sat me in after I semi-snapped out of it. I force myself to breathe. Everything is falling apart and Cole has lost control.
“Penn Simmons?” Grady asks.
Cole pauses for a second before pulling out his phone. “I’m not sure what he’ll know, but he does know people all over. It’s a long shot, but it’s my only one.”
“What the fuck are we waiting for?” Jarvis pipes in. “We can be in raid gear storming the place in less than fifteen minutes. We have the element of surprise. We need to take advantage.”
“No.” All eyes in the room turn to me. It’s the first word I’ve spoken since my very uncharacteristic crying jag that the men walked in on. I focus on Cole. “The money hasn’t moved. We need to see this through to the end.”
Cole nods and turns back to the monitors, arms crossed, deliberating every earth-shattering problem raining down on us.
The room stills when sounds come over the speakers. Footsteps shuffle through a room at a quick clip. When the men busted in to take Gary and his helpers, they planted bugs but the church has been quiet until today.
“This is where you operate from?”
A shiver travels up my spine from hearing my brother’s voice as if he were sitting right next to me.
“It’s not exactly official business, Donnelly,” Wendy chides.
“You don’t say?”
I close my eyes. Devon was always the sarcastic one of the family.
Wendy keeps talking. “We know why you’re here, but it isn’t necessary. It was a mistake that won’t happen again. You’ll get your money’s worth but it’s going to take a couple days. We had some contractors disappear on us but should have someone else in line soon. We need the opportunity to arise for it to happen. The targets have been MIA.”
“Maybe there’s another way. Let me reach out to Carson,” Nick Peterson butts in.
“There’s no other way. I told you from the beginning when you agreed to join this effort,” Wendy snaps.
“I know for a fact my sister is on our trail. It’s only a matter of time before she and your CIA officer suss it out. And since I’m sitting at the end of the trail, that cannot happen. You were paid to make that go away and you fucked it up.”
I’m physically ill. Cole turns to catch my eyes and bruises are forming on his handsome face from my freak out. Everything happening to him is because of me.
My throat thickens and I can’t look at him any longer. The guilt is too heavy.
“Our contractors thought they were home,” Wendy argues.
“Not quite sure how much more you can fuck up. You can’t even get rid of the ex-Marine in Switzerland, for God’s sake. How do you get anything done in your agency?”
“Penn Simmons…” Nick tries to explain how yet another soul is living and breathing that they’ve tried so hard to kill. “We couldn’t get anyone to carry it out.”
“He’s been asking all over Europe about Spain. I’m not going down for that.”
The more they argue, the more it goes back and forth, and the more it settles in my gut—I’ve been stabbed in the back by my own brother.
My own blood.
“I want my money back,” Devon demands.
Silence blankets the audio feed and lingers so long, I shift in my chair for fear we’ve been cut off.
Wendy’s lost her backbone when she finally responds, “That’s not for us to decide.”
“Then I want to meet with Randolph. If he insists on keeping his hands clean, he’ll pay up. If not, he can come here and tell me his damn self.”
“He won’t come here,” Nick insists and I hope he’s wrong.
“Then tell the fancy-as-fuck Senator the money in my account is mine and there will be no action from his so-called terrorists. See how much funding his precious committee gets then. I came all this way and have a shitload to take care of because you two can’t carry out a simple fucking job.”
I stand with a start, the office chair rolling away behind me. Cole’s eyes zip to mine and I’m not sure if I have a headrush or am about to pass out.
“Baby—” he starts and reaches for me.
I put my hand up and look at the screen, muttering to no one, “Take the meet. Please, take the meet.”
“I’ll text him and let you know. Don’t hold your breath.” Wendy says.
“I’ll be here as long as it takes for me to do what I have to do. Make sure the arsehole knows