“Right on,” Harley replied. “Don’t know how you knew that, but keep your ears on. We do this together. We get in, get Maddie, get out.”
By ears, Harley meant the wireless headset Jameson had secured over his head. Listening and interpreting audible data was his gift. Without asking or talking, he turned with his head up, his nose in the wind, and his new team at his side. Maddie was here. He’d never be able to explain how he knew, and it wasn’t because he could scent her like dogs scented missing humans. But he’d never been more positive. Somehow, she’d arrived before them.
“She’s already here,” he told his teammates with confidence.
A heavy hand cupped his elbow. “Then you lead,” Eric breathed, “and we’ll follow.”
He’d no more than uttered that order when his phone chirped. Harley’s buzzed at the same time. Both men asked, “Yes, Boss?”
Jameson had lost his cell after Delaney’s jet exploded, and he hadn’t thought to grab the burner from the safehouse before they’d charged out to rescue Maddie. He cocked his head now, listened, and prepared for the worst. Cell phones ringing in harmony always spelled trouble.
He just didn’t expect Alex’s voice in stereo, bellowing, “Wait for me!”
“What the hell?” Harley muttered. “Where are you, Boss?”
Jameson sensed the direction of the shockwave rolling toward them. “He’s right there.” He almost told his teammates to, “Duck.”
OhGodOhGodOhGod. Jameson is here? Eric and Harley, too? How’d they do that? How’d they know where I’d be? I didn’t even know where I was going until I called Nash’s loan shark.
Which had been the luckiest guess of Maddie’s life. She’d snagged the burner phone back at the safe house, and then, after she’d snuck inside the power company truck that had been parked fortuitously on the curb outside the safe house, she’d finally called the number that wicked loan shark had nailed to the middle of her front door, like an eviction notice. Which seemed like another good sign at the time, him answering his phone as quickly as he had.
But now that she stood in the shadow alongside the Black Irish Rose Tavern, avoiding eye contact with everyone and keeping her head down, she wasn’t so sure of anything. Planning a strategy back inside the safe house was easier than implementing it out here where anything could go wrong. She’d used every last bit of her savings to rent passage on the private plane that brought her to an airstrip outside South Boston. There she’d called a cab to get her to this exact business on the Harbor.
The grimy denim jacket she wore now, she’d stolen on her way past a row of disgusting, smelly forklifts. It was too large and smelled so strongly of body odor that it watered her eyes. The ball cap she’d picked up from the ground didn’t fit any better. But the jacket concealed her nine, and the dirty cap made her anonymous, just one of the guys. One of the short guys.
She’d never met Nash’s loan shark in person, but when he’d first called, demanding she pay off Nash’s debt, he’d sounded just as she’d expected, cold and ruthless. What she hadn’t expected was that he’d also be Irish. That made her think. Maybe Pops Delaney owned every loan shark on the East Coast, and bingo. She’d been right, at least that Pops had owned this guy. When she’d informed Mr. Shark that his boss was recently deceased, that she’d seen him die with her own eyes, he’d called her a liar and hung up. But he’d quickly called back, said he’d checked and confirmed her story. He’d been ready to listen then.
“So what do you want, Missy?” he’d asked. Guess he hadn’t known Delaney’s daughter was even in the picture, or that Lucy Shade, the uppity news celeb, was really Lucy Delaney, Pops only daughter, and the heiress to his empire. Or that she was headed to Boston to take control of his gang. And him, Mr. Bigshot Shark. Guilt by association made him one of Lucy’s targets, and that was how Maddie had fed him her lie. He needed to get on Lucy’s good side. Him sending his new boss a quick chunk of change might make things easier for him. Never hurts to grease the hand that feeds you, right?
All Maddie wanted in return for the privilege of ending her ex’s affiliation with the underworld, was the address in Boston, to make that deposit. After a couple more terse minutes of dishonest negotiation as to who had the better hand, during which Mr. Shark threatened to slice all of her fingers off, then her toes, one by bloody one, until she paid him—or else. Not like she wanted to know what ‘or else’ meant, but somehow, she’d stood firm. Demanded he tell her where Pops Delaney lived or worked in Boston, that she would only hand over the money—yes, all thirty-thousand dollars Nash owed, plus fifteen thousand more in interest—to the woman in charge today, not to one of her lackeys.
Not that Maddie had that kind of cash, but she wasn’t going to visit Miss Delaney to hand over money anyway. No. She was here to kill the woman who’d tried to murder Jameson Tenney too many times.
Maddie was at peace with her decision because, like Lucy Shade, she was her father’s daughter, and she would always be just that. Nothing more. She wasn’t a Marine, never would be. But she’d worked alongside enough of them these past few months, former soldiers
