“I’m going to kill her again,” Kyle said, a hard look in his eyes.
“You’re not getting anywhere near her tonight.” He couldn’t trust Kyle to watch his back. The man was too emotional. Besides, he had other plans.
“She has MaeBe. I’m not leaving her there,” Kyle insisted. “Have you heard anything I’ve said? She’ll hurt MaeBe.”
“Yes, and likely take her time doing it. She’ll want you there,” Deke explained. “She’ll want you to watch.”
“Or she’ll throw her body on my doorstep. Or put her head in a box and ship it to me like a present,” Kyle countered.
Drake stood, folding his laptop closed. “She’s been playing this slow for a while now. You told me you’ve had trouble lately. Your whole family. Julia’s probably behind most of it. She never does something quickly when she can do it slow. She’ll want you to trade your life for MaeBe’s.”
“And then she’ll kill her in front of me,” Kyle spat. “Then she’ll go after my brothers and sister and my mom and stepdad. Hell, she’ll go after my friends. She won’t stop until I understand she’s taken everything from me. I have to kill her, and this time I’ll make damn sure I see her body. I’ll cremate her myself and keep her in a jar in my office so I never take my eyes off her again.”
Deke’s phone buzzed but when he looked down it wasn’t a familiar number.
He’d been right. It was go time.
“Everyone keep quiet.” He slid his finger across the screen. “This is Deke.”
“Hello, Deke. I suppose you’d like to know what happened to your sub. She’s with me.” Nolan Byrne’s voice was silky across the line. He obviously felt like he was totally in control. “Tell me. Have you already called the police in?”
“Of course not, and you know why I won’t,” Deke replied. “Your girl killed someone here tonight, and we have to protect his reputation. His family could be harmed if we call the police in, but I suspect you knew how we would react. That’s precisely why she killed him here. Did Maddie see it happen?”
“None of that matters.” Byrne was quiet for a moment and then his voice wasn’t so silky. There was a fine edge of tension that caught Deke’s interest. “I need Madeline to do a job for me. Once she’s done, you can have her back. I need you to come to my house, but you have to come alone. If I get even a whiff that you’ve involved the authorities, I’ll have to make sure no one can find her. Am I clear?”
He hadn’t known about what his girlfriend was going to do. If he had, he would have explained the whole thing like the monologuing villain he was. Byrne liked to listen to himself talk, and the fact that he wasn’t meant he’d been left out. He hadn’t known she was planning an assassination. “Yes. I’ll be there. I just want Maddie to be okay.”
Byrne had no idea who he was. He didn’t know about the team around him.
The woman who called herself Jane was leaving Byrne to be slaughtered.
“Be here in two hours. Not a moment sooner.” The line went dead.
Deke turned to what was left of his team. “He wants me to pick her up in two hours, so that’s how long he thinks the job will take. I’m supposed to go alone. He’s going to have her do the work he can’t and then he’ll set me as the jealous boyfriend who killed her because she was cheating. Or Jane will simply kill us all and walk out with everything she wants.”
“Including MaeBe.” Kyle’s tone had gone stark. “She’ll take MaeBe with her and make her hurt until she’s ready to bring me in. She won’t stop until she’s hurt everyone I love.”
“Then we take her out first or find another solution.” Deke felt ice start to flow in his veins because he was going to be ruthless when it came to getting Maddie back. “They gave us two hours. I think we can cause some chaos in two hours.”
Kayla nodded. “Yeah, I think we can.”
“I wonder who gets all that Byrne stock and all the tech intellectual property if Byrne dies,” Deke mused.
“I assure you, Julia will make certain her group gets it all,” Kyle explained. “They’ve likely maneuvered the situation to the point that they own some of the board members and a whole lot of stock. If Byrne dies and there’s no police involvement, Julia’s group could very quickly move to consolidate power. Perhaps they’ll even make the timeline for the launch.”
Drake sighed. “That’s why she’s moving now. She wants Byrne out of the way before the launch.”
“Then we make sure the launch doesn’t happen.” A plan began to form in Deke’s head, but he needed to talk to Ian before he started making things go boom. Deke pulled out his cell and made the call.
* * * *
Nolan Byrne hung up his phone and turned to the backstabbing bitch who’d lied to him. He shouldn’t have found out that information from one of their victims. “You killed someone at The Reef?”
Jane shrugged. “He was a loose end, and that was pretty much the only way I was going to get close to him without causing a scene. I had to kill him in the club otherwise the police would get involved, and none of us wants that. Since he died in the club in a very embarrassing position, I assume Mrs. Hunt is currently cleaning up the mess.”
“Why the fuck did you need to kill a doctor?” He’d known Jane’s work could get bloody, but he’d thought he had her under control.
She looked cool and competent. By the time he’d made it back to his place, she’d already changed into black pants and a black jacket, her hair in a neat bun on her head. She’d secured the prisoners—that had been a surprise, too, since their plans had only included kidnapping Madeline. He’d been informed that the plan had changed and that Jane had brought along an extra. Of course by the time he’d gotten here, Jane had also given the guards their instructions. When he’d demanded information from one of them, he’d been told to ask Jane.
She’d been the one to bring in the six burly and dangerous-looking men she’d assured him would be discreet and take care of any situation that might arise.
Now he was starting to wonder who they would be loyal to. Him or Jane.
“I have my reasons,” she replied. “Is Madeline hard at work?”
Madeline was in his private office on his system. She had two hours to fully integrate the weapon with her AI. If she didn’t get it done by then, he would use her boyfriend against her. He would cut Deke Murphy’s fingers off one by one every fifteen minutes until she gave him a solution or he had to move on to the man’s toes. “She’s getting it done. Now explain why we have the extra body I’m going to have to deal with.”
“MaeBe Vaughn?” Jane leaned against the sofa looking as casual as a person talking about the weather instead of kidnapping and murder.
“Yes. Why the hell would you bring her with you? Did she see something she shouldn’t?” The plan had been to distract Kayla Summers-Hunt with a problem in the locker room and then sneak Madeline out the back. When Deke went to find her, Nolan would slip away.