Ripped: A Blood Money Novel

by Edie Harris

  While it rang, Adam made a sudden left into a narrow, paved walkway between a bookshop and a menswear store, risking another look over his shoulder. “C’mon, pick up, man, pick up,” he muttered as he ducked past a dumpster into the delivery alley at the back of the commercial block.

  Finally there was an answer. Casey’s low rumble filled Adam’s ears. “What’s up, kiddo?”

  “Case, I got trouble.” Adam gripped the strap of his bag, suddenly vibrantly aware of the tablet and external hard drive he had stowed inside. “Three men, either Hispanic or Middle Eastern—it’s too dark outside to tell. Not dressed like thugs, but they’re all carrying. Been following me for five blocks now. Attempted an evasive protocol but they’re still riding my ass. What the hell do I do?”

  “Where are you?” Casey’s voice was all business, the soldier bleeding through like a sliced artery. “Is your GPS on?”

  “Boston, near Haymarket. Three or four blocks from the Red Letter.” He popped one of the earbuds out and felt his pulse triple its speed as he registered the footsteps gaining on him. “GPS on my phone but you know I don’t have a tracker implant.” Adam wasn’t a field agent, so an implant had never made sense when he was confined to his warehouse office on the compound property. “They seem too coordinated to be thieves.” Their approach indicated as much, two coming from behind and one who’d disappeared onto a curving side street that Adam knew fed out at the end of this alley—directly where he was heading. It was a confrontational approach as opposed to a simple snatching of his bag. Apprehension, maybe even fear, knotted his throat. “Fuck. Do you think...would they grab me, man?” Or kill me?

  He and his brothers and sisters had been raised knowing they’d always have targets painted on their backs, simply due to their surname. After Beth’s situation, not to mention Tobias’s recent death threat from those whiny British bitches, they were all on high alert.

  And that wasn’t even taking into account what Adam had uncovered a few days ago, hidden deep within the company server.

  Casey’s instructions yanked him back to the present. “They might try, but you fight back only until they pull weapons, understand? Don’t make them shoot you.” Steel enforced Casey’s hard tone. “What do you have on you?”

  “Like, to fight?” Adam gulped nervously as he veered right and stepped into the deep shadows of a restaurant’s rear door. Better to prep and turn than to let them surprise him from the back. “Fists only.” And he hadn’t trained with Faraday’s resident MMA badass in over a month. “Bigger problem is the tech I’m carrying. Tablet and hard drive, and those can not be taken.” A remote wipe was impossible. “I’ve gotta destroy it all.”

  Quickly, knowing time was not his friend now, he dropped the bag and ripped off his sweatshirt. Wrapping the tablet in the sweatshirt to muffle the noise, he smashed it against the sharp brick corner edging the doorway. He felt the casing bend, and another harsh jerk with both hands over his knee snapped it in half. The hard drive was a different problem; depositing the broken shards of the tablet back into his bag, he wrapped the drive, set it vertically on the ground and, with a deep breath, stomped it hard beneath the heel of his carpenter boot.

  It crumpled, and again, he put the remains within the bag and shoved the entire lot behind a leaning broom. “Casey?”

  “I’m here. I texted Henry and Finn, but they’re fifteen minutes out, at minimum.”

  Shit, shit, shit. “Okay, listen. I ditched my bag in an alley door behind a Thai restaurant approximately two blocks east of the Red Letter. I broke everything, but the data is still retrievable under the right hands, so you need to pick it up.”

  “Fuck. Adam—”

  “Too late.” Two shadows, then a third, fell across the cracked pavers in front of Adam’s hiding spot. Shoving the phone and earbuds in the back pocket of his jeans, conscious of Casey’s shouts muted by the denim, Adam rose from his crouch and stepped into the alley, shoulders back as he took in the men who, without doubt, intended to do him harm.

  With a grin, he adopted a comfortable fighting stance, fists raised and ready to move. “‘Sup, dudes?”

  And then the brawl began.

  Life in Death: The Faraday Story

  by T. S. Marcus, PhD

  (A Comprehensive Examination of America’s First Warmongering Family)

  Library of Congress Classification Number: EJ3369.V22 T101 2014

  PART II: COUNTRY IN CRISIS (excerpt)

  [...] The American Civil War claimed more than 600,000 lives before the official cessation of hostilities in 1865. Today, the conflict is cited for its atrocities because it pitched “brother against brother,” posited as the most heinous of crimes. Families were torn apart based upon ethical and economical differences.

  Not the Faradays. Throughout most of the multi-year war between the states, the Faradays of Boston remained cloistered safely within the boundaries of their family compound, not engaging as soldiers or militants, nor entering into the vehement political debates surrounding the period. To put it bluntly, they behaved as Switzerland, long before the comparison would make sense.

