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“There were at least seven officers found dead in the building you blew up!”
“They were alive when I left the building,” I argued. “It was all Duke. I swear, I brought tranq guns.”
Duke was suspiciously quiet behind me and Rae was doing her best not to grin. They had no idea just how much was at stake here. It wasn’t just about food. It was about my sanity.
“You’re supposed to be down there gathering intel.”
“On that front, I have something to share,” Rae finally said. “Fox was able to download a flash drive from Michael’s computer. With any luck, it’ll give us more to go on.”
“You’d better hope it has fucking military secrets on it,” Cash shouted. “You blew up a fucking building!”
“Yeah, we’re sorry,” Rae said, trying to sound remorseful.
“No, you’re not. You’re only sorry you weren’t able to get home and concoct a story to tell me before I found out.”
“Okay, that’s true, but we really didn’t intend to blow up the building. It just sort of happened. Oh, and boss, don’t be too hard on Fox. He really did try to be good.”
“Try? I was a fucking saint! I brought tranquilizers with me. I didn’t shoot a single person with a real gun. I even took the elevator shaft as an escape route over the safer option of killing everyone in the stairwell and walking over them! If you want to blame anyone, blame Duke! He shot seven men, boss.”
Cash snorted in amusement. “Fox, you kill me sometimes.”
“I’m serious!”
He closed out of the screen and I spun on Rae, jabbing a finger in her direction. “If shawarma gets taken away from me, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”
“We’ll have a dance off,” she said solemnly.
“You bet your ass we will. And you won’t win because I’m gonna make you look like a fool. I have better moves than all of you. I’ll dance on your grave when I’m done! You will rue the day you messed with me.”
27
DUKE
After an hour of waiting for any news from Rae, I couldn’t stay away any longer. I knew she said it would take time to sort through all the information on the flash drive, but I was never very good at being patient.
I grabbed a drink and headed into the living room where she was working. She was so lost in thought that she didn’t hear me come in. I took a moment to study her. Her body was tense instead of calm and the lines on her face were pulled tight as she studied the screen. Whatever she was looking at had her worried.
“Rae?”
She flinched slightly, then turned to me with an intense look on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Uh…I found something.”
“Already?”
She gave a stiff nod. I sat down beside her, waiting for her to tell me what was wrong. She didn’t look like herself right now. Her normally cool demeanor was now replaced with a nervous energy that had me dreading whatever it was she was about to tell me.
“Xavier Roth…I found his name in connection to Draven Wixx.”
“Okay,” I said hesitantly. “Who is Xavier?”
“He’s in child trafficking.”
My heart started thundering in my chest as I let that sink in. I took a minute to absorb that, trying not to jump to the worst conclusions.
“It’s not what you think. At least, if I’m right, he wasn’t trafficked.”
