Chapter 18 #2
Sterling glanced down into his coffee and fiddled with the rim.
"Tell me you didn't."
"I won't lie to you," Sterling said.
“You organized my cabinets?”
“Just one." He shrugged. "You had soup next to cereal.”
“They’re both food.”
Nick laughed. “I’m so glad I came.”
Sterling pointed at the report. “Can we focus?”
“I am focused.” Juniper kept her eyes on him. “On the fact that you rearranged my kitchen.”
“It was a hostile environment.”
“My soup threatened no one.”
Nick slapped a hand over his mouth, but the laughter still managed to spill through his fingers.
Sterling sighed. “Maybe not, but you asked me to go over to your house and get a few things. I did. And then I got carried away. But we should just bring everything over here. It would be so much easier.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
"I need some popcorn," Nick said.
“Be quiet.” She went back to the report, though a smile tugged at her mouth. She didn’t want it there. The morning had too much weight for smiling. But Sterling had inadvertently suggested she stay with him… longer.
And the idea didn't bother her at all.
She tapped the boxed names. “So, Koda’s name sits near people who were part of the corridor but managed to stay out of the official record.”
“Near,” Sterling said. “That’s the key word. Not tied. Not proven. Just near.”
“Near Shrike,” Nick said. "That's really the key."
Juniper’s fingers tightened around the highlighter. “It always comes back to them, now, doesn't it."
Nick nodded. “Koda moves in circles where Shrike could hide. That doesn’t make him Shrike. It doesn’t make him part of it. But when Mia overlays Koda’s post-corridor rebuilding contacts with Sterling's old Shrike-adjacent names, the same weather pattern keeps forming.”
She hated that. Hated the careful language. The hedging. The almost. The maybe. The same slippery smoke that had followed Shrike every time Mark had tried to grab hold of it.
Almost wasn’t evidence.
Maybe didn’t get warrants.
She set down the highlighter before she snapped it in half.
Sterling covered her hand with his, warm and steady. A week ago, she might have pulled away. A week ago, she’d still believed she could walk out of Calusa Cove if the job demanded it.
Now, the idea scraped raw places she had a name for but wasn't ready to say out loud.
“What else?” she asked.
Sterling removed his hand and reached for a separate folder.
This one had no corporate logos, no Mia-style flow lines, no neat digital printouts. It was thinner, and for some reason, that scared the shit out of her.
“I took a closer look at the Norfolk raid," Sterling said.
Her lungs locked for half a second. People always found softer ways to say it. The joint operation. The incident. She’d used those words herself because language gave people distance, and distance kept them upright.
But Mark had died there.
So had four other agents.
“What did you find?” Juniper asked.
Sterling opened the folder and turned the first page toward her.
The list of names didn’t punch through her the way it would have two years ago. That almost surprised her. Mark Stratton still hurt. His name always would. But her pain had edges now. It had a place and she knew she could carry it.
Progress. Or scar tissue. She wasn’t sure there was much difference.
Sterling tapped one name near the bottom of the list.
Logan Pike.
Juniper drew the folder closer. “He was one of the survivors.” She dragged it out of the old mess in her head.
Hospital hallways. Officials in suits. Someone mentioning Pike had been lucky.
Someone else saying lucky was a hell of a word for a man who’d taken six rounds and lived.
“He was DEA. Mark didn't know him well.”
Nick leaned forward. "I went over that list after Mark died a dozen times. Pike never hit for me. Never came up on any list or flagged in any way.”
“That’s because you weren’t looking for the right overlap,” Sterling said.
She stared at him. "What does that mean?”
“I worked with Pike on a couple of ops.”
The kitchen seemed to narrow around those nine words.
“Where?” She flattened her hands on the counter as if that would keep her from falling apart. Or tossing something.
“Honduras. Then Curacao. Different operations. He was DEA support. Smart. Quiet. Good with sources. Honestly, nothing stands out, at first glance. I wouldn't think twice about him, except for one thing.”
