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Orion waves him off. “I’m suspicious by nature. I’m too old to change my ways now. But why did they tell you she worked for them if she doesn’t?”
“Because if she wasn’t employed by them, she was just a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that meant a lot of questions about what makes her special when thousands of women are trafficked through the cartel every week.”
He nods, conceding my point, so I continue, “Zig and I volunteered to go, and Cooper tried to talk us into letting him go instead, but we refused. At the time, we didn’t think anything of it, but now…” I sigh, shaking my head.
“I still need the info on what happened with Cooper.” Luna frowns, and she’s not alone. I haven’t had time to give everyone the full rundown yet. They just know he betrayed us and is now dead.
“To explain what and why he did what he did, you need to hear the rest first.”
She waves for me to continue.
“We accepted the job. But since it could have turned into a political nightmare, we had no choice but to do it the hard way. We filed a bogus flight plan and went in. It was dead. And when I say dead, I mean we didn’t meet a single person on the way in. And not only that, but every person in the cells with Salem was dead.” I look at Salem and see her shiver before she looks up at me and takes over.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-FOUR
Salem
“Islept through it. What kind of person sleeps through that sort of thing?” I ask, more to myself. It’s something I’ve questioned multiple times.
“A skilled assassin would have made no noise, and they know how to eliminate someone in the same way,” Jagger offers.
“I guess. But it just doesn’t make sense. Whatever they thought about my worth might be why they left me alive, but to kill all the others who were no threat to them just feels off.”
“I agree. Oz and I thought the same thing when we found her. We thought she was dead, too. But then Salem looked up at us,” Zig comments. He hadn’t spoken much since we got off the plane. I don’t know if he’s always like this or if he’s just trying to readjust to being back. Whatever his reason, his silence is comforting. It makes me feel like I don’t have to act a certain way. I can just be quiet when I need to be, and they won’t push me.
“It was like someone had cleared the way for us to get her,” Oz tells them.
There’s silence for a moment as they take that in, then Crew leans forward. “They had someone on the inside?”
“That’s our guess. We didn’t encounter anyone else until we were near the perimeter of the compound. The guards were switching with each other, and one of them spotted us. Still, we took them out and were running back to the plane within minutes.”
“Anyone follow you?” Hendrix questions.
“No. Not a single person. And when we reached the plane, I knew why. We hid Salem and searched the area, and we found men waiting for us. We eliminated them before boarding.”
“How the fuck did the cartel know where to find the plane if they didn’t follow you?” Halo curses quietly, trying not to wake up Ruby.
“Not all the men there were cartel members. At least one was a Fed.”
This time, they all curse. I watch them, each with a grim face, as they quiet down.
“But why? I don’t get it. If they wanted you to retrieve Salem and you had her, why would they attempt to stop you from bringing her home?” Orion’s brows furrow in confusion.
“They wanted Salem, but they wanted the world to think she was dead,” Zig tells them.
“Cooper rigged the plane to crash on their orders. Only Zig and I were supposed to be on it when it went down, though. We were nothing more than collateral damage.”
Luna growls, almost making me laugh. Seems their little sister is as protective of them as they are of her. “Why the fuck would Cooper do that? He loved you guys.”
“He loved his wife more,” Zig tells them, his voice even and cold.
“Kay is sick. Really sick. Cooper made a deal with them so that he could get her better,” Oz adds.
“He had to know that was bullshit. If the government were willing to eliminate two men and steal a woman for whatever reason, then Cooper would have been next on their list. Knowing she existed when they were trying to fake her death would have been a loose end they couldn’t afford to leave hanging,” Orion states.
"Yeah, but Cooper was desperate and failed to put all the pieces together," Oz tells him.
"Or maybe he did and didn’t care what happened to him as long as his wife lived. Though how he was so willing to let her deal with the grief of losing him when he was too weak to deal with his own grief is mind-blowing," Greg says, shaking his head.
