Insurgency Saga: The Complete Series: A Military Sci-Fi Thriller Box Set by T.E. Bakutis

Author:T.E. Bakutis [Bakutis, T.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2022-04-19T06:00:00+00:00

12: RECRUITER

Mackenzie slapped Clayton hard enough to knock his head sideways. “Asshole!”

Clayton worked his jaw. “Okay.”

“You used us!” Mackenzie shouted. “You got my shuttle blown up, got Jinx blown up, got my warehouse—”

“I hired you to do a job for me,” Clayton interrupted, rubbing his chin with one big hand. “Lots of assholes hire you to do jobs for them. Do you slap them, too, especially after you screw up?”

“Someone sold me out!”

“Jeffrey Shaw sold you out,” Clayton said, stepping back before she could slap him again, “and I had no way of knowing he’d acquired Network access. That’s the only way he could have known you were coming, and sent his people to intercept you.”

Mackenzie thought about shouting, again, then decided it would be better to ask her other burning question. “Where’s Jinx?” What she didn’t ask was, Where’s her body?

“Not there,” Clayton said. “Shaw probably took her with your Freyja armor when he pulled out. The CSD moved on the crawl ship firefight as fast as they could, but there were minutes of chaos before enough aircars arrived. I wouldn’t be surprised if a half-dozen skiffs and helos got out before they got enough units in the area to lock down a perimeter.”

“Shaw took Jinx,” Mackenzie whispered. Those three little words made her world make sense again.

A man like Jeffrey Shaw — assuming he was as intelligent as Clayton claimed — would never drag Jinx’s fully armored body off the crawl ship with the CSD and Bai Ro bearing down. Not unless he needed her, and he didn’t need a dead woman. Jinx was alive, despite what Mackenzie saw after she beat her up. That made things possible that hadn’t been possible before.

That made it possible for Mackenzie to climb out of this hole.

“You said you knew Shaw, right?” Mackenzie considered all Clayton had revealed, about Cordoba’s human trafficking and Shaw’s ultimatum. “Why can’t you just tell him to call this bullshit off?”

Clayton glanced behind him, at the empty hallway, then back at her. “That’s not a conversation we can have here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Mackenzie threw up her arms. “Maybe if you’d told me those crates were full of fucking people, I wouldn’t have pummeled my girlfriend half to death or let Ro blow them into giblets!” Oh yeah, her balancers were really starting to wear off.

Clayton’s eyes narrowed. “You need to calm down.”

“I’m calm, asshole. I’m this close to taking your head off.”

Mackenzie trembled as she considered the burning wreckage Clayton, or whoever he was, had made of her simple and quite luxurious life. She’d lost her shuttle. She’d lost her warehouse and everything in it, and now she’d lost her armor. And worst of all ... she’d almost lost Jinx.

As Mackenzie glared at a man who had lied to her and used her, twice, someone stopped her from snapping Clayton’s neck and taking her chances with the many CSD soldiers outside this cell. Jinx. If Mackenzie died here or, worse, got thrown into a cell forever, Anton Cordoba and Bai Ro would keep selling innocent people to the Supremacy.

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