Page 69 of Lulu

I knew they’d been working closely together because I’d hooked them up. It was easier than passing information back and forth. “What’d you find out?”

“Pavel Sidorov ring a bell?”

I said the name over in my mind. Pavel Sidorov had been a Russian spy that Spider and I had worked on taking out the year before. Wolf and Ghost hadn’t been part of the job, so I didn’t see the fucking connection.

“Okay, what the fuck aren’t you telling me? I don’t see the connection. Spider and I worked that job—”

“So did Wolf and Ghost.”

Dammit, I was getting tired of having to drag information out of him. “Fucking explain, Sanford. I’m not in the mood to play twenty-twenty. How do you expect me to put it all together if I don’t have all the facts?”

I heard his exhale. “Sorry. I’m thinking about how much I should tell you. Since the breach—”

“Yeah, you’re a little paranoid, I get it.” I scowled. “You’d better fucking tell me everything. Men are dying, and in case it’s slipped your notice, I appear to be next on the list.” Christ, I could probably get the information I needed from Oz. “We are talking about a past job, right?” I reminded him.

“Yes.” He hesitated, and I clenched my jaw. “What you don’t know is that two teams were sent in for that hit. If one didn’t manage to take Sidorov out, the other would.”

I’d figured as much when he’d revealed that Ghost and Wolf had gone in, too. That was the connection--the four of us had been sent in to take Sidorov out. Shit, the government had really wanted the Russian bastard gone.

The rest was easy to figure out. “So we were found out and Sidorov’s family is retaliating.”

“It appears so, yes. The irony is that they’re using one of you against us.”

I was sure that whoever it was was also getting a hefty payment in exchange, too.

“It’s Crazy.”

That didn’t surprise me, because I’d had my own suspicions about Crazy, too. “Let me guess--Oz managed to hack into his computer and discovered some info that leads straight to him.”

“Yes, him and Dobbs.” He obviously wanted to make sure Dobbs got some credit, too. As if I fucking cared. “Once Crazy stopped communicating with me I grew suspicious.”

I thought back to Crazy’s phone call to me in the beginning. So it had been meant to distract me from any involvement he might have in this. Get me to let down my guard so he could get close if he had to expose himself. I wondered if he'd phoned the other men. Lulu’s description of the man who’d paid her a visit didn’t sound like the Crazy I’d worked with, but I knew that didn’t mean anything. The fact that he’d been as close to Lulu as he had scared the fuck out of me.

“You have no idea where he is?”

“You know how you guys work. Once you go off the grid, you’re impossible to find.”

“Obviously not if he’s managed to take three of us out,” I snarled. “Jesus H Christ, Sanford, this is a fucking mess.”

“All I can tell you is he’s there somewhere in Vegas.”

Again, something I already fucking knew. And something else I knew was that we’d never find Crazy if he didn’t want to be found. I’d have to wait for him to come to me, and the only way that could happen was if I was out in the open. Fuck. It would be a miracle if I came out of this alive.

“Now that we know it’s Crazy and where he is I’ve sent a couple of our guys to flush him out. Between the three of you—”

“Who?” I wanted to know who to look for if our paths crossed.

“Animal and Fox.”

In spite of the situation, I snorted out a laugh. I hadn’t worked with either of them.

“Oz and Dobbs are going to keep working on narrowing down his location using face recognition software. Check in with me in a couple of days.”

Fuck that. I’d check in with Oz.

I’d hung up after that, and returned to my room to find Lulu dead asleep and snoring softly.

Speak of the devil, here she came now, prancing out of the clinic with a big fucking smile on her beautiful face. Her smile did something crazy to me, something that was calming and gave me a feeling of being whole. It was so sweet and fresh, like the cherry on top of a milkshake. I knew that our relationship was heading somewhere, but I’d been running solo for so damned long. Now I had a womananda fucking dog. And with the other shit going on in my life right now? It was clear, and maybe time, that I made other changes, too.

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