Page 134 of Cruel Lies

It was the only thing that made sense.

The target was an easy one—anyone in the Guild could have taken this job and completed it successfully. But she gave it to us instead.

It wasn’t the only thing that didn’t add up. And it was the first time in seven years that a job from Lilly didn’t make sense.

Angel was posted up on the roof of the adjacent building, binoculars in hand, watching for our target to leave the building. Nash was around the corner, knife in hand, ready to slit the guy’s throat in a quick, efficient move. It wasn’t his usual style, but this was what the job called for.

Precision knifework, quick moves, and a personal message sent with his dead body on his boss’s doorstep.

We’d be done with it by midnight and be home to Harper by one.

It was beginning to feel like things were settling down, evening themselves out.

And then it all went sideways.

I glanced at my phone as the vibrations started, worry creasing my brow.

There shouldn’t be any activity at the old man’s house this late.

Maybe a security guard tripped a planted signal.

After the near-death of Harper, ordered by my father, I’d been sneaking into his daily life with the help of an old friend. He’d hacked Father’s mainframes, planted a virus that fed datadirectly back to me at the Guild, and set up tracers on every transaction in his bank dating back to the day Nash was born.

He was hiding something. And if I could find out what it was, perhaps I could stop whatever plan he’d put in place from falling together in his favor.

I didn’t doubt that he’d try for Harper’s life again. When he didn’t win a hand of cards, he played until he came out on top. And when life threw him a curveball, he switched to a pinch hitter.

My plant was dead. I couldn’t trust that she’d be safe anywhere now without protection.

Nash radioed in my ear, his voice low and gravely. "You forget we’re on a job, bro? What’s so interesting on your phone?"

I tapped the receiver to activate the mic and sighed. "Activity at Father’s house. Not normal for this late at night."

Nash and Angel both knew I was trying to find out what our sperm donor was hiding. They each had their reasons for keeping him alive, and I couldn’t argue with them. But we all agreed on one thing—he was too dangerous to Harper to let live for long.

The only question was, could we keep Harper out of danger long enough to get what we needed from the man?

Nash crackled in my ear again, his voice a bit more on edge. "What kind of activity?"

I glanced back down at my phone, almost missing the signal flash Angel sent up with his mirror reflection. "Shit, it’s go time. We’ll have to look into it later."

Our target exited the building and hailed a taxi through his little rideshare app, right on schedule. Of course, I accepted the job on the other side of our faked app profile and slipped into the throwaway car we swiped this morning off a quiet residential street.

We’d slip the lady who owned the car we stole the money toreplace it. She could report it stolen, her insurance would pay for it when it turned up totaled under the bridge, and she’d get a lump sum settlement from silent partners.

Happened all the time. People in that neighborhood knew how things worked. So did the detective on the Guild’s payroll.

It was a good system.

I pulled up to the side of the building with ease, smiling in my suit and tie with skeleton makeup on my face, such a contrast within myself that it almost made me laugh. The interior of the car was dark enough that he couldn’t see the makeup, though, and the man was perpetually in a hurry, so he didn’t bother to look at me in the rearview mirror as he piled in and rattled off an address.

"And make it snappy, please. I wanted to be there twenty minutes ago."

This was going to be an easy job.Guys like this were usually oblivious to the world around them.

Sure enough, even when I pulled around the corner in the opposite direction from where he instructed, he didn’t bat an eyelash. When the door opened on his side, he only just barely glanced up from his phone in confusion.

Only when Nash jerked him from the car by his hair did I think it finally started to set in that something was not normal about his taxi fare.

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