Brielle met his gaze, giving him a small smile. “I bet you would. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s another secret you’re not getting your hands on. Not for free.”
Caleb looked like he wanted to keep pressing her for an answer, but Jake cut him off. “You said Seamus was here for Adriana. If so, why take Kristoff? And more importantly, are they still alive?”
Brielle flipped her long, dark hair over her shoulder with a tired hand. “They’re alive. Well, Adriana is alive at least. Kristoff probably is, too, but only as long as he has some value as leverage to make her fall in line and do exactly what Yegor needs her to do. After that, he’ll almost assuredly kill both of them.”
“Since you seem to know a hell of a lot about what Yegor is planning, did you know he’d send people here to attack everyone?”
Brielle leveled her gaze at him. “I knew Adriana was critical to his plan, so I assumed he’d try to get her back at some point. But to answer your question, no, I didn’t know exactly when he’d try it.”
Tessa slammed her hand down on the table, fury on her face. “Why the hell didn’t you warn us? Eight of my friends are dead because of you!”
Brielle glared at her coldly. “Their deaths are on you, not me! I offered to make a deal for everything I knew. You’re the one who decided that keeping me locked up for life and forcing me to find supernaturals for you was the only thing you were interested in. Tell me, what will STAT do with all the supernaturals they collect? Do you think the people in charge will ask nicely if they want to work for you? Or will they force them to be part of the organization like you’re doing to me?” She let out a delicate snort. “Now that I think about it, it’s funny how much you people and Yegor have in common. You’re even holding my brother’s life and freedom over my head just like he did.”
Tessa jumped to her feet, hand going for the gun holstered at her hip. Jes quickly stood, putting a hand on the woman’s arm. “Tessa, she’s right. She may have said it more harshly than she had to, but Brielle is telling the truth. Right now, STAT is more interested in getting their hands on Brielle than they are in finding out what she knows.”
The STAT agent hesitated—like she was torn on whether to shoot Brielle or not—but then she slowly shoved the weapon back in its holster. Giving Jes a nod, she sat down.
Brielle looked around the table at all of them, her expression more earnest than Sawyer had ever seen on her. “This thing Yegor is planning is so much worse than you could ever imagine, and I don’t want it to happen any more than you do. But I’m not letting you imprison my brother and me for the rest of our lives. I can’t.”
Bloody hell, this was getting old.
Sawyer exchanged looks with Jake. Nodding, the other werewolf pulled out his phone and punched a number on his contact list.
“McKay, it’s Jake,” he said, dark eyes locked on the Frenchwoman. “You aren’t going to like this, but we’re making that deal with Brielle. If STAT doesn’t like it, that’s too damn bad. You can fire me after this mission. She and her brother go free in exchange for everything she knows about Yegor.”
Chapter 17
France
When Harley joined STAT, she’d tried to imagine all the different places her new job might take her. Since she didn’t have much experience with the world outside the United States—and none at all with covert operations—she hadn’t come up with a very realistic list of possibilities. But if there was one thing she could say with certainty, it was that she’d never expected to find herself at a microbrewery overlooking endless rolling hills of hops trellises on a tract of farmland right outside Calais, France. Probably because she didn’t know that there were microbreweries in France. Though in her defense, when Harley drank beer, she didn’t think too much about where it came from.
But as she stood on the back loading dock of the brewery, looking out over the tall trellises covered in thick, green vines as the late-day sun slowly set behind it, Harley decided it was one of the most beautiful and tranquil places she’d ever seen. She hoped she and Sawyer could come back here someday so they could look around at their leisure.
It seemed almost sinful that this tranquil locale was positioned smack-dab in the middle of where Yegor was going to strike…and soon, if Brielle was right about everything she’d told them. Not that there was any reason to think she’d lied to them. As soon as Jake had agreed to the deal, the woman started talking so fast it was hard to keep up with it all.
Unfortunately, the more she’d told them, the more terrified Harley and everyone else had become. It was official—Yegor Shevchenko was a psychopath. Basically, the whack job was planning to nuke the entirety of northern France, along with southern Britain and parts of Belgium and Germany. No doubt he considered the last two countries a bonus.
Harley breathed in the wholesome aromas rolling off the hops field, wondering how Tessa had been able to arrange the use of this place so quickly. They’d flown out of Athens late yesterday, and by the time they arrived in Calais, she’d already taken care of the paperwork to rent the brewery that had previously been up for sale. It made Harley wonder if STAT had simply bought the place outright. She was sure Caleb would approve. He liked beer. A lot.
Harley picked up Sawyer’s scent before he stepped out of the building and onto
