Secrets of Summer - THE SPECTER SERIES [book four]

Chapter THIRTY FOUR

Kirby Carter

. . t h r e e m o n t h s l a t e r. .

Time seems to blur, each day melting into the next and picking up speed.. Things run relatively smoothly, despite the chaos that is your fortnightly meetings with Darby.. Which have now become an increasingly tense stand-off and macho display of one upmanship between the Bratva and the IRA rebels..

Another of those meetings is set for midnight tonight, as Darby has finally found you a space to begin construction of the Vulknut ULTRA device that he is apparently very excited to show you.. Hunter - acting as Bratva Sargent Axe Hunt' - has handled almost all of the negotiations on your conditions, setting it up so that half of the men working in the lab with you will be there to protect, Bratva Bodyguards, basically.. The other half however will be Darby's IRA diehards, there to ensure you play by his rules..

The whole idea is to tie Darby to as much dirty money and criminal activity as possible before Specter will perform what the viking refers to as a 'sting operation'.. You aren't entirely sure of the details, but you understand the need to have the evidence nessicary for Specter to hand him off to the appropriate government body..

Maybe even the CIA..

Honestly, it wouldn't surprise you at this point.. Not much would..

But in the meantime, you actually have to begin building the ghastly device.. Something you are seriously dreading.. Concept design is one thing.. But construction is another thing entirely.. You can't just cook up any old crap, the process is such a delicate balance.. incredibly dangerous and high risk..

The last time you made a device it housed less than half of the capacity of the Vulknut.. And you had intended to stop its use too, at Rose River.. But you had failed then.. Because of you, too many innocent lives were lost.. You have to believe that somehow, this time is different.. That Hunter and his team won't do to you the same thing Stuart Diggle had all those years ago.. When you were supposed to get out of the IRA the first time..

Honestly, when it comes to Darby, you have placed all your faith in Hunter.. You desperately cling to the belief that the viking won't bail on you when things get tough..

You need that to be the case..

Everything else otherwise in your life runs on a loop between those meetings.. Lucky calls you with updates on the goings on of her life every other day, while you pretend everything is normal on your end... When she had called you a few days ago to cancel a lunch date with you because she was feeling under the weather, you had almost had a complete meltdown..

But she had assured you it was just a cold, and she would be over if by the end of the week..

Still, you had insisted that Hunter called Knox and make sure he keep a very close eye on her.. And to ease your mind.. He had done exactly that.. Even allowing you to question Knox for a half hour about everything she had been up to... A gesture that had not gone unappreciated..

Hunter takes you to visit Lacey on Sundays, the pixie-faced doctor to be has basically become your unofficial midwife, helping you prepare for and understand some of the way too crazy medical practices involved in giving birth..

The Viking goes with you to every one of your doctors appointments, he reads all the books.. He makes sure you eat enough and take your vitamins, in the most annoyingly adorable ways..

He does everything you hadn't expected.. He's there for you.. Only every so often, he needs to return to Specter to work on his reports for Ellerie, usually coming back to the apartment unbelievably late, or even the next day.. On those nights, Patrick usually comes and stays with you until Hunter returns the next day.. And on those nights, you're are uncomfortably aware of just how much you hate it when he isnt6 there..