Chapter Twenty-Two
Blade
I n a dark fucking headspace, I drove to Alpha Elite Security through predawn traffic.
Glancing at an adjacent, oceanfront commercial building, I noticed their private parking lot that should’ve been empty at this hour, but wasn’t. Not that I gave a shit, except that was the fallout of over twenty years of hunting down bad fucking people. You noticed shit.
An old, dark green Jeep and a silver Toyota pickup.
Squatters, homeless, or people fucking.
Didn’t care which, or that they were getting a beachfront view with free parking. But I still cataloged them before I drove into the underground parking garage for the Miami Beach high-rise that now served as AES’s headquarters. I didn’t miss the company’s previous HQ in Manhattan. The relocation to South Florida was easier to maneuver, and the Executive Airport down here had less traffic than Teterboro, but neither location could touch the seclusion of my Montana property.
Shoving down all thoughts of saying fuck it and retreating to my cabin in the woods with the one hundred and thirty-five acres that backed up to the US Forest Service, I reminded myself why the fuck I was here this early.
No one else besides November and Alpha would be in yet, and November usually gave Alpha a sitrep each morning.
That ten-minute window when November would be out of the command room and the shitstorm that’d gone down last week were the reasons why I was taking the elevator to the top floor.
Except calling last week a shitstorm was the understatement of the century.
The most notoriously lethal SEAL the US Government had ever trained, then lost control of when he’d walked off the grid, had pulled off a complete fucking coup.
Disappearing seven years ago, that fucker resurfaced at an airport in the British Virgin Islands last week. Bleeding out, carrying a woman, Ghost had stepped off a megayacht’s tender and into the fucking surf, barely making it ashore before he collapsed on the apron.
But none of that was what’d really caught my attention.
Ghost’s actions leading up to that point were.
They were unprecedented and fucking impossible—without help.
Which was why I was stepping off the elevator and disappearing into the sea of cubicles to wait.
That fucker Ghost didn’t pull off the second-largest terrorist takedown in history single-handedly.
I didn’t care how good his strike teams were or how many Delta Force Operatives he’d had, or whoever the fuck else was boots on the ground. The mission had been a massive fucking undertaking, and Ghost’d had help.
Inside help.
Brass, Langley, someone.
I waited till November left the command room to go talk to Alpha, then I let myself in and went to his triple-monitor setup. Hoping to hit paydirt and grab his cell because November was more attached to his laptop than his fucking phone, I struck out.
Waking up his screens, I made one last-ditch attempt to get what I was looking for without having to ask. Which was the whole point of my stealth bullshit.
I got fucking lucky.
November was still logged in to the network.
I could log into AES’s servers. Everyone who worked for Alpha could. But November wasn’t only the mastermind behind every invasive cyber-tracking, cyberstalking software program AES had, he was the keeper of the kingdom.
Not all logins were created equal, and his was gold.
Aiming for the call log I knew November kept on all landline and cell traffic for every one of us, hopefully including himself, I found the program and started scanning.
Two minutes later, I saw the number for one of November’s recent burners. Tracking the calls, both incoming and outgoing, against the timeframe AES had been retrieving, housing, then relocating Ghost’s fucking harem of trafficked women, I found one repeat number.
After quickly memorizing it, I walked back my steps, erased my digital footprint, and sent the monitors back into dark mode. Then I grabbed one of the extra burners November kept in his bottom drawer and headed out.
Before I made a clean exfil, the door opened, and November walked in.
“Blade.” Not glancing up from his laptop, November bypassed me on his way to his desk. “Can I help you with anything?”
“Grabbing a clean burner.”
“Copy.” November sat down at his desk.
I walked out of the command room, hit the elevators, and went down to the garage level. Thirty seconds later, I was in my company Range Rover with the AC blasting, dialing the fucking number.
Ghost answered and mistook me for November. “Busy, Rhys.”
“Not Rhys. Need a favor.”
“How’d you get this number? You don’t hack.”
Correction—I didn’t use to hack. I didn’t use to have any fucking time for computers. Now I made time. “I do what I have to. I need a contact.”
“Ask your boss.”
“It’s not that kind of contact.” Alpha was honorable.
“Can’t help you.” An engine turned over in the background.
I called him on his bullshit. “You didn’t handle your shit solo, and that coordinated hit on Baccalaureate’s operation took more than some strike teams outfitted with guys from the Unit.” He had fucking contacts.
“Conversation’s over. I’m retired.” Ghost hung up.
Two years.
Two goddamn years, and I was nowhere closer to finding out what’d happened to Church than when I’d carried that casket off a transport.