Chapter Twenty-Four

Blade

F ucking pissed, I threw the SUV into Reverse, and the burner rang.

Not about to take more of Ghost’s bullshit, I answered and headed him off. “Go fuck yourself.”

Pause.

“I hear you’re looking for your brother.”

Not Ghost. Racking my brain, analyzing every word the caller had said—American accent, not old, not young, monotone. Could be anyone, but it wasn’t. His voice had that distinctive cadence. Military. Spec Ops.

“Who is this?” I demanded.

“I have a proposition for you.”

I threw the SUV back into Park. “Tell me who the fuck this is, and I might listen.” Scanning the underground parking garage of AES out of habit, I checked the row of empty, parked Range Rovers.

“That’s not important.”

The fuck it wasn’t. Not ten seconds ago, Ghost had hung up on me, and despite history fucking me over to the contrary, I still didn’t believe in coincidences.

Running this down from every angle, knowing all AES cells, assigned ones and burners, were encrypted but not foolproof, I didn’t dismiss the possibility that I’d been hacked.

Or was being watched.

I’d looked under every fucking stone over the past two years.

I’d probably pissed off some agencies or brass. Didn’t care. But the reality was, I’d come up so damn empty-handed, it had to be purposeful. Which was why I’d wanted a name from Ghost. Hell, I would’ve taken that fucker’s help at this point. He’d been ruthless on the Teams. He’d cut through shit that ran decades deep, and nothing had traced back to him. It was next level and the reason I’d called him in the first place.

I wanted one fucking contact.

Someone on the inside.

Someone like Ghost—in the know, but not on payroll.

But this fucking phone call? It wasn’t it. “We’re done.” The kind of intel I was looking for wouldn’t come from a goddamn call.

“You never met Church’s fiancée.”

About to hang up, I fucking paused. Not because this asshole could put two and two together and figure out that me, my brother, and whoever his woman was had never been in the same zip code at the same time together.

That wasn’t the red flag.

No one outside the Teams knew my brother’s unofficial call sign was Church. Officially, it’d been Charlie.

Quickly making a few swipes on the burner, I logged into AES’s servers and initiated a trace on the call. “Don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Christer ‘Charlie’ Emrik. Also known as Church. Two years ago, there was a new headstone in Arlington, no fiancée at the service, and you became the last man standing.”

Headstone. Not body.

Ignoring his comment about me being the last of my bloodline, wanting to pound this fucker’s head in, I watched the trace. “You got a point to all of this?”

“You help me, I’ll help you.”

Fuck him. “Negative.”

“You want the intel I have.”

I wanted to know who the fuck he was. “Then lay it out.”

“Your brother wasn’t on an Op when the incident occurred.”

“Incident.” This fucking asshole was sealing his fate.

“November third. Oh five thirty.” He rattled off the official date and time of Church’s death. “But he wasn’t in theater.”

I knew that. His whole fucking Team knew that. But not one person, brass or otherwise, had contradicted it. Until now. “And?”

“I’ll be in touch.” The asshole hung up, and the trace came through.

Iraq. Baghdad.

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