Devil's Tango (Running with the Devil Book 1)

by Claire J Monroe

  Black dragged a hand through his hair. “At least she told you that.”

  “Yeah and you’re going to tell me the rest. So quit stalling and start talking.”

  Black nodded. “Not stalling, but it’s complicated and you need to know all of it so you know what we’re up against.”

  Tango stayed silent and waited. It wasn’t long before Black started talking.

  “Shortly after Andrei joined your team, the CIA started sniffing around.”

  Tango nodded. “Yep and if you’re about to bitch me out because he got sheep dipped, take it up with your brother. He accepted their offer against my advice.”

  Black waved that away. “I know. He’s an ass and doesn’t listen. But what you don’t know is why they made him the offer. It had nothing to do with any training you’d given him. That was a bonus, but not necessary.”

  Tango frowned. “You know why.”

  Black nodded. “They wanted Andrei so he could get close to our father.”

  “Your father is dead. At least that’s what you told me.”

  “I lied,” Black confessed. “Not because I didn’t trust you, but because my father was Sinclair’s Alpha team lead. You know, the one that turned on Sinclair and slaughtered nearly all of the other teams because his son, that’s me, got kidnapped and his mate, that’d be my mother who was pregnant at the time, also disappeared.”

  “Holy shit,” Tango breathed as his arms fell to his sides. He’d heard all about the Alpha team and how the team lead had gone fucking nuts when he’d lost his mate but… not one damn mention of the man losing his mate and child. No wonder the guy had lost it. If he’d felt a tenth about his mate the way that Tango felt about Maddie… it was a wonder the world was still living and breathing. “You’re Tolstoy’s son.”

  “Oh, good, you do know about him. That makes what I’m about to say next a helluvalot easier.” Black stepped up close and lowered his voice. “I don’t give a shit what anybody tells you. Tolstoy Ivanov is not dead. He’s alive and hell bent on revenge against Sinclair.” A pause. “And he’s gonna pick apart every damn team by doing exactly what happened to him.”

  Tango hesitated as it sank in and his brain made a connection he hadn’t known he needed. “That’s who has been targeting the mates. That son of a bitch has been targeting our mates.”

  “Has been? Try did.”

  Connection made, Tango felt his knees go weak. “Holy shit. Your father killed Tank’s mate. That fucking son of a bitch killed Tank’s mate.”

  “If by Tank you’re referring to Chase Maitland, Delta team lead, then no, my father didn’t get Laurel.”

  Tango frowned and waited for Black to explain. Which he did. With a bomb.

  “I did.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  As if dealing with the miscarriage and Maddie’s poke the god slayer routine hadn’t been enough, Tango had to get trapped in some freaking Twilight Zone getting schooled by Michael Black on shit that should have been so irrelevant that he could have ignored it, but no. Not him. He had to sit there and listen to Black explain shit that was guaranteed to get him, his team, and everyone in the known world killed by one pissed off telepath who could end the world with a fucking thought.

  Except it wouldn’t end him, his team, and the entire known world because Maddie gave him a ring. A ring that she’d told him would give him access to the bunker, but in actuality was a ‘stop Delta team’s mind monkey from reading his brain’ gadget that Black swore had been field tested.

  To say Tango was skeptical was an understatement, but hey. It was what it was and if it were his time to go, then he’d go. Not kicking. Not screaming. He’d just go. Anything to avoid the near constant bombardment of shit fairy bombs that kept landing in his lap.

  Oh sure, it’d started with Black admitting he’d rescued, not killed—thank fuck—Laurel Johnson Maitland. Which was great, awesome, and not the last of Black’s bombs.

  Because he had another one and that was the answer to Tango’s current mission and the name of the power behind the moron he’d been hunting for eight years—ever since Tango had asked Sinclair to reassign him so he could be closer to Maddie. That name was Senator John E. Banks.

  Yay. His mission was complete. Now he could focus on his future.

  Or he could have had Black not followed that lovely morsel up with… another bomb.

  “Senator John E. Banks is Bravo’s father.”

