Page 42 of No More Lies

Hell, so the boys hadn’t got caught. They’d had to fess up once they realized what was going on.

“The fucker has access to sarin, and he threatened my family. My eight-year-old daughter was approached at school, used to send a message. What if he’d used...” Steve turned away, unable to finish the sentence. The thought of Megan being exposed, the excruciating pain and suffering. He swallowed down the lump in his throat, forcing himself to keep it together.

Donnie placed a hand on his shoulder. “He won’t get near them again.”

“Steve, your family is our family, and we will protect them with our lives,” Dex said.

Steve nodded, turning back, knowing the team would do exactly that.

“What else do we know? Who else is connected,” he asked.

“We’re still working on that.”

He ran a hand over his face. “So what’s the plan? Police? A safe house?”

“No police. This is a need-to-know op,” Sam said. “It’s six o’clock. Diane isn’t due back at the office until tomorrow, so we have until morning. It might be safer to keep things normal right now. If the car outside is watching you, leaving suddenly will only raise suspicion. Volkov threatened her not to stray from routine. In the meantime, Kelly, the rest of the team, CIA are working on locating the sarin. We need to work on locating Volkov.”

“Kelly hasn't been able to find him yet. Diane might be able to speed that up and could help us,” Dex said. “We need to know everything she knows about this guy. We also need to know how much he knows about you.”

Great. He didn’t need another confrontation right now.

“I’m not the best person to talk to her. Might be better if one of you does it,” Steve admitted.

“No problem, I'll do it.” Dex said without hesitation.

“Steve, did Megan give you a description or anything of use?” Sam asked.

“I haven’t spoken to her about it yet. She was too upset, and I was too focused on getting to Diane.”

“Why don’t I go sit with her and see if she’ll talk to me while you guys chat with Diane?” Donnie offered. “Unless you want to do it, Steve?”

He did want to do it, but his temperament said otherwise. His emotions were skyrocketing, and he didn’t want his daughter seeing that. Megan loved Donnie, and Steve trusted him to be gentle and not hurt his little girl.

“No, you go. Just... well, you know.”

Donnie squeezed his shoulder. “I won’t upset her or push her. I promise.” He glanced at Dex and Sam. “I’ll send Diane up.”

Donnie headed downstairs.

“I’m sorry, guys, for asking the boys to help me out. I know that’s not how we operate.”

“No, it’s not. I thought we had all got passed this begging forgiveness rather than asking permission attitude,” Sam said.

When they had all first joined Onyx, Dex had pushed the boundaries on more than one occasion, until he finally trusted that Sam would always listen and be reasonable. The rest of the team had gone along with Dex, and Sam had been adamant that couldn’t happen.

“The call you should have made was to me or Dex. Op or no op. We would have listened.” Sam’s face was tense.

Yep, Sam was pissed. Steve nodded. “Understood, sir. I was hoping it was nothing.”

“Well, it’s certainly not nothing.” Sam sighed, visibly relaxing. “Look, it doesn’t matter how we got here. You and your family are in danger, and we’ll do whatever is necessary to take care of it. However, we also have missing sarin to find, and the clock is ticking.”

They stopped talking when Diane came into the kitchen. Her red eyes stood out against deathly pale skin. She looked at Steve nervously.

“Hey, Diane.” Dex stepped forward and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

“Hi, Sam.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper as she acknowledged him.

“Hello, Diane. Why don’t we go sit down?”