Page 64 of Ignite

Denny sighed as if resolved. “All right. We’re gonna dig up some information and find the Slaggers’ place. Prolly take a few hours. I’ll give you as much time as I can, but my help will only go so far. You get caught, you’re paying for it.”

“Thank you, Officer.”

Denny shook his head. “Just do me a big favor and don’t do something that will make me arrest you for real, yeah?” He muttered several curses under his breath as he left the club.

Wolf was alone. He didn’t roar with unfettered, burning rage. He calmly walked to the back locker room and picked up a hard-sided case he’d stored there. A few minutes later, he was on his bike and heading north.

* * *

“What the fuckis taking so gawddamn long?”

Ramrod sucked back a lungful of sweet smoke and blew plumes of it in the air. Jazz coughed at the pungent smell of pot and typed in another random line. “I’ve pulled out the funds from the orphanage and got them deposited in your account. The other transactions are processing.”

She silently prayed her message got through. She’d piggybacked a link into a text when she hacked into her own phone. Then she set up several phony accounts that showed huge amounts of money. Every time she “transferred” from one of them to the Slaggers’ account, it showed up as pending approval. That was enough to keep Ramrod happy and smoking as he saw his numbers go up. Jazz had no idea if she was fooling the other guy. He hadn’t said much since she started pressing buttons.

“Fucking cunt. So stupid to spread my money all over the place.”

“A really big deposit would trigger an automatic audit. I didn’t want any of those charities to get in trouble.” She didn’t know if that was true or not, but it sounded like a legit excuse. The longer she took, the more time she gave Wolf to find her. She had visions of him and the club bursting in and razing the place to the ground. Or maybe Wolf would have an unstoppable John Wick moment. There was also the chance that he hadn’t received the text or would get here too late. “My family doesn’t know a thing about this. As far as they’re concerned, I’m the big fuckup. There’s no reason to go after them.”

“Stupid bitch.” Ramrod took another long drag and held his breath. He spun the shaky chair around and backhanded Jazz across the face. The chair tilted, and she ended up on the floor.

A small quickchinkaccompanied her cry of pain. Ramrod’s head snapped back, and a clean red hole appeared in his forehead. The look of surprise on his face stayed there as he crumpled next to Jazz.

“Madarchod!” The word burst from the assassin’s mouth, and he seized Jazz’s hair to yank her up and put her body between his and the window. “You did this, didn’t you?”

Jazz’s mouth filled with a warm coppery taste. Ramrod’s blow had reopened the cut on her lip, and blood was flowing again. “I never touched my phone. Ramrod still has it.”

He laughed. “Do you think I’m stupid?Youdon’t have to use your phone to call someone. The question is, did you call many or only one?”

His grip tightened in her hair. “I think only one.”

He stepped back to hide in the shadows of the small room and placed Jazz in front of him as a shield, pulling her head back and slightly to the side so she was forced to stand tall and arch her back. He rested a large handgun on her shoulder with the barrel pointed at the windows. The angle of the sun shone down on Ramrod’s body, still bleeding from the head wound.

Minutes passed. Jazz’s head burned from the unrelenting grip, and her shoulders were starting to cramp from being held in the awkward position.

“Call him.”

“What?”

“I said call him.” He pressed a burner phone into her hand. “I want to hear what he has to say.”

The first time she called, it was ignored. It took three times before Wolf picked up.

“Hello.”

“Wolf?”

“Tell him I’m going to kill him.”

The line went dead. Jazz whimpered at the matter-of-fact tone in Wolf’s flat voice. Just like Stefan inThe Vampire Diaries, his emotions were turned off. The person he hated from his past, he’d gone there again.

“H-h-he said?—”

“Yes, I heard him. Funny, as I believe I’ll kill him first. Pity, as I feel this man and I are brothers in a way. We now play a game of waiting and stamina. Who will win?”

“You sound amused.”

“I am,priya. This is the first time in a very long while that I’ve had a challenge. Most of my assignments are simple and boring. This one has entertained me more than anything else in years.”

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