  And that shit should not have come as a surprise given that Bravo’s fake name wasn’t so fake since it really was John Banks, but for fuck’s sake. Banks was a common name. As was John. And he’d been the idiot who hadn’t pieced it together, because his wife was a genius and had hidden this needle in a stack of fucking needles that his own fucking soldier should have mentioned, but hadn’t.

  “Un-fucking-believable,” Tango muttered under his breath as he flipped through another page of the file that Black had handed to him on a tablet then ordered him to skim through before he flipped the fuck out. Again.

  Because it just kept getting better.

  Because Michael Black wouldn’t stop talking.

  “Media proclaims the Senator to be the next coming of the messiah, pretty boy politician with a squeaky clean image. Straight as an arrow. Blah-blah-whatever. The news is wrong. Damn wrong.”

  “Welcome to the spin zone,” Tango muttered to himself as he scanned another page that corroborated every word Black was giving him. Dammit.

  “Senator is on his second marriage. His first having ended with Bravo’s mama dying in a suspicious accident when Bravo was in his early teens. Bravo’s mama had money—not a huge amount, but enough to keep an unambitious man fat and happy—and upon her death the money went into trust for her only son, Bravo. Which meant it sucked to be Bravo’s daddy because that fucker didn’t see a dime of it and he was already lining up relationship number two and the current Mrs. Senator Banks who happens to be the widow to obscenely wealthy Aries Johnson, who was the son of obnoxiously wealthy multibillionaire, Archimedes Johnson.”

  “Let me guess,” Tango interrupted. “Aries Johnson also died under suspicious circumstances.”

  “Yep and he also had a kid. Only one and that’d be his daughter and Bravo’s little step sister… Laurel Johnson.”

  “This shit reads like a damn soap opera,” Tango muttered.

  “Just wait. It gets better.”

  Tango doubted that but waved him on to continue. Which Black did. Dammit.

  “By all accounts, scoring the former Mrs. Aries Johnson should have sealed the deal for the Senator, but karma’s a bitch and there was a snafu that stopped the money from getting into Bravo’s daddy’s pocket. That snafu was a change to Aries Johnson’s will shortly before he kicked the bucket and that brilliant maneuver had all his billions going to his daughter, Laurel, in a trust that is managed by none other than the master money man who taught your boy Bravo everything he ever wanted to know about making money—”

  “Archimedes Johnson,” Tango said. “Damn. That explains Bravo’s skill in the market.”

  “Yep,” Black muttered. “The world would be a different place had Bravo’s daddy noticed that skill, but he didn’t and instead got wrapped up in a plot twist that put the Senator and his new missus on track to craft yet another crime of greed.”

  “Against their own kids,” Tango surmised.

  Another nod and Black continued, “Don’t have absolute proof, but suspect a slow siphoning of the trust funds started when they shipped Bravo and Laurel off to boarding school. That got them more than enough to keep the Senator and his missus in the lifestyle they’d grown accustomed to. But as the kids got older and the threat of that trust fund being diverted to the actual heirs started to rise… they got proactive. Then creative.”

  Tango tapped the tablet screen. “This article refers to Bravo as JEB. That how he was known?”

  Black nodded. “That’s why your girl decided to make him use his real name.”

 
“Yeah, well my girl is gonna get her ass spanked for getting involved in any of this. Don’t give a damn if it happened before we met. She should have known better.”

  “She needed the money, Gabriel.”

  “I don’t give a good damn if she—,” Tango broke off as he looked up and met Black’s holier than thou stare. “Don’t give me that shit, Michael. You’d do the same if Amelia had done this.”

  Black snorted. “No, dumbass, you’ve got no one to blame for her having done this but yourself. You’re the one I called back then looking for a source to make some untraceable identities.”

  “That was for this? I didn’t give you her name. Hell, I hadn’t met Maddie then. That was all… son of a bitch.” The tablet dropped to Tango’s lap. “Your brother was on my team. I asked him. He said yeah and… son of a bitch. It’s my fault she got messed up in this. Son of a bitch.”

  “Get over that shit quick, Gabriel. ‘Cause I’m not done. Not by a long shot.” Black plucked the tablet off Tango’s lap and held it out to him.

  Tango took the tablet with a muttered, “Do I have a choice?”

