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PROLOGUE
“I hear you, Maddon, and you know him better than I do, but I don’t see this playing out in your favor.”
Understatement.
After I finished my warning, I went back to doodling on the legal pad I’d found on my father’s black leather desk blotter. Any time I was on the phone, I jotted down notes, parts of the conversation I didn’t want to forget, names I needed to research. But when I was scheming I doodled. It helped me think, helped me strategize my next move, helped me plot my next maneuver.
In my world, it paid to be three steps ahead.
So I made sure I always had the next five moves planned.
“It’s the only way you’re getting a sit down with Viper,” Maddon mostly repeated.
Yes, Viper.
The one and only man I knew better than to go up against. The one man I’d done everything I could to steer clear of. Zane Lewis was not a man anyone outmaneuvered.
But the time was ripe.
Maddon was desperate. He needed me to meet with Zane.
I scratched a line across the pad connecting a heart and a star and waited. As good as an operative as Maddon was, he was impatient.
Desperate and impatient—a deadly combination.
I heard Maddon let out an irritated sigh and I smiled.
Come on, jackhole, push harder.
“Nebraska, we have no choice. Charlie has an in. Use it to your advantage; it’s the only way to get Viper to play—”
“Zane isn’t a man you play,” I told him something he very well knew. “You play him, he fucks you. And no offense to you or him or your mission but the last person I want to get fucked by is Zane Lewis. I’ll find another way, I always do. Charlie can take the meet, tell Zane’s men he’s no threat to Bridget Keller, and send them on their way. This is a suicide mission, you know it and I know it.”
“Nebraska—”
“If it’s not, you go in and tell Zane the truth. Tell him Charlie was never a threat, the whole Raven project was a carefully crafted setup that was working brilliantly until some overzealous woman killed an employee over an OSHA violation that would’ve cost the company a couple hundred thousand dollars in fines. Instead, she fucked your mission. Tell him that everything was in place until that idiot Mark Shillings thought it was a good idea to blackmail Kathy Cobb and from there the web you cast disintegrated. If this is such a great plan, you take the meet. You tell him you need his help. You explain the situation. If after the sit-down you’re still breathing, I’ll go in and negotiate the deal.”
“You’re a far sight prettier than me, Nebraska. You’ve got a better chance coming out of that meeting breathing.”
Dick.
“This isn’t a honeytrap.”
“You know your father would never send you in if he thought you were in danger,” Maddon carefully said in an attempt to win me over.
His point was debatable. Charlie Michaels’s first love was CIA. Not that I actually thought my father would put me in harm’s way on purpose but he wouldn’t blink an eye sending me into the Viper’s den if he thought I could charm the snake into helping him. Which was exactly what Maddon was banking on.
“You do remember I don’t actually work for you, right? I only agreed to listen to the plan, which I did. I’m telling you it’s shit. I’ll find another way to get what I need.”
“And in the meantime what do I tell my team?”
“To stand down,” I suggested.
“You know I can’t do that.”
Yes, I knew he couldn’t tell his team their mission was off. That would ruin Maddon’s plan.
Again, desperate.
