Oddly, there was no text about the job itself or the events that had unfolded last night. Probably because her treetop hit man didn’t want anyone to know what he’d done to the person he’d hired.
Finding Vadim’s number, she clicked on it and winced. Here went nothin’.
“Jesus Christ, Teddy, it’s been more than twenty-four hours! Are you okay? Do you need us? Where the hell are you and where’s Cormac Vitali?” Vadim shouted, his voice rife with panic and fear.
Blowing out a breath of pent-up air, she said, “I’m fine, Vadim. Relax. Everything is fine.”
“I’m putting you on speaker so Viktor can stop wearing a hole in the damn floor. Jesus and hell, Teddy! You scared the shit out of us!”
“Teddy?” her brother Viktor roared, curling her eardrums. “What in blazes is going on? Do you have any idea how worried we were? When I say call and keep in touch during a bounty, I mean call and keep in touch!”
She pictured Viktor and Vadim, pacing the worn length of the hardwood kitchen floor in their ranch house, running their hands over the light brown scruff on their faces, in tune with one another’s every move.
“Okay, okay! Wait, please! Just let me explain. Everybody calm down and let me talk. No interruptions. Agreed?”
“It better be good, Theodora,” Vadim hissed.
Most people couldn’t tell her identical brothers apart, but she didn’t have any trouble at all because their differences were distinct. Vadim was the less high-strung of the two; his swagger was more relaxed, his face less scrunched up in a frown, his overall vibe down to earth.
Viktor, on the other hand, was always wired for sound. Ready to go at a moment’s notice, all pent-up energy and motion. Both worried about her in equal measure, they just did so very differently, and right now, she wasn’t up to the interrogation.
Tucking her legs under her, Teddy sighed. “First, Cormac Vitali isn’t the bad guy here. Now, hold on…” She heard Viktor’s simmer, even over the phone. “Don’t start yelling about sympathizing or whatever psychobabble you two keep coming up with until I explain. And if you’re not going to stay calm while I do it, I’m hanging up.”
Vadim huffed into the speaker. “But that’s exactly what I’m going to do. What have we told you about sympathizing with the bounty, Teddy? Stop trying to figure everyone out and fix their damn boo-boos and just bring ’em in. That’s the job we gave you.”
“You’re not listening. I’m not sympathizing with the bounty. I’m telling you, Cormac Vitali isn’t the bad guy. That bastard of a client is! The one who hired us with his pathetic story about catching the guy who killed his friend! Know how I know? I’ll tell you how I know, brothers. That client tried to kill me last night. Kill me.”
She still had trouble believing it, but it was true. The man who’d been taking potshots at her last night was the very man who’d hired her to bring in Cormac Vitali.
There was a silent moment while Teddy allowed them to absorb her words. She’d stunned them speechless. That almost made her giggle. Except, that client had paid them a lot of money as a deposit to find Cormac, and they’d just lost a lot of money because he was dirty.
They had a mortgage to pay and a ranch to run. She’d have to find a way to make it up to them somehow.
“So you’re telling me, the client from Jersey, Arty McDaniels—”
“Probably not his real name,” she interjected.
“Okay, the guy with the potentially fake name who was carrying on about how Cormac had killed his friend, the friend he wanted justice for, was the same guy who tried to kill you last night?” The disbelief in her brother’s voice rang in her ear clear as a bell.
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Same guy climbed a damn tree opposite the room I’m staying in and took a shot at me just last night. I went after him and I saw him, Vadim. Saw him with my own two eyes. He got away, but it was the same damn guy.”
She was still parsing it in her mind, trying to make sense of all this. McDaniels told all three of them the sob story of his dead friend with real tears glistening in his eyes as he’d hired them. He’d told them all about how he was determined Cormac be brought to justice in honor of his alleged dead friend. All he wanted was for them to locate the mark and bring him in, where he’d gladly help her bring Cormac to the nearest police station.
That was when Viktor and Vadim had stopped him cold. They never asked for the emotional details surrounding a bounty—it was too personal. All they needed was the cash and the assurance that, once the bounty was found, the client agreed to let them aide in escorting the bounty to the police department. It was unconventional, yes. But their reasons for taking bounties to begin with were very personal.