Come To Me (Owned Book 3) by Mary Catherine Gebhard Page A

even opened the goddamn thing. The message shouldn’t have been a surprise. None of it should have been a shock. If I’d been thinking with just an ounce of forethought or cunning, I would have seen it.
    I rubbed my neck as I read, trying to work out the kinks sleeping on a desk had created. Obviously, my mind had been elsewhere.
    According to Charlie’s intel, GEM had ordered the hit in Mexico and the hit was me. If I had gone to Mexico, I would be a dead man. I read and reread, trying to see if there was any other way to interpret it. There wasn’t.
    Dom had deceived me and was not a neutral party, but a spineless shitfuck working for GEM—though for some reason GEM still hadn’t officially blacklisted me. Probably because it was Alice pulling the strings.
    If you ever find yourself in this situation—quasi-blacklisted by a bitch with a vendetta—you should never do what I did. You should close out the files, delete them, and a go off the grid as soon as possible. You shouldn’t stay bent over the desk, goddamn message still open on your screen.
    But I was…hung up.
    See, as I dialed the fucker, I couldn’t help but remember all the shit I’d done for him. Mistake number one. In the wetwork world, honor and nobility are like diamonds: everyone wants them, no one really has them, and there really is no point to them. I guess that was why Charlie and I got along so well (well, as much as you could in that world). He might have been a bit of psychopath, but somewhere deep down, he had his honor.
    Dom answered on the last ring. I should have cut Dom out of my life years ago, but the young marine in me still had ties to him. I would give him one more chance. Mistake number two.
    “Tell me you’re someplace safe.”
    “You told me END was the one who organized the hit,” I replied.
    “They did,” he said quickly. Too quickly.
    “Then why am I looking at intel that says GEM organized it? And why does it say eliminate target on sight?”
    “I…” Dom trailed off. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who gave you that intel? It’s probably bad.” I wasn’t about to give up my source. Charlie had risked his ass sending me the information. It was clear Dom was just as sniveling and weaselly as he had been the first day I’d met him.
    I guess I just never expected him to weasel on me. Mistake number fucking three. Remember how I said I hate odd numbers?
    “That’s your explanation?”
    “I…” The line went dead.
    “Motherfucker.” I pushed away from the desk, preparing myself for what would come next.
     

     
    I punched in Grace’s number as I exited my office, mind running through everything I had to do.
    “There may come a time when you’ve been compromised. Learn your ABCs. Assemble. Break. Clear out.”
    “Vic?” Grace’s voice came through sleepy. “Why are you callin’ so early? Is everythin’ okay?” I hadn’t even looked at the clock yet, but that hardly mattered.
    “You need to leave.”
    “What do you mean I need to leave?”
    “I mean you’re in danger. Get Eli and leave Santa Barbara.”
    “What are you talkin’ ‘bout? You’re not makin’ any sense.”
    “When you’ve been compromised, every tool, every resource you had is gone. If you’re smart, you’ve been assembling your own resources.”
    “I’ve put a burner phone, instructions, and some cash in a PO box at the post office by your house.”I had similar setups at multiple PO boxes, safety deposit boxes, and even buried beneath the earth, around Santa Barbara and the US. Assemble was the first thing you learned in training. Officially, learning your ABCs was never about being blacklisted. It was about if your real name got leaked to a competing company. I was lucky, though; I had a trainer who let me in on the secret early. Too bad that would eventually cost him his life.
    “There will come a day when GEM will not be there to assist you and you will be hunted.”
    “Why?” Some kid raised his