Felix showed at dinner. Everyone OK. Home in 15.
I look down at the black notebook open on my desk, containing the notes I’ve been carefully and meticulously keeping for a decade, and consider the name listed in the most recent round of hits.
Felix Cruz.
When I first got his name from the General and started digging, I believed he was just a local cleaner. Someone who made himself useful to the local criminal element—disposing of bodies, cleaning crime scenes, providing alibis, that sort of thing—but it’s become clear he’s much more than that. What are his aspirations? What are his motives? Does he know he’s on the General’s list?
I haven’t taken the hit, so it’s only a matter of time before the General offers it to someone else. If Felix has somehow figured out that he’s become a target, does that mean he’ll want to go after the General?
Could that be a good thing for me? The enemy of my enemy and all that…
I hear Dimitri’s heavy boots in the hallway outside and slip my book back into its locked drawer, getting it closed just before a heavy pounding of knuckles precedes the scarred face in the doorway. Big D—a fitting nickname for the 6’8” beast of a man—looks freshly showered and royally pissed off. But between the permanent scowl, courtesy of the deep, old scar twisting across his face, and the fact that he’s the biggest, broadest bloke anyone’s ever seen… well, he always looks at least a little pissed off.
“The car just pulled in,” he informs me in his thick accent, going to take his usual place leaning against one of the desks I have pushed against the wall. He tends to favor the one with the half-completed electrical projects—my theory is that all the blinking lights from the single board computers on the adjacent desk freak him out.
The sound of the front door echoing in the foyer a moment later proves Dimitri right. Sound carries well across polished stone, so I usually keep my door closed because it funnels right into my office. But Dimitri didn’t close the door, so we can hear Mac and Eleanor pretty clearly.
“Darlin’, you okay?” Mac asks, a desperate edge to his voice that makes me uncomfortable to hear.
Her answer is quiet and tight. “I’m okay. I promise.” She sniffles. “I’m a little shaken up, but no one got hurt. I’m just… worried. So go talk to Wes and Dimitri and figure this out like you guys do best. I’ll be here when you’re done, andwe’lltalk about it, just the two of us.”
“I’ll find you upstairs?”
“I’m way too stressed out to sleep. I’m going to… bake something.”
There’s a shuffling of feet, and when Mac speaks again, voice slightly muffled, I can picture him saying the words into her hair as he presses a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
“I know. I just…” She inhales shakily, the sound breaking in her throat. “Sometimes I wish you didn’t have to be.”
Suddenly, the moment feels much too private to be listening to. I glance over at Dimitri, sheepish, and he looks just as uncomfortable, eyes downcast and shifting from foot to foot.
“Eleanor—”
“I loveyou, James Mackenzie,” she says fiercely. “Always. Forever. We can get through anything. We’ll figure this out.”
“It is not right,” Dimitri murmurs over the sound of two sets of feet heading in opposite directions. “That she has become a target. For Felix to make her feel unsafe.”
“Agreed,” I reply. “And after everything that fuckingjusthappened with Nicole as well.” Our team of three hardened killers has two very blatant soft spots now, and I happen to genuinely care for both of them.
Mac appears in the doorway in a rumpled suit, still smelling like aftershave. His dark hair is askew, likely from running a frustrated hand through its length. The expression on his face is hard and angry, and he barely gets the door shut before launching in.
“Felix found us. Or he’s been following me, maybe. That smug motherfucker sat across the table andsmirkedat me because he knew there was nothing I could do with all those witnesses and with Eleanor…” He crosses the room and collapses into the red wingback chair, pressing the heels of his hands against his eye sockets. “I… she was with me and I couldn’t… I had to get her out of there.”
Dimitri uncrosses his arms and leans forward with his usual stoic resolve. Big D has the most reason to want Felix dead of all of us, considering Felix’s recent role in kidnapping Nicole—so I’m a bit surprised when he simply commands, “Calm yourself and tell us what happened.”
After a few deep breaths and a jerk of his chin that cracks his neck, Mac leans forward in his seat. Elbows perched on knees, he recounts how Felix showed just as their dinner wrapped up, dropped the bomb about being hired to steal the Volkevich USB drive containing the fortune in bitcoin, and the even bigger bomb of his new mission to take down the General. I glance at Dimitri throughout, watching his scowl slowly deepen.
“He wants my—our, by extension—help tracking down the General. Said he was calling in my favor,” Mac finishes.
“And what was your response?” I ask, tone careful.
“Obviously, I told him to fuck right off. I only made that deal with the contingency that whatever favor he wanted wouldn’t put me or mine at risk. And tracking down and killing the General? That’s not just a risk…”
Dimitri finishes his thought. “It is suicide. At least we know Felix remains nearby. It will make it simpler to locate him,” he shrugs.
Mac’s brows lift, perhaps as surprised as I am that Dimitri is being so reasonable about this.
“Odd that he’d come to us about it,” I point out. “He must know he’s damn near the top of our shite list. Why would he think we’d consider helping him? And why would we help him withthistask specifically, considering our loyalties?” As far as he knows—as far asanyoneknows—the three of us work for the General. There’s no way Felix has any idea about the truth. I’ve never told anyone.
