Hello My Angel - Sue Brown Page 0,63

means nothing to me.”

He had no doubt she meant it.

“Chyna, tell us what you want.” Josh made his voice calm and soothing. “Talk to me.”

“It’s too late for that. You took away what I wanted.”

Her voice was strange, a tone Josh hadn’t heard before. Then Josh processed what she’d said. “You took away what I wanted.” What the hell?

“You mean Feliz?”

“Not my brother. Jesse. You took away Jesse.”

“But he killed your brother.”

“I sat with him for days, weeks. I listened to him dream about Dan, hallucinate that he was there. I listened to him ramble about Dan endlessly. He didn’t even notice I was there.”

Josh saw the startled expression on Cal’s face and knew his own probably mirrored it. They thought she was avenging her brother, but she was in love with Jesse? All this destruction for unrequited love?

“Why did you kill so many people, Chyna?” Josh asked softly. “Why not just Jesse and Dan?”

She shrugged, so indifferent to the hurt she had caused for years. “The agency destroyed my brother. I wanted to make all of you pay. So many secrets just waiting to be discovered. And I did. I brought them into the light and used them to bring you down. It was so easy to infiltrate you. I found a new identity, then I made friends with Lucy. I knew her secret.”

Josh watched the myriad of expressions on Cal and Rick’s faces. The agency had been their world for a lifetime, and now it had crumbled around their ears and friends had become strangers, enemies even.

“You made friends with them, blackmailed them, and then killed them,” he said. He couldn’t believe a girl barely out of her teens could be so devious. How had the agency let her get so close?

“They were weak,” she sneered.

“You broke them.”

She shrugged, clearly indifferent to their plight. Josh felt the anger rise in his throat. This bitch didn’t care about the damage she’d caused.

“I don’t believe you,” Josh said.

Chyna narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I heard you the first time. What do you mean you don’t believe me? What don’t you believe?”

Josh sneered at her. “I don’t believe you did this as revenge for your family. I really don’t believe you had a crush on your brother’s killer. You did this for another reason.”

For a moment he thought Chyna was going to deny it. Then she smiled, a nasty curl of her lip telling him he was on the right track.

“You tell me.”

Josh thought through everything that had happened. The long-term plan, Jesse’s former handler’s death, killing the personal assistant, Landry…. Josh gritted his teeth as he thought of how they’d used Landry’s addiction. So many people used, so many dead.

“This isn’t about drugs or guns.”

“What is it about?” Cal asked quietly.

“Power. Politics. You’re proving how powerful you are. Jesse was just a way in.” Josh knew he was right from the faintest narrowing of her eyes. “Your uncle killed your father in a coup.” He’d read that in Jesse’s reports.

Oh yes. Paydirt. She glared at him, her jaw clenched.

“Who’s behind it? Your uncle?”

“Him,” she said scornfully. “He wouldn’t have the balls to do this. I do.”

Josh tapped his chin as if he were thinking. “You’re not the kingpin though, Chyna. You’re just a pawn.”

“I’m not a pawn,” she snarled and waved the gun at him.

“Not a pawn,” he said hastily. “A soldier, a general.”

Chyna looked down her nose at him. “I brought down your government agency. Now I’m going to bring down your government.”

“The only way you’re getting out of here is in handcuffs or a body bag,” Josh snapped.

She gave a harsh unamused laugh. “I’m the one with the gun.”

“They have guns too.” He nodded at Cal and Rick, not wanting to use his hands in case that spooked her.

“I can kill you before they do anything.”

“You shoot me, they shoot you.”

A stand-off. She didn’t want to die. That much was obvious. She wanted, no, she expected to pull off one of her disappearing tricks again.

Josh narrowed his eyes. “You’ve got an escape plan.”

“You’re not as stupid as you look.”

“Thanks,” Josh said dryly.

“You won’t walk away from this,” Cal said.

“I—”

A single shot rang out.

Chyna’s eyes went wide. She looked almost surprised as she collapsed to the ground.

“You always talk too much,” Gil grumbled from behind her.

“Why the hell did you kill her?” Cal bellowed even as he reached for Josh. “We needed her.”

Rick knelt beside her body, taking the gun and handing it to Gil. He felt for