by Cara Carnes
“Vi.” Mary’s voice was soft, hesitant. The Edge wasn’t ever supposed to be soft.
And sure as hell not hesitant.
Vi had done that, added those cracks in a once unbreakable armor.
She forced a cleansing breath and focused on the task at hand. “Any luck with HERA tracking the voice?”
“She’s working on it,” Mary replied. “Are you okay?”
“Okay, I’ll see you soon.”
“See you.”
The line went dead. Addy shook her head. “You can’t avoid her forever. She’s worried.”
Vi didn’t need to avoid Mary forever, just long enough to track down the bastards who funded Peter’s betrayal. The ones who got away. Once Vi found them, everything would be good. She would fix everything. Better late than never, right?
2
“They’re out. Quillery kicks ass in the field.” Jacob looked over at him. “What now?”
Judson Jensen looked over at his nephew, unsure how to respond. For the first time in a long time he had no clue.
A contract was in play—terminate the Quillery Edge. The payout was huge, huge enough to awaken all the sharks. The bastards behind the payday added chum to the already bloodied waters with a triple the reward offer—kill them and secure HERA. Six million dollars.
He’d received numerous phone calls about the recent contract—one he had a personal stake in ensuring didn’t happen. The two women saved his nephew’s father fifteen years before. It’d taken more favors than he cared to expend to find their new location.
The Quillery Edge had taken down Hive, their former employer, after they realized it was dirty. That action alone made a lot of people nervous, including Jud’s employer. The fact they’d created the most sophisticated offensive and defensive security system around added chum to the already shark-infested waters. No matter how much he might want to stay out of the situation, he didn’t have a choice. They’d saved Danny. He owed them. “Time to make a call. Stay quiet, bud.”
“Like I’m an idiot,” Jacob muttered.
The phone rang in the vehicle’s speakers. “Jud, what a pleasant surprise.”
“Cut the shit, Jian. I got your message.” Jud watched Viviana Chambers, aka Quillery, and her team pull out. “What’s with the contract on the Quillery Edge?”
“My message was pretty clear. Two million for them, four for their program.” Amusement glinted in his voice. “If you take it, I’m prepared to extend an additional incentive.”
He’d taken a lot of jobs, operated in the shadows his entire career. “I don’t take unjustified contracts, not anymore.”
“We all have our lines, Judson. I’m thinking you’ll move yours for this particular…situation.”
Jian Chen was a bastard, one who’d stayed alive because he was useful to Jud’s employers. The Collective had turned the man into a puppet over the years, one who acquired anything and anyone as long as the price was right.
“You know better than to piss me off, Jian. I’m not interested in the contract and I’d advise you to withdraw it. Going after the Quillery Edge is highly inadvisable.”
“That’s a shame, because I have some connections who could help with your little problem, assuming they’re ordered to do so.”
“I don’t have a problem.” Jud’s sixth sense kicked in, the one that’d kept him breathing in impossible situations. “Cut your shit and get to the point, Jian.”
“I’m afraid your brother’s convoy had some unfortunate problems last week and has been declared missing.” Son of a bitch. Jud settled his hand on Jacob’s mouth. Tears formed in his nineteen-year-old nephew’s eyes. “I’m sure you’ll be notified soon enough. You know how slow these situations sometimes unfold. I have some assets in position to help…expedite his safe extraction, should I have reason to do so.”
Son of a bitch.
“I take the contract and you’ll make sure he’s released unharmed. Is that how this works?”
“It’s rather unfortunate this little incident happened, but friends do look out for one another, yes? Secure the program and eliminate the Quillery Edge and I’ll make sure Danny is returned without harm.” Jian’s voice dropped. “Don’t take too much time to decide. Six million is a big payday, one many are bound to seek.”
“It’ll take some time to get into position. They’re aligned with The Arsenal now. Only an idiot would think this is a simple contract.”
“I’m well aware of their recent employment shift. It’s unfortunate they betrayed their former employers like they did.”
