Page 141 of Sins of Arrogance

“There’s watch­ing out for a dou­ble cross and there’s putting your hand around the wasp’s nest and ex­pect­ing not to get stung.”

Bro­gan laughs like I’m jok­ing.

I’m not.

“There are other op­tions for dis­tri­bu­tion,” he muses in the si­lence that falls be­tween us.

“Start­ing with al­lies we al­ready have strong bonds with makes more sense.” Though I want to con­nect with the Greek mafia out of Port­land.

They have some im­pres­sive weapons con­nec­tions and a rep­u­ta­tion for bru­tal but hon­est deal­ings. I can work with that.

My phone lights up with a text.

“I’ve got to go.” I don’t wait for Bro­gan’s an­swer be­fore dis­con­nect­ing the call and putting one through to my lieu­tenant. “Where is she?”

“The Wal­dorf. Wraith fol­lowed her to a room on the concierge level.”

I don’t ask how he got the key­card to gain ac­cess to that floor. I ex­pect my men to take ini­tia­tive. “Who’s stay­ing in that room?”

“The black­gloves are hack­ing into the reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem now, but chances are it’ll be booked un­der an alias.”

And if Wraith had got­ten a look at the oc­cu­pant, Brice would have al­ready told me.

“Her phone?”

“Who­ever is stay­ing there is us­ing a jam­mer. We can’t use the lis­ten­ing app we in­stalled and there’s noth­ing but muf­fled sound through those thick walls. Even our best tar­geted lis­ten­ing de­vice isn’t pick­ing up dis­tin­guish­able words.”

Who­ever is in that room ex­cels at coun­ter­surveil­lance mea­sures.

My money is on my least fa­vorite Rus­sian. Darakov.

Plans for Dier­dre are go­ing to have to es­ca­late.

And that fa­vor my fa­ther and Oisín promised Bro­gan for keep­ing her safe is go­ing to have to go un­ful­filled.

Chap­ter 35: The Break­ing Point

KARA

The sound of a knock on the apart­ment door drags me out of the code I’m writ­ing for my Ad­vanced Python Pro­gram­ming class.

Stand­ing, pain zings into my lower back. Sit­ting so long in one po­si­tion never goes well, but I keep do­ing it.

It’s too easy to get lost in my pro­gram­ming.

Stretch­ing my neck from side to side, I hurry to an­swer the door.

Hope’s prob­a­bly look­ing for some­one to keep her com­pany. She seems pretty lost now that both Es­ther and Enoch are in school.

I don’t mind tak­ing a break.

There’s a smile of wel­come on my face when I open the door. “My boy def­i­nitely thanks you for the in­ter…”

My voice cuts off and my smile slides right into a scowl when I see who is on the other side.

Dier­dre.

“Mick isn’t here.” Man­ners dic­tate I step back and in­vite her in­side.