Chapter Thirty-Four
Blade
I called Christensen again.
No answer.
I logged into AES servers and searched for anything on Phoenix.
Nothing.
I hit up the dark web and looked for any intel on SMUs or Black Ops in Iraq called Phoenix, but came up empty.
I dialed Church’s cell, a line I’d kept turned on for two years because I couldn’t bring myself to release the number or delete his account. I didn’t know where the fuck his cell was or what’d happened to it, but I still had the data that’d been pulled off it. I had Geir’s data too. It was one of the first things I’d asked November for after onboarding. It wasn’t much. Geir had been less talkative than me. But I had all our old texts, the bullshit hazing we all used to do, and the gun and bicep pics we’d send.
I listened to Church’s voicemail greeting before ending the call.
Then I thought about hunting down Whiskey or Delta and asking them what the fuck Phoenix was.
Whiskey would smile as he lied to your face.
Delta would give you an answer to a different question, and make you feel fucking grateful for it.
Fucking SEALs.
Not that I could talk shit about either of them. Or any SEAL. Every damn one of us would take a bullet or endure torture until our bodies quit before betraying the Trident.
I shut down my laptop, ate, and was considering another run because I was fucking restless when a text came through on the burner.
Crazy Chick: So for real, this isn’t Charlie or his blond brother taking over Reena’s phone?
Blond brother?
I wasn’t fucking blond. But Church was. He’d looked like a male version of our mother—blond as shit and easygoing. Me and my youngest brother, Geir, looked like our old man—dark-haired and mean. The only thing all three of us had in common were our eyes and our height.
I sat on the fucking text for thirty minutes.
Then I replied.
Me: Now there’s a brother?
The response came almost immediately.
Crazy Chick: I’m not playing.
She was doing something.
Me: Not Charlie, not blond, not Reena. Not stating it again .
An idea hit, and I pulled up November’s text with the two numbers. Then I ran a block of numbers with sequential variations on the last two digits.
All of them came back as out of service.
On a hunch, I brought up the burner number I’d gotten for Ghost and did the same thing.
A dozen numbers that were just two digits off from his burner also came back as out of service.
I dialed Ghost’s burner.
He answered on the second ring. “Lose this number, Emrik.”
“One question, and I will.”
He didn’t respond.
I asked. “Do you work for Phoenix?”
There was a five-second pause. Then, “Have you been given a target yet?”
I assumed he meant by the anonymous asshole caller. “No.”
“That’s how it starts. If you want answers, don’t fuck up. The courting or the assignment. Watch your six.” Ghost ended the call.