other anymore.

None of them, however, knew the real reason why.

Dallas turned to Liam. "Did she call you, too? Did she tell you about WORR and Ortega?" He hadn't thought to ask her if she'd spoken to Liam.

"No. She's been buried in that screenplay, and I've been working in London. We haven't talked in weeks."

As children, the three of them had been inseparable. Now, Liam and Jane were still close, and that was probably the one thing for which Dallas was jealous of his friend.

Jane, of course, didn't know the truth about what Liam did. She thought--as did the world--that Liam worked for SysOps, a private security company that operated under the umbrella of the Sykes conglomerate and dealt with security at the various Sykes retail establishments.

"What did she say?" Liam pressed.

"She told me about Ortega getting caught in WORR's net," Dallas said. "That he wanted to trade immunity for information about our kidnapping. But that's not all of it. She also told me that WORR knows about Deliverance."

"Bloody hell," Quince said.

"That about sums it up," Dallas agreed. "Apparently Elaine Darcy put pressure on her son," he began, then ran down the rest of what Jane had told him.

"And he knew the name? He knows we call ourselves Deliverance?"

"We've never advertised it, but we've never kept it a secret. There's risk involved. We all know that. But code name or not, no client has a clue to any of our identities." They were too careful for that, operating Deliverance through a complicated web of anonymous contact points, untraceable wire transfers, burner phones, and a myriad of other precautions.

"You might want to have a talk with Darcy," Liam suggested. "As a concerned friend. After all, your ex-brother-in-law is at WORR. Makes sense you would have heard the news."

Dallas nodded. "I thought of that. Would be good to know what he's telling Bill. I'll catch him at a party. Or throw one myself."

"Rough gig," Quince said with a cocky grin. "I saw the pictures of you and that actress that were all over the Post. Hard life you got there."

Dallas shot him the bird. But he smiled while doing it. Then he nodded to Quince. "On that note, why don't you go show our guest just how hard this life can be?"

"Thought you'd never ask."

As Dallas watched, Quince went to the door and started to slowly raise the lights. First there was only a gray blur. Then it formed into the outline of a man. And then Dallas could see that it was Mueller, sitting in the dark in the soundproof room, his hands cuffed to the table as he tried to look cool and tough, when Dallas knew that he was scared right down to his bones.

His phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out, taking his eyes away from the image behind the one-way glass only long enough to see the caller ID. Adele.

For a moment, he was tempted to answer, but she wasn't the woman he wanted or needed.

He sent the call to voicemail, then slipped the phone back into his pocket. Then he moved closer to the glass and watched as Quince entered the room and shut the door behind him, the thud of the steel reverberating even over the electrical hum that filled the tech-heavy room.

He watched as his friend put a small leather case on the table. As Mueller's eyes went wide.

And then Quince opened the case, and Dallas caught sight of the gleam of a steel scalpel and a metal hook.