Dead Drop (The Guild #2)(22)

“Do we have a destination, ma’am?” my pilot, Rene, asked with a blank expression. He was the definition of discretion and was paid handsomely by Carlos to fly the plane and never speak about his work. I’d known him for three years, but now I was side-eyeing everyone. Shit. Would Rene sell me out, given the right incentive?

I had to hope the answer to that was no.

Did I have any other options? Of course I did. But none of them would play out well. Hell, this probably wouldn’t play out well, either, but it seemed like the best I might get.

“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “Paris.”

Carlos had a safe house that I’d used before in the Latin Quarter. He wouldn’t mind me staying there for a few days, and I could probably pick the locks if he’d moved the key.

“Understood, ma’am,” Rene responded, then disappeared back into the cockpit to leave me alone.

I looked back down at my phone, waking the screen up with a swipe of my thumb.

“Now or never, DeLuna,” I muttered. “Don’t be a fucking coward.”

Clenching my jaw tight against the rising anxiety, I tapped the call button on my last resort. The line rang enough times that I almost hung up. Then it connected, and a ripple of guilt ran through me.

“Hey,” I said on a heavy exhale, “Mo… it’s me. Danny.”

She inhaled sharply, then the line went dead.

“What?” I frowned at my screen. Oh, lovely. She’d hung up on me. Not totally unexpected, I supposed. “Well… that could have gone better.”

With a defeated groan, I sat back in my seat and clipped my safety belt. We were already taxiing and would be in the air in no time. But now I was second-guessing my choice of Paris.

“Dammit,” I grunted. Leaning over to the wall, I pressed the intercom button that would connect me to Rene. “I changed my mind. Take me to Seattle.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rene replied, not even hesitating a moment. He was great like that. Fuck the paperwork on flight plans, we paid people to handle that crap.

My phone sat there on my lap as we took off, mocking me with its blank screen. For the first time in my entire life, I felt lost. The Guild had raised me; it was the only figure of authority I’d ever known. They weren’t simply my employers, they were my family. And now they wanted me dead.

Why?

What had I done to make a member of the Circle turn on me, after all my years of loyalty? My birth mother had surrendered me to the church only hours after birth, and the Guild orphanage had taken me in. I’d been given my first contract when I was eight. For twenty years, I had done everything the Guild ever asked of me, never questioning my loyalty to the mercenary way of life.

Now I had no one to trust, nowhere to go, and no solid plan for how I could get my life back to normal.

I was so screwed.

It was that gut-twisting sense of regret for all my life’s choices that weighed me down as I reclined my seat to sleep. Suddenly, everything I thought I knew, everything I lived for… it was gone. I was alone.

My phone vibrating in my lap woke me up sometime later, ripping me from my anxiety-fueled dreams about being chased down by faceless, cloaked killers.

“Hello?” I croaked, my eyes too blurry to read the name and desperately hoping it was Carlos calling me back.

“You’ve got a whole lot of fucking nerve calling me, Danny DeLuna,” Mo hissed down the phone, instantly wiping the sleep fog from my head.

My mouth was as dry as a desert, but I swallowed hard and breathed a small sigh. “I know,” I replied. “Trust me, Mo. I’m well aware. But… I need your help.”

Fuck. Admitting that out loud was like falling on my own blade. I could only cross my fingers and hope that this was the right move. Kai had a Guild necklace in his bedroom for a reason. I’d been contracted to kill him for a reason. I couldn’t help but think that they were more tangled up in the mercenary world than they’d let on.

Of course, getting Mo to help was going to be the first hurdle.

“I would rather help myself to a battery acid enema than help a lying, sneaky, traitorous fraud like you,” she spat down the line.

Good. We were off to a good start.





10





Mo was furious at me and made sure I knew all about it. About how I’d betrayed her trust, how she’d genuinely thought we were friends, and how she had no idea who I even was now. But she never once mentioned Kai. That had to be a bad thing, right? Surely if he had felt anything for me, she’d have mentioned how I broke her little brother’s heart. Wouldn’t she?

Shit, maybe that was a good thing. Fuck, what was I saying, it was definitely a good thing. The last thing I needed was Kai and Leon entering into some sort of dick-measuring competition. Actually, now that I thought about it—

“Danny!” Mo barked in my ear, making me jolt. “Are you even listening to me?”

Nope, I was daydreaming about two of the most impressive dicks I’d ever encountered—and I had plenty of reference points—and wondering which would actually be bigger. It was too hard to guess; I’d have to compare in person.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Mo demanded.

I was the first one to admit I was somewhat out of touch with social etiquette when it came to girlfriends. Jude and Sabine had known me so long they just rolled with my rudeness. But I was fairly sure she didn’t want me talking about the jaw-aching size of her brother’s cock.