Blade (The Alpha Elite #11)

Chapter Forty-Six

Blade

F ifteen fucking hours later, I was on the ground in Miami.

Forty-five minutes after that, I was in my penthouse.

Showered, my burned IDs already destroyed, I powered up my AES cell and logged into the servers from my laptop. Then my burner vibrated with an incoming call the same time a text came through on my work cell.

I grabbed the burner.

No Caller ID.

I answered. “What?”

“Not in the timeframe I gave you, but mission accomplished.”

“Fuck you.” Fuck him. “Intel, now.”

He fed me a bullshit female name that sounded like an alias.

“Tell me what you know about Church.”

“I’ll be in touch.” The asshole hung up.

I fucking stood there.

Then I typed Juniper Lakes into one of November’s software programs.

The search came back with actual fucking lakes.

Another text came through on my work cell.

Alpha: Need to talk .

Alpha: Priority one.

I wiped my search, logged out, and replied.

Me: Location?

Alpha: HQ .

Me: OMW .

I drove over, took the elevator to the top floor, and strode into AES, bypassing the vacant reception area.

Picking one of the empty interior offices, I walked around the desk and woke up the computer.

“Blade.” November appeared in the doorway with his laptop. “Need help?”

“No.” I sat.

“You usually use the computers in the command room.”

Not for this. “You usually don’t give a shit which setup I use.” I logged in to the network.

“Only when it’s mine.”

Busted, I glanced at the hacker and owned it. “I needed specific intel.”

“Ghost’s burner number.” Fucker took a seat across from me. “One of them, anyway.”

Christ. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

“Yes.” He set his laptop on the desk. “What are we looking for?”

“Not a ‘we’ project.”

He typed for a few seconds. “A Salafi-jihadist insurgent group leader was eliminated last night in Sana’a, Yemen.” He spun his laptop around.

I glanced up.

An image of my fucking HVT was on his screen.

“And?” Focusing back on my setup, I ran a bogus search.

He turned his laptop back toward him. “You crossed the Yemen-Saudi border this morning just before oh five hundred.” He typed. “Then drove to Najran and caught a charter.”

I’d covered my tracks. How the fuck did he know this? “Wasn’t me.”

“I think it was.” His hands flew across his keyboard, then abruptly stopped. “Do you know the last mission your brother was on?”

“No.”

“An aborted attempt at the same jihadist HVT that you took out last night.”

Abandoning my search, I looked at the hacker.

“I think you eliminated the target. I think it was an initiation, and I think you passed.” Zero fucking tells, he glanced at the desktop. “What were you really searching for?”

“Facial rec on a Salafi-jihadist insurgent group leader.” A single name. Female.

He nodded. “You didn’t know who the target was.”

I didn’t care. At first. “No.”

“Now you do.” November grabbed his laptop and stood.

It hit me. “You know who’s behind this.”

Pausing in the doorway, the secretive fucker glanced back, but he didn’t say shit.

“Is this Church’s doing?”

“No.”

“Is Church in trouble?”

No answer.

“Why were the brunette’s texts diverted to my burner?”

“I don’t know.”

There was a specific reason, and it was connected. I was fucking sure of it. “Who the hell is this asshole, November?”

He glanced down at his laptop, and for the first fucking time since I’d known him, the Cyberspace Operations Officer looked conflicted.

I pushed. “Give me a name.”

The hacker didn’t say shit.

I realized a crucial piece of intel. “Alpha doesn’t know that you’re read in.”

“Because I’m not.”

“Not officially.” But he’d done what he did best. Fucker had hacked his way in. The only question was why the hell was he sitting on the intel. “Who are you protecting?” It was the only angle that made sense.

November looked me square in the eye. “All of us.” He turned. “Alpha’s waiting for you in his office.” The hacker walked out.