Page 83 of Delta Force Defender

Deliberately.

And he’d fallen for it. Hook, line, and sinker.

The way he always did with her. Only with her.

The comm unit was quiet. Jonas had stopped performing, and the profound silence suggested that he and Templeton had already completed their task. There were two of them, after all—meaning it wasn’t a fair fight for the rest of the patrons. Anyone who tried to go against them would find that out, and fast.

“There’s nothing written on her napkin,” Templeton said over the comm unit, but in his normal speaking voice. Confirming that he and Jonas had silently taken control of Sharkey’s. “There is, however, the impression of a key.”

Isaac shoved the wire in his pocket, then pushed into the main part of the bar. He took in the situation with a glance. Jonas stood near the front door, still and deadly again. He had a gun in his hand, though it pointed down to the floor. The three regulars Templeton had counted earlier were lying down on the ground, faces pressed against the sticky floor. They weren’t even grumbling, suggesting that any tough-guy fronting had already been dealt with.

Brutally.

Templeton stood behind the bar. The bartender stood in front of him, with his hands resting on the top of his head. The 9 mm on the sticky, scarred wood in front of them wasn’t Templeton’s, indicating that he’d relieved the bartender of it.

Painfully, Isaac hoped.

“Where did she go?” Isaac asked the bartender softly.

Very, very softly.

The bartender bared his teeth. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Templeton laughed in that booming, unsettling way of his. “Oh, buddy. You’re reading this situation the wrong way.”

“Who did he text?” Isaac asked.

Templeton tossed the bartender’s phone onto the bar, letting it clatter as it slid, then stop in a puddle. “A number. No name. All it says is,Package in the hall.”

Isaac got good and still.

She’d been saying good-bye to him. She’d known exactly what was going to happen, set it up, and she’d been trying to clear her slate before she did it.

Caradine had played him. Deliberately.

He was going to find her, save her if necessary, and then kill her himself.

But right now he concentrated on the smirking bartender with every bit of temper and adrenaline inside him.

“You’re making a mistake,” the bartender snarled.

“Good,” Isaac told the man, doing absolutely nothing to contain the rage inside of him. He didn’t even keep it out of his voice, and he ignored Templeton’s startled look. “Then let’s make sure it’s a big one.”

Twenty-two

The last time Caradine had been in these tunnels she’d been about twenty. She and Lindsay had been sent here by their mother on a summer’s night because their brother Danny had needed collecting. Again. He’d been passed out after a spot of belligerence, embarrassing the family the way he always did.

You don’t want your father having to deal with him,their mother had said sharply when they’d been slow to get up from the television to do her bidding.Or your brother Jimmy.

That had been back in the days when her mother had still believed that Danny could be saved.

Or maybe not, Caradine reflected as she made it to the bottom of the stairs that led down to the cellar. She heard a slam from up above and winced, certain she knew exactly who that was. Isaac, slamming his way into the building. She pushed on, moving more quickly than she might have otherwise down the dim hallway that opened up in front of her.

And as she moved, she thought about her mother and that long-ago night. Maybe Donna hadn’t thought she could save anyone. Maybe she’d used Danny as a way to poke at her husband—not wanting to save him so much as wanting to keep Mickey from handling him the way he liked.

Either way, Caradine and Lindsay had been met at the back door by the usual flat-eyed goon, shoved roughly down these same stairs, and told to drag their wasted brother out to the car they’d parked on the next block before someone took him out with the trash.

For good, was the implication.

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