Yeah, right. Their former employers, Hive, had kidnapped Mary, aka Edge, and tortured her to gain access to their security system. The Arsenal had mounted a rescue and gotten the two women safely. Jud was of half a mind to go after the rest of the bastards behind the kidnapping himself, but it was obvious Viviana, aka Quillery, had her partner’s back. She had the entirety of The Arsenal looking for whomever hired Hive to betray them and go after the program.
“I’ll need a week to get into place.”
“Unacceptable.”
“You know damn good and well I’m the only one capable of pulling this off. Warning, Jian. Don’t piss me off more than I already am,” Jud growled.
“I’ll expect frequent updates. My employer for this matter is quite…impatient.”
His employer. Disgust rolled through Jud. Few had the balls or the finances to bankroll a high-value contract. Only one came to mind. Jud’s employer, The Collective.
Son of a bitch.
“I’ll be in touch.” He clicked off and released his steely grip on Jacob’s mouth.
His nephew screamed and wailed, more rage than surprise. Jud held on, let the young man vent the emotions stealing his control a couple moments, then he pulled away. “Gotta get it together, bud. I know it sucks, but we need to verify what Jian said and make some decisions.”
The teen grabbed his computer. Tears streamed down his face. “He was lying. Right, Uncle Jud? Dad’s okay, right?”
“Wish he was, bud. He wouldn’t lie about something I can verify.”
Danny had taken an overseas training mission even though he had zero business in the field. The man was determined to do right by Jacob and help him pay down his entry into a doctorate degree program at MIT. The brilliant kid had already gotten his bachelor’s and was halfway through with a master’s. Jud’s waste of space sister had walked away from them fifteen years ago, when Danny narrowly escaped his last captivity.
“Dad can’t survive that again, Uncle Jud. He’s in a wheelchair. They wouldn’t hurt a paraplegic, would they?”
Jacob had somehow maintained a naive view on many things, including what people would and wouldn’t do. He’d recently started delving into the seedy black ops world Jud had lived in the past couple of decades. The kid knew the answer to the question. “I don’t ever bullshit you.”
He turned ashen as he pointed at the screen. “There’s…there’s a message.”
“Play it.”
Jud squeezed his nephew’s shoulder and bit back the rage rising in him as he watched the video play. Danny was beaten, bloodied but alive. There was no message, no audio whatsoever. The short ten second clip offered little in the way of insight into where he was being held or by who. Very few could find out those details from what little was known.
“This is bullshit,” Jacob clipped.
“Yeah, it is.”
“He thinks you’ll take out the Quillery Edge, that he can control you. Make you.” Jacob’s hands fisted in his lap. “This is bullshit.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Dad wouldn’t want to keep breathing if it meant they weren’t.” Tears flowed down Jacob’s face. “What are you gonna do?”
“The only thing I can, get into position and make certain no one else takes them out.”
“You’re doing it? You’re going to murder the Quillery Edge, after what they did for Dad. They saved his life, Uncle Jud. We can’t…you can’t.
”
“You and your dad are more important to me than anyone,” he replied. “This wouldn’t be the first shitty contract I’ve taken.”
“There’s gotta be another way.”
“We’ll figure it out, bud.”
“There’s gotta be another way,” Jacob repeated. “They’ll help us, you know. The Quillery Edge will help us. We can help them. You and them together would be unstoppable.”
The kid idolized the two women. Danny had regaled his son with stories of how the two brilliant women so much like Jacob had kept him alive. Jud couldn’t imagine taking either of them out, which meant he’d have to stand between them and anyone else who tried to take the contract.
But what about Danny?
Refusing the contract was a certain death sentence for his brother-in-law.
“Get us tickets to Texas, bud. We’re going to have a chat with the Quillery Edge.”
“So you’ll help them?”
“No one’s touching them. You saw the group they’re with now. They’re good. Secure.” He looked over and navigated the vehicle onto the busy highway leading toward the airport. “You looked into The Arsenal, bud. They’re good. The best.”
