Page 28 of Mile High Heist

“Good. Now, let’s keep this clean. I don’t like mess.” He took another sip, his eyes unblinking above the rim. “You know exactly why I’m here. And you know what it means.”

“You want the bounty on my crew.”

“It is quite a sum,” he agreed. “Your death is worth more than your life. Rather poetic, no?”

My fists balled in my lap. “Let me guess. Dr. Z also wants the prototype.”

He nodded, smiling again. “He was outbid for it, and you know how that infuriates him. You were his best collectors, after all. He did not want for anything.”

Bile rose up my throat. I swallowed it down, burning with anger. “Then what are you waiting for? Why the fucking production?”

“As I said, Jax, what happens next is up to you. Dr. Z wants the prototype. He wants you to pay for what you did. But there is something else he wants even more.”

He lowered his glass with a soft ‘clink’. “I believe you know her.”

My heart stopped.

He couldn’t mean who I thought he meant. He couldn’t possibly be talking about Olivia.

The very idea of her being on Dr. Z’s radar made me murderous. My jaw clicked as I kept my fury from lashing out. I couldn’t stop the tremor that overtook me, my muscles itching to pummel him into the fucking carpet.

“Who?” I gritted out, playing dumb.

His eyes gleamed. He saw right through me. “The girl,” he said. At my stony expression, he added with malice: “You have no idea who she really is, do you?”

“Why would he want Olivia?”

“Ah. I can’t give away all the secrets. We’re just at the beginning. But if you don’t know who she is yet, you will soon.”

I considered forcing the answers out of him. I’d done it plenty of times in the past. But something in the way he moved, the way he held himself, made me reconsider.

He was too confident. He had the upper hand, even showing his cards. Which meant there was more at play.

He finished his drink and faced me fully. The fucking silver pin on his chest winked at me. I hated performative killers, and he was proving to be the worst one yet.

“Here is my proposition,” he said softly. “In just under six hours, we will be flying over the North Atlantic. There is a boat waiting for us on the border of Ireland. You will let me take the girl and the SKS. I won’t kill your crew. A fair trade.”

I barked a humorless laugh. There was nothing fair about it, and he knew it.

“Go fuck yourself,” I said, then nodded at the bartender when he topped up my drink again. The bartender didn’t linger, but the silence beside me was telling.

It was leverage.

“You said you don’t like mess,” I said after the bartender drifted out of ear shot. “You clearly don’t want witnesses. But if you touch us, we fight back. And it won’t be fucking clean.”

His jaw ticked.

I raised my glass in a sarcastic salute. “You need us to cooperate.”

“You overestimate your value.”

“You underestimate ours.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. Then he smiled again, and I imagined knocking out each one of those perfect teeth. “I am not concerned about witnesses.”

“Seems like you are.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “More bodies could be useful. You are familiar with my methods, yes?”