Page 6 of Explosive Vengeance

“Have you got something?” Megan asked. After being separated as kids and funneled into the Valkyrie Program, they’d finally been reunited a few months ago. She appreciated every moment they spent together now, united in this common cause.

“Think so. Come take a look.”

Her heart beat faster. They’d been searching for the other remaining Valkyries together for the past several weeks. They’d managed to rescue one other so far—Kiyomi, who was staying here at the manor with them. But there were others, and time was running out.

Megan stood behind her sister as Amber pulled up a news story on one screen and security footage on another. “What am I looking at?” A burning house, and a train station.

“A Paris businessman with suspected ties to the criminal underworld was just blown up in his own house. It’s the fourth incident of its kind over as many months. All of them involving men connected with organized crime, and all of them small, controlled explosions with no collateral damage.”

“Is it Chloe?” She desperately wanted it to be Chloe, a fellow Valkyrie trained as a demolitions expert. It had been so many years since Megan had seen her former friend and roommate—she wanted to bring Chloe in safely.

“Odds are high it’s her. If it is, she’s been taking out risky targets.”

“Chloe always loved breaking the rules.” A memory surfaced, something she hadn’t thought about in a long, long time.

Exhausted from a long day of training, Megan groaned as she flopped onto her bunk. Her hand touched something beneath the pillow. Sitting up, she lifted it to reveal a giant candy bar—and it was her favorite kind.

Immediately she rolled over to peer over the edge of her bed at Chloe, stretched out below on the bottom bunk. “You know we can’t have that in here. It’s contraband.”

“Yeah. So?” The crinkle of a wrapper sounded as Chloe ripped open her own.

“So we’ll get in trouble.”

“Only if we get caught. And we’re not going to get caught, because you’re not gonna say anything.”

Megan chewed her lip. Her stomach growled, the thought of sinking her teeth into the chocolate pure torture, making her mouth water.

“Come on, live a little. Be a rebel with me, Itch.”

Megan smiled at the nickname. She was Itch, because she was always restless and itching to be on the move. Chloe was Twitch, because she was…well, twitchy, and high-octane. Sometimes she thought Chloe was actually a little crazy, yet there was talk that Chloe might be put into the demolitions program. A terrifying thought.

A partially-unwrapped chocolate bar appeared at the side of her mattress. Chloe waved it around. “Come on. Cheers me.”

Laughing under her breath, Megan tapped her bar to Chloe’s. “Okay. Race you.” They had to make them disappear fast in case there was a lights-out inspection.

“Game on.” The bar disappeared back to the lower bunk. “Ready? Go.”

They wolfed down the huge chocolate bars. Megan barely tasted hers, didn’t even enjoy it really, because she was too worried about one of their instructors coming in for an unannounced inspection.

Footsteps in the hall outside their room made her freeze. “Shit, they’re coming,” she said around a mouthful of chocolate.

“So hurry up and hide the wrapper.”

Megan nearly choked getting the last bite down her throat, then quickly shoved the wrapper under her mattress and flopped down on her back just as a key turned in the lock. The instructor came in, did the inspection, and left without incident.

Smiling up at the ceiling in the darkness after the door closed, Megan reached a hand down over the edge of her bunk. “You’re a bad influence.”

“I know. You’re welcome.” Chloe curled her pinkie around Megan’s in a finger shake, then let go. “Night, Itch.”

“Night, Twitch.”

“Take a look at this,” Amber said, pulling Megan back to the present as she typed in some commands and shifted aside to give Megan a better view. “I’ve been using a new facial recognition program and got a hit.”

Megan leaned closer to the second screen showing a paused surveillance video Amber must have hacked into. The things her sister could do with a computer were downright scary.

“Watch right…here,” Amber said, freezing the screen on a shot of people standing on the platform. She zoomed in on a woman standing in a long, gray trench, a black knit cap on her head, a blond ponytail trailing down her back. “Recent chatter says this matches the description of the woman seen leaving the victim’s office earlier tonight. And it looks a lot like—”

“Chloe,” Megan breathed, setting her hand on the screen as if she could reach out and touch her old friend. Her throat tightened, and for a second she struggled to control the punch of emotion that hit her. “When was this?”

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