Viviana “Quillery” Chambers secured the wrist control into position and activated HERA. Drones rose and zoomed to their pre-programmed positions. Palms sweaty, pulse racing, she forced a deep breath and exhaled through the unease. She’d participated in hundreds, no thousands, of ops through the years. This one was different, though. She was in the field on this one because it was personal.

“Hey, we’ve got this.” Addy Rugers slapped her on the back and smiled. “We’ve run through every possible scenario damn near a hundred times.”

The kickass operative wasn’t lying. Every muscle in Vi’s body ached from the hours upon hours of “dry runs” her new boss insisted on doing. Marshall Mason and his brothers didn’t mess around. It was one of the ten thousand reasons The Arsenal was the best private paramilitary organization around.

“I’m good. I’m just sick of waiting.” Vi adjusted the earpiece in her left ear and stared out across the street. Apartment 6E held their quarry. He damned well better have the answers she wanted.

“Shake it off or you’ll get benched,” Addy warned. The redhead motioned to the vehicle in front of them, a black SUV with darkened windows—a twin to the one they had just exited. “Say the word and Cord’ll step in.”

“No. This is mine. I’m lead.” She punctuated the last two words as she channeled the anger, the seething rage she’d kept contained, unseen. Nervous energy was expected, an acceptable display, one she’d allowed the past few minutes.

No more.

If her new boss knew how emotionally vested she was, they’d bench her. She’d spent damn near every hour of the past two weeks scouring the Deep Web and every other crevice of humanity to unearth the asshole in apartment 6E. The Arsenal didn’t mess around, but they didn’t put their people in trouble’s sight lines, not if they were too deep in their own heads to focus.

Today’s objective was simple: breach apartment 6E and get answers.

She summoned the calm: the no-holds-barred confidence which had translated to nothing but successful missions for her and her partner, Mary, aka the Edge. Together they’d been the Quillery Edge ever since freshman year at MIT. Today was for Mary.

Her and Addy.

Vi looked over at her redheaded friend, the one who’d lost so much and hadn’t batted an eye. Fierce operatives like Addison Rugers took whatever blows life dealt and came back stronger. She deserved a break. It was the least Vi could do, seeing how she failed them both so miserably when the Hive nightmare started. They deserved answers.

Justice.

Closure.

Her wrist apparatus chimed, signaling the start of the mission. Drones were in position.

“Hallways are clear and secure,” Mary offered through the com.

“Roger,” Vi replied.

“Be careful,” Mary whispered in reply. “Listen to Addy if things go wrong. Cord and I have your back.”

Mary had insisted on coming, being alongside Vi. Thank goodness Dylan had talked sense into her.

You’ll be better backup here in Command. She and Mary had received limited field training when they started at their former employer, Hive. Thus the “refresher courses” Addy and the other team leaders at The Arsenal had made her go through. Fortunately, she’d done well enough for them to flag her as active for field work.

They had no choice. Although they’d gotten most of those responsible for kidnapping Mary, the ring leader was still in the wind. Her friend wouldn’t be truly safe, able to move on until every single person with a hand in what happened paid. This entire thing was Vi’s mess and she was going to clean it up.

“We’re going in,” Vi stated.

A drone maneuvered up the stairwell to the left when they entered the lobby. Huntington Apartments was in a part of Chicago where most people wouldn’t care to live. But it was within a quarter mile of the pizzeria Arnie Mulligan worked at thirty hours a week. The minimum wage position and shitty one-bedroom kept him off Uncle Sam’s radar. Too bad he’d hit Vi’s in a big way.

Addy’s long-legged stride chewed up the stairs two and sometimes three at a time. Vi cursed her short and much fuller body, but remained radio silent. She didn’t need to breathe to kick Arnie’s ass. She wouldn’t be kicking his ass at all. That was Addy’s job.

Addy remained five to six stairs ahead of Vi the entire way up to the sixth floor. Two drones hovered near Vi. One in front of Addy. They’d only used two in the last hostage recovery mission they’d undertaken last week. Needless to say, the entire Arsenal was personally vested in the objective.

Vi pulled out the Sig Sauer she’d been issued. Just holding it made her feel a bit more bad ass and a little less fat ass. Then Addy nodded, lifted a leg and kicked the door to apartment 6E. Wood splintered. The redhead didn’t miss a beat. She disappeared through the entry. Vi remembered the instructions. Duck and to the right.

Easy enough.

Penetration of the target’s domicile wasn’t difficult. He was a three-hundred-seventy-pound idiot savant with a penchant for kiddie porn. Addy had her gun pressed against Arnie’s temple. Arnie was staring at Vi as she entered. His large, brown-eyed gaze flitted between her and Addy.

“Hello, Arnie,” Vi said.

