Crazed: A Blood Money Novel Read Online Free Page A

front of their cousin, Della Quinn, before shoving a doughnut into his mouth from a box labeled Glazed & Infused sitting near the coffeepot.
    Della hadn’t bothered with coffee or doughnuts before diving into the broken cell phone, tablet and hard drive she pulled from Adam’s bag, her own laptop open on the quartz countertop as she plugged everything in and began to work her magic. As Adam’s right hand, Della had put up with Adam’s breed of crazy more than just about anyone else in the family. Tobias’s kid brother may subscribe to a laissez-faire attitude in the rest of his life, but Adam was an exacting taskmaster when it came to the job. He took his work seriously, protecting every Faraday asset online and doing his fair share of investigating—through means legal and illegal—to perform the sometimes ugly duties that came with running part of the world’s leading arms manufacturer.
    Now Della muttered to herself as thick silence blanketed the room, plugging cords into devices and typing away with a vicious frown marring her pale face. The trio of delicate hoops piercing her eyebrow blinked in the light as she shoveled a hand through the haphazard white-blond pixie cut. Della hid her true identity under hair dye, skillfully applied liner and lipstick and numerous piercings, and, given what Tobias knew of her history—and the history of her older siblings, Freya and Keir—that urge toward concealment was understandable.
    The Quinns had blood in their backstory. But then, what branch of the Faraday family tree didn’t these days?
    “So.” Vick grabbed a cup of tea of his own and settled next to Beth, one long arm running along the back of the couch, fingertips stroking over the bare cap of her shoulder. “Everyone’s here.”
    Tobias glanced toward the empty entryway to the kitchen. “Not quite every—”
    “What’s with the board meeting?” The gravelly Georgia drawl reached them before the owner of that voice did. Gavin Bok limped into the room, pausing to grip the doorframe in one scarred, tattooed hand. Dark blue eyes scanned the room, clear and alert as they hadn’t been in the weeks since he’d given up his undercover work with the Russian mob. Not that Beth’s field partner had planned his exit from the black market arms ring Polnoch’ Pulya —he’d been gut-shot and beaten when Tobias, Chandler and Casey had hauled him out of Moscow and delivered him to Beth’s doorstep, and to see the former Navy pilot steady on his feet was a testament to the man’s iron will.
    “Gavin. We were just waiting for you.” Tobias looked to the screen where Gillian stared out at them. “Is the audio working on your end?”
    She lifted her energy drink in toast. “Loud and clear.”
    “Then we begin.” Taking a bracing sip of coffee, his other hand still locked around Chandler’s firm thigh, Tobias recounted the known facts. “At approximately eighteen hundred hours last night, Adam Faraday was assaulted and kidnapped from an alleyway in historic Boston.”
    Gavin, the only person who hadn’t known, tensed and cursed, but otherwise remained silent.
    “He was on the phone with Casey when the struggle began,” Tobias continued, his voice cool and modulated though inside he felt anything but, “and was able to provide clues as to the identity of his attackers. Three Latino men, one of whom was left-handed, wearing tourist-style clothing, managed to overpower him and got him into an unmarked black panel van that had been parked on a nearby street. A fourth individual was driving the van, identity unknown.” He looked to Casey. “A contact inside Boston PD was able to provide us with red-light camera footage. The van was a rental out of Logan International Airport, but it was not returned to that location last night, which leads us to believe...”
    Casey cleared his throat. “Which leads us to believe they flew out of either a private airstrip or a more rural setting—there’s flat farmland if