Page 574 of Lodestar

“Yup.”

“When you’re done with Temper, donotstart a fire.”

She sniffed. “Spoilsport.”

“Arsonist.”

“You see, you think that’s an insult…”

“I know it is.” I arched a brow at her. “Agreed? We don’t need emergency services flying over here when a wildfire starts, and we sure as fuck don’t need them snooping around our kill zone, now do we?”

“No, I guess not,” she said with a huff. “You want me to clean up the place, though? Just in case Kuznetsov catches wind that you’re onto him and he uses this crime scene against you?”

“We have people we can send in to do that,” Conor informed her.

“Make her suffer, D.”

“She betrayed us, Star. Don’t you worry—” D drawled as she cracked her knuckles. “—I will.”

68

CONOR

The journeydown to the Keys required a second pit stop for gas. That was when Star asked Savannah where Dagger’s estate was so she could land the helicopter there.

Which, of course, was when we had our confirmation that the Daniels’ neighbors were, in fact, Sparrows because that was the address Reinier had smeared onto the wall before his death.

During the flight, and wired, I got to work.

Firstly, I sent the worm Star had gifted me crawling through several top-secret databases, wanting to make sure that the case files on Smythe, Reinier, and Foundry were all slowly edging out of detectives’ interests.

They were.

Secondly, I reasoned that if Anton wanted to frame us with their murders, he would have used hisPauksto store the intel, so I hacked into one of their known online playgrounds and set some Trojan horses as traps so that one of the team would let me in. Hopefully before doomsday.

Finally, I crashed into Reinier’s security system before we even crossed into his estate, and we ‘borrowed’ one of the Daniels’ SUVs to tear down a hole in a border fence.

When we made it over to the main house, it was dark and the lights weren’t on—nobody was home.

The building was surrounded by a pool which was still well-maintained as was the rest of the property.

“We need to lie low with the flashlights,” I told her. “The gated community has security patrols.”

Though she nodded her understanding, she was quiet as she picked the locks on the back door.

Hell, she’d been quiet ever since takeoff in the Catskills.

Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she liked Anton.

It wasn’t as if I could blame her—I’d come to like him too.

It was weird to think that a tyrant could be pleasant.

Having lived with one for so long, it was dichotomous to what I knew of them, but Anton was clearly a better actor than Da.

As we moved throughout the massive edifice, quietly scanning each room for signs of an office, she eventually said, “Do you know what hurts the most?”

She’d been silent for so long that her words startled me.

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