Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 36052 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 180(@200wpm)___ 144(@250wpm)___ 120(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36052 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 180(@200wpm)___ 144(@250wpm)___ 120(@300wpm)
“Did he tell you why he wanted you to spy on us?”
“He said he had a job for you, Bear. You by name. He said if I got caught, I was to tell you he had you by the balls and that you better do your fucking job this time.”
“He say how he had me by the balls? What he was holding over me and what he expected to happen?”
“Pretty sure he thought he was going to find something when I infiltrated this place and turned on that app. As to what he had planned, I don’t know for sure, but the target’s in the mountains of Afghanistan. I’m just not sure what or exactly where. I got the impression that, just like that town south of Tripoli, this was a small group, probably sitting on something the CIA wants and are unwilling or unable to negotiate for. They said it was very remote and no one would miss the place, but they don’t want to leave any evidence behind, so he’s looking for a professional cleaning crew. He said that’s what you used to do, Bear. You cleaned an area and left no trace. Not like the mess they had back in Tripoli.”
If she believed Leon Black when he’d told her I’d eliminated entire villages just because someone told me to, I could understand her hesitation to trust me.
“Telling me this took courage. I’m proud of you for taking a chance and trusting me.” I smiled down at her. “Thank you, Olivia.”
She looked up at me with wide, brown eyes. “Are you going to hurt me? If you are, I can take it. I just can’t take not knowing.” She ended on a little sob before swallowing loudly to get her emotions under control. I had no doubt she was terrified. Any woman in her position would be, and she’d be smart to be scared.
“Already told you, honey.” I grinned down at her, stroking her jaw gently with my finger. “I’ll never hurt you unless you ask me to, and only with pleasure being the end result.” I winked at her, trying to lighten the mood and help her be at ease when she was anything but.
“What about your president or vice president? The other men in Grim Road?”
“Not lettin’ anyone hurt you. Is there anything else I need to know? I know Venus searched you. You told me about your phone. Is there anything else you need to tell me. Anything at all? Even if it’s just bits and pieces.”
“No.”
“What made you change your mind about telling me, Liv?” I needed to know this most of all. I knew we still had a long way to go to trust each other, but I thought she might have the same instinctive pull toward me as I did her.
“You guys might be a lot of things, but you’re not the kind of men to kill innocent people, let alone commit some kind of genocide. I wanted to believe you when you first picked me up and put me on your bike.” Pink tinged her cheeks, and I knew she was uncomfortable. Embarrassed or nervous, maybe. But I thought it was more than that. “And the second I jumped into your arms, something inside me settled. I felt safe for the first time in a long time. I want that feeling for the rest of my life. I tried to justify what Mr. Black wanted me to do with the fact that you were murderers. That you’d killed innocent women and children because you were being paid to. I thought I could deny the blood on my hands because I wouldn’t be the one to pull the trigger. But that was a lame justification. I’m not sure I could have gone through with it even if I still believed you were murderers, but after the way you treated me, how you protected me and never demanded anything, not even immediate answers, until you had me in a safe place. Those aren’t the actions of cold-blooded killers. At least not someone who could kill innocent people for money.”
I grinned. “I’ll take it, honey. Now. You OK?”
She nodded. “I think so. What do I do now? Crush didn’t turn on the phone here, did he? Because I don’t trust Mr. Black or anything he gives me. Just connecting to the network could be bad.”
“No. He took it somewhere else where he said he’d have more control over everything.”
“Good.” She whispered her response and ducked her head again. “Bear?” She didn’t look up.
“Yeah, baby.”
“I’m really sorry I intended to betray you.”
“You didn’t know me. Still don’t, but you know the important things.”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“But just so you know I’ll do my best to never keep anything from you or mislead you, when I was in the Middle East, my team was assigned to that same fuckin’ village near Tripoli. When we got there, we were given the order that the place was to be… liquidated. No one was to survive to be able to give an account of what happened.”