Page 86 of Dangerous Devotion

“We moved the bomb,” Simpson was saying.

Her heart clamped hard. She knew something was off, but hadn’t expected a betrayal of this level. He was moving a bomb where? For what purpose?

“She doesn’t know where it is. But I have her,” he continued.

Harsh, rapid breaths dragged in and out of her lungs. It didn’t stop the spinning sensation a lack of oxygen would give her. In fact, it seemed to be making it worse…

Realizing that she was on the brink of hyperventilating, she compressed her lips and forced herself to breathe in to the count of ten, out to the count of ten. Slowly, the tingle in her cheeks faded, and she focused on the conversation again.

This time she heard a crackle of a second speaker through a phone, distorted but filled with authority.

“You lifers never think for yourselves, do you?” the man was saying. “You take orders like a good little soldier. Even being at the top, you still have someone to answer to.” The speaker seemed to sneer at Simpson’s rank and position.

That idea made May’s blood run cold.

Thing was, the speaker wasn’t wrong. She’d seen it throughout her career. Working with top-ranking military and even government officials, she knew there were those who led and those who passed along orders.

At first, Simpson didn’t respond to the speaker. His hesitation was telling. The major general wasn’t the mastermind—he was the pawn in this game.

An even worse epiphany was that the speaker had Simpson under his thumb.

Simpson had something this man needed—like the ability to move a bomb under the sharp eyes of the US military. And in trade…was he being paid off?

What sort of price tag would come with moving a bomb?

Enough to purchase expensive wine and acquire a massive collection of art while paying an exorbitant amount of alimony to an ex-wife who vanished into thin air along with his grown children?

Her pulse pounded faster, so loud in her ears that she cursed how loud it was. She needed to hear what the men were saying.

“I know you took the money offered too. That makes you under my command now.”

The already chilled blood pumping through May’s veins froze, like a river in wintertime. She closed her eyes and focused on that voice. The nuances of it. She was no master of linguistics, and picking out dialect and intonation wasn’t easy, but she forced every syllable into her memory.

Later, it might help them identify the man behind the bomb.

If there was a later. She might never make it out of this place.

“She’s alive?” he asked Simpson.

“She’s alive.”

“Good. Find out what she knows.”

“Find out what she knows,” Simpson echoed him.

“Then—” The speaker seemed to break up, his words coming in spotty, like he didn’t have good service, or the major general was moving again.

This time when she heard the crackle, it came from the left side of the door. She jerked her head in that direction, glaring at the closed door.

Then what?she wanted to scream.

“Pardon me, but I need to hear that directive again.”

This time the man’s voice came out in a short-tempered bark. A bark that thudded into her chest like the blow of a battering ram.

“When you have all the information you can get out of her, kill her.”

A long pause ensued. Simpson didn’t speak.

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