Grave Vengeance by Lori Sjoberg

she have a choice, Tommy?” Reaching into her pocket, she drew out the paper and held it out for him to see. “Does it have anything to do with this?”
    He paled.
    Aha. “Tell me what it is, Tommy.”
    He shook his head. “He’ll kill me if I tell you.”
    “If you don’t tell me, I’ll make you wish you were dead.”
    Seconds ticked by. A minute.
    “I don’t have all day. Talk or we return to our original programming.”
    Tommy bit his lower lip so hard it bled. His eyes darted about the room, as if searching for a means to escape. “The artifact acts as a key,” he finally said. “It opens a portal between dimensions.”
    One by one, the dots connected in her mind, and her blood chilled to ice in her veins. “He’s planning to assassinate Fate?”
    He shook his head. “Not assassinate. Overthrow. We’ll need her until we know how everything works.”
    “And then he’ll kill her. How charitable.” Gwen prowled across the room like a tiger in a cage. How could he even consider doing such a thing? True, Fate could be a cruel mistress at times, but without her designs to bring order to the world, humanity would plunge into chaos. “How does the portal open?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Bullshit!” She braced her hands on the chair arms and leaned close enough to see the pulse pounding in his throat. “Tell me how it works.”
    “I told you I don’t know!”
    “Fine, have it your way.” She kneeled down beside his feet. “Which big toe do you prefer to lose first, the left or the right?”
    “Dammit, I’m telling you the truth!” His voice cracked. “I don’t fucking know!”
    Glancing up, she studied his face and saw unwashed terror in his eyes. Instinct told her he was speaking the truth, so she switched to another line of questioning. “Where’s the stone now? Who has it?”
    He shook his head again. “I don’t know. We were supposed to pick it up from some broad in D.C., but she said it was missing from the museum’s inventory.”
    “Which museum?”
    “The Smithsonian.”
    Like there was only one Smithsonian. “Care to whittle that down for me?”
    “Natural History,” he said through clenched teeth.
    “And the woman’s name?”
    “We never got her name. She said it was safer that way.”
    Great. “If you’d gotten the stone, where were you planning to take it?”
    Tommy licked his bleeding lower lip, his eyes looking everywhere but at her.
    “Come on, Tommy. I’m losing my patience. Where were you taking the artifact?” Lightly, she traced the tip of the blade over the top of his foot, and every muscle in his body jerked.
    “I don’t know, all right? Our orders were to go back to the hotel and wait for instructions. But then Reynolds spotted you and the Russian on the highway and decided to give Patrick a call.”
    “And Patrick told you to shoot Dmitri?”
    He hesitated before answering. “Not exactly.”
    When he failed to elaborate, she asked, “Then what exactly did he tell you to do?”
    Tommy fidgeted in his chair. “He said to grab you, and to make sure the Russian was in no condition to follow.”
    So Patrick still harbored hopes of converting her to the cause. That might come in handy later. Her anger spiked at the thought of their plans to harm Dmitri. How dared they turn on one of their own? Idiots. If they had any idea who they were dealing with, they would have come up with a better plan to take him out.
    What had first seemed like a simple retrieval mission was quickly snowballing into something far more sinister. How many reapers were already involved in Patrick’s plans for insurrection? How many more would join? She had a feeling things were going to get a lot messier before they got any better.
    With a sigh, she rose to standing. “Thank you for your help.” She glanced down to inspect his broken fingers. The bones in his thumb had already realigned and were in the process of knitting back together, but the remaining digits were still twisted at