anger in him didn’t escape anyone in the room.
Olivia glared at him. “Are you that naive? People are not always what they seem, Car Klepto.”
“My father could have been left in the dark,” AJ mused out loud.
“High probability,” Sasha said.
AJ ran both hands through his hair and rubbed them over his face. “Someone in that room knows who killed my sister.”
“My money is on Pohl commissioning a hit,” Olivia said.
“Then why the other roommates?” Claire asked. “I mean . . . Jax and I are close. Everyone at the school knows that. If Creepazoid hired me and five years later wanted to get to me, he wouldn’t take out my other roommates.”
“Unless it isn’t Pohl and whoever made the hits wasn’t going to risk asking around and raising any red flags,” Sasha said.
“Amelia was friendly with everyone.” Olivia paced the room.
“What about you?” Neil asked. “Were you friendly with everyone?”
Olivia’s lips pressed together . . . she paused. “My roommates. But I cut it all off when I took the job with Pohl.”
“Until you met back up with Amelia.”
“Which was a total accident. I would never have sought her out and put her at risk.” Olivia looked directly at AJ, remorse in her eyes. “I wasn’t on a job when I reconnected with Amelia in South Africa. It had been three months since I’d been sent out. I’d had it. I wanted out and couldn’t find a way. If I went to the authorities, it would be my neck in the noose, not the man who was blackmailing me. We were drinking one night and I told your sister enough to scare some sense into her. She wouldn’t have it. She believed that we were smarter than the average person out there. Together we could find a way to break me out of the chains that I’d let myself get into. We met up a couple times after that, and when it seemed no one caught on to our friendship, I disappeared.”
“Did you contact Amelia after that?” Neil asked.
“Once. Two months before she was murdered.”
“You worked for Pohl. Only him, right?” Neil asked.
She nodded.
“You never had any contact with anyone, on any job, other than him?”
She shook her head. “Solo agent. I didn’t have the luxury of a team.” Olivia glanced around the room.
Neil leaned against a table, crossed his arms over his chest. “Then it’s time for you to turn state’s evidence.”
Sasha felt her heart slam in her chest. There was no way of knowing how Olivia would respond to the suggestion.
“I’ll be dead before I can testify.”
“Not if we gather everything Richter is hiding and blow all the whistles,” Sasha suggested. “Regardless of who falls.” Her gaze met AJ’s. “Even your mother.”
“All guilty parties stand trial. Innocents go free,” Claire said.
“That’s not how things work in the real world,” Olivia scoffed.
“As long as Pohl is a free man, you have no life. He will hunt you down and kill anyone you care for,” Sasha reminded her.
Olivia lifted her chin.
Silence filled the room.
“I’ll do it.”
Sasha heard at least two of the men sigh.
“On one condition.”
“Name it,” Neil told her.
“I go out with you tonight. Part of the team.”
“Out of the question.”
Olivia faced off to Neil. The man towered over her, outweighed her by a hundred pounds of sheer muscle, but she didn’t back down. “Then I won’t be here when you get back.”
“How do I know you won’t escape while we’re out?”
“You. Have. My. Word.” Each word was its own sentence, all humor on Olivia’s face gone.
Neil’s jaw twitched.
Sasha wasn’t sure she’d want the decision that was his to make. For what her opinion was worth, she believed Olivia would be there in the end. But trust needed time to be earned, and they hadn’t known her long enough to grant her that.
“You team with me,” Neil finally said.
Anxious looks moved around the room.
AJ took a giant step toward Olivia. “If you fuck this up.”
“I owe your sister.”
He tilted his head, clenched his fists. The tension in his frame called a warning in Sasha’s head.
She jumped up, moved between them. “Let’s take a walk.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“Wait up.” Sasha jogged after AJ as he stormed out of the room and down the hall.
He kept walking.
She doubled her steps to keep up. She got it. The need to move, the need to exercise emotion out of her system.
Her legs kept up with his. They marched through the warehouse, past the van that brought them there, and out the door. It was dark,