Page 127 of Redemption

Ryder understood.Deny.“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You have to stop it!” she demanded. “Now.”

“Victoria, what’re you talking about?”

“I said no discussion.”

“She knows,” Brock mouthed.

How? But it didn’t matter. Parker had a phone pressed to his ear and dropped his hands to his keyboard, fingers flying, likely trying to figure out the how. Or maybe better, why.

Brock rolled his hand, urging him to get more info. To do that, Ryder would have to admit to what was in place. The rest of the team leaned every which way to watch the three of them. Not even the air conditioning dared to rattle.

“Why would we try to stop that?” he asked.

“I can’t say.”

“One reason,” he snapped. “One reason, love, why we’d walk away?”

The flat screen TV on the wall lit up with the main team’s location on a live-image map of the middle of nowhere. They weren’t more than a few clicks away from the target point. A tiny read-out in the corner of the screen announced that within ten minutes, the operational team would be on-site. They’d have their hands on those weapons, making the world a hell of a lot safer.

“I’m serious, Ryder!” she finally broke the silence. “Tell them to stand down.”

Seven stood up, and Brock held his hand up as though he were stopping traffic. Brock pointed at her, at the chair that she came from, and gestured to sit her ass down—then he flagged Parker, who switched to Titan’s comm system.

“Break, break, break, this is home base. Be advised, I repeat, be advised. Confirmation of hostile environment. Do you copy?” Parker kept his eyes on Brock who kept his gaze on Ryder.

“Got an affirmative from Winters,” Parker relayed with a thumbs up.

Brock nodded, and Ryder took somewhat of a reassured breath. Still, not for nothing, Victoria was still on the line. “Love, you sound compromised as fuck.”

“I’m not.”

“Mayhem has a vested interest in not losing their merchandise. If you have a gun to your head, babe, spit it out—”

“God dammit, Ryder, back them off now. This is nothing more than revenge—”

The line went silent. Was she saying revenge? He couldn’t be sure as Ryder stared at the blank cell phone screen of the ended call.

“What happened?” Brock demanded.

“Call cut,” Parker volunteered. “Did it die? Or end?”

Ryder was at a loss. “I don’t know.”

“What the mother fuck is going on?” Brock growled.

“ETA, less than five minutes,” Parker confirmed.

Ryder looked around the room as all of Delta team remained silent. Then there was Seven, her eyes imploring him to do something, and he didn’t know what. “Seven, what is this? What’s going on?”

Her pink-and-blue hair and eyebrow ring stood out in the row of men ready to go to war as she softly shook her head. “I have no idea.”

His jaw ached from gnashing molars for hours on end. “You know everything about Mayhem—”

The softness abated, and she balked. “The hell I do.”

The conference room door opened and slammed against the wall as Sugar stormed in, fury dripping in every leather-clad step. “ATF knows we’re going after the guns? How thefuckdoes ATF know we’re going after those guns?” She threw her arms out, dark pink fingernails acting like explosions in the air. “Can anyone answer me?”

---