Loose Ends - By Tara Janzen Page 0,22

of what the drugs he was given do to him. I’ve been where he is.”

No, she hadn’t.

No matter what Gillian/Red Dog had been through, she wasn’t scarred like Con. She hadn’t been tortured like Con.

“It’s a miracle he’s lasted this long, Scout. He’s got to be on meds,” the woman continued. “You must have seen him take something. What was it? What kind of drugs is he taking to keep himself alive?”

Pills, she could have told the woman, colored gelcaps, and sometimes a Syrette for pain. Scout could have given her that information eight weeks ago, the first time she’d asked, but this time, like all the others before, Scout wasn’t telling her anything.

But the questions tore her up.

Con, the only person in the world she trusted, had been lying to her all these years. He’d said he needed vitamins and supplements to keep in shape, and sometimes the pain meds if his old wounds started aching and acting up. He’d never said he needed to pop up to twelve pills a day just to stay alive, to keep his blood flowing and his synapses firing. This woman said he did, that there was no other way for people like Con, not six years into his resurrection—and Scout believed her.

Resurrection. The hard truth twisted inside her. The word explained too much—not just the pills, but how he’d survived the butchery that had left him so terribly scarred. She wasn’t an idiot. She’d known the pills were more important than he’d let on, but she hadn’t known the truth. Con was the biggest, baddest, toughest, strongest man she’d ever met, ever known—and, according to Red Dog, his life was hanging by a thread. He couldn’t last much longer, not without help.

Yes, Scout could have told the woman. He does get bad headaches, visual migraines. Sometimes his gut knots up on him. Sometimes pain takes hold of him, indescribable pain, like fire under his skin, and through it all, he pops the pills like candy, always maintaining, always self-assured, never like a man whose life could end at virtually any moment of any day.

The truth made her sweat, literally made her skin hot with flashes of anxiety.

“Are you going to help us?” the woman asked with a definite finality in her voice, reaching across the table and wrapping her hand around Scout’s wrist. Her palm was callused, her fingertips rough, and she was strong—and Scout still didn’t move, not a twitch, not a blink. She knew Red Dog could crush her bones in an instant if the older woman wished, but Scout was biding her time.

Con was coming, and when he breached the door, she needed to be ready. She would move then, Red Dog or no Red Dog, but until that moment, she was deliberately as passive as she could manage, trying to keep her muscles soft and her mind clear.

She needed to talk with Con. She needed the truth from him. So she sat, and waited, carefully keeping both of her guards in sight, who were returning the favor one hundred percent. She hadn’t been out of at least one SDF operator’s sight since her capture.

When she failed to answer the question, Red Dog turned to Kid. “What’s the situation?”

“Two flash bangs in the seventh-floor garage,” the tall, dark-haired man said, the radio still to his ear. Like the woman, he was dressed in BDU pants, camouflage, but his T-shirt was olive drab. “One in the office, and Skeeter’s got a tripped proximity alarm on the roof. Unknown Tangos headed our way. No one got a positive ID on the guy in the garage, and the cameras are out on the roof.”

“It’s him,” Red Dog said, the barest hint of satisfaction shading her voice.

Scout knew the woman thought she was ready for whatever happened next—more than ready. She knew the whole Steele Street crew thought they had the situation under control, that they’d covered all their bases, but no matter how much they knew about J. T. Chronopolous, they didn’t know Conroy Farrel. They were expecting a man. They weren’t expecting Con.

And she hadn’t been expecting damn Jack Traeger, but the other unknown Tango couldn’t be anybody else, which just made her wish … oh, hell.

This was going down right now.

A shadow of movement down the outside edge of one of the loft’s huge windows caught her eye: Jack, half hidden by the adjacent brick wall, descending toward the loft’s balcony. He was hanging from a climbing harness, his red

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