Page 96 of Fire for Effect

I was ready to step between them, but Taz held me back with a claw-like grip on my bicep.

Sierra turned back to Taz, and with a deadly serious face said, “I have to keep this fucker alive. I need him to keep me breathing as well. This affects me. So, tell me. Do you truly love him, or are you just messing with his mind the way Kristin was?”

“Sierra…”

“Daria,” Taz began, pulling on my arm.

Just the slightest touch from her made me ready to melt. It was like all the fight drained right out of me, and when Taz reached out to cup my cheek, I was as docile as a kitten.

“Yes, I love him,” Taz was speaking to Sierra, but she was looking right at me.

“And?” Sierra asked, crossing her arms.

Taz tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, then turned to my partner.

“I don’t know if I’ll break his heart. That’s not something I can swear to. I will do what I have to so that he’s okay.” I didn’t like her answer at all. The warm fuzzies from a second ago turned to ice. She continued, “I’ll do what’s best for him, no matter what it costs me. Or what it costs him.”

Sierra tilted her head, her blond hair falling over her shoulder as her eyes narrowed, examining Taz like she was trying to polygraph her with her mind.

“I’ll accept your answer, and I can’t wait to be his best man at the wedding,” Sierra finally concluded. “Now down to the important shit.”

Without invitation, Sierra sat down on the little kitchen table, her eyes devoid of that mischievous light that was almost always there.

“There’s no leak in the CIA,” Sierra finally said. “They concluded their investigation, and I combed through it. I have hacked every single document that I could find and been up the ass of every person even remotely attached to this. It’s not a leak, like we had initially thought.”

“That’s worse.” A leak gave us a mole to hunt. Without something to hunt and kill, then we might have a bigger problem on our hands.

“Now, now, I just said there isn’t a leak in the CIA. There is a leak somewhere, but not specifically from them. I think that maybe another agency is adjacent, or somehow, they have put the pieces together some other way.”

“What pieces? What the hell do they want?” I felt the blood rushing to my extremities - an old evolutionary development that made us ready to run, and fight.

“Matthews and his little group of people call themselves the Frontline,” Sierra said, shedding off her jokes and suddenly becoming serious. “They have members across cartels, Mafia, and Motorcycle Clubs.

“Like the Prodigal Sons?” It was a question, but I already knew the answer. “Frontline.” I said the name out loud, then scoffed, “Like the dog tick medication?”

“You have a dog?” Sierra asked, tilting her head to the side. “Since when?”

“No, but I see the commercials.” I had wanted a dog, but Kristin thought it would be too much work.

“Huh,” Sierra said, then she looked at Taz. “Next time you have a fight, get him a puppy.”

She crossed her slender legs and leaned back into the fake leather seat.

I vaguely wondered what Taz would look like in a cute red dress, but dismissed it quickly, because it was too strange to imagine.

“I’ll consider it,” Taz said, not bothered in the least as she went to her fridge and pulled out a Belgian white beer, offering one to me, then Sierra.

“Got anything stronger?” Sierra asked.

Taz went to the freezer and pulled out a bottle of vodka, pouring out a shot for Sierra who sipped it with her pinky up.

“It seems that the Frontline have been trying to attack your dear Papa, and President Lau ever since the prisoner exchange,” Sierra said. “I decrypted their communication, and while they kept using nicknames, it was obvious what they were talking about. They have absolutely no idea that we killed the defector two days later.”

“Great, so we what? We tell them the guy got his throat slit as you looked deep into his eyes and gave him a message from President Lau?”

Sierra laughed, and it sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

“Yes and no. It seems that Frontline have expanded their vendetta against Cerberus and have acquired a new target. The Ghost.”

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