Sake Bomb (10 page)

“When’d you get in?”

“Earlier.” Blunt and even. Not a hint of
warmth in it. Good. This trip would
not
be anything like the
last one…two. There would be no fraternizing with the enemy—damn
you, warm fuzzies—and Xander was the enemy. Temporary teammate.
Means to an end. That was it.

She settled her tablet in its space in the
bag, put the binocs back into the soft black case. Snatched the
Beretta off the table; checked the chamber was clear and the safety
set.

“You think I slept with her.” A
statement.

“Not my business if you did.”

“And if I didn’t?”

She looked up at him then. He was struggling
on the edge—eyes sharp, chest rising and falling evenly. So very
close to having his carefully wound control snap.

Kizzie smirked. “Whatever you do or don’t do
with your submissive…my bad, I mean,”—a glance at his hand, the
gold band absent—“
wife,
is really not my concern. Just here
to do a job, slick.”

Xander’s fingers curled into a fist.

“And so we’re clear,” Kizzie added, “I don’t
mean—” She stuck her tongue in and out of her left cheek, made a
loose fist with her right hand and pantomimed a blowjob; ended the
show with a crass little slurp on the head of the imaginary
cock.

Xander’s jaw went tight. “She’s…” He inhaled
a slow breath. “It’s….” Both attempts at starting that sentence
failed, and with wonder clear in his voice he asked the air, “Why
am I even explaining myself?”

The duffle thudded onto the floor. “Don’t
know. But I make a living getting people to talk—well, when I don’t
need ‘em to shut up, that is.” Kizzie plopped onto the bed and the
springs sang. Stretched out on her back, she crossed her bare feet
at the ankles. “Want to spill your guts, or have ‘em spilled for
you, I’m your girl.”

Xander pushed to his feet, lifted his coat
with a level of calm that bordered inhuman. He stared down at her
from the foot of the bed. Had she not seen that deceptive composure
directed elsewhere, she wouldn’t have known it for the anger it
was.

Screw his anger. Kizzie wouldn’t be an
accomplice to adultery. She stared right back until he shut the
door with a resounding click.

Kizzie flipped off the bedside light, hoping
for sleep to emerge from the darkness. Turned on her side and beat
the pillow with a fist. Waited a handful of minutes before she was
on her back again, studying the ceiling. Perfect. Now she wasn’t
tired.

The lights went on.

Hands in her hair, she worked the pins out
and lifted the wig off her head. The stocking cap followed, and she
fingered the long, brown and honey-colored tresses. Her gaze
traveled to the belt beside her, the memory of having her arms
bound by leather rushing to the fore. Heat suffused her body and
she growled at the intrusion.

Pushing both recollection and accessory
aside, she closed her eyes and muttered to the only person in the
room, “You’ll never be his damn sub.”

But the only person in the room didn’t quite
believe her.

* * * *

“
T
he hell are you
doing?” The door snicked closed, softly underscoring the
thinly-veiled violence in Xander’s tone.

Phil sat at the table on the other side of
the room, rubbing a cloth over an extracted barrel. Two handguns
and the field-stripped frame and components of a third rested on a
towel spread over the tabletop. Tiny bottles and brushes were
within arm’s reach, a box of ammo a little farther away. He didn’t
bother looking up to respond. “Same thing you’ve been doing the
last few hours… Cleaning my gun.”

Xander’s nostrils flared. The sonuvabitch
thought this was funny? He launched his coat on the bed and strode
over to the table, sank into the available chair. Palming the grip
of his SIG, he twisted the gun to and fro. “If you wanted your
skull cracked, Phillip, all you had to do was ask.”

Phil glanced up, false concern on his face.
“How
is
Mrs. Duquesne?” He concentrated on the gun again,
reseating the barrel.

With practiced moves, Xander started in on
the gun he held—dropped out the magazine, cranked the slide a few
times to clear the chamber.
Clack-clack
—“How long’ve we been
boys, Phil?”—
Clack-clack
.

“Too long to count. More than just boys.
Brothers.”

“Brothers.” By blood. In a way stronger than
if they’d been born to the same parents. A visual check of the
chamber and Xander locked the slide back, flipped the breakdown
lever to vertical. He pulled the slide off the frame and took the
cloth Phil offered. “So this stunt doesn’t compute. What’s the
problem?”

