Chapter 61

Justice darted into Momma and Leland’s shared home office on the main level of the Mantua Home. More sedate than Momma’s office underground, it was twice the size, had two desks with chairs opposite them. And two sitting areas, each containing a couch and four leather chairs.

Justice’s hands were slick with sweat. Her heart so high in her throat she could barely breathe. Her eyes darted around the room.

Leland.

He was on the phone. She stepped over to his desk. He looked at Justice. Held up one finger. No. Way. That phone was going out the window. She reached toward him.

Someone cleared a throat. Justice turned.

Bridget?

She was dressed in a loose gold gown cinched at the waist by a belt of faux flowers. It looked like something a Greek goddess might wear. Traitor. They let her come to the party. Of course. They needed everything to look normal. It wasn’t normal. And soon Bridget wouldn’t be normal. She’d be M-erased.

“What’s going on?”

“Justice.” Bridget used her customary let’s-get-calmed-down-and-seated-before-we-proceed voice.

The familiar tone, the normalness of it, hurt in a way Justice hadn’t anticipated. A physical ache in the center of her chest. She shoved it away, shoved all the pain into a box. “Don’t fuck with me right now, Bridget.”

Leland put a hand over the mouthpiece. “The limo we sent for Sandesh was found abandoned. The driver dead in the trunk.”

The driver? Lewis? His poor family. Justice straightened her shoulders, lifted her head, clenched her stomach, readied for the next punch. “And Sandesh?”

Leland raised a curious eyebrow. Paused as if listening on the phone. Come on. She could barely fucking breathe right now. “Leland.”

Leland hung up the phone. “They took him.”

Justice didn’t faint. She would never in a million years faint. Her legs though, it turned out, could forget to keep her standing. She sat. Plopped right on her ass in a chair in front of Leland’s desk.

It was Walid. It had to be. She turned to Bridget, glared.

Bridget shook her head. “I know nothing. Maybe Dada. Her contact, Juan.”

That made sense. “Leland, tell Dada to get her ass in here.”

“I am here, abrasive one.”

Dada, wearing a cream gown with black brocade and capped sleeves that showed off her toned arms, strolled through the double doors. Justice stood. Wet noodles had more strength than her legs, but she pushed past the chair.

The doors opened again as Tony and Gracie entered. Tony had undone his bow tie so that it hung around his neck like a loosened noose.

“No.” Leland waved a hand at them. “We need to have actual family members out there entertaining.”

Tony spread his hands in an are-you-serious gesture. “Trust me, we got an extra twenty or so.” He came up to Justice, put his arm around her. “I’m sorry, kid.”

She shrugged him off. “Sorry is something you tell someone when they have no choice but to deal with something. I’ve got a choice, Tony. I’m going after him.”

He nodded. “I’m with you. Remember that.”

Justice could feel the twitch in her eye and the tremble of her lip. She looked away, toward Dada. Dada clasped her hands around her cell and let them fall protectively in front of her.

Justice would not take it easy on her. “You know things. You have a contact there. Find out where they fucking took Sandesh.”

Dada held up her cell. “I just texted Juan.”

The doors swung open again. Momma entered. She took one look around the room and made the only play that would’ve calmed Justice down. “I don’t think they would hurt him.”

She didn’t add what they all knew. Yet. Eventually, they’d take him to Walid. And the torture would begin.

The thought hollowed her stomach. She had to get out of here. Do something.

Dada’s phone chirped. Justice fisted her hands to keep from grabbing it. Dada looked down, cleared her throat. “He’s on his way to Mexico. My source.” She paused, lowered her eyes. “Juan confirms this is so.”

“I don’t trust this guy,” Gracie said. Despite the fact that she was so much shorter than Dada, Gracie still commanded attention when standing beside her.

Dada stiffened, looked down at Gracie. “He has proven himself by getting us this information. And when he could have run, should have run, when another man was tortured and killed in his place. But he hasn’t. And, more important, you can trust him because we have his son.”

Dada put a hand on her belly.

Gracie gasped, literally gasped. Then her mouth tightened. Her eyes grew hard.

Shit. Dada was pregnant. And though she’d suspected it before, now that she took a good look, she could see the swell of Dada’s belly. Gracie looked sick to her stomach.

The room went silent. After a moment, Tony said, “’Bout time you admitted it.”

Bridget let out a breath. “Strategically, considering the League’s goals, the secrecy, this is good news.”

Everyone turned to look at her. “Not the pregnancy. I mean, that’s good. Congrats and all. But I meant Mexico is good. Doable for our government. By now they know Sandesh has been taken. I saw some agents scurrying out of here. We’ll find a way to pass on the information of where. They’ll go after him. They’ll assume it’s all related to his work with the IPT.”

She had to be kidding. “We are not leaving Sandesh in the hands of that sick bastard while the government makes up its mind whether or not to go in there.”

“She’s right,” Leland said. “Even if the authorities did get him out, there would still be the issue of Walid and what he knows of us. We need to get him before that happens. Which means we have less, not more, time.”

Cold dread lined Justice’s bones. She felt brittle and frozen.

A memory of she and Sandesh in that small room in Israel, of him holding her, his warmth, and her telling him that she didn’t believe there was such a thing as a real hero.

What she hadn’t told him, what she’d kept to herself, was that she respected the men in the League, but in her mind, all the heroes were heroines. Women. And to find that decency in a man, someone outside the League, a soldier, it had shaken her to her very core.

She hadn’t recognized before what Gracie had been trying to tell her, about how many preconceived notions she had. About the world. About men. Now, she wanted to go back in time and erase them all, replacing them with the strength and warmth that was Sandesh.

She wrung her hands, looked around. She wouldn’t ask them without telling them the truth. Crap. How had this happened to her? “I love Sandesh.”

She heard the whisper of disbelief from her siblings but kept her eyes on Momma. She’d never felt more vulnerable. “I’m going after him. But I’m not willing to make that choice for anyone but me.”

Gracie raised a hand and a devilish eyebrow. “I’m in. I like Sandesh. Apparently not as much as you.”

“You know I’m in,” Tony said.

Dada shook her head. “Juan can get you inside using the plan he and Tony devised.”

“I can help,” Bridget said. “I can—”

Justice held up a hand, stopped her from talking. “Not you. Traitor.”

“We’ll have to revise the plan,” Leland said. “It never called for a rescue.”

Momma touched her niqab, nodded. She gazed around at the others in the room. “And if I’m not mistaken, the original plan called for a second man. Justice, you’ll have to choose someone from internal, unless you have another idea.”