“No. You’re the best,” his nephew shot back angrily. “You’re so good no one knows you even exist. You can help The Arsenal go after those assholes. She needs you. They wouldn’t dare go after her or The Edge if you were involved. And they can rescue Dad without breaking a sweat.”
“It’s not that simple. Walking onto their compound and announcing there’s a contract on their head will earn me a bullet in my brain, especially once they figure out who I’m with.”
The Arsenal was a relatively new operation, one already respected within the paramilitary arena as the best around, mainly because of the six brothers who’d formed the operation. The Masons. Jud had only worked with one of the men, Dallas. He doubted the man would appreciate him showing up at their compound, but Jud wasn’t seeing much of a choice.
“If they kill her, we never get Dad out of there. She saved him once, she can do it again. You’re in a perfect position to help keep her breathing, Uncle Jud. Or should I call you Judge?”
Jud clenched his jaw and looked out the window. Jacob was a brilliant pain in the ass. He’d stumbled across Jud’s second life, the one he’d carefully kept hidden for over two decades. But his nephew had figured out the quiet, barely operable investigation company he ran out of Boston was more than it seemed. “Bud, you’ve got to ease off on plunging into the cesspit I’m in. Now isn’t the time for you to swim around, not when everyone’s nervous about what went down with Edge and Hive.”
After The Arsenal rescued Edge from her captivity, she and Quillery partnered up with the new private paramilitary organization and brought the bastards who’d taken her down. Hard. Hive had been a force within more than just the private paramilitary arena. Tremors from its collapse rocked Jud’s world, one very few knew—a world where knowing too much got you killed. His nephew danced the line daily despite Jud’s insistence he back off.
“This has nothing to do with The Collective.” Or so he hoped.
Jian was a puppet controlled by The Collective, but he had more clients. Jud couldn’t ignore the fact his employer was probably involved, however. The security system the Quillery Edge created would be a huge boon for them. If The Collective was behind Jian, then Jud had a much larger problem on his hands.
His employer was the largest, most formidable organization in existence. It operated in the dark shadows of the underworld, where unknown individuals controlled entire empires.
“No, but no one in The Collective would go against their very best. You stand between the contract and the target and they’ll back down. Then Quillery and Edge will owe us and they’ll help us save Dad.” Jacob clenched his laptop tight. His lips thinned into a grim line. “Besides, we already owe them.”
Fuck. He’d maintained a firm grip on the reins of his two worlds and kept them separated. Only his brilliant MIT graduate nephew had connected them. “Jacob, I can’t cash the debt in, not against this.”
“Why not? Is it too hard? Too dangerous?” Jacob’s voice rose. “What if Quillery had thought that? And Edge? Yeah, if they’d thought that, Dad wouldn’t be breathing. We owe them, Uncle Jud. It’s not your debt, though. It’s Dad’s and mine, so I’ll help if you won’t. Either way, I’m keeping them breathing and getting them to help me save him.”
“I’m thinking they need a different skill set than you can offer,” he replied calmly. Tension coiled within the vehicle, a viper poised to strike. He recognized the gleam in his nephew’s eyes. Fiery determination, the same drive that made Jud the best available within The Collective.
“Courage doesn’t come from winning the battle,” Jacob whispered, his voice tight and threaded with anger. “It comes from looking impossible in the eyes and kneeing his nuts.”
“You’re still throwing that quote out?”
“Every chance I get.” A smile spread on his face.
“Your mom’s not a fan,” he commented. “I promised her I’d keep you safe and happy.”
“I’m not a fan of Mom’s.”
“Bud…”
“Leave her out of this, Uncle Jud. She left. She doesn’t get a say in what I do. I’m an adult now and get my own say and I’m in. Whatever it takes to rescue Dad and keep the Quillery Edge breathing, I’m in.” His fierceness maligned the moisture in his eyes. “We don’t get to walk away because the impossible is big, Uncle Jud. They didn’t.”
“You’re right. We don’t.” He gripped the steering wheel and breathed the decision in deep, until it filled him with the calm, the same calm he thrived in. “No one touches the Quillery Edge, bud.”
