Page 20 of Dirty Quinn
“Hey, what’s up?”
“I’ve got the list of real estate holdings for Sinclair.”
“Anything I should know about right now?”
“I don’t think so. Why? What are you doing?”
“Just playing with a little Pentolite and Semtex.”
“Where? Why? Who’s with you?”
“No one. And before you say anything, I’m being safe. I just want to shake the bushes a bit.”
“It’s shake thetrees.”
“Whatever.” I sigh.
“Whose trees are you shaking?”
“Andrei’s.”
“Daria.” She sounds upset, not that I blame her. If any of my girls were to do something like this alone, I would be livid.
“I know. It’s okay,” I tell her. “I’ve been doing this alone a lot longer than any of you have been doing it with me. And it’s nothing dangerous, just a little fun.”
“Promise to call me if you need anything?”
“Promise,” I say.
I hang up before she says anything else.
I know that I’m lucky to have such amazing women working with me, not to mention my bar staff. The manager I hired a few months back barely even needs me around. I still show my face every day, but mostly, she handles everything else. Sometimes I miss the day to day in the bar, but other times, like today, I’m grateful for the time to do my own thing.
Namely, find out who kidnapped my best friend, and get Andrei Turgenev’s attention with as much destruction as possible.
I know that a plastic explosive is not going to even begin to take down Andrei’s behemoth of a home. But I can at least do a little damage to the east wing or one of the garages before I have to cut and run. I park my car further down the hill from the gate leading to his winding drive. Then plant myself in a nearby tree to scope out any activity.
I don’t have a problem scaling the fence and getting close to the house. I’m good at being invisible. But, because it’s still daylight, I want to make sure I’m not walking into a situation where I’ll be grossly outnumbered. Everything appears to be business as usual. Two guys at the guardhouse by the gate, two guys patrolling the front of the property, which means another two guys will patrol the back. They will leave the sides unattended, because Andrei is an idiot who thinks no one will attack from the side.
Which is exactly why that will be the first place I target. If I can get a couple devices on each side of the house, I can do some decent damage from the other side of the fence and be down the hill to my car before they realize what’s going on.
I’m about to climb down the tree to go assemble my explosives when I hear a small convoy coming up the road. Five black Escalades with tinted windows speed past me, slowing only to wait for the gate leading to the property to open. The last in line pauses a moment, then reverses down the hill to stop beside my car.
Shit.
Why did I park in front of the house?
Why do I have such a flashy, recognizable car?
Why did I drive that car here?
Stupid, Daria. Unmistakably stupid.
If they see me up here, I’m dead. No way out of it. I have my little pocket Ruger tucked in the back of my jeans, but it won’t do a lot of damage considering Andrei’s guys are usually carrying semi-automatics. I try to make myself as small as possible as the truck idles beside my car; the driver doing something I can’t make out without being closer. A sigh of relief escapes me as he moves away until he reverses again and slides in line behind my car as though to parallel park.
Fuck. They are going to spot me.
I pull my phone from my pocket, my finger hovering over the button to call Al. There’s not much she can do from where she is. In fact, there’s nothing she can do. But at least she’ll know where I am in case he maims and captures in lieu of killing me.
