Page 102 of Locked and Loaded

"You've never held a baby in your life," Rush said.

"I've held lots of things. How different can it be?"

More laughter on the comms. Dragan felt something loosen in his gut that he hadn't known was tight. He'd spent most of his life alone. Running alone. Fighting alone. Trusting no one because no one was worthy of trust. Then he'd joined Callahan and found himself surrounded by people who didn't ask him to be anything except what he was. People who had his six and picked up his calls at three in the morning and made jokes on comms while the world burned around them.

Family. That was the word for it. He'd never had one before. He hadn't known what it felt like.

Lennox was safer tonight than she'd been since the moment she set foot in Morocco. Not because of him. Because of all of them. Because every exit was covered and every angle was watched and every man on the comms was willing to die to keep the people in this room safe.

She didn't know that. She was standing by an ice sculpture looking for threats she couldn't see, not knowing that Ryker had the doors, not knowing that Flynn had the balcony, not aware that Cash watched the hallway to the auction or that Enzo Valardi was about to walk into that auction with an Italian mobster who owed him favors. She was running on months of exhaustion and adrenaline and guilt, and she was still fighting.

He was going to tell her. When this was over. He was going to tell her that they had an army and that she didn't have to fight alone anymore. And he was going to thank everyone personally. He didn’t really know Ryker, Rush, Cash, and Flynn. They were Society guys, but they were here on comms, and they knew the assignment. They were here not just because of Armand but because when Armand asked Dragan to explain the situation, they all understood what was at stake.

His earpiece crackled again.

"Interesting," a voice said.

Dragan went still. The voice was calm. Measured. It carried the faint trace of an accent that took him a second to place. A voice that belonged to a man who'd been dead for months.

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.

The voice continued. "You've got good coverage on the room. I'd shift Flynn to the east balcony, though. The west balcony has a blind spot near the service entrance. Someone could slip through there without being seen. East is cleaner. Better sightlines."

Dragan knew that voice. His old rival and sometime friend. Archer Gray. He looked across the room. Lennox was still by the ice sculpture. Still safe. Still watched. But something had shifted in his chest. It was as if by hearing Archer’s voice, the animal that he once was had come alive again. He would have to put his trust in his chosen family to look after Lennox if he was going to deal with Georgiou. Knowing Archer was there and was ready to help made that so much easier.

"Flynn, relocate to the east balcony now." The voice wasn't asking. It was telling. "Cash, keep your position but widen your scan. The hallway to the dining room has a secondary entrance that doesn't show up on the building plans. Service elevator behind the false wall. I'd put someone there if I were running security."

Cash's voice: "On it, boss. How do you know that?"

"Because I built this building as part of the Society a long time ago. Sold it when our members’ needs here changed."

“Is everyone ready?” Armand’s voice came across the comms. “It’s about to begin.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

She leaned back in her chair and watched as the buyers were arriving. The private dining room was ready.

She typed two words to Eli Fisher. Begin check-in.

Camera three was her view of the corridor outside the dining room. She watched the buyers arrive in ones and twos, spaced out the way she'd instructed. No crowds. No attention. A Russian oligarch she'd dealt with before. A Chinese shipping executive. A tech investor from Silicon Valley whose public platform was all TED Talks and philanthropy, but whose private tastes ran considerably darker. They walked past the camera without looking at it. They'd been briefed. No eye contact with security. No acknowledgment of the cameras. Pretend you're going to the restroom. Pretend you're taking a call. Pretend you're anyone except exactly who you are.

The dining room itself was on camera five. She'd designed it herself. Round tables draped in dark green. Low lighting. A stage at the front with a podium and a screen. The menu was five courses, each paired with a wine that cost more than most people made in a year. The auction would run between courses. Appetizers, then Lot One. Soup, then Lot Two. By the time dessert was served, she'd have moved fifteen girls and made more money than Margot St. Clair raised in donations all night.

That was the beauty of it. The gala was the cover. The gala was always the cover. Three hundred people in one room, all of them rich, all of them watched, all of them accounted for. The ten men who slipped away to the private dining room were invisible by comparison. Who noticed ten missing faces in a crowd of three hundred? Who noticed a closed door at the end of a hallway when there was champagne and ice sculptures and Margot St. Clair holding court in the ballroom?

No one. That was the point.

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen. An update from her man on the ground. The charity donations had passed eight figures. Margot was on track to raise twenty million before the night was over. The mastermind smiled. Her cut was fifteen percent, wired through three shell companies to an account in the Caymans. Another two million, give or take, on top of whatever the auction brought in.

Not bad for a woman who'd had to rebuild her life from nothing.

The encrypted chat updated. The first buyer had passed biometric verification. The second was in progress. Fisher was handling it personally, which meant he was in the room, sweating through his suit, trying to look like he belonged there. He didn't. Fisher had never belonged anywhere. That was why she'd chosen him. Men who didn't belong were grateful for any place that would have them, and grateful men were easy to control.

She'd hang him out to dry when this was over. That had always been the plan. Lennox Crowe had been useful for a while…a dog chasing the wrong scent. But the moment she stopped being useful, her elimination was greenlit.

Fisher was different. Fisher knew too much. Fisher could name names. Fisher could bring the whole operation down if someone got to him. And someone would eventually. Someone always did.

She knew from the beginning Fisher would have to go. He would be her fall guy. A Society board member who ran everything. A suicide, she thought. Something tragic and public. The kind of thing that made headlines for a day and then disappeared. Epstein had set the template. Hanged himself in his cell while the cameras mysteriously failed. Everyone knew it wasn't suicide. Everyone knew it didn't matter. The system protected itself. It always did.