Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 129980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
“You see that before?” Czar asked.
Maestro shook his head. “She has jewelry on her nightstand in a little box but no necklaces. It’s cheap stuff. Cute but cheap. I couldn’t find a safe.”
“I thoroughly searched her apartment three times,” Keys said. “I didn’t see that chain either. Or find a safe.”
Azelie hesitated briefly just before an open door. She pushed what appeared to be a tiny square into a pendant hanging on the chain. The pendant looked like a small envelope charm. She put the chain around her neck and then dropped the pendant inside her clothing.
“That’s what you’re going to be looking for, Keys, when I take her out tomorrow night,” Maestro said. “We get that, we’re in.”
Keys studied the picture frozen on the screen. She had placed the chip in the envelope charm so quickly, her hand shielding the item, but at least they knew where it was. It was a matter of finding where she kept the necklace.
“We’ll need eyes on her all the time. She doesn’t have a safety deposit box at the bank, does she?” Czar asked.
Code answered. “No. And she would always need access to that part of the key. Billows seems to call her randomly. This crisis is most likely because he’s been informed his money has disappeared from his various accounts and no one can trace it. He’s acting out of character from what Azelie told Maestro.”
“No shit. I’d be flipping too if fifty million dollars disappeared into thin air,” Master said. “A little more than fifty million,” he corrected, “but who’s counting?”
“I think Billows is. He made bank with trafficking,” Transporter said.
“And a few other illegal businesses,” Code said. “The man knows people. Has the information we need. When we make our move on him, we need to be certain we keep him alive until we have a chance to get that information.” He glanced at Destroyer and then Savage.
Savage grinned at him and held up both hands. “Some men are pansy asses. They give up before we can extract the information. Just sayin’.”
Maestro knew he was full of shit. They all did. Savage didn’t like pedophiles or traffickers. He made that known to them immediately and he did so in extreme ways. He knew how to keep an informant alive and make them suffer the worst pain imaginable, but there were times when his disgust and need for vengeance outweighed his desire to allow the informant to talk.
Savage had it particularly difficult as a child. Intellectually, Maestro knew they all had suffered tremendously, but to him, what happened to Savage was some of the worst. They had turned him into a sexual sadist, unable to get off without causing his partner pain. Hell of a thing for any man to live with, especially when you loved the woman more than life. There had been a time Torpedo Ink had worried they would lose him. They’d come close until Seychelle had entered into his life. Maestro almost managed to fuck that up with his idiotic advice to the two of them.
He ran his fingers through his hair in agitation. What was he thinking? How was he supposed to do the right thing for his woman when he didn’t have a clue about relationships? He detested most women. He didn’t believe a word coming out of their mouths. They seemed to delight in betraying their man. The only good ones were the ones married to his brethren and Alena and Lana. The rest of the world of females seemed fucked up to him. Or maybe he was the one fucked up. More than likely, he was.
“Maestro.” Czar used his low, commanding voice. “We’re going forward with the recording. Has anyone else noticed that it’s eerily silent? We can’t hear her breathing, and we should be able to, shouldn’t we, Mechanic?”
Mechanic was the king of gadgets. He continually came up with new and unique designs for keeping eyes and ears on their enemies as well as communication devices.
His head went up alertly. “Damn it, the lower she goes into that hellhole, the more the audio is affected. He has it soundproofed down there, but I didn’t think that would matter.”
“Jamming device?” Transporter asked, moving up beside his birth brother.
Maestro stopped with the introspection, his heart clenching hard in his chest. Azelie’s heart rate had accelerated. The camera was still sending that data, and they could see the shadows of grays in front of her as she approached the office. What they couldn’t do was hear anything.
Billows waited for her, pacing back and forth. He swung around and snapped something at her, but she wasn’t looking directly at his face, so they couldn’t read his lips. She made her way to the desk and sank into an office chair. That was bad. The camera was pointed at the computer, not at Billows, and they didn’t have audio.