The slide of Kizzie’s Glock in hand, Phil
lined it up with the frame rails and pushed it back into place,
continuing past neutral and cranking it back and forth.
Clack-clack, clack-clack
.

“As your brother,” Phil shoved an empty
magazine into the base of the stock with a crunch, “it’s my job to
slap you upside the head before you repeat a mistake. Consider
yourself slapped.” He yanked back the slide again and then squeezed
the trigger to dry fire the weapon. Thumbing the button on the side
dropped the magazine out.

Xander knuckled a box of shells across the
table and then sprayed his barrel and spring with cleaner. Setting
those aside, he gave the nylon brush a couple of short bursts of
solvent from the can and set to work scrubbing the slide. Phil had
something to get off his chest; he’d wait for the man to do it.

They worked in the comfort of ritual. With
the TV off, the only sounds were the clank of metal-on-metal and
the soft
shhh-shhh-shhh
of the scrub brush. Phil interrupted
the music.

“Sacha was—”

“A loose end.”

“A calculated risk,” Phil corrected, pulling
on a pair of gloves, “and that’s sugarcoating it.” He thumbed the
ammo into the cartridge, metal jackets clicking into place.

Xander lightly oiled the slide of his SIG.
In a moment of white-hot rage, he’d risked the bomb they’d worked
years to acquire just to ensure the bastard who cut Kizzie Baldwin
was dead. And he was. Strung up like the puppets he jerked about
and mistreated. Given more time Xander might have tortured that
monster instead of leaving before the man’s breathing stopped, but
hunting Sacha Sokoviev down to Nikolay’s home in St. Petersburg
took a couple days. Which made Xander late meeting Naima in
Paris.

Naima.

And Kizzie.

Shit.

There were very specific rules about these
things. Unspoken, sure, but nonetheless specific:
Don’t
let
Kizzie see him with Naima
.
Whatever the reasoning, Phil’s
stunt was stupid and reckless, and Xander wanted to break his
buddy’s jaw again. He dabbed grease on the frame instead.

“Fu—” Phil cleared his throat as though
still working out the specifics of his speech. “Go over there and
get Kizzie out of your system. Hand her the Intel on 3-19 and send
her on her way. You and me’ll go wrap up Harvey. Either that
or—”

“Since when are you calling the shots…or
worried about who I’m fuckin’?” The menace was back. Unequivocally
lethal despite Xander’s attention wholly consumed with cleaning the
gun.

Phil leaned back in the chair. “To the
former, I’m not, and don’t want to be.” He pushed the full clip
into the base and chambered a round, sighting down the short
barrel. “As for the latter, well… Still got that bullet if your
memory needs jogging.”

The cleaning stopped and the room fell
silent.

The bullet.

A normal day. Sun shining and birds
chirping. Maybe that should have tipped Xander off. Normal days
weren’t…normal. With all the scrapes and close calls they’d been
in, both he and Phil should have been dead ten times over by the
time they got to the bullet.

A dull ache started between his shoulder
blades. Jaw clenched, Xander scrubbed at the gun. Glock on the
table, Phil went to his bag. He found a black shirt, swapped it for
the gray one he wore, and then shoved a different pistol into his
waistband. “Door number two. You’ve got options.”

Xander grunted. Phil had been banging this
drum since Kizzie left Oman, and they were at opposite ends of the
spectrum. Phil argued Kizzie was flippable; Xander was the boss, so
his word was final.

Ideally, he’d bring Kizzie on and not have
to worry about the imminent battle that would come once they found
Harvey. But their situation was far from ideal. She’d been gone a
long time, back with The Crew. She could very well have told them
everything, could have returned with the intent to slow walk Xander
into a trap. Absence might make the heart grow fonder, but it made
the brain grow suspicious.

“She’s dedicated to Connolly.” Fists balled,
Xander ground his teeth. “After all this time I’m sure the
connection runs deep.”

“You want her.”

“I
plan
to sleep with her, Phil—a
subtle difference of motive. What I want is who she can get
me.”

“Connolly?” Xander nodded and Phil added,
“Tate…by default?”

“McMillan, Douglas, Nevins, and all the rest
of the old man’s minions,” Xander spat icily. Kizzie fell in that
category. To give her a pass just because he wanted to fuck her was
bad business.