“Doyle," she whispered. "Did he work with Doyle?
Sterling’s gaze held hers. “He did. And he works for a similar operation as Doyle up in Delaware called Brandywine Security. And they've done a few joint private cases together.”
"When did you learn all this?" Juniper looked down at Logan’s name again. "How?"
"When I made the Pike connection, I had Mia do a quick look. She's doing more, but that's the pre-lim."
"Fuck me," Nick muttered.
There it was. The line she hadn’t wanted and couldn’t ignore. Logan to Sterling. Sterling to Doyle. Doyle to Logan. Logan to Mark. Mark to her.
"Shit," she mumbled. “If Doyle knows Logan, and Logan knows who I am, then Doyle might know who I am, too.”
"I'd say that's a pretty safe bet," Sterling said.
“He hit on me the first day,” she said.
Sterling's face contorted.
"Oh shit," Nick said. "You look like this just got way too personal and that's never good."
“It was already personal when he showed up here to lure me into a trap for what's in my brain,” Sterling said. "Now, he’s pissed me off by bringing someone I care about into it."
“Where's Pike now?” she asked. "Besides living in Delaware."
“Mia's looking for an address and an exact location." Sterling pushed aside his half-eaten sandwich.
“But he could be anywhere,” she said.
“He could be here,” Nick added. "We need to change gears. We can't play the long game and wait for you to meet with Doyle's client. Whatever they actually want from you and are willing to do with you to get it, they’re willing to be patient as fuck."
"What do you suggest I do?" Sterling asked. "Call Doyle and tell him, sorry, changed my mind—not taking the job."
"That's actually a good idea. It’ll force them to be more aggressive." Nick lifted the papers. "Might even bring a few people out of the woodwork."
"That's crazy." Juniper shook her head. "That could get him killed.
" Glaring at Nick, she took a step back and planted her hands on her hips.
"You know Mark was working on trying to prove that Shrike was buying and selling secrets.
That whatever or whoever Shrike was, that it was moving money, assets, weapons, whatever it wanted, between governments, cartels, terrorists, and it managed to stay under the radar.
You also know he got a call right before he got killed, and you know what I think about that. "
“I've always known someone would come for me,” Sterling said. "I've shut down more corridors in Central and South America than are on the books. The mission that Nick, Doyle, and I were on eight years ago had to have a leak. I knew it. Nick knew it. But we could never find it."
"We never thought it was Doyle." Nick rubbed his temple. "He took a bullet. He took heavy gunfire. We all did. I read that report many times. But someone gave up our position. Someone wanted our guy. And the worst part was after that op, things went quiet."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Someone put pressure on congress to let the corridor take care of itself," Nick said.
"Not someone." Sterling shifted arched a brow. "Harlan Koda."
"What?" Nick stared at Sterling.
So did Juniper. "You knew this?"
Sterling leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I suspected it, but I didn't know for sure until I was interviewed by congress two years later.
I was sworn to secrecy, and honestly, I didn't think anything of it until all this shit started happening.” He shifted his gaze.
"And we're forgetting something incredibly important here.
They came after Juniper, too. They put a gator on her porch.
That might have been a warning. Or a distraction.
But whatever it was meant to be, it was also a message that they know who she is, and it's one way to keep me in line. "
Nick cocked his head. “All the more reason to tell Doyle you changed your mind and force them to come in hot.”
"I totally agree," Sterling said.
Juniper turned and crossed to the window. The morning sun hit the inlet hard enough to scatter light across the water. Calusa Cove looked peaceful, but she knew better. Out there, hidden in the murky water, was a town full of secrets.
She gripped the edge of the counter. If Doyle knew who she was, then the game had most definitely changed. "I need you to ask Mia to look into my handler."
"Why?" Sterling asked.
"What if my being placed here was to kill two birds with one stone?" She turned. "Or maybe three, since we just pulled in Nick."