Page 27 of Vengeful

I grinned. "There's nothing wrong with my company. I'm fucking awesome and you know it."

"Yeah, yeah." He rolled his eyes. "What's the plan, champ? You better be serious about paying me double. A guy has expenses. This job was going to take care of them. Double andI'll be on an island in Tahiti, drinking beer and fucking pretty women."

"How many other teams are there? What are our chances of being able to convince them to walk away?" I asked.

"Three, and slim to none. Most of those guys have a major grudge against the Bell family." He stepped over to Dave and grabbed up his gun.

"Which Brantley hired them?" I asked. They had a bigger grudge than most. Who else would it be? "Do they know two of their brothers are out here?"

"I'm not sure, and one with a grudge against his brothers." Kent tucked his spare gun away. "Probably not Zeke." Kent and Zeke were also friends back in school.

"Hunter and Parker have a tendency to piss Zeke off, but I doubt he'd do anything of this scope," I agreed. "If I was a betting man, I'd assume it was Caleb. Lila and the twins disrupted his human trafficking operation. That's the kind of thing Caleb doesn't take very well."

"Whatdoeshe take well?" Kent asked. He was as big a fan of Caleb as I was. Not to mention he despised the abuse of innocent people to at least an equal extent. Guys like us, we went after people who deserved it. There was satisfaction in killing assholes and preventing them from hurting anyone else ever again. To me, justice was a bigger motivator than a power trip. People like Caleb and Reuben, and Samuel Bell were all about power trips. Maybe it was just their way of compensating for other shortcomings.

Me, I didn't need to do that.

"As far as I know, nothing." I pulled out my phone, sent off a text to the twins and searched for Lila's location. I hoped the text would get through with the limited coverage here. Trying to pin down the location of the tracking chip in her earring should be easier.

Itshouldbe, but it wasn't. I frowned at the screen. Closed the app and opened it again.

"That can't be right." I shook my head.

"What is it?" Kent glanced over my shoulder.

"I'm trying to track Lila, but this is giving me nothing. Her tracking chip isn't responding." I closed and opened the app again. Nothing changed. According to the app, no tracking chips were within range. I should have received a signal from several hundred kilometres away.

"I hate to say it, but that's not a good sign," Kent said. "It's not too late for me to kill you and get my original pay." His hand hovered loosely over one of the guns.

"Just try it," I growled. "It's the reception out here. It's fucking with the signal. Or one of the teams has it jammed." I narrowed my eyes and pressed my face closer to his. "Do you have it jammed?"

He raised his hands to either side again. "Not me. My job was to wait for whichever one of you came this way and take you out. Another one of the teams was supposed to deal with her."

His words sent white hot fury through me. Not aimed at him necessarily, but the other teams and Caleb or whoever the hell was behind this… Anyone would think she was some kind of monster, to go to this extent to get to her. Did they not understand she was a nineteen year old woman, trying to figure things out? That, on some level, she was a scared little girl. She'd hate that analogy, but it was accurate.

"You better hope we find her before they do," I said. "Otherwise no Tahiti for you at best. At worst, I'll kill you myself."

"There's nine other men out there," Kent said as if I hadn't just threatened his life. "Between us, we make approximately six." That might have been slightly ambitious.

"Hunter and Parker can take care of themselves. Lila evens out the nine. Those sound like good odds to me." He grinned as if it was all as simple as that. We had skills, but nine versus six out here was still going to be tricky. Nothing we couldn't handle, but not as easily as he made out.

"Not if we stand here talking about it." The twins hadn't responded to my text. As far as I could tell, they hadn't received it. They better still be alive. I might need them to help Lila. Not to mention the fact I'd miss the hell out of them both if they were dead. They were closer to me than my siblings. Not to mention much more entertaining.

I turned away, then turned back. "You must have something to tell you the location of the other teams?"

He cleared his throat. "I might have a satellite phone." He pulled it out of his pocket.

I snatched it out of his hand and tapped on the screen. It opened to an app with three blinking dots.

"Three other satellite phones?" I asked.

"Something like that," he agreed. "They're still spread out."

"And moving north," I added. "Following, but not converging. Chances are they haven't found the others yet, but they have a fair idea where they are."

I tucked his phone in my opposite back pocket and ignored his grunt of protest. I needed it more than he did at this point. I didn't bother checking again to see if the twins saw my text. Chances were, they were well aware they were being followed and had their phones turned off. They were likely leading them away from Lila, or toward a place they could deal with them. That left the middle team. That's where we'd head first. We'd deal with them and then make a decision after that.

"Come on." I started off as quickly as I could. I didn't bother trying to be quiet right now, we were too far from them to be heard. Once we drew closer, we'd slow down.

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