Page 30 of Assassin's Game
My sister’s laugh filled the truck, and she patted Diesel on the head. “So I figured after the e-mail this morning, things would move fast, but not this fast,” she said. “What gives?”
“What e-mail?” Eli asked, his voice rough.
Maris turned to me, wide eyes telling me she hadn’t intended to reveal a secret. But honestly, how long could we conceivably go without giving the Agozi brothers a deadline? Apparently they hadn’t received one of their own.
“X contacted us again this morning,” I told Eli, patting Maris’s thigh unobtrusively to let her know things were okay. “We have seventy-two hours to move on the target, or…”
I watched Eli’s knuckles go white on the steering wheel as I trailed off. “Or what?”
“Or our information gets passed on to the appropriate authorities.” He already knew what that information was, so why keep the consequences a secret?
A rough curse escaped him, and the Humvee picked up speed immediately. I gripped the handle above the passenger door. “Eli—”
“You should’ve told us we were in a hurry,” he said, and I knew the words were directed at me.
“I don’t know you,” I reminded him, even though the truth was I’d simply not thought to share that information yet. I’d been busy meeting with the enemy, then bringing my team back together.And getting tied up in knots over a mercenary playboy.
“You’ll know me well enough when this is all over,” he muttered under his breath, clear enough for both Maris and me to catch. Her expression when she turned to me was half amusement, half shock. I couldn’t exactly explain to her what I didn’t understand myself, so I shrugged instead.
And kept my mouth shut. What the hell could I say, anyway? Nothing that made sense of this, that was for damn sure.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Fourteen
Levi —
Impatience ate at me as we waited for Eli to return. The rest of Nix’s team refused to strategize without her here, so I’d left them to stew while Remi and I went over what data Eli had collected on Bram Sullivan and X so far. But in the back of my mind was the knowledge that Abby could return at any minute from her “important appointment” that I’d known nothing about. I wanted things secure, wanted to know she was safe when she got back to me, and right now the gnawing in my gut didn’t say “safe.”
“Incoming,” Remi said from his spot in front of the computer.
“About damn time,” I growled.
Monty and Rhys rose from the couch they’d taken residence on, moving to the door to await their crew. Remi stood next to me, waiting. Watching.
“There’s not enough in those files to find X,” Remi said under his breath, just loud enough for me to hear.
“Not yet.” Butyetcould take a while. “We’re outnumbered.” My brain told me to trust my instincts, to trust my brothers’ instincts, but my gut... Damn it, nothing was trustworthy if it meant Abby was in danger. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, something I needed to uncover and root out before it got anywhere close to her.
A beep sounded from the computer, and Remi glanced that way. “Abby’s home,” he whispered.
Time’s up.“I don’t think—”
Eli burst through the back door, anger slashing across his face. “We need to kidnap Bram Sullivan.”
“What?”
The word echoed from every corner of the room as if all of us had suddenly lost the connection between our ears and brains. Eli ignored the questions, crossing the room straight to us, bypassing Nix’s crew. “We need Sullivan,” he repeated. “Mikaela received an e-mail this morning threatening them with a seventy-two-hour deadline.”
I cursed under my breath. Remi’s cursing was louder.
Eli stopped at the end of the conference table to grip the back of a chair, his face hard, intent. So unlike him, even in the middle of an op. I hadn’t missed the way he refused to call Nix by her nickname. At first I’d thought it was just an irritation, a way to throw her off her game. Now I had to wonder...
“Isn’t that their problem?” I barked. My woman was upstairs. Our family mattered. Eli’s priorities had shifted with the dog; were they shifting more?
The look he leveled on me answered the question loud and clear—those eyes were shooting daggers, and the only one receiving that look should be X, not his family.
“It’s our problem if Bram gets taken out by someone else,” he said. “X has a minimum of two teams; who’s to say he doesn’t have more? And what happens to the teams who don’t accomplish what he wants?”
