The Revenge by Tijan

They were moving against me.

“I take it that you are calling me to notify me that you have found my twin brother, and also Chrissy Hayes? Was that the purpose of this phone call?”

“Shit.” A low curse under her breath. “Yeah.” She was resigned. She knew I knew. “We have a team moving in as we’re speaking, and I’m assuming we’ll be taking your brother into custody momentarily.” Another pause of hesitation. “You can wait for another call from myself. We’ll let you know if we find Chrissy Hayes alive or not.”

She ended the call, and with that, I hung my head.

The hold I had over Bright and Wilson was done.

She’d been trying to entrap me, which said they were putting together a case against me. Whether they moved on it or not was a different situation, but now I knew, and I’d be covering my bases. Not letting myself contemplate the loss of that professional relationship, I went to Peter’s safe in the office and took out a phone I didn’t use unless it was absolutely necessary.

I called my team. “Delete everything. Feds are now looking.”

Then a second call. “Have you left yet?”

“No.”

“Stay. They’ve moved on them already.”

“Will do.”

I had one thing at least. I still had my grandfather within my clasp.

“What’s going on?”

Peter Francis was standing inside the office, his eyes alert and alarmed. It was a stark contrast from the bags under his eyes, or the exhaustion emanating from him.

“The FBI found Chrissy Hayes.”





FORTY-FIVE

Kash


I had limited time.

Peter was told everything, and as he fell to his couch in shock, I strolled right past him. I was an ungrateful asshole to him, too. I should’ve taken the time, softened the blow, been there for him while he was coming to grips with everything that’d been uncovered in the last thirty-six hours.

I didn’t.

I walked right past, texting Matt.

Kash: Fly back. Chrissy Hayes is alive. Your father and sister need you.

My phone buzzed a second later.

Matt: WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?

Kash: Bailey will fill you in. Come back. I have to circle the wagons, don’t have time for more.

That was it. He was texting me back, but I ignored his calls. What I said was true. I’d lost Bright and Wilson from my pocket. They were looking at me as an adversary, trying to find charges against me, and, well, they’d have a fight on their hands. I hadn’t intended on adopting the mantra that if I went down, they’d go down, but since they were flying around me, I was taking that mantra on now.

Game on.

“Hello?”

“I need you to pull up anything and everything on my two FBI assets.”

“Not to incriminate you, I’m assuming.”

“Correct.”

If they took payments from me, guarantee there was a whole closet of other payments, other bribes, other times they had looked the other way. They looked the other way when Bailey was first brought in, and they did it without blinking. There was a pattern, one they’d been doing for a long time, and there was a trail. There was always a trail.

“You don’t want your girl to look into it?”

I paused, just briefly, as I considered it. “No.” Bailey needed to be as clear from this as possible. “They said she left a trail when she found them. I need to know if she did.”

“She didn’t.”

My hand tightened on the phone. “Are you sure?”

“She left one system open, the neighbor’s, but that was it. And I only know it was your girl because you told me what was going on. I’ll look, but I didn’t see anything they could trail back to her.”

“They found the house.”

He was silent on his end.

I could read between the lines. I doubted they would’ve found the house on their own, not as fast as they did. That meant something happened. They had followed—

He interrupted my thoughts. “They might’ve put an alert on your location, figuring you’d hunker down and have her look.”

“They can do that?”

“They can do almost anything, but if she erased her trail…”

“Could they still have it?”

He was silent again. A long second. “I don’t know.”

Fuck.

“Can you break in? See whether they have anything on her?”

“They’re saying they do?”

“Yeah.” I hated that word. I hated that admission.

“I’ll look, but once I do, they’ll trail it back to me. Our own location will be exposed.”

I couldn’t risk Bailey.

“Start packing up. Do it remote, if you can,” I responded, still walking down the hallway to our room.

“On it.”

I ended the call as I got to the room, and going inside, I saw Bailey hadn’t moved. Her eyes were big. She was clutching her knees to her chest. I cursed, seeing how pale she was.

“What’s happened?”

I checked the clock. I was figuring I had one hour, if even that.

“Feds found the house. They called; they’re trying to pull me in. My guess is you’ll be getting a call from them to notify you that your mother is alive this afternoon.”