“She’s sweet as a button, and pretty as a peach. I don’t even need her dead, which is why I’m calling you instead of Tank.”
Tank. My blood boils just thinking about that nearly seven-foot, muscle-clad, doesn’t-mind-fucking-a-corpse prick.
“She lives in a small town, and he’s too conspicuous. You’ll do this for me, Castro. I’m not interested in the wordno.”
“I have my own life now! I have a business and deadlines and shit that keep me busy right here. I can’t hop on a plane and come out to?—”
“If you don’t, I’ll send Scarlett’s files to D.C,” he snarls. “It sure is ironic how you’ve made a career of tracking criminalsdown and handing them over to the cops, when all along, you knowexactlywhere a wanted felon lives.”
“Aster—”
“And then there’s your list of fuckery,” he taunts. “Murder in the first. Assault with a deadly weapon. Fraud. Racketeering. Laundering. Oh, and there was that time you moved powder across the border. You remember that?”
My temper burns hot, my lips curling into a sneer.
“I’ve got youbothtied up, Linc, with a sexy little bow on top. I know you have a life you’d like to keep living, and you sure as fuck want Scarlett left out of this. So do the job. It’s only a week, then you go back to that house you think is hidden in the woods.”
I gnash my teeth and know he’s won. For now. “What do you want from her?” I grit out. “She doesn’t have to die?”
“No. But the last guy I sent killed the target right in front of her. So you’re gonna have to be subtle.”
“There was a different target? And now they’re dead? But you want me to go after the girl?” I settle back in my chair and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Consider me confused.”
“Ryan Nichols was the target. He was the woman’s brother. He’s got something I want, and I’m willing to do whatever the fuck I need to do to get it. I sent Harris out first, but he fucked up and killed the guy and himself in the process.”
Curious, I slide my tongue along the front of my teeth. “Like, he turned a gun on himself and pulled the trigger, or likeyoupointed a gun and pulled the trigger?”
“Like, he thought he could total Nichols’ truck in plain fuckin’ daylight and use the chaos to search for the item, but allhe did was make a scene, reveal himself to the girl, kill the target, and walk away empty-handed.”
“He got seen.” I nod, catching the one detail Aster thinks he can slide over. “He was a loose end, so you had Tank deal with him.”
“You know me so well.” He chuckles, the telltale click-click of a lighter playing through the line as he lights a cigar and takes a long puff. “Harris is out, and my other guys are too busy or too conspicuous. That leaves you. And we’re both delightfully aware that youalwaysfinish a job.”
“What am I supposed to be looking for? Paperwork? Disks? Footage?”
“That’s where it gets tricky…” He exhales, his voice changing with the movement of his throat. “I don’t know.”
“The fuck you mean you don’t know? I can’t pick this woman’s pockets if I don’t even know what I’m taking.”
“Nichols was one of five soldiers,” he explains. “They each possessed a key of some sort.”
“So… a key?”
“A set of numbers, to be precise. But of the original five men, we’ve recovered four completely different things. A key card, a USB stick, a ring, and a laptop. We need the last key to access…” He hesitates for a beat, secrecy a weighted blanket draped across our call. “Somethingthat holds a great deal of interest for me. We don’t know where Nichols saved his key or what it looks like. We don’t know if he kept it on his body, or at his sister’s house, or in the truck, or?—”
“How do you know the code wasn’t destroyed in the accident?”
“Because that’s not acceptable to me. We have four of thefive keys. And the girl, Nova Nichols, is Ryan Nichols’ only living relative.”
“No women in his life?”
“None in years, and I already looked at her, just in case. He dumped her, cut all contact, and left her cold half a decade ago. She’s still pissed about it. The only relationship he maintained outside of the military was with his sister, and she admits she only ever saw him once a year, at best.”
“Sheadmits?” I set my feet on my desk and cast my gaze toward my computer screen. “You already made contact?”
“Thompkins did. Briefly. Bought her a drink and chatted for an hour. She bailed before he could buy her a second.”
“She smelled a rat?”
