other talents.”
“Our other talents?”
“We’re not fucking anyone for some spy job.”
Max turned in her chair so she could look at her teammate. “Again, Mads, I don’t think that’s what he means so maybe shut up.”
“Again, she’s right,” Benji said with a smile. “I’m talking about your other skills.”
He tossed one of the folders across the table so it landed in front of Tock. “Three months ago, uranium stolen from a Russian lab, the entire event somehow managing to take thirty minutes—precisely.”
Another folder landed in front of Nelle. “A year ago, a truckload of gold bars taken from outside the Vatican.”
A folder in front of Streep. “Six months ago, a billionaire—who escaped justice even though he liked his conquests . . . rather young—found with a bullet to the back of his head and his two-hundred-million-dollar impressionist art collection gone.”
He stopped and stared at Mads. “Shockingly, I have nothing on you. Either you’re really good or . . . very boring.”
“That’s just rude,” Tock muttered.
“But your family,” he said. “Now that is some fascinating shit. But we didn’t have space for the number of folders we’d have to use.”
Benji moved around the table until he stood behind Max. Now he slowly leaned around her and placed a thick red folder on the table in front of her.
“Then there’s you, Miss MacKilligan.” He stood straight and patted her shoulder. “And then there’s you.”
He began to pace around the room. “I mean, where do I start? The diamond heist in Uruguay? The missing Gutenberg Bible from Paris? Or the tapestries stolen from the Vatican Gallery of Tapestries? That’s a good one, too. Happened in the middle of the day with a full crowd of tourists mulling around, waiting for the pope to arrive for a visit. Now that, ladies, is skill.”
Max focused her gaze on the unopened folder. She couldn’t look at her sister because she knew Charlie wouldn’t be happy. In fact, she might hate her. Charlie had tried so hard to keep both Max and Stevie out of trouble and away from a “typical MacKilligan career.”
She knew Charlie wouldn’t just be disappointed in her, but ashamed, and that was something Max couldn’t deal with. Because the only other person Charlie was ashamed of was their father and Max never wanted either of her sisters to see her that way.
“What is the point of this?” Mads asked, the only one among them who seemed to have found legal ways to occupy her time between basketball games.
“You work with us, none of this ever gets out.”
Mads sat up a little straighter. “And if we don’t work with you? Then what?”
“Sweetie . . . what do you think? We have enough evidence to put you all away for a very long time. Well”—he glanced at Mads—“maybe not you, but all your family. And not just here in the States, but in places where you don’t want to go to prison.” He leaned down so his head was right by Max’s. “Just ask your mom about that.”
Wow. He’d gone there. Had gone there hard. And her friends were none too happy about it either. The four of them jumped up from the table—despite their bound hands—and started yelling at Benji. The guards he had with him immediately rested their hands on their holstered weapons. And the cops outside the glass had finally found something interesting to watch in this conference room.
Only Max stayed in her seat because . . . because . . . did it matter? Any of it? Now that her sister knew the truth. Now that she knew everything, would Charlie ever forgive her? Or just push Max out of their lives as she’d done to their father?
Max couldn’t even think about it. It was too horrible for her to even . . .
It was instinctual, the way Max shoved herself and the chair she was sitting in back and out of the way. Because she didn’t hear anything. See anything. She simply sensed a change in the air around them as Charlie launched herself across the table and directly into Benji. She didn’t take him to the ground, though. Instead, she forced him into the wall that was a solid fifty feet behind him.
Benji laughed and grabbed her upper arms, pushing her back. “I heard you’d be the problem here. The Group, Katzenhaus, BPC . . . they may all be scared of you. But I’m not, freak. Now get her out of my sight,” he ordered his team.
A male grizzly