She set the gun down on the kitchen table, one he’d converted into a workstation of sorts. Computers in assorted stages of completion or deconstruction were strewn about the area. Gnats flitted about and landed on half-finished food and paper plates. Super-sized drinks from the corner convenience store laid in a heap in the corner.

“Jesus, the bastard’s a cliché geek,” Cord spat through the com.

Arnie gasped as the drone hovered inches from his face.

“Back off. This is my op,” Vi commented. She waited as the drone backed away a few inches, hovering near her ear. “We need to talk, Arnie.”

“I ain’t got nothing of any value. Take whatever you want.” His lower lip quivered. “Just don’t hurt me.”

“Please. You’d probably enjoy it too much,” Addy replied, her voice low and lethal.

“You disappoint me, Arnie.” Vi forced his attention back to her.

“Lady, I don’t even know you.” His shaky voice rose an octave. “Don’t hurt me.”

Vi pulled on a pair of gloves, more for effect than necessity, and waited until his eyes widened. “What am I going to find on your computer, Arnie?”

Lower lip trembling, he remained quiet. She’d dreamed of this moment for days. He wasn’t supposed to cry, not this soon. He needed to suffer for his part in Mary’s abduction. Arnie was messing with her pissed-off mojo.

It wasn’t fun squashing a bug if they didn’t offer at least a little fight.

She’d seen what the bastard got off on. Studied what he sold to pad his secret bank accounts. He deserved far more than her wrath.

“You’ve been a bad, bad boy, Arnold Harry Mulligan. You would’ve gotten by with it if you hadn’t gotten greedy.” Vi went around the table to stand at his other side. “See, you’re one of a million cockroaches scurrying when the lights go on. When I purge the Deep Web, I move right past you because you aren’t worth the effort. I’m going for the snakes, the vipers.”

She reached down and banged the table. Gnats flew for cover, unfinished drinks teetered. Arnie trembled.

“Talk to me about your voice alteration programs. Who hired you to duplicate my voice?”

Recognition flared his eyes wide and for a flash, barely a breath, Vi tasted something other than failure, guilt. She heard something other than her best friend’s voice screaming in the middle of the night. Screaming her name over and over and over. It’d been weeks since Mary had bad episodes, but Vi remembered. Every time she closed her eyes she remembered those screams.

“Oh God.” Arnie squeezed his eyes shut. His bladder let loose. “I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know what they were gonna do.”

“But you agreed. Did the deed, took the money and ran like the cockroach you are,” she whispered angrily. “You knew whose voice you were cloning. You aren’t a dumb troll, just lazy. You knew there’d be consequences. You knew who I was.”

“Y-Yeah, I knew. Quillery, the bitch who culls the Shadows.”

Vi culled far more than the Shadows. The one sight was a frequent pit stop for her personal quest to clean up the cesspit in the Hidden Web. While many people had heard of the Dark Web, there were far worse, seedier areas. Those were her hunting grounds. “I’m surprised they let little piss ants like you in, with your paltry few credit card numbers you lift from the pizzeria.”

Pander to his pride, piss off the peacock and he’ll preen. She backed up a step when his face reddened. Addy eased the gun away and shook her head. Vi allowed her revulsion to show in her expression. Arnie had cracked too fast, too easy.

“You stupid cow. You think I pawn digits? You’re the idiot. I’m the best damn coder in the Shadows. No one’s better.” His chest swelled. “I can make anything if the price is right. Everything I create is genius.”

“What was the price?” Addy demanded.

Arnie gulped.

The redhead’s eyes glimmered and she smirked. Taking a step back, she aimed and fired at the biggest monitor with her silenced weapon. The 4K television serving as a monitor shattered.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” Vi whispered. “You’re going to tell me everything, and fast. My friend here is short tempered and has a lot of bullets. The next one’s going into your hard drive.”

“I’m not telling you a damn thing. They’ll kill me.”

“I won’t let them because that’d be too easy.” He needed to suffer, scream endlessly night after night feeling phantom horrors. “First, I’m going to put you in a cold, dark hole and make you listen to what they did to her. Make you listen to your genius. Then you’ll take her place, experience everything she did as you listen to your genius.”

“Vi, ease off,” Cord whispered through the com.

To hell with easing off. Those bastards hadn’t eased off when they’d had Mary. Hurt Mary. Made her scream.

Made her think they were hurting Vi the same way. All because of Arnie.

The genius.

“I didn’t know,” he cried out. “I swear.”

“Actions have consequences, Arn. Today you get yours.” Vi motioned toward the computer. “Call up your genius. Show me.”

“I-I don’t keep a copy, it’s part of my agreement.”

Like hell he didn’t keep a copy.

“Show me,” Vi thundered.

“O-okay.”

His fingers trembled as he got to work on the keyboard. Vi watched, noted passwords as he keyed them in, and observed his security measures and protocols as he bypassed them. The drone hovered, recording each keystroke, each move. “H-here it is.”

