13
Vivian hated the heat that pressed down on her inside the rusted-out skeleton of the old bottling plant. She hated the dust that hung thick in the air and scraped at her lungs whenever she dragged in a breath. But, most of all, she hated the dread running beneath her skin until her whole body buzzed.
Bishop.
Their current employer was due to call any minute, and she couldn’t wait to be done with the whole damn conversation. The whole damn operation.
It wasn’t just the mechanical pitch of his altered voice that set her teeth on edge. It was the unspoken warning behind every word he said.
Do this for me, or else.
Vivian didn’t believe in god. Heaven and hell were myths made up by rich men who hoped to keep the peasants from revolting. But every time she spoke to Bishop, she couldn’t shake the sense that she was talking to someone or something too powerful for its own good.
Creepy bastard.
She’d tried to take the edge off her garrote-tight nerves in the usual way—flat on her back with Hummer between her thighs. And to his credit, he’d delivered. Twice. But the warm glow of release had already burned off, and the crawling rawness was back in her blood.
If there hadn’t been so many zeros in the amount Bishop had agreed to pay them, she might have passed on the job. She’d learned long ago to trust her instincts when it came to contracts, and her instincts told her Bishop—and everything he stood for—was bad news.
But her crew would’ve strung her up by her toenails if she’d waved toodle-oo to ten million dollars.
Ten million on top of ten million, she silently corrected. Because Bishop had promised that if the Knights came through with the ransom, she and her boys were welcome to keep it.
“You think he wants them all dead?” Kurt said, sounding like he always did. Like someone had shoved a wad of gauze up his nose. “Or just the hostage?” His face showed disappointment that this last thing might be an option.
Kurt was a bloodthirsty little fucker. Which was usually a boon to the work they did.
But maybe not today.
“Bishop is paying us a pretty penny to do exactly as he says.” She swiped a bead of sweat from her temple and flicked it off her fingertips. It hit the floor at her feet, leaving a dark circle on the concrete. “If he says we only body the hostage, then we only body the hostage.”
That’s another thing that bothered Vivian. Bishop hadn’t exactly been magnanimous when sharing the details of this op.
All he’d said when he’d hired her was, “Take one of the women. Hold her for ransom. I’ll provide next steps after that’s done.”
And when she’d asked if they needed to protect their identities, if his intention was that they release the hostage once the transaction was complete, his exact words were, “That seems like too much trouble. Killing her is easier.”
So cold. So careless.
Most of the time, Vivian considered those to be positive attributes. But, with Bishop, she had to wonder?—
“Back up.” Diesel elbowed Hummer. “You smell like dirty sex, and it’s making my dick hard.”
Instead of retreating, Hummer grinned. “Jealous?”
“No.” Diesel flicked a hot, calculating glance at Vivian. “She can’t handle me. She’s admitted it.”
She knew the only things keeping Diesel from doing to her what he did to the other women were his fear of losing the paychecks she brought him and his certainty she’d kill him graveyard dead should he ever try to slip something into her drink.
Because he expected it, because they all did, she gave him one of her lethal smiles. All teeth. No feeling.
“Oh, I could handle you,” she purred. “I just like being fully conscious when I fuck someone. It’s more fun for me that way.”
“Your loss.” Diesel shrugged his gargantuan shoulders.
“So you keep telling me.”
She checked her watch and pulled the burner phone from her hip pocket.