  By the start of the 1850s, nearly a decade before the Civil War began, the Faraday Manufactory was the single largest employer in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York combined. Beyond the development of firearms and other battlefield weaponry—in surprisingly high demand from the contingent of settlers who trekked westward to forcibly oust native populations from the resource-rich lands they wished to claim—the Manufactory also held several ironworks yards and owned controlling shares in transportation development fields, including locomotives and shipbuilding. The Faradays of the mid-nineteenth century upheld the values of the original Faraday, who, at heart, had been an inventor; those values were reflected in the Manufactory’s industrial pursuits.

  As tensions escalated between the North and South in the years leading up to the war, the Faradays maintained their notably mysterious ways. Since the compound’s creation, prior to the American Revolution, those who lived within the property lines were rarely seen in society. Their business interests were overseen by trusted foremen and managers, but the Faradays themselves embraced reclusiveness. By the time the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in 1861, there is no record of a Faraday having been witnessed passing through the wrought-iron gates of the compound for eleven months.

  The oddity of the family and their living situation drew more attention than not. There are several accounts, in the diaries and letters of neighbors and curious Bostonians, where the Faradays’ unusual behavior is noted. “Folks have taken to leaving baskets at the gate,” wrote Beverly Noonan, a schoolteacher from the time, in a letter to her sister in New York City dated 17 December 1860. “Firewood has been stacked on pallets by any who can spare a log, and the other day, little Anna Maxwell attempted to leave a young goat tethered to one of the iron bars—before her father came to collect both girl and goat, of course. Anna told me she offered her precious Violet (the goat) because she worried the Faradays no longer had any friends, seeing as they haven’t been to town in months. No one had the heart to tell our generous Anna that Faradays do not have friends to begin with.”

  The family itself may have all but disappeared, but for the next four years the Manufactory worked overtime to meet the shipment orders demanded by the Union and Confederate armies. An estimated 65 percent of the weaponry utilized during this period was produced by the Faraday family’s holdings.

  Thei
r staunch avoidance of engagement ended abruptly, however, in the summer of 1864, when twenty-four-year-old Margaret “Meggie” Faraday, purported to be a quietly studious young woman, famously walked through the compound gate to join hands with a free man named Constantine Read, an ironworker employed by the Manufactory. Eyewitness accounts state that Meggie and Read climbed into his waiting wagon and drove slowly down the long road connecting the compound to the outermost edge of Boston, before veering off to the west and away from the city. The journey took hours, and was conducted in silence, but multiple individuals report the same thing: never did the two let go of one another.

  The scandal of the spectacle spurred local gossip to new heights; the assumption had always been that the Faradays merely wished to avoid discussing the bloody state of the nation, but perhaps, people argued, their retreat was more personal, and more insidious. Perhaps the locking of the gates was meant to keep one of their own in, instead of the rest of the violent world out. Needless to say, speculation ran wild and unchecked.

  The Faraday family—one member short—departed the compound shortly thereafter en masse, but whether it was due to their daughter’s rebellious affair or to the official end of the Civil War was not immediately clear. The indicator that something might be amiss in the Faradays’ world was the abrupt closing of three warehouses stocked with the equipment and materials to construct Faraday-branded weaponry. Following that act, substantial sums of money were diverted from the arms side of their business holdings and into the steelworks ventures that greater served the public.

  Though the doors were barred and windows boarded on the warehouses within the space of a single week in June 1864, the Faradays did not cease to produce firearms. Those with jobs at the closed warehouses had their positions relocated to one of the operational assemblage factories in south Boston, and business went on much as it had before. The starkest difference—and what many believe was the Faradays’ intent in doing so—was the near-instantaneous plunge in weapons availability to the embattled armies still locked in combat. Though production continued, not a single armament was sold from that June week in ‘64 until February 1866, when then-patriarch Richard Faraday brokered a deal with the United States government1.

  In this author’s opinion, it is worth noting that Meggie and Read are never heard from again. No census information was logged pertaining to their status or whereabouts2, and their names do not appear in any correspondence to, from, or discussing the Faradays. It is almost as if they never existed at all, and yet their drive down that long, silent road can be argued as the fulcrum moment during which the entire future of Faraday Industries executed a decisive pivot.

  * * * * *

  Look for CRAZED, the next book in the BLOOD MONEY series, coming from Edie Harris and Carina Press in October 2015

  To purchase and read more books by Edie Harris please visit her website here or at edieharris.com/books/

  More on the landmark deal that shaped the entire future of what is now Faraday Industries featured in Part III of this book.

  The lack of census detail is unsurprising: Unions between black and white individuals were illegal in the United States until 1967, following the Supreme Court decision of Loving v. Virginia. If one were to assume Meggie and Read were lovers, their life together—if they remained in the U.S.—would have been fraught with incalculable danger.