“Thinking you’ll charm your way between her
legs to get her to give up Connolly is ridiculous.” Phil snorted.
“Bring her to the dark side. You want to screw her after that,
fine, but screwing her over like this is the wrong move, X. If
Kizzie shoots, she won’t aim for your shoulder.”

Xander studied his friend through narrowed
eyes. “You’re awful protective of Ms. Baldwin.”

“No matter the day, no matter the job, two
things never change for me: Protect your ass and get you what you
want.”

“And you think I want Kizzie?”

The challenge in Phil’s gaze was clear. Then
he shrugged. “What do I know? I’m just a beta…” Tugging on a black
jacket, he covered the slight bulge at his low back. “Gotta make a
run.”

“Expecting trouble on this ‘run’?”

“It has a habit of finding me.” Xander
lifted a brow and Phil shook his head in response to the unasked
question. “I’m good. Be back in a couple hours and we’ll head out.
Got a potential hit on the necklace.”

Xander squeezed the trigger on the SIG and a
hollow click sounded. “You couldn’t have told me that before?”

“Had your hands full of…
with
…Hm.
Sounds bad either way, doesn’t it?” Phil strode to the door. “You
were busy with Naima. Didn’t want to interrupt you.”

“So you made sure Kizzie saw us together? An
attempt to force my hand, I take it.”

“Damn straight, I am. Just hope you figure
out I’m right before this all blows up,” Phil said from the
door.

“She won’t flip,” Xander said, shaking his
head. “And why bring her back in the first place?
We
have
the info on the necklace.”

“Covering your six. Besides, you’re a Dom
who gave his word. If we moved without her, you would have nagged
and nagged and
nagged…
”

“Phil,” Xander interrupted. The big man
turned back to his boss, a sly grin on his face. “Don’t come back
here dead. Or with an extra hole in that ugly mug of yours. With
Kizzie around, I need a pilot for my plane.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n.” A middle-finger salute.
“How’s Nai anyway?”

“She says you’re…‘prickly lately,’” Xander
said, mocking her accent. Phil chuckled. “She was wrong. You’ve
always been a fucking porcupine to me… And you’re gonna be an
uncle.”

Phil’s laughter faded; eyes widened a hair,
face blanched. Xander nodded solemnly, leaned back in the
chair.

“Damn,” Phil breathed. Xander inhaled, gave
another tired bob of his head, and Phil cleared his throat. “She’s
not—”

“We’ll be down one woman. I told her I’d
think it over, but Nai’s not going. Which means we’ll have to
reassess.” A glance at Phil. “Cotton candy?”

“Softer...but for good reason.” Phil twisted
the knob, paused and turned back once more. “Did you at least enjoy
your present?”

At the memory of Kizzie’s body, wet and
naked and beautiful, a smile tugged at Xander’s lips. Damn good to
see her—not so much the cut hair, which he hated. Having her
pressed so close and feeling her shiver as his hands smoothed down
her skin had him hard as steel…

Right up until she mentioned the wife.

Xander remembered who deserved the blame for
enlightening Kizzie on the matter. A matter that would make his
plans for her all the more difficult to execute.

“You’re a bastard, Marchande,” he said, and
Phil started up with a new round of laughter. “Don’t think I’m not
pissed with you.”

“Of course you are, X. If you weren’t, it
would mean I was wrong.”

July 28
^th

Tokyo, Japan

T
he voyeur slipped
inside the apartment, hands covered by nitrile gloves, soft soles
noiseless on the bamboo floor. The warrior lay face up only yards
away. She stepped into the field of vision and the gaze locked on
her, begging.
Pleading
.

A hard wheeze as constricting lungs worked
triple-time to draw air. The skin of the face was an odd shade, not
the normal apricot but flushed a bright cherry. A cracked cell
phone, a bento box, and an upturned laptop were strewn haphazardly
on the floor, as though yanked off the desk.

A stiff wind came in through the window,
carrying the scent of hydrangeas and a darting black blob. It
struck somewhere with a soft
pop
, drawing the voyeur’s eye a
brief moment before she focused again on the body.

Dying.

Lowering to hands and knees, she dipped to
hold her ear against the mouth. Air scraped though the windpipe.
She pushed a hand to the fleshy throat and pressed down enough to
stop the flow.