  “No.” A deep breath then Black resumed his download. “Bravo’s image at school was that of a typical trust fund baby playboy. Parties, drugs, cars, and women. Lots of women. His little step sister, Laurel, didn’t fit the mold and was instead more shy, reserved, and a good wholesome kid—aka, not a team player when the parents needed her to be a party animal with a too stupid to live way of life that’d be all too easy to get her lost during a Spring Break gone awry.

  “So the evil parents improvised. They started pushing the kids together and made sure the media noticed. A lot. So much so that a story came out that Bravo was obsessed with his little step sister and, according to witnesses, had repeatedly assaulted her and when she finally stood up and told him no—”

  “He what?” Tango blurted out.

  “Kidnapped Laurel,” Black finished undeterred.

  “You have got to be kidding me. People actually believed this shit?”

  “Ate it up. Like fucking candy.”

  “Idiots. Bravo wouldn’t do that shit. Don’t give a damn how credible they claim this witness is. Bravo’s a man whore, yes, but a rapist?” Tango shook his head. “Hell no. No way.”

  “I know that, you know that, and Laurel knows that, but it’s all about the media spin.” Black pointed to the tablet screen and the article Tango was half way through skimming. “They got just enough facts right in that piece to have the appearance of truthful reporting. And just enough wrong to ruin JEB’s reputation for the rest of his life.”

  Tango tapped the tablet. “Says here that Bravo kidnapped her, took her to a warehouse his mother’s family owned in Baltimore, and then there was a struggle which resulted in a fire and… boom. Warehouse destroyed. Bravo dead. Laurel dead.” He looked up at Black. “I assume this is where you came in.”

  A muscle worked in Black’s jaw as he nodded, then got to his feet. He paced away a few feet then stopped and turned. “I pulled them out of the fire.”

  Tango set the tablet aside and got to his feet. “You made the right call. Neither one of them deserved the shit that’d been handed to them.”

  “Yeah, well what you wouldn’t know is how I got wind of it.” Black paced away then back again. “And no, I didn’t have orders to do it. I got the intel and made the call on my own and…,” he trailed off as he stopped in front of Tango. “They sold Laurel.”

  Tango froze. “What?”

  “You heard me. Laurel’s mother and stepfather fucking sold her to the highest bidder. Tolstoy. My fucking bastard of a father.” Black paced away again. “Like I was gonna let that shit happen. Fucking bastard knew exactly what hell he was about to unleash on the world. Do you have any idea what kind of hell Chase Maitland would have rained down had his wife been taken and used to get to him? Her being declared dead was the safest route I could take for all of us.”

  Tango could only imagine. Chase “Tank” Maitland was a huge motherfucker with a heart of gold and a telepathic ability that could kill an entire stadium full of people with a single enraged thought. Sinclair’s Delta team was practically unstoppable when Chase was in the lead and stable, but after he’d lost Laurel… he hadn’t been the same. Hell, if it weren’t for Sinclair’s influence and the other members of Delta team stabilizing Chase… fuck, it’s a wonder the world hadn’t already gone up in a blaze of glory spawned by Chase’s all-consuming grief.

  “Your boy, Bravo, was setup as the scapegoat for everything and with that media spin shit… everyone, including Sinclair and Chase, believed it,” Black said.

  Tango muttered a curse under his breath. “That’s why Chase hung on. Why he hasn’t given up and imploded.”

  “Yep.”

  “Because he’s hunting for who hurt his Laurel. He’s hunting Bravo.”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Black confirmed. “Scroll to the last page in the file.”

  Tango did and when he got to the last page his stomach dropped. “No. No, no, no. Michael, tell me this is not what I think it is.”

  “It is,” Black confirmed with absolutely no glee in his voice. “Two months before the fire, Bravo and Sinclair both witnessed Chase and Laurel’s wedding.”

  “Bravo knows Sinclair,” Tango breathed.

  “Worse. Chase knows what Bravo looks like and he’s linked to every damn member of Delta team. So if one of them sees your boy Bravo… you’re fucked.”

  Tango stared at Black as the shrapnel from that bomb dug its way into his fear center. “Shiiiiiiit.”

