Twist worked quickly at first, walking directly to the bone china candy dish on the table and removing a cat hair-sized copper wire and flat square from the bottom of it, and then unraveling a longer wire with a white cone on the end from one of the albino statues near the ceiling-to-floor windows that overlooked the lush summer green of Central Park.
After a few easy removals that he’d definitely known where they were, he began using the loop-topped device, meticulously examining every part of the walls and furniture while he watched the dial.
He found three more devices, two microphones, and a camera stuck to the top of the glass wall at ceiling height, where it would have a panoramic view of everything in the apartment.
As Twist found them, he crushed each one under his heel.
Blaze watched, making sure Twist removed a spying device every time the needle on his instrument’s dial swung and he didn’t miss any, accidentally or not.
In the end, Blaze mused aloud, “I’m surprised Logan didn’t know he was being bugged.”
Twist looked up at him, his startlingly blue eyes wide under his lashes like he was going to say something with portent. “Logan knew they were here. Many politicians have been videotaped indulging in hookers and blow or were bribed in this apartment. That’s a great thing about all this white decor. It doesn’t show the cocaine.”
“Ah, kompromat. Is that how Logan got you and Micah to work for a Russian bratva?”
Twist shrugged. “The supposed loan from the Malefactor, of course, and then Bell threatened my wife.”
Blaze had been at Twist’s small wedding to Colleen Frost a few months before, an impromptu affair on Twist’s yacht in Monaco with only a priest, the four of them, a few people who worked on Twist’s boat, and the royal family of Monaco in attendance. “And you didn’t come to me, an actual US Navy SEAL, for help?”
“You saw what Mary Varvara Bell is capable of. Actually, you didn’t see. That was fuckingnothing.She wants those weapons from you badly, otherwise, she would’ve shot you both there in her office. Probably gut shots, so you could watch each other bleed out.”
“Nah. Blood stains are hard to get out of white carpeting,” Blaze quipped.
“She has cleaners and a carpet guy on speed dial. They would’ve pulled up that carpet, bleached the concrete underneath, and laid down new before she got back from lunch.”
Disconcerting.“I saw that glance between you and Micah in her office. Both of you were coerced into working with her, weren’t you?”
“It was that damn loan. She called it in. I did something that would send me to jail if the government ever found out.”
“And what was that? Blaze asked.
“Legally, insider trading.”
Blaze snorted. “She wants enough military-grade weapons from me to start World War III. What’s a little insider trading?”
“It was more than just a little. It was outright market manipulation. Because she’s hanging that over me, I’m funding her operation with cryptocurrency manipulation, and I’m her beck-and-call hacker. She’s planning something big. She wants me to hack the US government’s emergency services so they can’t respond.”
“Emergency services?” Blaze asked because it wasn’t adding up. “Not the military?”
“Yeah. There’s something big going down.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. They keep talking about hiding weapons under heavy coats, so I guess it’ll go down someplace where it gets cold.”
While Twist was debugging the bedroom, Sarah told him, “Micah says he has something to tell you.”
Micah Shine talked a lot. While the rumors were that he had gone legit after he’d accepted the Malefactor’s money, he’d played fast and loose with investment opportunities with their mutual overly wealthy friends since he’d graduated from college.
Those guys could afford to lose a few hundred million here or there and not even notice it. It wasn’t like they’d paid taxes on any of it.
“Are you guys planning to overthrow Mary Varvara Bell?” Micah asked.
“Why?” Blaze demanded.
Twist piped up from where he was peeling a wire off the back of the white headboard. “She threatened Kylie’s life, too.”
Micah’s wife was Kylie Miller.
