Winston (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 3) by Becca Fanning Read Free Book Online Page A

luck you’ll drive her insane.”

    “I’ll do my very best, Captain,” Monroe said with a smile, saluting.  

    “Great. Everyone, back to wherever it is you should be right now. Custer, don’t fuck up.”

    The crew began to file out of the room. Kane took Chapel’s hand and squeezed.

    “You go ahead,” she said. “I want to talk to her.”

    Chapel’s eyebrows shot up. “You want me to leave you alone with the woman who is currently trying to kill you?”

    “I’m not alone,” she answered with a slight smile. “Custer’s here.”

    “You want me to leave you alone with the woman who is currently trying to kill you and Custer ?”

    “Just go. If I’m not out in five, you have my permission to come in, guns blazing.” Muttering under his breath, Chapel obeyed.

    It was just Delphine, the woman she’d failed to kill, and man who would probably not kill her left in the room. She studied them both, fighting off the haze of the drugs to think of what to say, if anything. Zoshanna Kane: abandoned by her mother and raised by the streets of an asteroid colony infamous for vice. Had the misfortune to be involved with Sylas Rahm disposing of his brother. Intelligent but neither aggressive nor physically threatening. Anthony “Custer” Monroe: No record of criminal activity until joining the crew of the ICS Starstriker , running weapons. Left due to irreconcilable differences with the crew. Similar incidents while working for the crews of the Bloodsport , Sidewinder , and Kingkiller . Newest core member of the Breakwater , serving for three years.

    What did all of that add up to? All that information, and what was it for? They would hardly let her go knowing she still intended to kill them. What was the point of all her knowledge, all her strength, tied to a chair?

    “Um, hi,” Kane said. She looked more awkward than afraid, like maybe Delphine was someone she ran into on the street that she didn’t know how to talk to and not someone who was responsible for the sizable bruise covering the left side of her face. “I have a few questions before I head up. Why are Rick, the captain, and I targets? A few of the others on the ship have done a lot more than we have, and I’ve only been part of the crew for a few months.”

    “Are you talking about the murder charge leveled against Mr. Jones,” Delphine inquired, “or Ms. Heathcoat’s role in the disappearance and presumed death of Captain Strathmore of the Appomattox ?”

    From the sharp inhale, Kane hadn’t been expecting her to know either of those things. Monroe, for his part, just looked interested.

    Delphine kept speaking. “My employers have nothing to lose or gain from the frame job your communications officer fell prey to, and any damage that could be done by Strathmore’s death has already been done.”

    “Then what?” Kane asked.

    “U4, obviously,” Monroe said, mouth curling into a smile far more catlike than Delphine had expected from a bear shifter. “You because it’s your fault we were in the position to enter the business, Rick because he loves you and because he helped you, and Leo because the captain is responsible for his crew. I was wondering when that business was going to come back to bite us in the ass. The only real question is, who do you work for? Remnants of the younger Rahm brother’s empire? The smugglers we replaced?”

    Delphine remained silent. The only thing she was sure she could not tell these people was the name of her employers. It was a betrayal, a failure.

    Delphine’s record was flawless, despite the setbacks her cluster had experienced in their developmental stage. She did not fail. She would not. Instead, she studied the man in front of her.

    Strange that the man with a galaxy-wide reputation for lunacy and drunken violence would be the one shrewd enough to pick apart her motives. She looked over him slowly. His hair, parted to the right, was light gold and seemed to glow under the artificial