Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
I’d prepared myself for that answer. I’d also told myself to take a leap of faith and believe him.
If that was wrong, I’d deal with it later.
“Okay.” I moved on to the next item. “The fake text you sent to Elliott from my phone—did you ever check if he responded?”
He shook his head and took a sip of his drink.
It made me kinda thirsty, so I went over to the bar to mix myself a drink too.
“I turned it off,” he replied. “Too easy to trace.” Fair enough. “I’ll give it back to you tomorrow. I have your passport, wallet, and a very nice knife too.”
Oh. Okay, that was good. “At least you’re a kind thief.” Here goes my confession. I grabbed a highball glass and filled half of it with ice. “The reason I asked is, I have another phone. My private cell. It was hidden in Ryan’s bag. That’s why I ran away after you injected the sedative. I disabled the password and left him a note on it.”
I caught his “God-fucking-dammit, Crew” look before I found a good rum for my drink.
“Of course you did,” he grumbled. “I trust you told him something that made my text utterly useless.”
“I wouldn’t say useless.” I grinned. “It worked like the best red flag.”
He huffed into his drink.
So far, so good.
Last confession. This one might sting, considering Vincente had murdered Adrien’s DEA partner.
I topped off my drink with Coke before I went over to the pool. After setting the glass on the deck, I pulled up my sweats and sat down along the side of the pool, and I stuck my feet into the water.
“You couldn’t have provided that much information to Ryan,” Adrien noted. “The yacht isn’t visible anywhere unless you somehow infiltrate the Spanish Coast Guard and get access to classified coordinates that are recoded every hour.”
I didn’t doubt Squeezy’s abilities, and I was sure she’d thought of the coast guard route. But with that said, I happened to know they did more than recode those classified coordinates. Most of them weren’t even stored digitally. Every training exercise I’d participated in that spanned multiple branches and nations… Stealth and secrecy were everything. And sometimes, the technology of yesterday was safer than the one we had today. A note could be read by the person who stood nearby. A digital message could be intercepted by the whole world.
“I told him Carillo isn’t entering Europe through Marseille or Valencia.” I took a swig of my drink. “I actually said a lot of stuff. That you fucked me over, that we were going out on a boat, that I suspected you was meeting up with Carillo—and that you’re using him to get into Colombia.”
Adrien drained his drink and clenched his jaw as he swallowed.
“You mad at me, papi?” I smirked.
“You little piece of shit.” He looked so irritated at first, but the longer I held his gaze, the harder he had to fight to hold on to his grudge. He shook his head at me when he lost his fight. “I wanna be angry with you. Fucking hell.”
“It’s tough, innit?”
He sighed and splashed water on his face. “You did what you were supposed to do.”
“Plus, I’m so charming, it’s almost impossible to stay mad at me,” I said.
He snorted softly, then climbed out of the pool. Those black boxer briefs clung to his ass like a second skin, and I just wanted to bite him.
He walked over to the bar. “Why are you telling me all this?”
I scratched my nose. “If you’re gonna wander off into the Colombian jungle, I want you to have all the facts.”
On his way back with the whiskey bottle, something warmed up in his gaze. “Does that mean you’re going to keep your team at bay for seventy-two hours?”
Yeah…um.
I took a big gulp of my drink.
They were gonna be so pissed at me, but yeah.
“Yeah.” I nodded once.
He walked down into the water again and poured himself more whiskey. “I know it won’t be easy for you, but I sincerely believe it will bring back your loved ones much faster than if you didn’t have the intel at all.”
I believed that too. I just had to make a group of livid PMCs see it.
“Okay, one more confession.” It was my turn to drain my glass, and then I held it out for him. “Whiskey, please.”
His forehead wrinkled. “It’s full of ice, and you just had rum and Coke in there.”
“So?”
Adrien liked to sigh at me a lot. “Fine. What else do you want to confess?”
My sins?
I didn’t say anything right away. Not until he’d poured me a generous drink of whiskey, and I took a swig and— I coughed. “For chrissakes.” And I coughed and coughed. “This is the smoky shit.” Fuck, that was gross. “No amount of ginger ale or Sprite will make that better.”