“Saint will be watching. Unless you go with him.”
“To see his kids?”
“Da—yes. Or Rubi.”
“No, I’ll do it.”
Alexei smiled a little. “Of course you will. Cam will guard Orla when you are not here. That will give Locke peace of mind enough to leave her.”
“We’re really not telling him?”
“We’re not telling anyone.” Rubi flopped onto the bed again. “Outside of this room, only Cam and Saint know, and we need to keep it that way.”
Because whoever this was, we were going to kill them, and we did that shit on a need-to-know basis.
I could dig that. But given Rubi’s distaste for all things murder, I had to wonder what the fuck he was doing here. Why him and not Saint? Or even Mateo. Not that I wanted to wake up naked in bed with either of them.
Alexei was a legit mind reader. “Rubi is here to be sure we do not act with too much... violence. Cam believes you and I cannot be trusted alone.”
“Me? I’m not the scuba-diving terrorist around here.”
“Happened on your watch, Nashie Poo.” Rubi lay down and closed his eyes. “Besides, these cunts came at Orla, even if it was by default. And now they’re coming at Locke. That makes you a loose cannon, even if you don’t know it yet.”
I had a balled-up T-shirt in my hand. Scowling, I threw it at him. I had zero regrets over green-lighting Alexei and Folk to do whatever the fuck they wanted. The Sambinis were gone. Obliterated. However I felt about mass murder, it left us one less enemy to fight. As for the rest of it... I pushed down the hot rage boiling in my chest. I had a punchbag for that shit. “We need a plan.”
“Is not rocket science.” Alexei had moved to the window. “You have flushed out Crows before, and I have heard that you and Saint were very good at it.”
“So that’s who’s doing this? Me and Saint?”
“And Ranger. That is the other thing we need to discuss. Jakov has requested a meeting tonight. I need you to go and tell him that we need our nomad back.”
“Tellhim?”
“Yes.” Alexei did that weird thing where he stopped blinking. “He is using Ranger to run interference at the ports in the north while he searches for Viktor. I understand why that is important to him, but unless you want to pull Locke from Orla’s detail, we need Ranger here.”
For his Crow knowledge. “You’re really not going to give me Folk?”
“Veles is unavailable.”
I sighed. Folk deserved a fucking holiday, but it pissed me off that it had to be now. He was a fuckingweapon.The best of Saint and Alexei combined. And he loved Locke. If he knew this shit was going down, there’s no way he wouldn’t fight for him.
“Do not even think about it.”
The warning in Alexei’s tone snapped my gaze back to him. “Think about what?”
“Youknow.” Alexei advanced on me and for a weird second, I thought he might lay hands on me to emphasise his point, but he changed course at the last minute and left the room.
A minute later, my phone buzzed with a notification that the front door had opened and closed, and I breathed a sigh of who the fuck knew what. “That dude is fucking tapped.”
Eyes still screwed shut, Rubi snorted. “Nah, he’s just cleverer than you.”
“Everyone’s cleverer than me.”
“Even Bear the Blister. He came back to work this morning and threatened River with an employment tribunal if you don’t apologise for twatting him.”
“What?”
“You broke his jaw.” Rubi opened his eyes, amusement warring with exasperation. “And it turns out he ain’t as thick as we thought. He’s been on Riv’s books for years, official like, and apparently you can’t just punch employees in the skull and bin them off without recourse. So, yeah... as happy as I am that you decked him and all, it didn’t really solve the problem.”
