Hostile Ground (The Arsenal #7) - Cara Carnes Page 0,93
final phase with and enlisted their help. There are only two high-ranking leaders who got away, but Gavriil expects them to be taken care of soon.”
“And by taken care of you mean…” Zoey’s eyes widened.
“That’s not our business,” Mary said. “We appreciate knowing that’s taken care of, Maksim. If we can help find anyone, let us know. Otherwise we’ll assume you and Gavriil will handle that portion until Kristof is available.”
“Certainly. I trust you have the weapons and everything else from the compound properly secured or destroyed since you all razed the area with such efficiency.” Maksim grinned. “I’d suspect Kristof will order his men to do the same with the remainder of Kostya’s holdings.”
“Why? They can be sold. Or, I don’t know. Maybe one of the ones who is helping would want them,” Zoey said.
“Kristof was quite clear when this began,” Maksim replied. “The houses will be destroyed. All personal property will be as if it never existed, except for whatever he and his cousin choose to keep.”
Which meant Kristof’s allies would be dividing up business assets and anything of monetary value within his illegal operations. Addy expected as much. She’d done the same thing with Peter’s personal property. Everything had been trashed. All Hive intel and assets were turned over to The Arsenal. Mary and Vi had disposed of most of it.
“I’m not sure what the itinerary for this meeting is, but can we start with the elephant in the room?” Johnny asked. “Spade?”
“Right.” Red tinged Zoey’s ears. “That’s not a discussion point at this time.”
“Bullshit,” Cracker said. “That bastard went AWOL on us and jumped into Mandrake. He’s at the freaking compound and we’re told to stand down from taking his betraying ass out. That’s not cool.”
“He doesn’t get a pass just because he was once one of us,” Thunder said. “If anything, this shit just proves he never was.”
“And you all need to shut up and trust us to know what the hell we’re doing,” Zoey said, her voice loud.
Silence descended in the room. Gage chuckled. “Should’ve warned y’all this was a sensitive topic to poke. Little Bit’s protective of Spade right now.”
“Why?” Shep asked, his gaze narrowed. He whistled. “There’s something we don’t know.”
“There’s something none of us knew but Zoey,” Mary said. “She’s read a few of us in and we’re one hundred percent behind her decision in this matter and trust her to see it through.”
“Not sure that’s enough for us to rest easy about this,” Nolan said. “We don’t run The Arsenal like that.”
Addy sighed and rubbed her temples. “Look, we’ve all been in enough black-in-black ops over the years to read between these lines. We knew exactly what was going on the second Zoey ordered us to stand down from Spade.”
Marshall’s eyebrows rose. “Not sure anyone’s been in that many black-in-black ops except for maybe Nolan, me, and you.”
“We were in a couple with Addy at Hive,” Beast said. “Most of the time we weren’t, though. We just knew she was in one because she wasn’t with us.”
“That shit sucked,” Johnny said. “But I’m thinking it was harder on her.”
“Which means it’s hell on Spade if that’s what’s going down,” Shep said. “He’s alone.”
Addy breathed a relieved breath. Shep always saw the other side of an argument faster than anyone else in her team. She looked across the room at Zoey. The tension escaped her shoulders as she sagged into her chair.
“We trust your decisions about this, Z,” Nolan said. “Just know that we’ll help however we can.”
“I-I may need your help. I need to reach out to Spade, see where things stand.”
“Shouldn’t you have done that before you ordered us to let him escape?” Marshall asked.
“Brother, stand down,” Jesse said.
“All I’m saying is that he could’ve been debriefed before he escaped.” Marshall air quoted escaped and kept his gaze on Zoey.
“Look, Addy’s right. You have all read between the lines on this,” Zoey said. “All I’m going to say is that there wasn’t enough time to debrief anything. The situation is risky enough for him as it is. I mean, he was literally the only one to walk away from that compound.”
“There were a couple more that got away,” Nolan said. “At least two, maybe three.”
“Good.” Zoey nodded. “That’ll help. And they weren’t in the same area he was so…”
“You suck at keeping shit from anyone, Little Bit,” Gage said with a smirk.
Zoey sighed heavily. “I know. Trust me, I know.”
“You’re doing great,” Mary said. “With that said, Mandrake isn’t