Page 120 of Sins of Arrogance

I nar­row my eyes. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Hex smirks like a kid with a match­book. “Vantablack. Dark­est ma­te­rial ever en­gi­neered. Ab­sorbs ninety-nine-point-some­thing per­cent of light. You don’t see it. You don’t hear it. Just dis­ap­pears into the dark. Like this beauty.”

I sight down the range, a small grin pulling at the cor­ner of my mouth. “It fits.”

“Yes.” She smirks. “It’s a hell of a lot bet­ter than call­ing it the whis­per gun like some dum­b­ass nick­name from a Ja­son Bourne knock­off.”

I take the dig with­out com­ment, my sour mood fi­nally lift­ing as I sight down the bar­rel at the tar­get.

The trig­ger pull is soft. No re­coil. Barely any sound.

The slug punches through the steel tar­get with no more drama than a whis­per through a con­fes­sional.

Noth­ing but dis­placed air to mark its pass­ing. This weapon is ex­actly as ad­ver­tised. A whis­per gun.

Vanta.

My heart gives a kick in my chest. We did it.

The sec­ond and third shots fly just as clean. Then I shift and aim at the lay­ered bal­lis­tic gel and Vanta’s bul­let goes through it like it’s air. Twice.

I pivot slightly, tar­get­ing a re­in­forced plex­i­glass dummy like the ones we use for train­ing sce­nar­ios.

Fi­nal two shots…same re­sult.

The han­dle is slightly warm, but no warmer than steel af­ter be­ing held in your hand.

I lower the weapon and glance back at Hex. “You’ve out­done your­self, Morales. Ex­pect a hefty bonus for job well done in your next pay­ment de­posit.”

“Thank you.”

We will briefly dis­cuss the next phase. Pro­duc­tion of a cadre of weapons we can pro­vide to hand­picked sol­diers to test in the field.

We’re weeks, if not months, off from mass pro­duc­tion.

And I’m sure as hell not ready for a Vanta to end up in the hands of a com­peti­tor for an at­tempt at back-en­gi­neer­ing.

Bro­gan and I dis­cussed this. We won’t of­fer the weapons for sale to al­lies un­til we are on the cusp of mass pro­duc­tion.

Now, it’s time to test out an­other weapon.

Wraith stands in the cen­ter of his hold­ing cell, sweat dark­en­ing the col­lar of his T-shirt, his breath­ing just start­ing to even out.

Brice nods to me. “He did good.”

My lieu­tenant put our new re­cruit through his paces with his crew.

Weights, cal­is­then­ics, and hand-to-hand com­bat train­ing. Noth­ing new for a man who was an Army Ranger.

“Hey, Kieran.” I step in­side the small room leav­ing the door open be­hind me. “How did you like train­ing with strong Irish sol­diers?”

His head jerks up.

“Besnik told me your le­gal name when I agreed to give him his nephew back in ex­change for for­get­ting you ex­ist.”

Kieran Llesh’s eye­brows raise and his mouth twists cyn­i­cally.

“And a half-a-mil­lion dol­lar fine for be­ing stupid enough to take a job that meant tres­pass­ing on our prop­erty.” I sit down in the only chair in the room and wave to­ward the bed for him to do the same.