Everything has changed.
My head is officially on a platter. Men I grew up with are hunting me. But at least I have the evidence now that will rip the Barone family open if they come close.
I'll make sure Don Vittorio learns the price of putting out that order.
Then I lean back in the booth, pull the burner out again, and open the encrypted cloud app. My fingers move fast as I back everything we have up to the cloud. I'm not going to be able to use this phone now, either, so saving our information is essential. If Barone tracks where I'm at or where I've been, he'll know how to find the others. I won't cry if he finds Hamilton and ends him, but Sabine deserves a chance to find someone to side with her, and letting them track my phone won't help that.
Barone wants my head. Fine. I'll hand him the whole family on a platter instead. Every ledger, every wire, every name tied to Bryan’s blood money. When I walk into Chicago, I'll carry a dead-man switch that will blow the Barone empire wide open. One button and the Feds will get everything. He'll learn what happens when he marks me as expendable.
The hallway door swings open and Sabine walks out with wet hair slicked back, skin pink from the shower's heat. She stops by the counter to buy her own sandwich and drink before she spots me, crosses the dining room, and slides into the booth opposite without asking.
She sets the tray down and unwraps a roast beef on rye with greedy hands and big eyes.
“We'll have to be more careful now," I tell her, but I don’t intend to give details. "With Hamilton holing up in a hotel, they'll start searching harder. The faster we can get to the others, the better."
She nods, takes a bite, chews slowly. Under the table her knee brushes mine and stays there. "Yeah, Ham was pretty riled when we got there. I bet they sent a memo out saying to stay away from me…" She looks annoyed as she takes a bite, but she doesn’t know the half of it.
If we don't get to the others before Barone's new hitter does, we lose any leverage. And protecting Hamilton will be our only option.
"Eat fast. We gotta get on the road tonight. I want to make it to North Carolina before we knock off for the night. We'll find a hotel this time."
I don’t mind sleeping in the truck again, but she deserves better and I have competition now. Sabine only nods and keepsshoveling her food into her face. Even devouring food like a hog, she's intoxicating.
I just have to keep her long enough that I can find the nerve to tell her that.
And hope all of this goes off without a hitch.
I won't let Barone get what he wants, and I won't lose her.
18
SABINE
Ilie on the threadbare comforter staring at the water-stained ceiling while I wait for Jace to return from speaking to hit number nine. The digital clock on the nightstand reads 11:43, and each minute that passes feels longer than the last. My phone sits powered off on the dresser, useless and abandoned, and the television plays some late-night talk show on mute because I can't stand the silence but can't focus on words either.
I have no interest in seeing or talking to Nathan Brooks, no desire to see his face or hear his voice or pretend that anything he says matters to me. He covered up my rape. He stood in that room two years ago and listened to me report what happened, and then he sided with my attacker and made sure the paperwork disappeared.
And not only did he follow Bryan's orders in Afghanistan, but it was also like he enjoyed it too. If anyone on Captain Bryan's list deserves what Jace is delivering tonight, it's him.
But knowing he deserves it doesn't make waiting easier. My mind keeps circling the same thoughts over and over while I liehere in this cheap room counting the minutes until Jace gets back. It isn't easy to live with the fact that Jace is out there murdering people, but I choose to believe that he's burning the world to the ground for me.
If he doesn't do this, then Bryan gets more yes men to back him up when he goes for his screening and interviews. A promotion to major means more authority and more power to cover up his own corruption, and I can't let that happen. The world needs to know what he did.
The door opens at 12:07 and Jace steps inside, closing it quietly behind him. He looks tired, and blood stains his knuckles and the cuffs of his shirt. He carries two small boxes that he sets on the dresser next to the television, and when he turns to face me, he's got a lot of fatigue showing under his eyes.
"It's done." I don't care for the way he says that so casually, as if he didn't just take a human life, but I don't get to complain about it.
"Brooks?" I ask him, and he grunts as he starts to unbutton his jacket.
"Won't be hurting anyone ever again…"
I half expect that to be followed by a hug or a gentle touch, but I'm forgetting that Jace is a hitman, an assassin—not a cinnamon roll lover-boy from one of those smutty romance novels. He's not going to cuddle up to me and pledge his undying love. He's doing his job and I've asked him to help me as a matter of a truce. Whatever else happens between us might just be a fluke.
I sit up on the bed and pull my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. "Was he ever going to help? Did you ask him if he would testify or provide evidence against Bryan?"
"I asked." Jace moves to the small sink in the corner of the room and turns on the water, scrubbing the blood from his hands with the cheap bar soap provided by the motel. "He laughed at me and said Bryan was smart to hire someone to clean up the mess because he knew one day, you'd open your 'trap'. He said he'd die before he turned on a superior officer and that you were a hysterical bitch who couldn't handle deployment stress."
I sit numbly on the bed and let the reality of what's happening settle over me. The cost I'm paying grows heavier with each passing day. If these men aren't going to come clean and help me uncover the truth, then they sort of deserve what they’re getting. At least more than those women and children in that house did. Way more than I deserved to be raped—because no one ever deserves that.
