In Plain Sight by Hope Anika
Chapter Eight
“Look,man, I know I owe you. But this is crazy.”
Max smiled grimly. “Did you think paying your debt would be easy?”
“No, but this…this is too much.”
Yeah, it probably was. Max didn’t care. “You know the deal.”
“That’s not fair.”
Behind him, a taxi laid on its horn, and Max stuck his finger in his ear. “You’d rather go to jail?”
“Jail? You said you got rid of the evidence!”
“I said I put the evidence in a safe place.”
“Shit,” Linus Masterson said. “Shit!”
“Focus,” Max told him sharply. “You do this, we’re even. No more evidence, no more favors. We’re square.”
“Fat lot of good it will do me when I’m dead!”
That was the problem with Linus: hysteria.
Part of it was his age—he’d been on the planet a whole twenty-one years—but mostly it was just because he liked drama. As a kid, Linus’ bedroom had been filled with superhero posters and comic books and Star Wars figurines; Max was pretty sure it still was.
“Here’s your chance to play the hero,” Max pointed out wryly. “For real.”
“Here’s my chance to get eviscerated by the mob,” Linus retorted. “For real.”
Max let his gaze roam the crowded Chicago streets, taking note of anyone who might be paying too much attention to an unassuming man clad in a cheap tan suit and Wal-Mart sunglasses who was using the battered payphone tucked into the alley. “I thought you were the best?”
“That’s not the point.”
“No?”
“If they catch me—”
“They won’t. You’re a genius, remember?”
A point Max knew Linus wouldn’t argue with—simply out of pride. The kid had hacked NASA when he was only fourteen and downloaded the classified schematics for the Orion rocket booster; the only reason he’d gotten caught was that his step-father had found the schematics stashed in the garage—along with a growing pile of the components required to build a rocket booster.
His stepfather, who happened to be Max’s accountant at the time, had asked Max to give Linus a stern talking to. Instead, Max had threatened Linus with arrest and imprisonment, and in return for helping him avoid those two unpleasantries, extorted the promise of a future favor, to be rendered at the time of Max’s choosing.
Time’s up. “You owe me,” he reminded the kid, unrepentant.
He supposed he should have felt guilty; what he was demanding of Linus was dangerous. But the kid was incredibly skilled, and it was highly unlikely that he’d get caught. It was less dangerous than what he’d asked of Rye.
Or Fiona.
“You suck,” Linus muttered. “You know that?”
Max did know. “I’ll text you the numbers. I want everything from seventy-two hours ago until now. Then I want you to monitor all calls until I tell you to stop.”
“Look, the mob is one thing, but the feds—”
“One of those feds tried to execute a fourteen-year-old girl,” Max retorted sharply. “I want to know who.”
Linus fell silent. Max waited. Another horn wailed; music from one of the nearby sex clubs spilled out onto the street, something with a low, throbbing beat. Night was beginning to descend over the windy city, and lights were kicking on along the street. Clouds rolled over the wide, gray expanse of Lake Michigan, but there was no rain. Not yet.
“Okay,” Linus said finally. “I’ll help. But this is it. Then we’re even. Right?”
“Right.”
“Text me the numbers. I’ll have something by tomorrow.”
Max pushed the metal disconnect on the phone and immediately dialed his partner, Special Agent Lyssa Valentine.
Who was going to be even more thrilled to hear from him than Linus.
She answered on the first ring. “Valentine.”
“You catch the fucker yet?” Max asked conversationally.
“Jesus, Prescott, where the hell are you? Moss is freaking out! He’s ready to issue a warrant on your stupid ass.”
“So that’s a no?”
“Max, you stole a witness. Have you lost your mind?”
A question he was starting to get a lot. But he was done with the rulebook. “I’m going to find out who screwed us, V, and I’m going to kill them.”
She inhaled sharply. “You’re not judge, jury, and executioner.”
“Yes, I am. Even if it’s you.”
Silence fell like a hammer. Max wished he could see her face; Lyssa had a crap poker face. But hacking into the Bureau’s internal cameras—or the one on her cell phone—was beyond him.
That was why tonight he would do reconnaissance. He would climb the tall, twelve-foot chain link fence that surrounded the parking lot of the Bureau’s downtown field office, disable the lot’s CCTV, and tag V’s car with a GPS tracker. Just for the hell of it, he’d add a high-grade listening device, too. It wouldn’t pick up anything while she was driving, but if she was parked, he might get something. Then he would repeat the process with Moss’s shiny Navigator and the dark blue Buick Lee Chang drove.
And the hunt would begin.
Max was good at hunting. People looked at his hair and his suit and his sleek FBI badge and forgot he was a soldier first; he knew how to track, how to stalk, and how to wait. He was a crack agent with a reputation for doing things the right way; no one expected him to become a rogue agent who did things his way. It would give him an edge.
For a while, at least.
“Is that really what you think?” Lyssa demanded tightly. “That I’m in bed with Dolan?”
Max didn’t want to think that; he liked Lyssa. Over the last six months, he’d saved her ass and she’d saved his. They worked well together, and if they weren’t exactly friends, they were partners. But he couldn’t afford to trust her.
He couldn’t afford to trust anyone.
“Anything’s possible,” he said. Sad but true. “I’m not taking any chances. I just wanted you to know.”
“Know what?” she snarled. “That you think I got Farland killed?”
“No,” he replied. “That I’m going hunting.”
“Max, please. Think about this. You’ll ruin your entire career. Is that what you want?”
“Screw my career.”
“Damn it, just bring her in. We can still fix this.”
He only shook his head. “You aren’t listening.”
“That’s because you sound insane! Are you hearing yourself? Are you listening? Because this isn’t the Max Prescott I know.”
But this was him. The real him.
Her misconceptions were his own doing; he’d led everyone to believe he was the consummate agent, a professional who believed in following protocol, who obeyed every rule, spoken and unspoken alike. He’d cultivated a carefully crafted façade of stability, a rock-solid, steadfast dependability—and predictability—that led everyone to believe him to be something other than what he truly was.
The son of a wastrel and an addict; a soldier who enjoyed the hunt, the violence, the feel of a weapon in his hands, and adrenaline kicking through his veins. A man who’d abandoned all that he was to become someone he’d realized too late he had no desire to be.
“You need to bring her in,” Lyssa said again, and he could hear her desperation. “We’ll keep her safe. I promise.”
“She is safe.”
“Where? Where is she safe?”
Somewhere you won’t find her.
And he was confident that Fiona and Rye would keep her that way. Although he wasn’t happy about whatever subtext was going on between them—he wasn’t an idiot, clearly something was happening—but there was shit-all he could do about it.
Fi had become a woman in his absence—a strong, confidant, beautiful woman—which, somehow, he’d hadn’t expected. As if she’d stay that fifteen-year-old girl, angry and hurt and forever locked in youth. As if she’d still look up to him; as if she’d still need him.
When neither was true. Not anymore.
Nothing was as it had been.
Ares’ unexpected, openly malevolent presence had sent that fact brutally home. The skinny, freckled, hero-worshiping kid Max remembered bore no resemblance to the blue-haired, tattooed young man who’d look at him with searing hate in his eyes. And Max was well aware he’d rightfully earned that animosity. That Fiona was not the only person from whom he needed to seek absolution.
He turned that thought aside, unwilling to lose his focus. This had to come first.
If he survived it.
“Where is she?” Lyssa demanded. “I can—”
“You tell them,” he interrupted softly. “You tell them I’m coming.”
“Max—”
“This is the only warning you’ll get,” he said and hung up.