Code Name: Hornet (K19 Allied Intelligence Team Two #4)
1. Hornet
1
HORNET
S omething was wrong. I knew it before I reached her room, before I saw the bed pulled so tight you could bounce a coin off it, before I noticed her go-bag missing from its usual spot in the wardrobe. It felt different, cold. Empty in a way that had nothing to do with my being here on my own. Instead, it was more like walking onto a theater stage after the final curtain call—everything arranged just so, props in their places, all of it hiding the truth of its abandonment.
I moved through the space, cataloging what told the real story: the false-bottom drawer stripped clean of the emergency cash and documents, the hidden compartment—the one I’d helped install—in her closet now cleared of everything she’d need to travel under a myriad of aliases.
There was no mystery as to why Kima—code name Delfino—had left under the cover of night. Three months ago, she learned the man who’d adopted her as a baby when he married her widowed mother, was alive. She’d spent eleven years mourning Edgar Hyde—code name Jekyll—only to discover he was a double agent who’d faked his own death.
How did she find out? Typhon, the man who Jekyll had made promise to care for her and her mom in the event where something happened to him, was taken hostage and tortured by a guy he believed was his best friend, along with his Russian mafiosi cronies, until our team rescued him.
Jekyll had disappeared into the wind that night, and now, I was certain Kima had gone to find him. What her plans were once she did was anyone’s guess. If asked my opinion, I’d say she planned to kill him. If he didn’t kill her first.
Rain hammered against the floor-to-ceiling windows of Typhon’s flat, transforming the London skyline into a watercolor smear of grays and blacks. This place, where Kima and I hid when Typhon feared her stepfather might come after her, stood as Unit 23’s crown jewel of secure locations.
With its titanium-core security systems and hidden command center, it had been built as a fortress where Leviticus “Typhon” Marras, commander of Britain’s most lethal special operations force, could orchestrate missions across the globe. A sanctuary to which I wielded full access since earning my place as his second-in-command of the elite SIS team that even MI6 whispered about in corners.
Which made it all the more damning that Kima had managed to leave without triggering even one of our triple-redundant security protocols.
My secure phone buzzed with a call from Reaper, probably having already sensed something was off. The American had an uncanny ability to know when things were going sideways, which, in the past, had made him an invaluable CIA agent and, now, an occasionally annoying best friend.
Reaper, Kima, and I met two years ago when we were each assigned to serve in the UN Coalition Against Human Trafficking. That coalition was made up of five elite task forces, one each from the UK, US, Albania, Switzerland, and Malta. I was a special advisor to the UK unit, Kima was on the Malta team, and Reaper was second-in-command of the US squad. He currently worked out of the command center in Shere, an hour south of London, where he had resources that might differ from what Unit 23 could access.
“Don’t tell me she gave you the slip,” he drawled when I answered, his Texas accent somehow more pronounced over the encrypted line.
“How did you?—”
“I’ve been waiting for this for three months.” There was a pause and the sound of him probably running his hand over his beard as he did when thinking. “Want me to start running trace protocols?”
“No.” I pulled up the security feeds on my tablet, my fingertips leaving smudges on the screen as I scrolled back through the night. “She’s too smart for that. She’ll have killed all her trackers.” I stopped when I spotted her leaving the flat shortly after zero three hundred hours, a silent shadow moving through the space. She never looked back as she ghosted through the front door.
My chest constricted. The warning signs I’d been oblivious to blazed as brightly as neon: her retreating into silence these past weeks, the way she’d pull back from conversations mid sentence, the countless times she’d press her forehead against the windows, focusing on the horizon. Now, I guessed she’d been memorizing her escape route.
“You still there?” Reaper’s voice cut through my downward spiral. “Look, I can be wheels up in thirty if you need backup. Typhon’s gonna lose his mind when he finds out his protege flew the coop.”
“Right,” I muttered, getting lost in thought again, this time about our dinner two nights ago. Kima had sat at the counter while I cooked, her laughter bouncing off the marble surfaces as she mocked my insistence on perfectly uniform vegetable cuts.
I’d caught a shadow lurking behind her smile, an undertow of something dark I’d chosen to ignore. Instead, I’d let myself get lost in how her fingers curved around the stem of her wineglass and the way the kitchen’s warm light painted copper streaks through her dark hair.
“You’re worse than Typhon sometimes,” she’d teased, snatching a carrot cube from my cutting board. “So obsessively compulsive.”
I’d fixed her with my sternest glare, the one that sent junior agents scrambling for cover. “My OCD keeps us alive.”
“And isolated,” she’d whispered, her mask cracking for a brief moment before she plastered on another disingenuous smile.
“I have to call Typhon,” I muttered pulling myself back into the present.
“Your funeral, man,” said Reaper. “But I’m prepping anyway because we both know how this will go—every available operative will be chasing her across Europe while trying not to piss off the scariest man in British intelligence.”
He was right on both counts, which was why I dreaded making the call I knew I couldn’t put off a moment longer.
After signing off with Reaper, I entered the hidden command center, the bookcase grinding open at my palm print. Banks of monitors bathed the room in electric blue as I pulled up the security logs. Timestamps confirmed my fears with brutal clarity: zero three hundred, Kima slipping out of her bedroom with a pack designed for deep cover operations.
