CJ stared after him, gaze narrowed.
“If it was Madison—”
Emery held up his hands. They’d stormed Evers’s mansion for Madison. For one of their own? He wasn’t ruling out homicide. Look at what he’d done for Tori. Matvei’s death didn’t even weigh on his conscience.
CJ scrubbed his face with his hand.
“Want a change of clothes?” Emery asked.
“Sure.” CJ glanced down at himself.
Emery crossed to the bunk room and grabbed a set of CJ’s clothes. Kathy’s hung next to his in the lockers-turned-wardrobe. He grabbed her clothes and stashed them on top of the lockers out of sight. Later, once things settled, he’d make sure her things got packed up. For now, he returned to the office and handed the polo and jeans to CJ before turning his back on the other agent.
“Thanks. Aiden’s not going to be on board with this, but I need you to convince him. You’ve always been better at getting in his head than I am.” Clothing rustled as CJ shed his ruined garments.
“What do you have in mind?” Emery listened to Aiden, that’s what the difference was. Unlike Julian, Aiden thought things through.
“Kill them.”
“How?”
“With a gun. My bare hands if I have to.”
Shit. Not good.
“Who do we want to kill?”
“All of them. The hit team. The Eleventh. That fucking bastard who ran off. They all need to die.”
“Did you call it in?” Emery asked. His only hope now was an FBI intervention.
“Why should I? They didn’t warn us and they fucking knew what was going on. They fucking knew.” His voice rose until he yelled the last words at Emery.
“Who told you that?”
“Come on.”
Emery glanced over his shoulder. CJ tucked the gun into his waistband. Great. Bereft and loaded. Emery didn’t for a second believe CJ had called anyone at the FBI field offices. He was operating on assumption, grief, and the desire to strike back.
The crew was in the bunk room, cups of coffee handed out as they were brewed. These were not the conditions under which they should be planning an urban battle. They should relocate, regroup, and then make a plan, but that wasn’t going to happen. Something was going down in the next few hours and it wouldn’t be pretty.
“CJ.” Tori took a few steps toward them when they entered the bunk room, but stopped a couple of feet short. Anguish twisted her features into a pained expression.
CJ reached for her, squeezing her arm and muttering something only for her ears. She nodded and glanced at Emery. The others stopped speaking, all eyes on CJ. The silence stretched on. He walked to the other end of the bunk room. A whiteboard took up most of the surface and provided a stark background. Despite the change of clothes, Emery could almost see Kathy’s blood still clinging to him.
He crossed his arms and hung back near the door while everyone turned to face CJ. Tori came to stand by Emery’s side, so close she even leaned her head on his shoulder. He curled his hand into a fist and for a second didn’t dare to breathe. Julian and Gabriel knew. Roni would know if she didn’t already. Were they at this point already? Was he allowed to touch her?
Madison sat next to Aiden on a cot in front of Emery. Aiden hooked his thumb in the waistband of her shorts. A possessive action, when Aiden hadn’t exactly been the possessive type in the last few years. Emery had watched the growing familiarity between the two, so he’d seen the gradual change, how they touched without being aware of it. Was that what it might be like with Tori? If they ever got the chance.
“Thank you all for your support.” CJ cleared his throat. “We’re lucky more of us weren’t hurt. It’s still early, but today’s going to be a long one. Evers’s people haven’t hit us yet, but they’re going to. We need to hit them first.”
Silence greeted this statement.
“What does the home office say?” Aiden asked.
“Does it matter?” CJ planted his hands on his hips and leaned forward.
“Look, man, I’m right there with you, but is this the best plan? Maybe we should get backup.” Aiden leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees. It was Madison’s turn to stroke his back in a show of support.
“We’ve called for backup—how many times, Emery?” CJ pointed at Emery and suddenly all eyes were on him.
Emery shrugged and CJ went on without his input.
