“And he’ll keep interrupting.”
“Not if Dog has my sat phone number. Not if someone gives it to him. I’ll take care of the rest.”
She had two of the pills left that she hadn’t given to Jonas. Just in case she needed them. She would use them if she had to. If Cabal forced her into it.
“Hell,” Mordecai cursed. “Contacting him directly isn’t exactly easy, sweetheart.”
“I have confidence in you.” Cassa moved back to the window and gazed across the river.
She almost smiled at the sight of the small fire on the opposite bank. A fisherman, no doubt, though it was damned cold to be fishing.
She frowned as the blaze flickered in shades of red and gold. It was close to the falls, where the water ran swifter, faster. An odd place, and an odd night, to be fishing the treacherous waters.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Mordecai finally sighed. “If he’s going to call, you’ll hear from him soon though. Dog’s not predictable. And you be damned careful.”
“As always, my friend,” she assured him. “When dealing with Breeds, one learns to be real damned careful.”
She almost laughed at his little grunt of acknowledgment. Flipping the phone closed, she slid it back into her jeans pocket and continued to watch the blaze in the distance for long seconds, as she tried to pinpoint why it bothered her.
She was drawn out of her reverie by the muted alarm on her laptop. The email alarm was set for one email address specifically.
That of a killer.
the killing himself, Jonas had attempted to intercept the email he had known she would receive. It hadn’t worked. The email had been delivered, and the program attached to it didn’t allow for remote corruption or deletion.
The rogue wanted her to know about this. He wanted her involved in this. She was a pawn in a very dangerous game, and he was growing sick of it.
“She’s been informed,” Jonas said quietly as Cabal glanced over at the director. “Confirmation just arrived. The email has been read, pictures downloaded. The remote tracker we have on her laptop is working at least.”
“Traced?” Cabal asked, though he knew better.
Jonas shook his head. There was no mockery, no sarcasm this time. This was the second email they’d tried to trace through Cassa’s connection, to no avail.
The director’s expression was somber, brooding and filled with icy fury. Jonas was at his most dangerous in this mood.
“No trace,” he bit out in clipped tones. “The program we installed isn’t going through. The email itself is embedded with a program that doesn’t allow for it. Dane hasn’t been able to crack it yet.”
Dane Vanderale, Jonas’s nemesis and half brother, as well as the heir to the powerful African Vanderale empire, was a natural born Breed and a thorn in all their sides. But he was the best they had at cracking codes and tracing information.
“He’ll crack it.” Cabal shrugged.
Cabal turned his gaze back to the bank then and the body Rule and Lawe had pulled from the water. The fishing line around the victim’s neck had cut into the skin, leaving a slender wound. Tape covered his mouth. Pale eyes bulged in horror; pale features were creased into lines of pain, suffering.
Someone, something, had made this man suffer.
“Cash Winslow,” Rule stated as he crouched next to the body before staring up at Jonas. “We’ve been watching him. Ex-CIA. He worked for Brandenmore as a security specialist.”
Jonas moved closer to the river-soaked body and hitched up the legs of his slacks so he could get down on his haunches and look at the features revealed by the slender illumination of Lawe’s flashlight.
“He was working on a special assignment from what we were able to find out,” Jonas mused quietly. “We were trying to track him, trying to figure out what the hell Brandenmore was up to, when he flipped off our radar last week.”
Cabal’s brows lifted. It was rare that anyone flipped off Jonas’s radar.
“No rumors as to the assignment?” Cabal asked.
Jonas stared back at him. “He was searching for someone, that’s all we knew. Someone Brandenmore was certain could help him with this case we have against him and Engalls.”
The attempted murder and illegal research against Breeds. Phillip Brandenmore and his brother-in-law Horace Engalls were coming closer to the day of reckoning and possible Breed Law sanctions for their actions over the past year. How the hell they thought anyone could help them was beyond Cabal.