Chapter 26

It’s okay if you don’t like me. Not everyone has good taste.

-Fact of Life

Lynn

I walked into the room, no longer caring that I was about to blow my operation to smithereens.

This day, along with that day, twenty-seven years ago, had been the worst of my life.

I was a special agent with the FBI. I’d done so much undercover work that I couldn’t even begin to tell you the multiple aliases that I’d used throughout my career. I’d investigated murder. Rape. Kidnapping. You name it, and I’d been there to witness it. All the while having to stand around and watch so I didn’t blow my cover or the operation that I happened to be working on at the time.

But this case…this was personal. It was one I’d been working on for a very long time, and no one knew my true motivation.

No one but a dead woman.

I’d made a promise to that dead woman that I’d keep her safe, and I’d broken it.

I’d also failed the other promise I made her: keeping her son safe.

Oh, I’d tried.

I’d tried really fucking hard, but there was no way in hell a single man could go up against the criminal machine that was Van and Candace Morrison.

I’d tried, of course, but I didn’t have the money to pay everyone in the world to do what I wanted them to do. To bring them over to my side.

Sure, I had the backing of the United States government now, but I didn’t then. Even so, it wouldn’t have been enough. At least not in this case.

Because had it been enough, I’d have nailed the two scumbags twenty-seven years ago after they killed my sister just hours after she’d birthed a child.

But I’d been only seventeen then. Just a kid in the eyes of the law.

I’d gone to the authorities, told them everything I knew along with my suspicions about who killed my sister.

But Van and Candace Morrison, despite being serious assholes, controlled Benton, Louisiana. They were never earnestly investigated for the crime. Everyone thought they were perfect and kind. Everyone, that is, but their family and the people they’d screwed over on their way to infamy.

“Hello, Lynnwood.”

I turned to find Van, the one man in this entire operation who I couldn’t kill because it would put the entire investigation in jeopardy, and stared at him.

The gun in my holster underneath my shirt was burning a hole in my pocket. It took everything I had not to pull it and use it on the man who made it his goal in life to make mine a living hell.

“Or should I call you Joker?” Van continued, not realizing how close he was to death. “That was what Lacy liked to call you.”

My sister’s name, coming out of this piece of shit’s mouth, was enough to make my hand twitch.

I could practically feel the gun in my hand. Feel my finger tightening on the trigger in response to that smug smile that was on his face.

“What are you doing here?” Van leaned back into his chair. “Would you like me to call my wife in here for old time’s sake?”

No, I most assuredly would not. His wife was a callous bitch, and I hated her. He knew it, too.

“Where’s my nephew?” I rasped.

I’d like nothing more than to put a bullet through this sick motherfucker’s skull, but this place was like a fucking maze. I had to know where Tunnel was before I could do a thing like kill him.

Van picked up a remote from his desk and pointed it at the TV on the wall.

The screen lit up, and my belly clenched immediately at what I saw.

“We’re getting ready to burn the rest of his tattoos off at the moment,” he said. “You made it just in time. We’re just about to get started!”

The actual joy in this man’s voice was enough to send my pulse skyrocketing with the need to kill him.

My fists clenched.

“Where’s the girl?”

“You mean this one?”

The screen flipped to show Audrey, huddled on the floor, watching the man with a blowtorch holding it over her brother’s chest.

“Or this one?”

The second screen showed Mina, huddled in a corner, staring at the door with such hatred in the expression on her face that I wanted to pat her on the back for not backing down and giving in to her fears.

Luckily, Sienna wasn’t there. That much, I knew for sure.

Tunnel had seen to that.

He’d paid for it, but he’d made sure that his baby girl was safe before they took him down.

Fender, who’d suffered a gunshot graze to his throat, had called us the minute that the door had closed on him.

Big Papa and the rest of the police in Mooresville had arrived three minutes and thirty seconds later, but other than a broken door, shattered glass and the gunshot-riddled front of the house, there was no one left but Sienna and a barely conscious Fender.

“You know, this is only going to end one way,” I told him.

I distracted him to attempt to keep his eyes off the screen. Why? Because I’d noticed that Tunnel’s hand came free from the rope he’d been working on, likely for the last couple hours that they’d had him.

The moment he was free, he had the blowtorch in his hands, that his torturer was just getting lit and the guy’s head in the crook of his elbow.

The blowtorch was on, and Tunnel aimed it at the guy’s eye, and within a few seconds, the guy had passed out from the pain.

I enjoyed the show, laughing inside as Van’s son saved himself, leaving me free to do nothing but internally gloat while I waited.