Page 47 of Never Enough

Nemo’s entire body went still. He had never experienced jealousy before, but he was pretty sure the red-hot heat coursing through his body qualified. “Youknowhim. How, exactly, do youknowhim?”

“We work together for Mythos.”

He clenched his teeth. To try and school his features and verbal responses, he looked at the shapes she’d drawn on the paper in front of her.

While he wanted to rage at her for her relationship with Cerberus, he knew it was irrational to do so. She had only said they worked together. No matter how much his brain wanted to translate that into a relationship, he knew it was a ridiculous jump in logic. He also knew he had no right to be jealous. It wasn’t as if he’d been celibate after being with Haskell, and it would be hypocritical to be angry with her for being involved with anyone else, no matter how much that thought hurt him.

In a sudden moment of clarity, the arrangement on the page made sense to him. “This is the layout of the café,” he concluded. “The shapes are the tables and chairs. The letters are people?”

Midas used his camera to take a photo of her drawing, then uploaded it to his laptop and projected it on the telescreen. Haskell talked them through the moments from that morning. “We stopped to get something to eat, but when we arrived, thecafé was overcrowded. There was a long line, so I decided to go outside and watch for a table to open.

“About twenty minutes later, Cherry brought out our tray. She stopped for a moment to talk to the owner. That was when a man in a brown suit got up from his seat and offered it to me. He even politely pushed in my chair. His companion, a man in a black suit, was standing between the other chair and the table, packing up a briefcase. I thought he pushed in his chair, but that must have been when he set the pressure plate. They walked away, and shortly after that, a breeze blew through and stole the extra napkins I had brought and placed on the table, so I got up and chased them down.”

Demon’s voice broke through. “How did you end up in the other seat?”

“I was at least five meters away chasing down the napkins. By that time, Cherry had finished her conversation, and when she came over to the table, she sat where I had been. Both chairs were open, and naturally, she chose the one closest to her, so I sat down in the other one.”

She sighed. “I’ll admit, I piss people off all the time when I strike, but not enough to blow me into a million pieces.”

TB grunted. “Individual threats are taken out through executions and assassinations. Bombs are for making statements. Jewel thieves don’t inspire that sort of violence.”

“Exactly,” Haskell agreed. “So as well as knowing that Cerberus was not behind this particular bomb, there’s only one group of people that I can think of that would go to such extreme lengths to remove a single person in such spectacular fashion. Not only are they willing to do it, but it’s typical for them to copy other criminals’ signatures in order to divert suspicion.”

“And who would that be?” Waters asked.

Again, Nemo watched Haskell flash a look at Cherry.

“She’s referring to the Salieri.” The voice was Cherry’s.

All the men stared at her in shock. TB’s other half had been stalked and taken by a man from her past, a drug dealer named Gendry. His intent had been to traffic her in revenge for her running away from him years earlier. When TB and Midas had tag-teamed his interrogation, Gendry had given up the name “Salieri” just before TB ended his miserable life.

Waters fixed their handler with a stern look. “What have you been hiding, Cherry?”

She blew out a breath before answering. “The Salieri make sense as our bombers if the bomb was meant for me.”

17

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Haskell

The room was so silent that Haskell swore she could hear her eyelashes batting.

Cherry explained her reasoning, “The man in the brown suit got up because you were headed to the table first. Had I been first, his companion in the black suit would have gotten up and offered me the seat. It was perfectly executed.”

Demon grabbed her hand. “Goddammit, Cherry, why do you think that bomb was for you?”

She took a deep breath and released it slowly before delivering her own version of a nuclear bomb. “My real name is Esme Bosworth, the only child of Grayson Bosworth.”

“Shit on a shingle with a side order of fries,” Midas whispered.

Demon rolled his eyes. “You’ve been hanging out too much with Kubrick and Flame. That was the oddest combination ofthe two of them swearing/not swearing I’ve ever heard. Why can’t you people swear like normal human beings?”

“You can’t even pronounce ‘fuck’ correctly,” TB teased him. “Who are you to talk?”

“I pronounce feck just fine,” Demon grumbled.

“That ‘u’ sounds an awful lot like an ‘e,’ dude,” Nemo pointed out.

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