Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 108242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
“Go get dressed,” I say in a low voice, my hand at her back turning her back toward the bedroom.
“What? I…” She glances at Grim and gathers the collar of her robe in one hand. “Grim, hi.”
“Lennix.” Grim nods but wisely keeps his eyes trained on her face.
“I’ll…be back.” She nods to my hand. “We need to get ice on that, though. It’s already swelling.”
“Okay.” I walk her toward the hall. “When you come out.”
I stride back to the sitting room, standing closer to Grim and pitching my voice lower, glancing over my shoulder. “Let’s get this over with.”
“You won’t be able to keep this from her. You know that, right?”
“If he did this to Owen, he’ll…” Horror and rage and fear stunt my words. “She was supposed to be in that car, Grim. If anything happens to Nix—”
“We’ll protect her.”
“Like I protected my brother?” I choke on self-condemnation, barely getting the words out.
“Owen had round-the-clock security, and if Keene got to him, there wasn’t more we—you—could have done given the information we had.”
“Of course it was him. Who else?”
“We gotta talk to him. If he’s being this bold and foolish, he’ll slip up and leave clues for us to follow.”
“You know that number’s a burner phone.”
“Still, having the number in advance this way, we can trace the general location and know where he is now. It’s something.”
“It’s not enough.”
“It’s a start.”
I breathe through my nose and force the air through my mouth, trying to calm down. This motherfucker loves getting a rise out of me. He proved that in our first conversation. Whatever he says will devastate me, will enrage me, and I won’t be able to do anything about it. I already know that.
“Maxim, make the damn call before he changes his mind.”
“Before who changes his mind?” Lennix asks. She’s back in her yoga pants and sweatshirt, her hair neatly pulled into a knot on top of her head. I don’t even want her in the room when I call this lunatic.
“Baby, could you give us a few more minutes?”
“No.” She sits beside me on the small couch. “Tell me what’s going on.”
I squeeze the bridge of my nose and close my eyes. If she were just biddable from time to time, my life would be so much simpler.
“King, she’ll have to know eventually.”
My head snaps up, and I glare at Grim. Whose side is this motherfucker on?
My side. I know that, and he’s right.
“Keene called.”
Lennix stiffens beside me, her eyes stretching to their limits. “What? He’s dead. Are you sure it was him? He called you here? Your cell? What… How did he—”
“He left a message for me at CadeCo headquarters in New York.”
“That makes no sense.” She frowns and rubs her forehead. “Why would he expose himself this way?”
“I believe he’s too narcissistic and twisted not to claim his kill,” Grim says.
The truth piles up between us—carnage and danger and vengeance.
“His kill?” Lennix divides the question between Grim and me.
“Owen,” I say. “We think Keene was behind the assassination.”
The full weight and horrific implications of my statement sink in, play out across her expressive face.
“No. Oh, God.” She covers her mouth. “This is…my fault. If you hadn’t come for me—”
“Nix, no.” I pull her to sit sideways on my lap, rubbing her back. “Don’t even think that. I provoked him. I shot his brother. It’s my fault.”
“You’re both wrong,” Grim says. “It’s his fault. He’s a psychopath. He killed innocent people and would have killed literally millions more had we not stopped him selling that vaccine on the black market.”
Nix looks as unconvinced as I feel, wearing guilt like a badly tailored jacket. It doesn’t belong on her.
“Look, I’ve been doing this shit all my life,” Grim says. “In the process of bringing bad guys to justice, bad guys get killed sometimes. Gregory’s brother was a bad guy who got what was coming to him, just like this motherfucker will. You don’t blame yourself for evil. You fight it, but evil fights back. That’s the nature of this thing since the beginning of time.”
Lennix finally nods at Grim’s philosophical flash, offering him a small, grateful smile, but I can’t accept his rationale so quickly. My brother is dead. My sister-in-law is a widow. Her kids are fatherless, and my mother is barely holding on because she lost her son.
“Give me a few minutes to get set up for the trace,” Grim says, “and then you need to call him.”
“Won’t he suspect you’re tracing the call?” Lennix asks.
“Oh, yeah. I’m sure it’s a burner,” Grim says, unpacking items from his bag and setting up a few pieces of electronic equipment. “And he’ll toss it as soon as he’s done, but we’ll know where he is at that moment. It’s a start, a crumb we’ll pick up until we find another, and we’ll keep following till we find this head case. He knows we’ll get this information, so he’s planning for it already. But he’ll slip up and give us something he doesn’t mean to. When that happens, we’ll grab him.”