A Harmless Little Ruse (Harmless #2)(52)

Her gasp breaks my heart.

Bzzz.

That’s Silas’s phone. He takes a look, his face hardening. Cold eyes meet mine.

“She needs to get home. Now.”

“Please, Drew. What does this mean? What are they doing? My darknet person on the Island helped me to have outside access. To know what the outside world said about me. They didn’t -- ”

I ignore her words, but walk past Silas and put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

“We need to know who it is,” I snap.

Silas gives me a look. “No shit.” He pauses. “Sir,” he adds, his voice bitter.

I turn to Lindsay. “We need to know who it is.”

Her face goes slack. “I don’t know who my informant was.”

I hold my breath. Pretty sure she’s doing the same.

This is a standoff.

I break it. I have to believe her.

I kiss Lindsay’s temple. God, she still smells like us, like me, a faint whiff of my own musk in her hair. “Silas will take you home. Mark’s there. He’s right. I’m a liability to you right now. If they’re after me, too, then being with you ups the danger for you.”

Years of living with other people telling her what to do for purposes bigger than herself makes Lindsay remarkably accepting. “Fine,” she says, resigned. Her ankle rubs against mine.

Heat rises through me from toes to crown.

At least I can track her electronically.

That’s the only reason I’m willing to let her go.

We’re brief. A quick kiss, an I love you, and the last thing I see is Lindsay’s back, Silas’s hand on her elbow, and then Jane’s front door shuts quickly.

I escape out the patio door. The scent of snickerdoodles fills the air as I creep past one of the apartments and find my way home.





Chapter 19





The sound of a law enforcement or military team coming to your house for a raid has a distinct racket. Years of training has honed my hearing, my ability to catch a raid seconds before it actually happens one of the soft skills that set me apart during my combat tours.

Unfortunately, that skill doesn’t translate when it comes to being the target of a raid.

And that’s exactly what I am right now, as uniformed officers carrying assault rifles kick in my front and back doors and swarm my apartment.

Cacophony never seems chaotic in the moment. It rolls out in nanoseconds, achingly slow, blurred lines and confusion on a parallel timeline with the rest of the world.

The crack of the door shooting inward, then another, are close enough to gunshots to make me jump out of bed, completely naked, with my gun in my hand already. Safety off.

Shoot to kill.

Then black cloth and metal glints, sunlight and skin, flesh and angry, cold eyes. My name, barked in serial by a bunch of men and women who not only don’t know me, but don’t give a shit about anything other than my compliance. They are here to subdue me, to take me away, to check off a box that says the good guys won and the bad guy is in his place.

I don’t know what I’ve done.

They won’t tell me.

The gun in my hand, though, changes their calculus.

In the movies, action heroes like Jason Bourne can outsmart a flock of highly trained Special Ops soldiers and take down a crowd of ten.

My limit is six.

And whatever branch of law enforcement has crashed my apartment brought what feels like two hundred elephants, all standing on tiptoes on my kidneys.

In other words, my shoulder’s just been wrenched out of the socket by someone zip-tying my wrists together. I see lightning bolts across my vision as the pain sears me.

My rights are barked out to me in a clipped, loud voice, and then I’m hauled on my feet, my gun long gone, my naked body arched forward, vision blurring.

Someone shoves my legs into a pair of orange prison scrub pants, and then I’m perp-walked out my own front door into the back of a van.

Ever shake a bead in a Pringles can?

Yeah. I’m the bead and the van is that can for the twenty-minute drive to the local police station. By the time we arrive, I’m as bruised as an apple being used as a soccer ball.

And through it all, the only thought I have is this: No f*cking way will they win.

It takes Mark less than half an hour to arrive, flashing government credentials that don’t mean shit when the people in charge of arresting me don’t seem to care about jurisdiction, policy, or the basics of the law itself.

A television blathers on in the corner of the ceiling, the volume too low to hear the newscaster’s words, but the closed captioning big and bold.

I’m the star of the show right now, the clip of my arrest being shown over and over, half naked, wearing orange scrub bottoms.

“Submit that video to America’s Funniest. You could win the grand prize.”

I snort. A bubble of blood shoots out my left nostril.

The news cuts in with a report that Lindsay Bosworth, presidential candidate Senator Harwell “Harry” Bosworth’s daughter, will leave today for a humanitarian mission working with Fair Trade coffee growers in Guatemala.



“Sources confirm that Lindsay Bosworth has decided to engage in the Fair Trade coffee project to work on assisting with literacy issues, teaching at the elementary school level. Ms. Bosworth earned a bachelor’s degree in education and is fluent in Spanish, according to Bosworth campaign spokesman Marshall Josephs, and -- ”