“So you’re in?”
“I’m in, but only if you’re out.” He kept talking when Jacob’s head shook side to side. “You’re on the sideline, helping when I ask for it. Nothing more.”
“Just like Quillery and Edge,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Though, she really kicked ass in the field today,” Jacob commented.
“Yeah, she did.”
Viviana Chambers had trouble written all over her. She was the worst decision he could make. Add in The Arsenal and Jud had zero business heading to Texas and walking onto that compound. But Jacob was right. A debt was owed, one he’d honor and keep them breathing because it was the right thing to do.
More importantly, he needed to get Danny secure and teach Jian and whoever was behind his decision a lesson.
No one fucked with his family.
He was a bit surprised Jacob wasn’t more freaked out by what Jian had just told them. Then again, Jacob never gave up, never quit. He was resilient and determined. Headstrong. Brilliant. He was all those things because of his dad, and the two women who saved his life fifteen years prior. Jud stared into his nephew’s determined face. The kid had kept him going the past year and didn’t even know.
Jud had bathed in carnage and shady decisions a long time, too long. Jacob had waded into the muck and straddled the ravine between reality and hell. He was a hell of a kid. “Book us a flight to Texas.”
Jacob grinned big. “I’ll get us a flight, express. Quillery and her team are leaving in half an hour on a private jet. We don’t want to waste time. I’ve got to pack my stuff and get my lists and…”
“Breathe, bud.” He squeezed his nephew’s shoulder. “We don’t have to chase them. We know where they’re going.”
“Yeah, okay.” Jacob swallowed, looked down at the keyboard. “You think they’ll like me?”
The question was a punch to the gut, one Jud took deep. Though he was nineteen, the little boy Jacob had once been, the one impacted so heavily by the Quillery Edge, remained steadfast, a permanent part of him. He’d established the framework of his entire future around them. He hoped to hell they were worthy of that level of devotion, especially since he’d just put himself between them and a six-million-dollar contr
act, one likely issued by The Collective.
“They’d be crazy not to,” he replied. “Make sure you pay for those tickets, bud.”
“But Uncle Jud…”
“We talked about this.” Jud and Danny had worked on curtailing Jacob’s tendency to appropriate items without paying. It’d been a big problem a few years before, one somewhat curbed the past few years.
“Okay.” Jacob’s shoulders drooped a couple notches. “I hope Dad’s okay.”
“Your dad’s the strongest person I know, and Jian won’t do anything more than he has. That was shock and awe to get my attention.” Jud hoped so. The man wasn’t usually an idiot.
“You think they’ll help us free him?”
The two women had been through hell the past few weeks. The last thing they probably wanted was a contract killer guarding their six with a scrawny geek in tow. A scrawny geek dead set on enlisting their help rescuing his father.
“Just remember they’re dealing with a lot. They won’t know you, bud. And Edge is…” Jud didn’t know what the hell to say.
“I know.” He shrugged. “Never wanted to meet them like this. It sucks. Still, it’s gonna be wicked.”
More like complicated. People didn’t just walk onto a secured compound like The Arsenal, not when they were on full alert, which they likely were. He’d get onto the compound and in a position to assist.
He had an ace in the hole he could play if necessary. Jian was mixed up in what’d gone down with the Hive, which meant Viviana and Mary, aka the Quillery Edge, had an even bigger reason to hunt him down than Jud did. The bastard underestimated the two women’s tenacity. It’d be fun to watch them kick the man’s ass and destroy his scuzzy trafficking ring, one that’d operated within the safe shadows of The Collective’s protection too long.
But giving Jian’s info to the Quillery Edge meant potentially pissing off The Collective. It was a see-saw, one he’d have to keep carefully balanced. Fortunately, he was good at doing the impossible.
While a lot of lone wolves operated within Jud’s niche world, he’d established himself as the best around, which meant everyone knew who he was. When he weighed in, the message would be loud. Swift.