Page 15 of License to Kill

“I really do. I haven’t gotten any in years, and it’s making me pissy.”

“If you end up taking Jake, he’s good for that.”

“Karma. I’m not going to take Jake. He’s yours. I’m afraid you’re stuck with him. You two will figure everything out in time. Will I talk with him and be friends with him? Sure, if you want me to talk with him and be friends with him, I can do that. I can help try to put his head back on straight while I’m at it. But he’s yours. It might take you two a while to figure it out, but you made that bed and you’ve slept in it. Also, feel free to use that line until your mate figures out his shit. It’s effective, and it can make it clear he fucked up. I mean, you’ve fucked up in some ways, too, but he’s taking the lion’s share. Honestly, my bet is he probably forgot you could smell other women on him. Had he remembered that, he would have kept his distance from them until his relationship with you was cemented in a fashion everyone else could accept. It’ll be all right. Time and therapy will fix a lot of the problems. What time and therapy can’t fix, affection and getting away from that stupid pack of his will.”

I doubted that, but I recognized when she wouldn’t change her mind, so I didn’t argue with her. “How do you survive without a pack? Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Daily. My wolf is lonely, and so am I. But I cope. One day, things will get better.”

“How many times a day do you have to tell yourself that?”

“Roughly once an hour,” she admitted. “Some days, it even helps.”

As warned, Amelia hopped me up on Demerol, and once she stole the ridiculous amount of blood required for her ploy, she sedated me, gave me a blood transfusion, and once the Demerol wore off, she dumped me in her SUV so we could continue our dirty work.

Our target was a little farm in the heart of the country. I’d seen hundreds of little farms just like it scattered up and down the east coast, with a red barn, rusted farm equipment decorating the dirt road, and a quaint, aging farmhouse at the end of the lane.

“Why are we here?”

“We are here because this is one of your best friend’s properties, and this is where he does his dirty work. Thanks to one of my contacts, the bastard is home with his accomplices planning a lucrative hit. I have already done my share of the work, so you’re here to press the button.”

That did a good job of catching my attention, and I sat straighter in my seat. “You’ve wired this place to blow?”

“Not only have I wired this place to blow, I have done so in such a fashion we get multiple birds with one stone.” Amelia parked, got out her phone, and opened an app, which she showed me. “We’re going to be wealthy women starting in a few minutes.”

Andrew, Brent, and six men I didn’t know sat around a card table in a room with wood-paneled walls. They played poker, and Amelia’s app recorded them. It also had sound, but it was muted. “Oh. I know that guy, too. Brent. He’s in CARD.”

“Yes. He was one of the asswipes on your team. He is also an accomplice in the Gianni case, although to a lesser degree. On that one, he just cooperated with that Linsc bastard. However, as he was an accomplice to the deaths of at least four kids he was supposed to be saving, the black market has decided he’s going down as well. At current, there has been no evidence the other member of your team was involved. Their supervisor was also not involved.”

“The supervisor’s just a dick. The FBI is loaded with dicks like him.”

“Yes, that’s the general consensus among the black market ops. This is a live feed, and we’re ready to go. After the place blows, I’ll dump your blood in a location I’ve already picked and we leave.”

“What about the tire tracks and footprints?”

“You’ll see,” she promised. Amelia opened a new app, tapped the screen a few times, and showed me the screen. “It’s not exactly a button, but I think you’ll cope. This is fairly easy to detonate. First, you tap arm and hold for five seconds. The icon will turn red when the explosives are armed and ready to be detonated. Then you tap the detonate button five times to light it up. That’s it, that’s all. There is a two second delay. I recommend you wear these mufflers kindly provided by our black market accomplices.” Amelia reached into the back and handed me a set before shoving hers over her ears. She then gestured to the screen.

I put the mufflers on, nodded, and pressed the arm button, waited until it changed to red, and then tapped the detonate button five times as instructed.

Two seconds felt like a damned long time, but the farmhouse exploded with a heart-stopping bang that shook the SUV and sent chunks of wood and debris raining down. Even with the mufflers, my ears rang.

Amelia took off her headset, tossed them in the back, and got out of the vehicle, grabbing the blood she’d stolen from me and skipping to the flaming ruins of the building. When I took off my headset, I listened to her sing a demented version of Happy Birthday. The blood went into a corner of the house and onto the ground just outside, and she sprayed it around as though I’d been blasted to bits.

Then she skipped back to the SUV, stole my shoes, added more blood to them, returned to the building, melted the poor things, and tossed them in the snow along with scraps of my clothing. She made several trips, dancing around and making sure to leave as many footprints as possible before returning to the vehicle, grabbing the small can of gasoline she’d stuffed in the back, setting down a piece of plywood, setting the shoes on them, dousing them, and torching them. She jumped between the flaming shoes and the SUV without touching the ground, started the engine, and drove away.

I scratched my head. “I guess that’s one way to do it. You trashed my shoes.”

“I bought you new ones. I trashed your clothes from that trailer, too. Investigators will be able to get a match on your blood unless they’re particularly stupid, and the quantity will convince most you’re very dead right now. Now, it may not convince Fenerec. You’re noted as being rather durable although not quite as tough as a Fenerec in your file. The information the cops need for a conviction is locked inside in a fireproof safe, and the black market ops took care to get the bastard’s fingerprints on some of the papers inside.”

“That leaves the problem of the tires.”

“I put the wrong sized tires on my SUV while you were napping this morning. They were modified by the black market to fit my vehicle. This specific one has a very similar carriage size to a common-as-dirt car, so we put those tires on. Once we’re to civilization, I’ll ditch these tires and put my proper ones back on. They’re in the carry-case on the top.”

Damn. “I should say please don’t become a criminal, but it’s a little too late for that.”

Amelia chuckled. “That it is. So, how did you like pressing the button?”

“Ask me again next week. Right now, I don’t feel much of anything at all. The fuckers deserved it for killing kids. I guess I’m glad they won’t be able to do that again.”