Blood and Bone: (Royal Blood #6) by Amity Cross Page B

they found the puddle,” he replied with a shrug.
    “I assume he’s going to meet with his employer about a contingency plan,” I said. “Since Moltke’s precious bomb was ruined and melted its maker.”
    “That’s the thing…” Jackson said slowly.
    “What?” I barked.
    He shrank back from my tone and pressed his finger on the keyboard.
    “We have an alternate source for the compound.” Bateman’s voice filtered from the laptop speakers.
    “Good. The time for the meet has been arranged.” Moltke . “I don’t need Gruber.”
    “Where?”
    There was a slight pause before Moltke replied, “Tilbury.”
    “The—”
    “Eleven p.m.,” Moltke interrupted. “Don’t be late.” Click .
    I glanced at Mercy, and she straightened up. “Tilbury, as in Greater London?”
    “How did you…” I stared at the laptop and wondered how the fuck Jackson had gotten all that information out of the stupid brick.
    “I know a thing or two about decoding elaborate software encryptions over a phone line,” he said with a shrug.
    “We need a specific location,” Mercy said. “How—”
    “Already on it. Agent Folsom gave me a protocol for contacting him below radar,” Jackson explained. “He can look into the intel and see if MI6 has picked up any additional chatter.”
    “There’s a dock at Tilbury,” I mused. “Container ships. There’ll be storage… Highly industrialized…”
    “Plenty of places to hide some Veltium-34,” Mercy added. “I’m sure Folsom can task a satellite or whatever it is they do to find the meeting point.”
    “Uh, guys?” Jackson said, sounding panicked.
    “What is it?” I hissed.
    “Folsom… He’s…” Jackson paled further.
    “ He’s what? ” Fuck it to hell, that man’s penchant for stuttering his words…
    He turned around the laptop, and Mercy and I stiffened as we beheld the crime scene photograph. One shot directly in the head.
    Jackson swallowed hard and declared, “Folsom is dead .”

Chapter 12

Mercy
    F olsom turning up dead had thrown a dirty great big fucking spanner in the works.
    He’d been right about a lot of things, the big kahuna being that Moltke had fingers in MI6’s pie. He knew Folsom was onto him, so he’d broken into his home and executed him. It brought back a lot of memories that I thought I was done with, but bad guys were forever shooting one another in the fucking head— like Sykes had murdered my family and how I put an end to him.
    BAM. Right between the eyes .
    Folsom being dead meant Moltke knew we were hunting him. Not just the whole fucking world but us specifically—X, Jackson, and me. He’d probably always suspected we would, but now he knew for sure, and that would make this much harder than it already had been. He knew our strengths and weaknesses from working at Section Seven. He knew what made us tick, and he’d use every last shred of intel against us.
    The only ray of light was that Jackson’s family was safe. Their location hadn’t been compromised, and the agents assigned had been loyal to Folsom. They’d be well looked after until this was over, just like they’d been promised.
    This whole thing seemed like a bridge too far…if you know what I mean. I had a bad feeling we were being set up, and this meet with Bateman was an elaborate ruse to flush us out like rats.
    Staring at the rows of shipping containers through binoculars, I studied the ship docked closest to our position at the Tilbury wharf, the lights of Greater London stretching off into the distance across the River Thames. I’d counted as many as twenty vessels, from tankers to container ships to passenger liners. Chatter Jackson had picked up indicated Moltke and Bateman were to meet within the rows of containers being unloaded from the Maersk Norwich .
    “This is bad news,” I said, my gaze raking over the stern of the ship. The huge black letters read Maersk Norwich . That was the one. “This has been too easy.”
    “It’s a trap,” X