Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4) Read Online Free

be exploited as a potential weakness, and that belief was reflected in his men and their cutthroat — and cowardly,  self-serving — mentality.
    When he had grown bored with his playing ground, Callaghan branched out into the media. There was less blood to spill in this sector, but controlling a live news stream fed into his massive ego, and in the wrong hands, in his hands, it could be used to lead witch hunts against his enemies, which I suspected was his main goal in such a merger.
    Revenge. Against us.
    I had cut transmission during the unveiling of his new telecommunications project, marking him as a failure in front of the very people he had been trying to impress. Callaghan would have my head on a platter just for that, if he could — hell have no fury like a sociopath humiliated — but that was just one humiliation in a long line of many.
    He would never forget that I'd been Richardson's first choice, not him.
    Christina was on his list, as well. He knew she was his best chance at getting back at me. But she was also the one who had shot him. She'd gotten him right in the knee. Shattered the patella. Because of her, he'd been forced to drop out of the public eye to lick his wounds. Nobody finds a gimp terrifying.
    God, I hoped it fucking hurt.
    But however badly he was hurting now, it wasn't enough. Not even close. A limp wouldn't stop him. It might slow him down, but it wouldn't stop him.
    To do that, we needed to kill him.
    “Angelica — do you have the files?”
    “One moment, please,” she called back in her Sudanese accent. I could hear her shuffling around in the file room. What the fuck was she doing in there?
    I wasn't a patient man by nature and she'd had plenty of time to put the file together while I'd been on the goddamn plane. Which had landed late.
    Turned out that there wasn't even time to give Christina the fucking I'd promised when we got back on land. Soon as we got in the car and I turned on my phone, I was assaulted by a number of texts from Angelica, each subsequent one rising in urgency in terms of tone.
    Where are you?
    Have you landed yet?
    I have something you need to see.
    Call me as soon as you get this.
    I was already dialing by the time I'd reached the last one. Angelica picked up on the first ring and said, “Come back to base as soon as you can.” And now she wasn't even fucking ready? My patience had officially hit zero.
    “Goddamn it, Angelica, where the hell is that folder? Are you shitting it out in there, or what?”
    “I said one moment. I am not used to Ms. Parker's filing system. It will take me a minute to locate it.”
    “Don't blame Christina. You had a full two hours to get used to it.”
    “Found it.”
    Angelica sashayed into the room, causing the tight material of her skirt to creak with the rolling motions of her hips.
    “Here is the dossier you requested so nicely,” she said, smiling as she handed me a thick folder bursting with papers. I eyed them warily.
    “I don't recall ordering a side of sass to go with it. What is this? You writing his biography?”
    I flipped through the thick stack of papers. I couldn't help but feel a little impressed. Angelica had gathered everything. Names, dates — I snorted — even his social security number and a photocopy of his birth certificate. “Jesus H. Christ.”
    “Is there a problem?”
    I slapped the folder lightly against my thigh. “You assembled all this today?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “How?”
    She smiled, pleased. “A magician never reveals her secrets, Mr. Boutilier.”
    The wry response, and its deadpan delivery, made me think, suddenly, of Kent. Which was not surprising in and of itself. Angelica had been Kent's protege. It would not be unusual for her to have picked up some of his mannerisms in the interim.
    I just hadn't expected how much it would hurt.
    Fuck.
    After Kent's death, I'd hired Angelica, figuring she would be the next best thing. Kent himself was irreplaceable. He had been killed in an