Six times they’d called in requests for support, to tip off any number of the alphabet soup of agencies, yet nothing had happened. It was frustrating to have everything lined up exactly as they were supposed to and yet be told it wasn’t good enough. Why were they here then? To be bait? Act as a decoy? Frustrating wasn’t a strong enough word. They’d been betrayed by the very organization they’d fought to support, but Emery wasn’t on board with taking the crew rogue. It didn’t look like he was going to get a choice in the matter.
Aiden was the conservative left. Julian and CJ the extremists on the right. Everyone else fell somewhere in the middle. Tori had seen everything, and he wouldn’t fault her for wanting to ease her conscience and help CJ. Where Tori went, he expected Roni would as well. With Gabriel’s history, Emery expected the former agent to hold very little value in adhering to the rules their superiors were breaking. John, well, he was probably closer to Aiden’s stance, but Emery didn’t really know.
The key was going to be keeping them all alive no matter what happened. He glanced at Tori, his new reason for breathing. For her sake, he needed to come up with a plan before CJ and Julian led them in a fatal frontal assault.
Chapter Twenty-One
The room was so loud with CJ, Julian, and Aiden yelling at each other that Tori covered her ears. She totally understood what CJ wanted. To some degree, she wanted an eye for an eye, but they’d already killed Matvei. Or Emery had. Her tummy twisted at the memory. She hadn’t even asked him about that or how he was doing.
“What would you have us do? Stick our thumbs up our asses and sit around, waiting for a hit team to come through the doors or the Eleventh to wreck us on the road?” Julian bent forward at the waist, his bloodshot gaze on Aiden.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I just don’t want anyone else to die because you go off half-cocked.” To Aiden’s credit, he was trying to keep his calm, something that hadn’t happened very often before Madison entered his life.
“So we call the FBI?” Julian straightened and crossed his arms.
“Yeah, you know, the people who write your paycheck? Fuck knows you don’t do enough around the shop to earn shit.” Aiden glared.
“The FBI is using all of us,” CJ interjected before Julian could get worked up over that little bomb.
Aiden and Julian were co-owners of Classic Rides, but it was no question who ran it. Aiden kept it going and operating as a business while Julian showed up for a couple hours a week to put in an appearance before going to play spy. It was a point of contention, and Tori fell on Aiden’s side. It was usually her responsibility to pick up Julian’s slack. No one could argue with the FBI, who practically owned Julian.
“No one’s arguing that.” Gabriel leaned against the far wall. He’d perked up quite a bit since his nap. Sure, the bruises looked bad, but he seemed to be back to himself, which was good if they were going to go storm anything.
“I’m not saying we don’t attack them. Can we just have a goddamn plan?” Aiden blew out a breath and the room seemed to exhale with him.
“We’re wasting time here.” Emery’s voice skated across her skin and her body took notice. “We don’t know where the hit team is, and the Greenworks building is built like a compound. We can’t just drive up and shoot it. Aiden’s right.” He held up a hand to stave off an argument from CJ and Julian. “If you’ll pull your heads out of your asses you’ll realize we’re all saying the same thing. Give me ten minutes. I’ll see what I can find out. Get us inside Greenworks.”
“What’s the point of getting inside?” Aid
en asked.
“We want to accomplish something. Well, let’s do that. Our mission from the beginning was to shut Evers’s operation down. Today he gets out of jail at eight o’ clock. That’s just a couple of hours from now and he’s back at the head of this thing. If we take it down before he’s out—he’s done. He’ll have no structure, no product, nothing. We cut the legs out from under him the only way we can. From the inside of Greenworks. And if the FBI won’t back us up, call in the cops. Once we have the Eleventh and this new leader in custody, we can flush out the hit team, if they’re even still in Florida. For all we know, they’re already headed back up north.”
She stared at Emery, still fascinated he could put that many sentences together. That, and he was basically telling their leadership to grow the fuck up. It was pretty damn hot.
