Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
It was official. I was traveling with my dad.
“I have a headache,” I muttered.
“And I have a hankering for local cuisine,” he said. “There’s a French Burger King over there. We have time for a drive-thru dinner.”
Lord almighty, give me strength.
It was mildly disturbing that we’d ordered the exact same thing at the French Burger King. A Whopper with fries and a vanilla shake. Or maybe the disturbing part was that we both dipped our fries in the shakes.
I liked French food, though. This was good.
I threw another fry into my mouth and kept quiet. ’Cause Ryan was calling Squeezy, and it turned out she was nonverbal around strangers. She had autism.
“Can you stop cursing at me, baby girl?” Ryan grated out. “I said I was sorry.”
“I’ll stop cursing you out when you stop calling me with textable information,” she griped.
She was feisty.
I’d learned from Gray that Squeezy—and her sister—had been adopted into the Quinn family, and they were much, much younger than the brothers.
“Did you read the update I sent in the chat?” Squeezy demanded. “I just posted it ten minutes ago.”
“I was on airport Wi-Fi,” Ryan replied. “I haven’t gotten my internet to work yet, so I can’t look now. We’re on our way to the address you sent.”
“Airport Wi-Fi?” Squeezy echoed in disbelief. “Do you know how easy it is to triangulate your—scratch that. I will use words you can understand, big brother. When you walk through an airport, anyone can set up a temporary cell tower to basically steal everything in your phone. Don’t do that!”
“Easy,” Ryan warned. He had limits, evidently. “I’m on a throwaway, and the server is encrypted. Give me some fucking credit.”
I smirked to myself. This was my brother Kaden and me. He worked in cybersecurity, and the best way to rile him up was to talk about a fictional operation online. He got so fucking heated.
Squeezy huffed and then went silent for a few seconds. I heard a baby screaming in the background, plus incessant clicking of keys. “We’ll have to make this quick,” she said. “I ran Rafael Delgado’s name through all the airlines I could get into, and when I narrowed down the search to Kenya, Myanmar, and various European countries, there was only one result. I’m double-checking everything now, but it looks like he has a permanent residence in Monaco. There’s something weird about the intel, though. I’ll get to the bottom of that before I post another update. In the meantime, prepare for the possibility that he’s not alone. I already talked to Darius, and he’s the one who suggested you gear up. The safehouse you’re going to belongs to an old friend of his. Figuratively old—I don’t know his actual age, just that he and Darius have been friends for a long time.”
Ryan couldn’t conceal his reaction to her monotonous rambling; it was a mix of affection and amusement. “Did Darius mention any specifics on the gear?”
“Um, no, just tactical stuff.”
Eh, that was enough. I took another bite of my burger and let my mind wander to the mission. I’d spent the last couple of days focusing so hard on my undercover identity that I had to catch up on some other homework. I didn’t know much about Monaco, aside from it being the location of the Monaco Grand Prix. That was when Uncle Angus had us over—at least Dad, me, and my brothers—for pizza and friendly bets. Then Dad returned the favor for the Indy 500.
Quit thinking about cars, moron.
Right. Focus. As soon as we’d picked up tactical gear, I was gonna practice my persona on Ryan. Ramirez was the group’s old-school intelligence genius, so he’d hooked me up with papers. But this wasn’t the pre-digital era, and he’d been out of the game a while, so I couldn’t move freely or anything. The passport and driver’s license would fool people, not airport technology. I wouldn’t be able to use the passport to leave the country, in other words.
“Was there anything else?” I heard Squeezy ask.
It sounded like she wasn’t a big fan of Ryan.
“Nope, all good for now. Talk soon—”
“And remember,” Squeezy said abruptly. “I’ll kill you if you get hurt.”
Never mind. She was a fan. A well-placed threat was a true declaration of love.
“I haven’t forgotten, baby girl,” Ryan chuckled.
So was this a thing? That PMCs tended to have their own safehouse—sometimes more than one—wasn’t news to me, but it was the second safehouse I’d entered in a few days that didn’t have a regular lock. Ryan had punched in a code.
I guessed it was practical if you had friends who needed to show up and raid the place on short notice.
Unlike Elliott and Tariq’s safehouse, this one didn’t look abandoned. If anything, it looked like a picturesque little vacation home, and it sat on a quiet street with similar houses of stone and painted concrete. Well-maintained front yards, solar-powered outdoor lights…