Page 59 of Peace Under Fire

“The assholes who rammed the gate and grabbed the women have a sizable budget—that was obvious from their rides and the equipment they brought into play—the kind of budget that could annex a satellite for surveillance,” Jacob retorted.

Mandy stirred uneasily. Tension seemed to flare between the two men. It was subtle, but there. Suddenly, Grumpy twisted all the way around in his seat and pinned Mandy with cold black eyes.

“Is it true?” he asked, his voice low and rumbly, his face lit with skepticism. “Can your sister kill just by thinking about it?”

CHAPTER 14

Squish felt Mandy freeze against him. But then her shoulders pulled back, and her chin rose in that dual reaction he was beginning to recognize. The woman refused to let anyone intimidate her. Not even men three times bigger and meaner than herself.

“Yes,” she responded, her voice a mixture of bravado and nerves.

Grumpy huffed, his disbelief clear. Squish didn’t blame him for his skepticism. It was damn hard to buy into something that every instinct insisted was impossible. Unless, perhaps, you saw a video clearly demonstrating something taking place that should be impossible. That cracked open the mind a bit.

“Guess Tex never showed you the video,” Brick said dryly from next to Mandy, his thoughts apparently in line with Squish’s.

Grumpy suspicious eyes switched from Mandy’s face to Brick’s. “What video?”

“Guess not,” Squish agreed. Why hadn’t Tex forwarded his crew the video footage?

Granted, they wouldn’t be running into the women who’d tossed and blown up the Humvee, or the one who’d orchestrated her own little dramatization of Hitchcock’s The Birds. At least not right now, during their recon of the compound.

But if a rescue were mounted, chances were excellent that they’d run into those women then. They needed to know what they were up against. And that video was the quickest way to drive that point home.

Squish turned to Brick. “Pull up that footage and pass it up front.”

Brick passed the phone up to Grumpy, who pressed play. The dude said nothing as the video played, not even when the eye-popping—as Tex had described it—stuff showed. The dude didn’t even make that wheezing, disbelieving gasp that he and Brick had made when they’d watched the car soar up in the air. But his buddy’s body got tighter and tighter, until it looked like his shoulders were about to rip right through his skin and shirt.

“It’s fake,” Grumpy said after the footage finished rolling.

At least the dude’s voice carried the same hoarse disbelief that Squish’s and Brick’s had after watching that video.

“Tex doesn’t think so.” Brick’s tone made it clear that Tex would know.

“Let me see it,” said long-haired, long-bearded Billy Cooper, who was sitting next to Brick beside the door.

Brick took the phone back from Grumpy and passed it to his left.

Billy wasn’t nearly as stoic while watching the video. A chorus of “holy fucks” and “son-of-a-bitches” followed his progression through the footage.

“Grumpy’s right,” he declared after watching the video for a second time. “No way did that shit happen. It must be faked.”

Squish shrugged. He’d warned them. If that video hadn’t convinced them, nothing he said would.

“So what are you?” Billy asked. “Some kind of Umbrella Factory graduate?”

Squish suspected he knew who the question was directed at, but he had no clue what the hell it meant. His eyebrows rose. “What the fuck is an Umbrella Factory.”

“It’s the Umbrella Academy, you dipshit,” Crusher—who was Tex’s team leader and their current chauffeur—corrected. The dude had watched the video alongside Grumpy.

“Still no clue what you two morons are talking about,” Squish growled.

“It’s a show.” Crusher shrugged. “On Netflix.”

“You mean the one with all the mutants?” Grumpy asked, his head turning toward Crusher.

Squish was sitting so close to Mandy, he felt the flinch roll through her. He draped his arms around her shoulders again and scowled. “Knock it off. You’re making her feel like a freak.”

“I wasn’t feeling like a freak,” Mandy muttered. “Until now, when you indicated I should feel like a freak.”

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