  About the Author

  Edie Harris studied English and creative writing at the University of Iowa and Grinnell College. She fills her days with writing and editing contract proposals, but her nights belong to the world of romance fiction. Edie lives and works in Chicago. Visit her website, www.edieharris.com, for backlist titles, contact information and regular updates on upcoming projects.

  Keep calm and spy on with book one of Blood Money!

  BLAMED: A BLOOD MONEY NOVEL

  Blood Money, book one

  “[...] cinematic and compelling, reading like a James Bond movie, complete with betrayals, double-crosses, torture, and madness, as well as a heavy dose of romantic and sexual tension.”

  —Library Journal, starred review

  “One of the best romances I’ve read all year.”

  —Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

  Born into a long line of spies, sanctioned killers and covert weapons developers, Beth Faraday carried out her first hit-for-hire when she was still a teenager.

  That part of her life—the American spy royalty part—ended one year ago, with a job gone wrong in Afghanistan. The collateral damage she caused with a single shot was unfathomable and, for Beth, unforgivable. She’s worked hard to build a new life for herself, far away from the family business.

  But someone, somewhere, hasn’t forgotten what Beth did in Kabul. And they want revenge.

  As the Faraday clan bands together to defend Beth and protect their legacy, Beth is forced to flee her new home with the unlikeliest of allies-MI6 agent Raleigh Vick, the only man she’s ever loved. And the one she thought she’d killed in the desert.

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  Now available from Carina Press and Edie Harris

  Born into a long line of spies, sanctioned killers and covert weapons developers, Beth Faraday carried out her first hit-for-hire when she was still a teenager...

  Read on for a preview of

  BLAMED,

  book one of Edie Harris’s

  Blood Money series

  The problem with dating, Beth Faraday decided, was that it involved socializing with people other than oneself. And people were the worst.

  “I can’t remember the last time I was so scared. I mean, the mayor at the chef’s table! I was convinced I would dump the soup course all over him.”

  Mark was a sous chef at a posh Chicago restaurant, which was why Beth had agreed to go out with him—she was a hungry single woman, after all, and her cooking abilities started and stopped with microwave instructions. Dating a man who could whip up a meal? He didn’t even have to be good in bed.

  He was required to not bore her senseless, however.

  Mark kept talking as she unlocked the gate, trudging wearily up the steps to the front door of the historical Lincoln Park three-flat in which she lived.

  “But the mayor, he was so nice, Beth. He talked to everyone, and did I tell you that Oprah was with him? Like, for real, Oprah.”

  Rahm Emanuel and Oprah Winfrey terrified this man. Beth couldn’t decide if she wanted to laugh or roll her eyes. Mark had no idea what real terror was like. No. Idea.

  He fell silent when she jiggled her keys in one hand, and she glanced at his face. It was a nice enough face, with a sharp chin and brown eyes that watched her expectantly, obviously hoping she would invite him in.

  She sighed. There’d been no spark, no chemistry—only pleasant smiles and shared appreciation of tapas and triple-shot espresso. “Thanks for a great time tonight, Mark.” She offered him a small smile. Just because she didn’t especially like people didn’t mean she couldn’t play the game. She was a Faraday, after all, and Faradays were born with bullshit in their veins.

  Mark’s gaze warmed as he sidled closer to her on the stoop. “The night doesn’t have to end now. We could go inside. I could throw some dessert together.”

  Uh-oh. “I don’t have anyth—”

 
“Trust me, whatever you have in your kitchen, I can make it work.” His grin was the same charming one that had convinced her to say yes to this date in the first place, when she had stopped by his restaurant to deliver an oil painting on loan from the Art Institute. That grin, combined with the fact that Beth had never once turned down dessert, tempted her for the briefest of moments.

  But then she looked past him and up, homing in on the third floor of the large house across the street. The darkness behind the prominent bay window indicated clearly enough that no one was home. She felt a pang in her chest.

  Smiling at Mark again, a little tighter, a little colder, she waited for him to notice the flashing No Vacancy sign she’d just stamped across her forehead. “Thanks again, Mark.” The first rule of letting someone down, according to her fussy lawyer brother, was saying his name in a firm, apologetic manner. Done and done. “Have a good night.” She slid the key into the lock and opened her building’s front door.

  His grin slipped, but he nodded. “G’night, Beth.” He left the small square of her front yard with a wave and a wry smile, thankfully not pushing her for more.

  As soon as the door closed behind her, she leaned heavily back against it. Idiot. Mark had been sweet—boring, but sweet—interested in her, and friendly. A chef, for God’s sake. He could have fed her yummy food for the rest of her life, made even more delicious because she wouldn’t have had to make it herself. She, who burned Lean Cuisines nine times out of ten.

  When Mark had asked her to dinner, she’d told herself he was exactly the sort of guy she should want, yet she had just sent him away after only a couple of hours in his company. How could she make any real decision about who he was or how they’d suit after little more than two hours? Sure, his idea of extreme stress was serving soup to a publicly elected official, while hers...