Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(132)

But why had she waited so long to turn him in? She could have delivered him at any point in the last few days. He’d been utterly off his guard. His head between her legs, his brain melted down.

Maybe she was going for a bigger prize. After all, Daddy Novak would pay big money for Tamara. And he’d enjoy cutting the McClouds into bloody pieces, too, for what they’d done to his son.

With his usual legendary bad judgment, Nick had exposed and endangered every last friend he had. “Get dressed, babe,” he said.

She looked like she was going to be sick. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” he told her honestly. “Anywhere. I don’t give a f*ck. I’d rather be a moving target. And I think better when I’m moving.”

She plugged her cell phone charger into the wall, attached the phone, stumbled into the bathroom. The shower began to hiss.

Nick sat down heavily on the bed, and stared at her purse. He wasn’t sure where the impulse came from, to unsnap the clasp and look through it. Self-torture, maybe. Punishment for his own stupidity.

The envelope in the inside pocket made his jaw twitch. It was a European envelope, the dimensions different from American stationery. The paper was thinner, shinier, yellower. The flaps folded differently. It was unsealed, and barely big enough to contain the wad of cash it held.

He flipped through it. Fifteen thousand, in crisp new hundreds. The bills stuck to the cold sweat on his clammy hands.

He shoved them back into the envelope, stuck it into the purse, and looked again, more carefully. Found a slit in the lining of her purse. He groped in, pulled out a GPS locating device. A commercial brand. Not professional level, but it did the job. The shower shut off. He shoved the locater back into the lining, tossed the purse where it had been.

So, then. That solved that mystery. She’d gone to Gavin Street to make her report, pick up cash for miscellaneous expenses, obtain a monitoring device. Maybe she’d been ordered to plant it on him.

Which meant he couldn’t lose it without her copping to him.

He groaned, dropped his face into his hands. His head throbbed. Complicated, hell. Complicated didn’t even begin to describe it.

She burst out of the bathroom, damp and naked and beautiful in a billowing cloud of back-lit steam. “Did my phone ring?”

He shook his head, watched her dress with frantic speed. Her hands shook. She kept dropping things. Shirt on inside out. Tripping when she put her legs into her pants. When she got to the laces of her shoes, he couldn’t bear to watch it anymore, act or no act.

He kneeled and pulled the laces of her sneakers tight, tied them for her. Mr. Solicitous. She reached out to touch his face with her fingertips, a butterfly caress. Her eyes were glowing with tears.

Whoo-hah. Brace yourself for the tender moment, chump. Jesus. He had his limits. He flinched away. “You ready to go?” he asked.

She grabbed her purse, checked her cell phone, tossed the charger into it and the phone into the outside pocket. “Ready,” she said.

His mind spun in circles as they got into the truck, considering all his options. All of them ugly. He could ask Tam for some girl assassin trick, something like a nerve gas capsule he could tape to the roof of his mouth. Crush it with his teeth and spit death into Zhoglo’s face while the prick was gloating over his broken body. That would be satisfying, for the brief seconds he would have to enjoy it before his own lung tissue melted. Tam always had a stash of wicked shit like that on hand for her wearable weaponry biz, but her studio was pretty far away.

He’d improvise with what she had on hand. Assuming she was in town, and that she would speak to him. She just might be willing to provide him with the means of his own death, she was that pissed at him. That would be better than asking for help, organizing an ambush. He didn’t want to put his friends into more danger than they were in already. They were family men, all in some stage of procreation. Except for Sean, who was on a plane to Italy with his bride for his honeymoon.

The other happy bonus that the Lone Ranger suicide plan had to offer was that he would no longer have to wonder what the f*ck to do with his own inconvenient self for the rest of his useless life.

His life for Zhoglo’s. A fair trade. Hell, it would be a blessed relief.

He just had to figure out what to do with Becca first. He had to plan for this, to prepare, and he couldn’t let her witness it. Nor could he take his eyes off her at this point. And he couldn’t bring her with him on a suicide mission. The chances of her getting killed were too great, even if she was on Zhoglo’s team. It was her job to keep him under control. If she failed to do that, she was dead meat.

He didn’t want that to happen. Whether she deserved it or not.

Besides. There was always the possibility that he was wrong. He’d been wrong before. He would never again trust his own reading of events the way he had before the Novak disaster. But he didn’t dare examine that possibility too closely. His judgment was whacked already. There was a crushing load of evidence massed against her. Fifteen K in a European envelope, for f*ck’s sake. What more did he need?

Weird, that she’d given him Mathes and Evans, though. That wasn’t in Zhoglo’s best interests. Maybe she figured they were harmless bits of meat to throw to the panting, whining dog under the table. After all, Diana Evans was already dead.

What the f*ck. He didn’t care. Lying, two-faced whore or not, Becca was in deep. He would protect her if he could, from Zhoglo, from herself. Let the lawyers and judges thrash it out afterwards. He wasn’t going to have to watch.