Chapter Thirty #2
Jude used the cover of pedestrians to slip through the door that led to the loft above the little shops littering the street.
When East Cambridge underwent the gentrification process back in the nineties, most of the old factories had been turned into commercial buildings and residential lofts.
He’d snagged a loft across the street from the restaurant the Sheridans frequented ten years ago, paying out the nose for the location.
His phone rang as he hit the stairs, and he cursed at the now-familiar number. “What do you want?”
“As convenient as it would be for me if you took a bullet to the chest—again, from what I hear—I want Romanov more than I want you.”
Jude had spent enough time as a man on a vengeance mission to recognize that trait in another person. As much as Romanov wanted the O’Malleys dead and gone, it appeared Aiden wanted the same for him—with interest.
Still, all Jude wanted was to take out whoever Romanov had sent to frame him and get Sloan somewhere where they would be left alone. “I’m not interested in whatever war you’re planning.”
“Not war. Never that.”
“You’re wasting my time.” He started up the stairs.
“I know Romanov wants to use you against Colm.”
That brought him up short. “You seem to know a whole hell of a lot that you shouldn’t.” He might have tapped his brother’s phone, but there’s no way he could have tapped Jude’s. It struck him that he’d underestimated Aiden, and that didn’t sit well with him in the least. “I’m listening.”
“Romanov won’t take your double-cross well. There’s little he hates more than someone breaking their word. He’ll bring everything in his power to make an example of you.”
That was what worried him more than anything else.
He could keep Sloan safe. He wasn’t worried about that.
But Sloan was a woman who would crave roots—her time in Callaway Rock had more than proven that.
It might take some time, but eventually she’d resent him for keeping them on the move and under the radar.
And that wasn’t even taking the kid into the equation. A life on the run was no way to raise a child. “You have thirty seconds to give me your pitch before I hang up.”
“I know that you do extensive research on both enemy and ally, and that you know things no one else can seem to pin down. I want what you have on Romanov—all of it.”
It seemed a small enough thing to ask, but Jude wasn’t the trusting sort. “I’ll pass it over with the condition that you tell me exactly what you’re planning—and keep me updated on the process.”
“Yes to the former. No to the latter.”
“Aiden, this isn’t a negotiation.” He needed warning if he was going to get Sloan out of wherever they were before Romanov brought his wrath down upon them.
He paused at the top of the stairs. “Take out whatever Romanov has set up as a backup plan and we’ll talk when I deliver the information to you. ”
“We’ll talk about my sister, too. We’ve reached the restaurant.
” Aiden hung up, leaving Jude more irritated than he should be.
His life had been so much simpler when he kept to the shadows and didn’t tangle with powerful men.
Aiden and Dmitri might think themselves so different, but they were just two sides of the same coin.
The only difference that mattered to him was that one had tried to blackmail him and the other was willing to work with him.
He took a careful breath, and then another, letting all that fall away. There was a fight waiting for him on the other side of the door, and he couldn’t afford to be distracted.
The door opened before he could move, revealing a man with tattoos crawling down his arms and up his neck, and whose face was marked with scars.
His eyes went wide, but Jude didn’t give him a chance to call out a warning.
He chopped him in the throat, grabbing his body as he started to tumble and shoving him into the loft.
The man hit the ground, gurgling, and Jude shut the door behind him and locked it for good measure. Someone could kick it down, even with the reinforced wood, but he’d hear them coming and have warning.
He kicked the fallen man, the force of it flipping him onto his back, where he lay still.
He wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. Jude stalked farther into the loft, avoiding the creaky boards.
There wasn’t furniture to deal with, because he’d never bothered to furnish the place, and so he had a clear line of sight to the second man kneeling before the window, a rifle in his hands, his attention on the building across the street.
“Stop.” The man didn’t look up, didn’t move, his Russian accent confirming what Jude already knew.
He slipped his hand behind his back, palming the .45 he had tucked into his waistband. “If you pull that trigger, I’m going to shoot you in the back of the head.”
“And you—”
Jude whipped his gun out and shot him in the back. He rushed across the distance and yanked the Russian away from the window just in case he got some funny ideas about trying to shoot Callista even with a bullet in him.
It turned out to be for nothing. His shot had aimed true. The man hit the ground, his eyes vacant with death. Jude walked back and put a bullet in the still-struggling second guy. He needed all his focus for what came next, and having some piece-of-shit Russian shoot him was not on the agenda.
He walked back to the sniper setup and knelt in the same place the man had, hissing out a breath when his bullet wound protested so much movement in such a short time.
The rifle was an M4, which was fucking pathetic, but they didn’t need the range of a true sniper rifle.
Still, there were a dozen better choices for this job.
He took out his phone and dialed Aiden, putting it on speaker as he used the scope to scan the buildings across from them.
“I’m busy.”
“I’ve removed one sniper.” Jude paused at the building next door, taking in the dark-dressed man with a rifle similar to his own. “There’s another one in the building to the south, second floor, three rooms from the street. He’s overlooking the alley where the restaurant’s back door leads.”
Aiden’s voice became muffled, but Jude still heard him order two of his men to deal with the threat.
He finished searching those windows and moved on. “Do you have my side of the street covered?”
“We’ve dealt with the threat we found two buildings down.”
Three men. Romanov hadn’t been taking any chances. He watched the man across the street get taken down by two O’Malley men. “I don’t see anyone else.”
More murmuring, though this time Jude couldn’t pick up on the words. Finally, Aiden came back on the line. “We’re moving them.”
“I’ll provide cover.”
“See that that’s all you do.”
Jude hung up and watched as a group of people hurried out the back door into the alley that he’d just helped clear. He saw Callista, her blond head close to her husband’s, his arm around her shoulders. Behind her…
He went still.
Colm Sheridan looked the same as he had the last time Jude observed him, his hair gray, though it hadn’t thinned in the least, his face weathered and old . Even his shoulders were hunched as he walked in the middle of his men.
He had a clear shot. All he had to do was pull the trigger and he could avenge his family’s memory. His mother’s memory.
Jude’s finger stroked the trigger, the feel of the metal a comfort and a torment. It wouldn’t take much, the slightest bit of pressure, and this would all end.
It wouldn’t be the only thing that ended .
Sloan might forgive him for killing Colm. She understood his need for vengeance, and there was no arguing that man more than deserved death at his hands.
But the O’Malley men wouldn’t see things his way. Callista Sheridan wouldn’t, either. If he killed Colm now, there would be no alliance with Aiden. There would just be him facing down O’Malley, Sheridan, Romanov, and possibly even Halloran.
Sloan didn’t deserve that.
Their child didn’t deserve that.
Jude hissed out a breath as a dark SUV pulled up to the curb and Colm disappeared from view. He waited for the guilt of a missed opportunity to pull him under, but there was nothing except a growing need to hold Sloan. To reassure himself that she was whole.
First, though, he had one last task to accomplish before he could go to her.