Loose Ends - By Tara Janzen Page 0,57

injection point, and fuck, there was swelling, tenderness, just like with the damn ketamine.

Well, hell.

He could fire Corinna up and try to outrun the drug. Jack knew as much as he did about maybe saving his ass one more time, if he could get to the motel and his med kit. But geezus, he was tired of running.

Fucking Halox. He didn’t know if he had it in him to get through another stretch of the kind of hell ahead of him—physical collapse, the endless twisting pain, the anguish, the fucking doubts of whether he’d make it and what kind of condition he’d be in even if he did survive, if he’d be too physically destroyed to function, or if his mind would finally break.

He’d seen all that and worse happen to stronger men than he at Souk’s.

A wave of heat pulsed to sudden life across his upper chest, raising his body temperature a dangerous number of degrees for the space of a heartbeat. Sweat broke out on his brow. Then as quickly as it had come, the heat was gone, but probably not for long.

Fuck. Stronger men than he.

He shoved his hand in his pocket, pulled it out full of pills, bet the house on one of the blues, and shoved the rest back—and he kept driving, taking the turns slow, looking over the city and wondering about every damn thing in his life. At least the greenies had finished off the headache the reds hadn’t quite killed. Time alone would tell if all that and a blue were going to do him a damn bit of good.

Yeah, time would tell, but he was running out of time. He felt it with each passing day.

A small beep coming from his jacket had him reaching for his cellphone. He pulled it out of the jacket’s inside pocket and quickly read the text message: Mission accomplished. Report.

A smile almost curved his mouth. He’d report in as soon as he dropped off his passenger, but his boy had done good, damn good. Scout was safe, and she was going to be a treasure trove of intel. She’d been with these Steele Street guys for eight weeks, and he knew her. She wouldn’t have forgotten a word, not a fact, not a breath any of them had taken.

But hell. He had to let that girl go, too.

He’d done plenty of private bitching over the last four years about Jack Traeger, plenty and then some, but Jack was who she’d need in the months ahead, and Paris was where she’d go. He had an apartment there she loved, and he’d put her name on the lease.

Jack knew where most of the money was, and Con had encrypted the data on the accounts Jack didn’t know about and put it all on a flash drive he’d left with a tech stringer they used out of Nevada, a U.S. Army vet named Miller. He’d get it to Scout.

Garrett Leesom’s girl was smart. She’d figure out the account codes, and when she looked at the numbers, she would know she was set for life. No more hanging on the edge, no more skirting the dark side. No more missions.

Reaching up, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and then turned on the car’s windshield wipers. While they’d been underground, night had fallen, bringing a drop in the temperature and a late spring rain. The cool drizzle ran down Corinna’s glass and was swept away in long, curving arcs by the wiper blades. Water pooled in the gutters. Steam rose from the streets.

He’d known he was an American citizen. Jack had told him. But he hadn’t known Denver, Colorado, was his hometown—not until today.

Maybe he wouldn’t leave the city.

Maybe he shouldn’t.

Christ. He had a brother.

A brother he didn’t really remember, so what did it really mean?

Not much, he decided. Not enough. No matter how much he wished it could be otherwise. It was too late. Whatever life he’d lived in this place, it was gone. Denver was an interlude, not a change in direction. The mission was still Randolph Lancaster, destroying the man and his company, LeedTech.

He pulled to a stop at a red light and checked the cross traffic going by, looking for big-block monsters, any trouble headed his way, and a place to say good-bye to Wild Thing. There were a few businesses at the intersection, but none of them met his criteria. The junk and stuff store was closed for the night. The

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