He motioned to the screen. Vi grabbed the keyboard. She called up the source files, the ones he’d been given with her voice. No date or time stamps. Oh well. She’d figure out where they came from, narrow suspects down. Likely Peter himself had recorded them, which meant they were at another dead end.

“Where did the payment you got come from?”

“Untraceable wires, pinged through four banks. I trace payments. Knowledge is power,” he offered lamely.

“How did they contact you?”

“On the Shadows, said a friend recommended me. I didn’t ask who.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Addy commented dryly. “Afraid the hard drive’s eating a bullet, Arnie.”

“No, no, no. Wait. I-I may have recorded a conversation or two. He used an app to disguise his voice, but I got passed it.”

“Right. Cause you’re the genius,” Vi supplied. “Call it up.”

He looked up nervously at Addy, then back at Vi. With a nod, he got to work. Moments later a thickly accented voice droned on through the computer’s speakers.

“Middle Eastern,” Mary commented through the headset.

HERA could trace the voice, possibly. She snagged the keyboard and entered a few commands, uploading the data to a secured network and downloading a virus to obliterate Arnie’s operation. It’d take forty-eight hours for the worm she’d written to duplicate all his data and send all incriminating evidence to the FBI. Just enough time for her to have what she needed without government suits getting in her way.

“Anything else you want to offer up, Arn?” Addy asked.

“I cooperated. I need security. He’ll come after me.”

“Doubtful. You aren’t worth the effort,” Vi commented. “Besides, remember what I said about consequences? Making stupid decisions gets you in trouble.”

Vi turned, picked up the weapon she’d set on the table and headed toward the door. She wanted to put two rounds in his forehead, but the bastard would get his comeuppance courtesy of the alphabet soup. Until then, he could marinate a couple days. “Don’t get on my radar again. I won’t be so nice next time. You owe me.”

Each step away from Arnie Mulligan quickened her pulse. She remained silent as Addy fell into step alongside her. Drones zoomed past them as they exited the building and headed across the street to the vehicle.

Addy grabbed Vi’s wrist and removed HERA’s controller, the one she hadn’t even considered using because Mary and Cord had handled the drones from the compound. Vi sat in her seat as Addy removed both their ear buds and sealed everything into the case. She slammed the door shut behind Vi, then went around the front of the SUV. The vehicle slid away from the curb less than a minute later.

A shrill ring sounded overhead.

“We’re clear,” Addy replied upon answering.

“Mary and Cord are working on the data,” Marshall replied. “We’ll talk in the air. Transport is waiting. We’re wheels up in forty minutes.”

Vi didn’t want to talk. Not now. Not in the air. Not anytime soon.

“He’s worried,” Addy offered unnecessarily when she hung up the call. “Vi, the things you said back there. You aren’t past what went down with Hive.”

“And you are?” Vi laughed and shook her head as she stared out the window. Chicago whizzed by as they headed toward the private airstrip they’d landed at less than three hours ago. “I’m not anymore messed up about what went down than you are.”

“You’re right. I’m not over it.” Addy locked gazes with Vi when she turned her head. “But I’ve spoken with Doctor Sinclair. I’m working through it. So is Mary.”

Her stomach clenched. Seeing a head shrink wasn’t on Vi’s agenda. She didn’t need help, not that kind anyway. She should’ve been there to keep Mary safe. She should’ve gotten them out of Hive sooner. It was her fault they’d remained too long. Mary had wanted to leave weeks before she was taken, but Vi wanted more dirt on Martin Driggs, Peter’s co-owner.

They’d both suspected Driggs as being dirty.

Neither had considered Peter, mainly because the bastard had faked his death.

Vi couldn’t undo her foolish decision, a decision Mary suffered for.

She squeezed her eyes shut and forced a deep breath. Her fingers moved in time to invisible code scrawling through her brain, but the stress management technique she’d taught herself didn’t ease the ache in her chest. The regret lodged in her throat.

I won’t let you down again, Mary. I won’t let any of you down. I swear.

The vehicle signaled another incoming call. Addy answered before Vi could say otherwise.

“Vi.” Mary’s voice was soft, hesitant. The Edge wasn’t ever supposed to be soft.

And sure as hell not hesitant.

Vi had done that, added those cracks in a once unbreakable armor.

She forced a cleansing breath and focused on the task at hand. “Any luck with HERA tracking the voice?”

“She’s working on it,” Mary replied. “Are you okay?”

“Okay, I’ll see you soon.”

“See you.”

The line went dead. Addy shook her head. “You can’t avoid her forever. She’s worried.”

Vi didn’t need to avoid Mary forever, just long enough to track down the bastards who funded Peter’s betrayal. The ones who got away. Once Vi found them, everything would be good. She would fix everything. Better late than never, right?