“I’ve been beating you up since we were twelve fucking years old!” he wheezes, his cheeks red. “I will beat you up now!”
He seizes my wrist and yanks my hand from his face—and punches me in the ribs. I exhale out a yelp, and he flips me off him and darts to his feet, but not before I kick the back of his knee and send him flying.
“You little shit—” He lunges for me.
I hold up my hands. “Truce!”
Gable freezes, breathless and red in the face, his eyes narrowed. “Actual truce or fake truce?”
I kick his knee again and as he curses my name, I bolt to my feet and go for the door. If I can get to Ella before him?—
His forearm closes around my throat.
I gargle, the headlock firm.
“Say you’ll kill her,” Gable says.
I claw at his arm. “No!”
“Say it!”
“Let … go!” I buck and he releases me, backing away, putting space between us. We both heave in breaths, my hands on my knees, my throat dry. My brother glares at me, equally winded. “I’ll make you a deal.”
“I don’t want a fucking deal.”
“Just listen.” I straighten and wipe the sweat from my brow. “We call Cleo.”
He frowns. “What will she do?”
Cleo sends out the contracts. She’s the well of knowledge when it comes to this underground world, and if you get in good with her, you get the decent work before anyone else. She loves us, finds me charming and Gable hilarious, and she’s how we know that any job we get is for a person who deserves their fate.
“We agreed when we started this that we wouldn’t kill anyone unless they deserved it,” I say. “I know for a fact Ella doesn’t. We call Cleo. We ask.”
“Cleo has never failed us.”
“People. Make. Mistakes,” I say, taking out my phone. I dial Cleo’s latest number, one she changes regularly, and it rings three times before her smokey voice sounds over the speakerphone.
“How’s my second favorite Flynn?”
Gable flashes me a smug smile, and I give him the finger. “We’re both here, but thanks.”
Cleo chuckles. “What’s up, my love?”
“The latest job we got. Ella Gibson,” I say. “What’s the reason for her bounty?”
“Ella who?”
I frown, and so does Gable. “Ella Gibson. She was part of the job with Barnaby Fisher.”
Cleo pauses. “I remember the Fisher guy, but I never sent through any job for a Gibson. Were they on the same paperwork?”
“No. Ella’s arrived two days later. But she’s in the same building, so we just assumed—” Gable says.
“Ella Gibson …” Cleo mumbles, clearly more to herself than us. I hear her tapping on a keyboard. “It didn’t come from the agency. There’s nothing here, guys.”
My skin chills, and I meet Gable’s eye. He looks equally confused and takes out his phone. He pulls up the message we got for Ella’s contract. It looks the same as all the others.
Someone bypassed the agency to send this to us. We’re the best in our field, our success rate ninety-nine percent (one target fell off a building before Gable could shoot him, and I’ve never forgiven him for it), but people also know we have limits on who we’ll kill. Whoever sent this to us wanted Ella in the ground but knew we wouldn’t do it without cause.
