Page 21 of Run

He’d been watching Elle carefully as he spoke, and when she paled, he felt the sight like a knife to his gut.

“Being popular is totally overrated,” she joked, but it fell flat.

“Add to that, the James Family have people seeded throughout most law enforcement agencies, making it hard to trust even our contacts on the inside. We might know the person we give our information to, but we don’t know whose hands it’ll end up in.”

“You got any good news?” Callum was clearly unimpressed by his intel.

“As far as I can tell, the James Family has a head start on everyone else who wants Elle. If we take them down, we could put an end to this whole thing once and for all. The best way to do that is to escalate tensions between them and the Albanian Mob. They’ve been nipping at each other’s heels for a while now, and it won’t take much to make the situation explode. We need a third party, though, to ensure they don’t figure out who’s to blame for anything that happens. I’m thinking we rope in MC20. They’re young, violent, and power-hungry. If we pit all three against each other, that should sort the problem for us.”

There was a beat of silence before Callum said, “Your big idea to get Elle off everyone’s radar is to start a war?”

“Yeah,” David said. “Preferably whilenotgetting caught or killed.”

“There’s one tiny, wee problem with that idea.” Callum spread his hands. “All our resources are stuck in the crime scene that used to be our office building. Surveillance equipment, weapons, computers. Hell, we don’t even have decent vehicles. All we’ve got are our crappy junker cars and cheap burner phones. Meanwhile, the people we could call for backup are holed up in Scotland, protecting their families—and ours. The rest of my team, the London team, are out on jobs. They’re scattered around the globe and can’t exactly walk out on clients, even if they could get back in time to help. This”—he gestured around the room—“is literally everything we have.”

David pointed at himself. “One spy.” Then he pointed at each of them in turn. “One retired SAS officer, one non-active Marine, one former army ranger, an ex-soldier with skills and experience he doesn’t talk about, a first-class project manager who’s a savant when it comes to seeing patterns in situations, the best hacker in the world, and whatever Megan is.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Thisis everything we need.”

They stared at him for a long moment before Ryan spoke. “I’m with the spy. I say we go all A-Team on their arses. I call dibs on Faceman.”

“No way,” Joe complained. “I’m better looking than any of you, and I’ve got more charm.I’mFaceman.”

“Well, I’m not going to be Howling Mad Murdock.” Ryan glared at Joe.

“No, that’s obviously Megan,” Joe said. “You can be B.A.”

“Bad Attitude Baracus? Are you nuts? That’s Callum!”

From there, things quickly deteriorated into an argument about which A-Team character best suited whom. Meanwhile, David sipped his coffee, keeping his gaze averted from Elle.

8

David was avoiding Elle. The coward. She’d let him get away with it, for now, seeing as they were busy trying to dig her out of her hole. But her generous spirit wouldn’t last much longer. Mainly because she was genetically incapable of dealing with other people’s mood swings.

The team had worked late into the night, talking with contacts and gathering as much information as possible on everyone’s operations before handing it over to Julia for her to organize. Around three a.m., Elle fell asleep on top of the crappy laptop David had bought from an outlet beside the airport—because he was the only one who had untraceable credit cards.

Typical. Bloody spies. Everything about them was secret and untraceable. Which was seriously annoying. Almost as annoying as the distance he’d put between them since they’d hung out in the bathroom. And yeah, that was a weird sentence, but whatever. What the hell was with all that ‘I don’t matter’ crap anyway? That was some seriously screwed up thinking. And one of several topics she’d like to bring up with him if he ever stopped avoiding her. Others included getting him to tell her his full name. Didn’t he realize how crazy it made her being kept in the dark? Probably. He had to be doing it deliberately. Andthatconclusion didnotlighten her mood.

“David’s gone out to talk with some of his contacts,” Ryan said when she stumbled into the kitchen, wearing yesterday’s clothes.

“Did I ask where he’d gone?” She jerked open the fridge and growled. It was full of healthy food.

“Don’t blame me for the food options,” Ryan said. “Your boyfriend has something against junk food. He cleared it out and replaced it with that crap.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Elle snapped in a full-on, head-spinningExorcistvoice.

After barely a few hours’ sleep, she’d woken with a crick in her neck, a hunger only sugar could satisfy, and a deep desire to stab the first person who spoke to her. Which didn’t bode well for Ryan.

“Before you go completely feral on me.” Strong survival instincts meant he’d easily read her mood. “You should know I have coffee, and I saved some fresh donuts from the culling. If you’re nice, I’ll share.”

Okay, maybe she wouldn’t stab him after all. She stalked to the table and plopped down in a chair, facing Ryan. “Gimme.”

“You’re usually the unbearably cheery one in the morning. What gives with channeling Megan?”

“Um, let me see.” Elle held up a hand and started ticking off on her fingers. “I was shot at by my father’s crazy mobster army, my brother wants me dead, or worse, the office was blown up, I was questioned for hours in a police interrogation room, a cop sold me out to three thugs, the thugs tried to kidnap me, I watched David kill the thugs, I’m worried some government agency will find me and make me disappear, David’s having mood swings that are doing my head in, I’m stuck in a generic four-bedroom house beside Heathrow Airport, planning to start a war that will probably get us all killed, and I scraped my knee.” She took a deep breath. “On top of all that, I had to destroy my baby!”

Ryan hurriedly opened the donut box and thrust one into her hand. “I’m sure your laptop didn’t feel a thing when it died.”

Elle bit off a chunk of the donut while Ryan poured her a mug of coffee. When he was done, she fell on it as though it were essential for life itself, not even caring that it tasted like mud. She needed the caffeine. There was nowhere near enough of it pumping through her system, especially for a woman who, when asked, gave her blood type as Caffeine-positive.