My throat closed as I watched her hesitate at my door, her hand hovering over the handle before moving on seconds later. Less than ten minutes later, she’d vanished.
“Damn it, Kima,” I muttered, reaching for my secure phone. The call connected after two rings.
“This better be important, Hornet.” Typhon’s tone was razor-sharp, typically reserved for interruptions to rare personal time.
“Sir.” I kept my voice level despite the blood in my veins turning to ice. “Delfino is gone.” My reference to her code name was in an effort to keep the conversation on a professional level, as if there was any chance of that happening.
The silence that followed could have frozen hell itself. When Typhon spoke again, his voice dropped to that deadly whisper that made veteran operatives pray for mercy. “Explain.”
I reported the details as I knew them.
“Your one job was to protect her.” Typhon spat each word. “It was the only thing I asked of you when I assigned you as her security lead after Jekyll surfaced.”
“Yes, sir.” No excuse could fill the void of my failure. I’d let myself get caught between duty and the warmth that bloomed in my chest whenever she smiled.
“I’ll be on the next flight out. Start crafting the mission. And, Hornet? When we do find her, try to keep in mind what happens to Unit 23 operatives who let personal feelings compromise their mission.”
My eyes closed when the line died, and I focused on the drumbeat of rain against the windows.
Seconds later, my phone buzzed again—Reaper—this time with a text. Jet on standby at Gatwick. Every nerve ending screamed to move, to chase, to hunt. But charging ahead now would only multiply my mistakes. I needed to think like Kima, to predict her next moves.
Returning to her room, I forced myself to study the space she’d inhabited, not as a crime scene but as a diary. The psychology texts and trauma-counseling manuals arranged by author on her shelves. The sketchbook filled with drawings from our surveillance shifts together, her way of staying sharp during the endless waiting. The empty space on her bedside table where she’d kept a photo of herself with Jekyll, taken when her mother married him.
Something peeking out from under her pillow caught my eye. I reached for the slip of paper, unfolded it, and read the simple message written in her distinctive handwriting. “Don’t attempt to follow me. I need to do this on my own.”
I traced each letter, remembering all the times I’d built walls between us in the name of professionalism after her touch sent an electric current through my body. Now, she was out there solo, hunting a ghost who’d already ripped her world apart once. Lying on the bed, I stared into space, willing Kima to reach out to me, to ask for help. If not mine, anyone’s. I visualized her soft pink lips, wishing I could rewind the clock to any point in the last couple of years when I’d come so close to kissing her. God, why hadn’t I?
After padding to the command center, I reviewed the security feeds from three days ago when Oleander appeared on the feed, snagging my attention. I’d dismissed the discussion the Unit 23 operative had with Kima about Bulgarian intelligence as routine coalition business. Now, I zeroed in on her body language, how her shoulders tensed as she made a note of the unit’s Eastern European contacts, and the way her hand drifted to a locket that her stepfather had given to her as a child.
From there, I scoured all the transportation hubs within a one-hundred-mile radius. It took some time, but combing through the footage, I eventually spotted someone I knew was Kima, despite her elaborate disguise, simply from the way she moved her body. She was getting ready to board a flight out of Manchester, traveling first to Amsterdam, then on to Belgrade.
“You’re clever, Delfino, but you forgot one important detail,” I muttered, pulling up flight manifests from there to Sofia—the most obvious of possible destinations—until I spotted the biometric profile compiled before she flew out of MAN.
No doubt believing Bulgarian intelligence would lead her to her stepfather, she’d worked backward from his last confirmed location, unraveling the puzzle from end to beginning.
As I headed out of the command center, my mobile vibrated with a message from Nemesis, the coalition commander, requesting an update about Delfino’s disappearance. I ignored it. Unit 23 answered to no one, least of all her. With Typhon in the air, it didn’t surprise me that she’d try to wrest control over the mission.
Whatever Kima had uncovered about Jekyll, whatever had driven her to leave before dawn this morning, my gut told me I couldn’t let her face it alone, even if finding her meant destroying her trust forever. Even if it meant Typhon would put her and me in protective custody so tight we’d never see the light of day. On second thought, he’d only do that to her. Me, he might kill.
The storm’s intensity worsened as dawn crept over London’s gunmetal sky, so common this time of year. Somewhere out there, Kima was already moving, following whatever pieces of evidence she’d gathered. But other than the biometric profile, she’d overlooked one other critical detail. After two years of working together, watching her back, studying her movements, I knew her patterns better than anyone except perhaps Typhon himself.
Shouldering my pack, I headed for the door, but stopped to send one more message. En route to SOF , it read, referencing the airport code.
Reaper’s response was immediate. Got your six when you need it, brother.
The flat’s door sealed behind me with a pneumatic hiss, leaving only traces of jasmine perfume and the ghost of everything Kima and I had left unsaid but couldn’t remain so any longer. She needed my help, and in order to get her to agree to it, she had to trust me. To earn that trust, I’d have to admit the true depth of my feelings for her. I’d fallen in love with Kima Sakari over the course of the last two years. I’d repeatedly denied it, following Typhon’s orders. Even when she’d admitted the same feelings for me, I’d lied and pushed her away. No more. As soon as I was close enough for our gazes to meet, I’d tell her the truth.