“We are in a no-win situation.” He swept the room with his gaze, all eyes on him. “We sit here, we’re targets. We call the FBI, they tie our hands. We launch an offensive against them, well, we’d be on everyone’s shit list, but we could do it. The only option to color inside the lines is to run away. We’ve never run, and if we do, we ruin all the work we’ve done over the last three years. So we have to protect ourselves. But we don’t have to throw away our lives to do it.”
For several seconds, no one else spoke. Emery was a quiet power within their crew. He’d never really flexed his muscle until now, and man, did he have muscle to flex.
“Okay, what do we need to do to make that happen?” Aiden asked.
“Ten minutes.” Emery held up his hands. “Don’t do anything for ten minutes.”
“You got it,” Julian said, slanting his gaze toward Aiden. The two had pulled each other out of situations worse than this. The least they could do was avoid murdering the other for a little bit longer.
Emery jerked his head in a nod and turned, striding out of the door and no doubt back to the security room. Curious gazes slid toward her. Screw it. Her sister knew; Julian, Gabriel, and CJ could all fill them in. She followed Emery, jogging to catch up with his long strides as he entered the security office.
He rounded the desk and glanced at her.
“What are you going to do?” she blurted.
“Don’t know.” He sank into the desk chair and turned toward the monitors.
“What can I do?” She clasped her hands together, unsure where to start. She was good with action, doing things, but Emery’s specialty was in an area she couldn’t begin to help with.
Aiden stepped into the office, glancing between the two of them before settling his gaze on Emery.
“We need to talk.” He grabbed the door and swung it shut, blocking out the low hum of conversation while the others dispersed from the bunk room.
Emery merely glanced up at Aiden before returning to tap at the keys.
“This is a suicide mission to CJ. He doesn’t even care who we hit, so long as someone dies,” Aiden said.
“Then we can’t do this,” Tori blurted.
Tori sat down hard. The thought had come to her, but she’d shied away from the idea of losing both CJ and Kathy. What was worse, Emery didn’t deny it.
“We either go with him, or he goes by himself.” Aiden stared at the desk. “There’s no best way to handle this. There’s just—doing it.”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out—a way to do it. What do you want?” Emery’s tone was brusque. There was too much to do and she wanted to shield him from having to shoulder more.
“Two things.” Aiden’s lips were thin, hard lines, his posture tense. “Madison recognized the surveillance picture of the older man.”
“The Geezer?” Emery paused his typing.
“Yeah, said she knew him as the owner of that company that Evers used to ship those cars. Mr. White.”
“Well, that’s an alias.” Tori rolled her eyes. There were a few names so incredibly common that they stuck out.
“I want to talk to her. See what she can remember. Maybe we can get some additional records from the FBI. He could be the link we need to figure all of this out.” A break. That’s all they needed. One break to solve this thing. There was no way Evers was the boss. The evidence, the continued success of his operation, that couldn’t have happened without someone directly in charge of things while Evers was in custody. Emery grabbed a pen and jotted down a list of questions on the back of an envelope.
“Also, do you think we can use Detective Smith?” Aiden asked. “If we’re going off the rails here, we need someone to make the arrests.”
Emery’s fingers paused on the keys for a moment.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Okay. Good. I don’t think—”
“I will call Smith. Julian will just start a fight if you’re involved. Get some sleep, try not to get in a pissing match with Julian.” Emery examined the blueprints for Greenworks.
“You got a plan?” Aiden asked.
“I will if you and everyone else will leave me the hell alone for a minute.”
“Sorry, man.” One side of Aiden’s mouth hitched up and he glanced at Tori. Seems she wasn’t the only one to notice the change in Emery’s behavior. “Let me know when you’ve got something.”
She glanced away from Aiden. Was this change her fault? She didn’t think it was a bad thing. Emery was smart. He should have more of a say in what they did, especially because they all leaned on him so much.
Aiden left without another word and Emery didn’t deign to speak. She had nothing to offer in the planning department. Instead, she gathered the mess of wrappers and cups from the desk and tiptoed out of the office. If they were going to survive on just a few hours of sleep, they were both going to need a little liquid stimulation.
