Master No (Masters and Mercenaries, #9)(123)

“What are you doing? We don’t have time to loot.”

She dumped the contents of the wallet on the grass, picking up a single key with a sigh. “We have time to loot this. This is everything Lei had on McDonald. His spirit animal might have been a castrated howler monkey, but the man knew how to dig up dirt. You taught me to keep a burn file. Lei had one, too. This is a key to a safe deposit box in a bank in London. I thought you might like to take a look. I think you’ll find everything you need to burn that f*cker Karriker and get your old job back.”

He was so happy he’d hired her. “You are a goddess, but I’m not going back to the Agency. I have a new job.”

“I’m also unemployed and will be needing a reference.”

“Shit,” a dark voice said. “Charlie’s going to freak out if I put you on the payroll. I tried to explain to her that I slept with your twin sister, not you. I don’t think she cares.” Big Tag stepped into the clearing, Case, Erin, and Hutch at his back, and none looking worse for the wear. “Any chance you’ll settle for the London office, Kun?”

“No way. I want American food and I want to be on the same continent as my dads. And the name’s Summers. Kayla Summers.” She gave Tag a smirk. “Got my text, huh, big guy? Do you have any idea how hard it was to find your phone number?”

Tag nodded. “I did indeed get your text and I salute your superior skills. I let Hutch explode the mine they left for us.”

“It was cool,” Hutch said with a grin. “I’m used to blowing things up in a virtual fashion. There’s something to be said for real life explosives.”

“Summers, how close is the plane to the compound?” He needed to start thinking about how to get Faith out of that house without her father putting a bullet in her or using her as a shield.

“We used a commercial airstrip, but we’re supposed to swing by and pick up the two men we left behind. They set up the mine and we’re supposed to meet at 1600 hours, which is very soon,” Summers explained. “I can drive us in. If you look in the back, there’s a nice weapons stash, including some C-4 and grenades if we need them. The person sitting next to me has to wear one of these jackets though. The girl could manage it. She’s small enough to be one of our guys.”

Erin started pulling a jacket off one of the dead men. “Hey, if it gets me close to McDonald, I’d wear a chicken suit.”

Ten looked over at Tag, glad to not be alone. “Thanks for coming back for me.”

“Always. And Case is keeping an eye on Erin. He won’t let her do anything dangerous.”

“Who’s keeping an eye on Case?” Ten asked.

Tag shook his head. “Case is a good kid. He knows what his brother would want and that’s for Erin to be safe. If she wasn’t here, I might worry.”

Ten looked back and Case was watching over Erin with a grim resolve.

“I’ve got Sean, Brody, and the Russian moving ahead on foot to the compound. They’ll relay anything they see. This is your girl and your op. So do we move?”

Ten picked one of the assault rifles left by the fallen MSS agents and recovered his SIG from Lei. “We move.”

One way or another, he was getting his girl back.





Faith looked around the building she’d been sure was a storage facility for gardening equipment and wondered exactly how stupid she could possibly be. It was some kind of hospital/torture chamber, and she had to wonder what had been going on down here and for how long.

She shivered as she looked over and saw the blood-stained sheets poking out of the trash receptacle.

“Your sister does like to play,” her father said as he entered the room.

She could barely look at him. When she was a kid, he’d been larger than life. He’d been that man who would come home from long times away, bringing her toys and candy. He’d left her and Hope with nannies and then placed them in boarding schools. Later in life, he’d been the man who wrote the checks and called her when he needed her to show up for some event.

She’d been a prop to him. She’d loved him in a distant way.

“How long has she been experimenting on the locals?” It made Faith want to puke.

Her dad crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. “I don’t ask her about her experiments very often. For a while, I suppose. The nanny found her cutting up animals at the age of nine. She was a curious child. So very interested in the way things worked.”

“She’s psychotic.”

“She’s a visionary,” her father insisted. “Do you even understand what she’s managed to do?”

At least she could find out how far Hope’s experiments had gone. “Time dilation. She’s experimenting with screwing around with people’s perception of time.”

“She’s not experimenting. She’s making it happen. Imagine how it will reform prison systems. We won’t have overcrowding problems anymore. And pesky things like human rights won’t matter because the actual punishment is virtual. You can really teach a man a lesson he’ll never forget and not truly harm an inch of his skin. Your sister made it possible for your little boyfriend to keep his cock on his body. Well, until the Chinese cut it off. I’ve been told they have plans to bronze it and put it on the head of MSS’s desk.”