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“Are you saying you didn’t tell them about mysuspension?”
“No,but—”
“Oh,” Rebecca held up her hand. “I get it. You staffed it out, so technically it wasn’t you. Did I get itright?”
“No.I—”
“You sent them my file then, so you wouldn’t have to actuallytellthem anything.Convenient.”
“Rebecca.”
Her next remark was primed and ready to fire, but died on the tip of her tongue. At the sound of her name, spoken with such intimate warning, her heartbeat stuttered. The blood in her veins raced to catch up, creating a sensation similar to an adrenaline rush and made her skin prickle with sensual awareness. Dammit! She’d all but forgotten the effect he could have on her with that one word. Once and only once, he’d said her name with such intensity it felt like a physical caress. Right before he screwed herover.
“No,” she said with a firm shake of her head. “You don’t get to do this again.” She shouldered her purse and pushed her chair from the table, the metal legs scraping against the tile to create a hideoussound.
“Sit. Down,” Dax insisted, his hand wrapped tightly, but not crushingly, around herwrist.
Rebecca froze, caught between the urge to obey the command in his voice and indignation that he’d dared use that tone withher.
“Jesus!” Dax let her go, slumping back in his seat. With a growl, he shoved his hand into his front pocket, pulled out a twenty then tossed it on the table without even looking at the bill the waitress had left behind. “This is why you didn’t get the job, not because ofme.”
“Why, because I refuse to bebullied?”
“No. Because you jump to too many damn conclusions!” Dax said through gritted teeth. He slid to the end of the booth that bracketed the other side of their table, but Rebecca stepped in front ofhim.
“Tell me why you’re here then,” she ordered, towering over him and blocking his retreat. “Which conclusion do I havewrong?”
Rebecca waited, seething as his brow rose in a mocking arch. “Who’s being the bully now?” heasked.
Somewhere behind her she heard a snicker and turned to see a man, roughly in his fifties, sitting in another booth, a sheepish smile on his reddened face. “Sorry,” the man said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “But he does have youthere.”
“Go to hell,” she said to Dax with a bitter grimace then turned on her heel towards the door. She didn’t need this. She didn’t needhim.She needed to find another way to get access to the government databases to find out where the local traffickers were moving their victims. There were other ways, non-legal ways, to get into those files. All she needed was to find a hacker good enough for the job, and the money to paythem.
“Collins was killed last night.” As if the words had been tentacles, she fought for balance when they reached out and yanked her to a halt. Dax was staring into his coffee when she finally turned around. He raised his head, his eyes met hers, and she knew she was in trouble. An ominous sense of dread settled in the pit of her stomach as she sank back into herseat.
Senator Collins, former head of the Foreign Intelligence Committee had been Kafeel Jauhar’s U.S. trafficking liaison. He’d been picked up in Navi, India by Keller’s team when they conducted the raid on Jauhar’s club. She’d watched in horror on the surveillance feed Grant’s hacker friend, Diver, had managed to access as Collins participated in Thalia’s capture and torture. Rebecca was set to testify against him once the Feds finished theirinvestigation.
Collins’s arrest also led to a search of his home, where a secret room was found with several child slaves hidden inside. The Senator’s tastes ran toward little boys in particular. Rebecca would never forget the images she’d seen of the small, redheaded boy they’d found, his knees capped with scar tissue from the constant scabbing caused by the wire floor of the cage he’d been keptin.
Collins was dead. Good. She hoped there was a special place in hell waiting for his kind, and wished him god speed getting there, but there was obviously a more pertinent reason Keller had come all the way to Boston to tell her about him in person. Whatever he was about to say, she wasn’t going to likehearing.
“It was a hit,” Dax whispered. “An inside job. A single stab to the neck with a handmade knife,” he clarified when he saw the question in hereyes.
Rebecca shook her head. “What makes you think it was a hit? Child molesters get shanked in prison all thetime.”
“No,” Dax argued. “He’d been in solitary, maximum security for that veryreason.”
“What reason?” Rebecca asked. “Life in prison or dead? Trust me,” she scoffed. “Society is better off without him. Saved the taxpayers a lot ofmoney.”
“He’d cut a deal with the federal prosecutor,” Dax said indisgust.
“What?”Who in their right mind would offer that sick, twisted demon anything but a slowdeath?
“I know.” Dax shook his head. “Makes me sick too, but that’s why they put him and Hector Morganti under such tight lock and key. They weren’t taking any chances with the locals. The Feds needed both their testimonies to nail the others in the trafficking ring. There are some powerful people on the indictment list. Almost all of them have any number of dangerousconnections.”
Just the mention of Hector Morganti’s name sent a chill up Rebecca’s spine. “They killed Morganti,too?”
Dax nodded. The mention of dangerous connections stirred another ominous question she was almost too afraid to ask. “You don’t think Grant…?” Her words trailed off. She didn’t want to give voice to the thought that Grant Kendal had somehow found a way to take out Collins, as he had every other member of Jauhar’s network that was involved in Thalia’s abduction. Dangerous didn’t even come close to describing what she’d seen in the former assassin that night in Navi. Vengeance was definitely his for the taking, and take hehad.
