“Drop it!” he yelled in a thick Chicago accent that reminded Britt of that old Saturday Night Live skit starring the late, great Chris Farley.Da Bears.“Drop it now!” the guard added, his voice as shaky as the gun in his hand.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Agent Douglas demanded from beside him.
“Britt, brother, go easy,” Hew cautioned from behind him.
Britt ignored them both as he stared hard at the one responsible for all this trouble. The one responsible for Sabrina’s assault, for his brother’s flight north, and for Cooper Greenlee’s death.
“You move,” he snarled, his nostrils flaring wide as his vision tunneled onto his target, “and I’ll put three holes in your head like a fucking bowling ball.”
27
JD Maddox blinked in confusion at the motorcycle mechanic.
Although, he supposed having a gun aimed at his head was just the icing on the week’s shitty-assed cake.
Nothing had gone right since he told his superiors inside the cartel that it was time to move on the FBI’s assets. First, Cooper Greenlee’s sister had been at her brother’s house. Second, Fat Eddy had fucked up the hit by getting his jollies off before finishing the job. Third, Knox and Sabrina had escaped north. And finally, that damned blond bitch hadn’t left Knox Rollins alone for one second so that JD could inject him with the poison he had in a tiny syringe in his pocket.
And now this,he thought angrily, having reached his wit’s end.
He had no idea why the mechanic had suddenly gone batshit, but he had neither the time nor patience for it. He had to find a way to get that poison into Knox before the sonofabitch turned state’s evidence.
“Stop waving that iron in my face,” he called across the lobby to the mechanic. The air inside the cavernous space was so thick with tension that it was hard to breathe. “Have you lost your damned mind?”
“No.” Britt Rollins shook his head. “But you take one step in the wrong direction, and you’ll lose yours. I’ll splatter your gray matter all over the wall behind you, Wilkes.”
The name was spat across the tiled floor like a venomous snake. JD felt the impact of it like a pair of fangs lodged deep in his chest.
Wilkes…
Not Maddox.
How the hell does he know?
“Drop your weapon!” the guard at the front desk shouted at the younger Rollins brother again.
“He’s crazy!” JD hollered, pointing at the mechanic. His thoughts spiraled, a whirlpool of disbelief and panic. “Take him down before he takes one of us down!”
“No!” Agent O’Toole cried while Keplar yelled, “Belay that order!”
JD didn’t care for the speculation in his partner’s eyes when Keplar turned to him and asked lowly, “What’s he talking about? Why did he call you Wilkes?”
“H-how the hell should I know?” JD sputtered, turning back to find the weapon in Rollins’s hand was rock steady.
But it was the certainty in Rollins’s voice that terrified him more than anything. The certainty and thefactshe stated. Facts no one outside of a handful of folksveryhigh up in the drug trafficking syndicate knew. “Jordan Ray Wilkes. That’s your real name, right? The one your mother gave you at birth? The one you used before the cartel set you up to be their inside man?”
Sonofabitch!
JD’s meticulously constructed life was gone, obliterated in a single moment.
But how? How does the mechanic know when even the FBI is in the dark?
Of course, the answer to that question was of little importance. What was most important was what JD did in the next thirty seconds.
His cover was blown, and his true identity was revealed. The jig was up, and fifteen years of carefully crafted work now circled the drain.
Time to GTFO.
If he could make it out of the building, he had a chance. He knew the FBI’s protocols. He could beat them.
