Twisted Mercy (Red Team Book 4) by Elaine Levine Read Free Book Online Page B

crime to be glad to see a friend?” Greer asked as Max climbed up the steps. Standing here in Blade’s bunker, looking at Greer…well, it all felt uncomfortably like coming home. It wasn’t his home. He didn’t have a home. He had work. And a fuse that was burning at both ends.
    “The guys are here,” Greer told him. “Get settled, then join us.”
    Max had nothing to settle but himself. He walked down the short hallway into the bunker’s large meeting room. The guys were all there, but the new girl, Selena, was missing.  
    Owen Tremaine leaned against one of the walls, with the group but apart from it. He was dangerous and cunning, not a man you took your eyes off for long. This op wasn’t the only project the man was running, but it had his main focus.  
    Kit Bolanger was sitting at the head of the conference table. Max nodded at him.  
    Blade grinned at Max. “Jesus, you look badass.”
    “You thought Owen kept me around ’cause I’m soft and cuddly?” He flipped a chair around and straddled it. “What’s doin’?” he asked Kit.  
    “A debrief.”  
    “Where’s Selena?” Max asked.
    “She’s gone back to clear out her quarters,” Kit told him. “She’ll be moving in here.”
    “She joining the team?”
    “Yes,” Owen answered from his place at the wall behind Max, offering no further explanation.  
    “Let’s get to it,” Kit said. “We’ll start with the boys Fang Lee fought the night Selena got Casey out of camp. He said their group was structured, focused, and disciplined, with boys ranging in age from twelve to twenty or so. They’d infiltrated Casey’s camp with the intent of luring her away from the others. Fang said they were trained in pack fight tactics and that they all had animal code names. The one called ‘Lion’ was their leader.
    “Fang caught one of them as they retreated. The kid didn’t know the overall objective for their outing, only that they had been assigned to find and hold Casey for five minutes by a certain time that night. ‘Catch and release,’ he’d called it.”  
    Kit didn’t look pleased with the subject, and Max knew why. “If it was catch and release during a range of time, then Amir had to have been at the camp, waiting for that window.”
    Blade nodded. “We think he orchestrated the rumble in town and the activities of the boys so that he could do exactly what he did—sneak inside here while most of the team was occupied elsewhere.”
    “You think those boys are the same ones you saw at the compound when you went after Holbrook?” Max asked Blade.
    “Could be.” Blade shrugged. “I thought the ones I saw were younger, but they could all be part of the same program the WKB has going on. I don’t know where they came from, who they belong to, or why they’re on WKB land.”
    “It’s a mystery. And I don’t like mysteries,” Kit grumbled. “For a fact, the WKB is not keeping them around because they have a flush widows and orphans fund. They’re training those boys to fight. We need to know why.”
    “Okay. I’ll check it out,” Max said.
    “Angel, bring up the schematics for the WKB’s missile complex,” Kit directed, switching to the next topic. “I want us to be on the same page regarding that silo and what we’ve seen of it so far.” The team had discovered the silo’s existence a few days before the rumble in town. Max hadn’t been with them at the time; he’d been stuck at the party in the nearby ghost town, keeping an eye on Amir.
    Angel tossed up a diagram of the Titan I missile silo that sprawled beneath the WKB compound, then pulled up a satellite image of the complete compound and laid it over the silo. “This Titan I site had three escape hatches.” Angel highlighted the three doors constructed as egresses for humans. “One inside the supply warehouse. One in the boys’ barracks. And one in this building.”
    “That’s the old wrench’s bike shop. The one Hope’s taking over.”  
    Kit met