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"Do you have furniture that needs to be ary sweetness "Because I’ in here with you indefinitely As soon as I can, I’ to the house"

The house she shared with Alex was small and located farther outside of town than she liked, but it was nice It was ho like the nice apartment she had shared with her roomhtly lit apartment with a balcony that overlooked the beach It hadn’t been hoh Somerset was home

"Tell me, Crista, do you want to die?" he asked her then "Because you will Those ames with those bullets, fancy-face They were serious And now, someone else could possibly believe you have theirdo you think it will take them to find you and slit your throat in your sleep?"

Crista felt the color leech fro to do with that," she argued weakly, feeling the stupidity in her response even as it came out of her lips

"You were there"

"Accidentally" She shook her head at the futility of her own arguht?

They won’t just kill me"

"No They’ll torture you first" He nodded with mock sobriety "They’ll tie you down, cut you a little, let you bleed soaze flickered over her with a flare of inner rage

"And when they realize you don’t know anything, they’ll really start having fun You’ll pray to die before they finish Is that what you want?"

She was shaking by the ti her life had just taken a very serious turn for the worse

She breathed out wearily "I don’t have furniture Just some clothes" And not a lot, at that Most of her stuff she was still waiting for Mark and Ty had been good enough to hold it for her until she had a place for it She just hadn’t found a place yet

The sa for her at that warehouse

They hadn’t been there Her earlier call to Mark had confir

A year

Had a year really gone by since she left Virginia?

A year that she had been steeped in the memories she had deliberately pushed behind her when she left hoet a handle on the a handle on them hadn’t been easy

He nodded abruptly "Get your shower and get dressed We’ll pack the rest of your stuff and bring it here You can keep your car in the privatethat Uncle Ray lets us use"

"I still need a job" Her chin lifted defiantly

"I can put you to work at the lued "I hear you’re pretty slick in the office"

Crista’s eyes narrowed "I applied there s"

"I’ritted out

"And you couldn’t rinned, devilry glittering in his gaze then "I didn’t have enough incentive then Maybe I do now"

If she had soiven a pitch worthy of a baseball player at that moment, just to wipe the s," she sneered instead

"So I keep hearing, fancy-face So I keep hearing"

NINE

Aaron Grael was dead, and no one else was talking As far as the thieves and the buyers were concerned, there was no one roup And that was bullshit They already knew that, aon the missiles had been paid to aknew Grael had been convinced Crista was that wo’s report was turned in He had seen Grael firing at the tea had made the shot and taken him out It wasn’t exactly a lie, of course, but it wasn’t the truth, either

Now they had to figure out where themiddle person here the money was, and how it affected the case

The four experireater distances and carried an explosive weight nearly double their predecessors And they could be nuclear-aruard that disabled the missiles entirely and effectively halted any chance of detonation or guidance of the weapon without them They were to have been transported to Fort Knox without those chips before heading to another base But, somehow, the Army fucked up The missiles were shipped with their safety chips, and the shipment was hijacked