  “I hate it for you, but I had to let you know now before things got any more messed up than they already are.”

  “Messed up?” Tango couldn’t help it. He laughed. Because that was funny. Damn funny in a sick twisted the world is about to end kind of way. “Messed up was my wife having a bounty on her head and figuring out that it’d been a trap to lure me and my team to her location so a bunch of mercs could attempt to do what’d failed to happen in Madrid, then getting my ass handed to me on a platter with you telling me you’d set the whole thing up to lure me back here to read me the fuck in on stuff I never, ever, in a million years wanted to know.”

  “Are you melting down,” Black asked in a concerned tone.

  “Hell yes, I’m melting down! I’m a recruiter, Michael. I work for Sinclair and recruit new soldiers for his organization. I find them, train them then report their strengths and weaknesses up to Sinclair so he can decide which team to put them on. I build trust with them. Protect them. Coddle them. Push them to do what’s right, but never once until I got this team have I deliberately misled them over their fate.”

  “You should have told them.”

  “Hell yes I should have told them, but I didn’t because I’d been ordered not to. Dammit.” Tango’s shoulders slumped. “What else am I missing, Michael?”

  “The truth. That everything I just told you, Sinclair let happen.”

  Tango considered that then rejected it. “Bullshit. Sinclair wouldn’t do that and certainly not to his right hand man, Chase. The two of them are close. Like father and son close.”

  “You would believe that,” Black mocked. “After all, you’re on his payroll.”

  “Not by choice,” Tango fired back. “But after the shit you and Ben pulled, it was the only way I could stop him from running you two to ground.”

  “So you say,” Black muttered. “But he got to Ben in the end.”

  Ben was Ben MacGregor and their other foster brother who was a special wolf shifter similar to Fox, but not the same. His team didn’t know Ben yet, but they would. Eventually. And probably a lot sooner than Tango had planned but, given their current situation, it couldn’t be helped. Tango kept his eyes on Black and his voice even as he said, “True, but Sinclair doesn’t know about Ben’s true abilities and that shit isn’t coming out. We protect our own, Michael. Period. End of story.”

  “But Sinclair let Laurel get taken,” Black
roared at him.

  “Proof, Michael. Without it you don’t know shit.”

  “But I know.” Black slapped a hand on his chest. “In my gut and he’s done it before. My mother was a prime example of that.”

  “Again, Michael, proof. You’ve got nothing if you don’t have it,” Tango reasserted.

  “How can you say that after he let that fucking Nexus Suit walk out the door,” Black demanded. “You know he did.”

  Tango shrugged. “The suit is broken. My team sabotaged it so we’d never have to use it again. If Sinclair used it as bait to catch some jackass with ulterior motives, then so be it. I’m not in Sinclair’s head, Michael, but I know he would never deliberately setup Chase’s mate to be killed, kidnapped, or used against him.”

  Black issued an angry growl and his eyes flashed red. “You’re a naïve, trusting fool, Gabriel. Sinclair doesn’t give two shits about you, Chase or anyone else. He’s got an agenda and your happily ever after doesn’t mean jack shit to him.” He stomped over and got in Tango’s face. “And that suit isn’t bait for some ass hat with ulterior motives. It’s a fucking neon blinking beacon for every damn wanna-be Sinclair in this godforsaken world.”

  A chill formed in the pit of Tango’s stomach. “What do you know about that suit that I don’t?”

  “The truth.” Black’s eyes flared red again. “Juice that suit with enough power and it’ll do exactly what you trained it to do. In Madrid.”

  The bottom dropped out of Tango’s stomach. “No.”

  “Yes. That suit in the wrong hands will open a portal to hell. And without you, me, or Trace there to stop it…?”

  “We’re all fucked.”

  “Up the ass without a complementary reach around.”

  “Why the hell are you just telling me this now?” Tango ran a hand over his forehead and started to pace away but stopped. “You should have fucking led with that.”

  “Maybe. But would you have listened when I told you about Bravo and Laurel?”

  “Hell no,” Tango fired back without hesitation.

  “Then how the hell else was I going to get you to listen to the shit I needed you to know?”