Page 101 of Redemption

Playing with the tongue stud, she nodded. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit.” Seven jumped that time, startling Victoria. “You know what we do.”

“I don’t know…” But she knew where Seven’s mind would head. “You stay home.”

“You wouldn’t dare go without me.”

“Of course I would. I work best alone.”

“I work best alone,” Seven said simultaneously, mimicking her. “Well, don’t get yourself killed. There’s a hot Aussie who’d be pissed.”

“Fine. Now tell me what you know.” Victoria grabbed her purse that she’d ditched by the coffee table after her meeting with Lenora earlier that day and extracted a pen and notepad. “Where and when?”

“Three weeks from tomorrow—”

“Really?” Victoria tossed the pen. “I got the impression there was something sooner.”

“Oh, well tonight. But how much prep time do you need—”

Versus waiting three weeks?“If you help me, not as much.” She tossed the blanket off. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“It’s just recon.” Victoria threw another protein bar into her bag. “Same as any other job.”

Seven watched. A disbelieving frown had been plastered on her face for the last forty-five minutes. “Then why can’t I come with you?”

“Because we’ve done this before. Twelve seconds into sitting there, you get bored, want your phone, and that won’t work for me.”

“You don’t have night vision goggles for my nighttime phone viewing pleasure in your bag of tricks.” Seven pointed at the bag as Victoria zipped it.

“Even if those existed, you’d distract me.”

“We could put ninja warfare paint on our faces and barrel roll around—”

“And now you’re slap happy when I need to concentrate.”

“Okay, true.”

Victoria walked over to the printed maps they’d pulled off Google and checked where Seven was sure the meet was going down. She’d heard Vashchenko had taken up a home base on what had been a working farm with, they decided, lots of places to stash a woman or two, if the Russians wanted to keep them there. They could store arms, bring in clients, make deals, move money, drugs, whatever they needed to, and organize cash-or-human payments to their suppliers from a central location.

If guns were coming out, they were going out. If Mayhem was going to place another order, like the one Seven thought there might be in three weeks, Vashchenko might keep some of the dough from Mayhem, send off women, turn a better profit, and make Mikhailov happy in the process.

Or not, and the whole night would be nothing but sitting in the dark, watching a gun deal go down and having nothing to do about it.

Seven popped up and paced. “All right then. I guess I’ll let you get to work.”

“Okay.”

Seven nervously pulled on her eyebrow piercing. “I just want to remind you. This time, it’s personal. You’re thinking about this differently, so you need to take double care of yourself.”

“What?” This wasn’t the pep talk she needed right now.

“You’re not spying for other people. You’re trying to figure something out for yourself. You’re not going to take what you learn and give it to someone else—you have said yourself, people can make bad decisions with good information—you’ll just have it on your own.”

“I get your point. I’m trained. I know what I’m doing—” She cut herself off, feeling suddenly stronger than she had in weeks. It was as if she needed this to remind her that she could do this job, that even if something went wrong, she was trained for it. “I expect my jobs to go bad, Seven.”

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