She dumped the trash in one of the garbage cans scattered through the warehouse. Roni, Gabriel, and John had their heads together looking at John’s truck, the same one that had been forced off the road. From where she stood, Tori couldn’t spy any damage done to the exterior. CJ and Julian stood in the doorway to the office. There was no sign of Madison or Aiden, which was probably for the best. The boys couldn’t start anything if they weren’t rubbing each other the wrong way. She went back to the bunk room and brewed two cups of coffee.
“What about Emery?” Roni’s voice startled Tori. She jumped, turning toward the door, poised to throw the cup of scalding liquid at her sister.
“Shit. Don’t do that.” Tori shook her head and pressed her hand to her chest.
“Sorry.” Roni chuckled and selected one of the coffee pods for herself.
Tori glanced around before grabbing her sister’s arm and pulling her deeper into the bunk room.
“We need to talk about—Papa.”
“Sh.” Roni glanced over her shoulder at the door.
“Emery knows. CJ does, too. It’s a matter of time until the others find out. We need to contact him. To tell him not to come here, that he might need to burn his identity.”
“Goddamn it.” Roni stared at the ceiling. “I like this life.”
“I do, too.” Tori had Emery now. She wasn’t going to give that up. “I can’t make contact with Emery around me all the time. Can you put out an ad?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll handle it. Plus, we can’t ask Emery to turn a blind eye if he never sees it happening. Consider it done.”
“Thanks, and I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“This. All of it.”
“If I was in town, they’d have been after me, too. The only reason they were after your ass is because you were here. And thank God Emery had your back.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” It didn’t make her feel any less responsible.
“You owe me details.”
“I don’t know where to start.” Tori blew out a breath. Three days and her life was in a completely different place.
“I’m not interrupting, am I?” Madison paused in the doorway, one hand gripping the frame.
“Nope. Just asking my sister when she’s goi
ng to tell me about whatever it is she’s been doing with the Walking Brain.” Roni leaned against the cinder-block wall, grinning.
Tori frowned, unable to shake the sudden irritation.
Doing with him? Of course Roni would take the boiled-down version of the last few days and assume it was a fling, a simple fuck she needed to get out of her system. As if she could—or wanted—to forget Emery.
“You’ve woken him up, that’s for sure.” Madison picked through the basket of coffee choices. “I dig Emery. I think someone like you could be good for him. Shake him up, ya know?”
Tori smiled. Yeah, she felt the same way. Look what she’d accomplished so far. The man was a conversational prodigy in just a couple of days.
“Please. He’s a computer geek.” Roni shook her head.
“He is not just a computer geek.” Tori turned on her sister and jabbed Roni’s shoulder with her finger. “I’m sick of you talking about him that way.”
“Wow, I didn’t—” Roni held up her hand, eyes going round.
“No, that’s exactly what you meant. Do you realize he does more for us than fart around on computers and shit? Do you have any idea what he goes through for us?” Anger simmered just under Tori’s skin.
“Dude, I—”
“You don’t care that I like him. That maybe he might be more than a screw to me. I’m sick of hearing that from you.”
Roni stared at her. Between them, Tori usually took a backseat to Roni’s more vocal nature, but sometimes a girl had to stand up for herself. They might be twins, but they weren’t identical in every regard. Tori was in love with Emery, and while she wasn’t ready to admit that much, she was taking a stand for what they might have together, so long as other people kept their opinions to themselves.
“Okay. My bad. Sorry.” They stared at each other for a moment. Roni shifted from foot to foot and Tori balled her free hand into a fist. It wasn’t a good idea to punch her sister, but right now she wanted to. “It’s not that I don’t like him. I do. I just want the best for you, and with how we work, that’s someone who’s got your back.”
“I think Emery proved that.” Tori glanced down at the second cup of coffee that was finished brewing, but it wasn’t coffee she saw. It was Matvei in those last seconds. Emery hadn’t even hesitated when he shot the man.
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