Chapter 26 – Evelyn
EVELYN
“Are you sure about this?” Alexander murmured.
He was leaning beside me against the wall of one of the Archers’ safehouses, the entryway narrow enough that his shoulder brushed mine when he shifted.
I’d chosen the location deliberately as it was neutral ground.
Not SDS, which needed to stay clean. Not the Archers’ HQ, which stayed invisible. A safehouse was the compromise.
Liam had outfitted the place with the best security SDS had to offer and was monitoring the meeting from HQ.
I hadn’t wanted any of my lieutenants here—protecting their identities was important to me—but Izzy had flat-out refused to be sidelined.
She was planted in the living room with the others, daring anyone to argue with her.
“I’m sure,” I said. “We don’t have many options left.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Alexander’s voice dropped. “I meant sharing…everything else.”
I sighed, already tired of the argument even though I understood it.
The guys wanted me to stick to the case, facts, files, and nothing about the Archers beyond what Dominic could already infer.
But my gut said partial truths wouldn’t cut it.
Dominic Hayes was smart. He’d been circling this long enough to recognize the shape of what we were doing.
Confirming the Archers’ existence and our mission was a risk. But so was continuing to dance around a man who was already investigating corruption inside the FIA. If we wanted his help, I needed to stop treating him like a liability and start treating him like a potential ally.
“I’m sure.”
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Right on time. I checked the peephole, then swung open the door when I confirmed it was Dominic.
“Hey, come on in.” I stood back to let him pass.
“Agent Hayes.” Alexander greeted him with a firm handshake.
“Call me Dominic, Mr. Stone,” Dominic replied.
“Alexander,” Alexander replied. “We’re right this way.”
He led Dominic into the living room. “You remember my brothers, Marcus and Sebastian, and our head of security, Adrian?”
Dominic nodded at each of them. Sebastian let out a little wave from the small kitchen table, while Marcus and Adrian just nodded from their places, leaning up against the living room wall like they were holding it up.
Izzy stood from the couch. “I’m Izzy.”
“Do you also work for SDS?” Dominic asked, shaking her extended hand.
“No, I work for Evelyn,” Izzy said.
Dominic looked at me, and I smiled. Moment of truth. “We’ve met before, but I’m Evelyn, and I lead an organization called the Archers.”
Dominic’s eyes were sharp and searching, and this time the slight widening wasn’t surprise so much as confirmation. A quiet confirmation of what he already knew. It felt strange to say it out loud, but it also felt right.
“It’s nice to be formally introduced,” he said, a twinkle in his brown eyes. He reached into the messenger bag slung over his shoulder and set it on the coffee table. The sound landed heavier than it should have.
“I brought everything I could pull without setting off alarms,” he continued, pulling out files as he spoke. “CI lists. Financial irregularities. And the FIA’s working file on Kingfisher. The person, not the organization.”
“The person?” Alexander frowned.
Dominic nodded and handed the file to me.
“It’s not a lot, but from what I can deduce from the file, the Kingfisher is a moniker for a person, not an organization.
Although there are people who work for the Kingfisher, they are not his people, if that makes sense.
He hires them to do a job, and that’s it. Like your old friend Luke Jones.”
“Hold on,” Marcus said. “Go back. Why do you think it’s a person, not an organization?”
Dominic gestured towards the file. “The file is thin, but there’s a structure and a pattern to each of his suspected operations. Every operation is clearly defined. He doesn’t build teams. There’s no chatter that we can ever pick up. He hires talent, pays them once, and disappears.”
He paused and held up another file. “The money moves in a pattern, too. Same timing, even if the subsidiaries are different. Same response pattern when something goes wrong. That’s not an organization of multiple people; that’s one person with very specific habits.”
His gaze flicked to me. “Organizations create loyalty. This creates fear. And fear only works when there’s a single person everyone’s afraid of disappointing.”
“He’s right,” I said, skimming through the folder.
The file was thin. There wasn’t concrete proof of the Kingfisher’s identity, but there was a pattern there. One Dominic had found.
“And Luke Jones? He’s not a CI with the FIA?” Izzy asked.
“No,” Dominic said. “He’s not on any of our CI lists. I checked pictures, not just names, in case he was using an alias, but nothing. I pulled in a favor with a friend in Interpol and got a hit on his mugshot.”
He handed me another folder, and I passed the Kingfisher folder to Alexander so he could read it too. I opened the new folder, and a grainy photo of Luke Jones was clipped on the front page. I recognized him instantly from the gala.
“Who is he?” Adrian asked.
“No one knows his actual name,” Dominic said. “But one of his aliases is Luke Jones. He’s a mercenary of sorts, a concierge known for completing any crime if the price is right. He’s a fix-it man and has no loyalties beyond whoever pays him the most.”
Sebastian came up behind me and hooked his chin on my shoulder so he could read the file as well. He whistled low as we got to the page that listed Luke Jones’s suspected crimes.
“From his rap sheet, I would guess that Kingfisher hired him to manage Citadel.”
“He was going to kidnap Evelyn and take her with him,” Marcus pointed out.
“Kidnapping is in his repertoire,” I said dryly.
I closed the file and offered it to Marcus. He pushed off the wall and accepted the file, leaning back against Adrian as they both read it.
“Hiring someone to manage someone else is a pattern for Kingfisher,” Dominic said. “It builds his anonymity.”
“Anonymity only works if someone else is absorbing the risk,” I said slowly. “Luke Jones didn’t just manage Citadel. He was positioned between Kingfisher and the fallout.”
Dominic nodded. “Exactly. Every major move Kingfisher makes has a buffer. Contractors. Cutouts. People who can take the fall while he stays safe.”
“And yet,” Alexander said, flipping another page in the Kingfisher file, “cases tied to Kingfisher don’t just stall. They get buried. Evidence has disappeared. Investigations turn cold. I don’t think there’s a single closed case in this file.”
“Not a single one?” Marcus frowned. “How can one man have that much reach?”
I looked back at Dominic. “We thought Kingfisher had people in high places, but what if he is the person in the high place?”
Alexander’s brow furrowed before his eyes widened. “The director.”
Dominic didn’t look surprised as he nodded.
“You don’t look surprised,” Adrian said.
Dominic blew out a breath. “Unfortunately, I’m not.
As I told Evelyn, I suspected something was going on at the FIA long before this.
After reading through the Kingfisher file…
well, the director controls cross-departmental inquiries, task forces, requests for information.
He decides which cases get resources and which ones don’t.
If Kingfisher were an organization, he’d need protection at every level. ”
He paused and met my eyes.
“But if Kingfisher is Director Keller, he just needs to sign his own paperwork, and it all goes away.”
I closed my eyes and let out a heavy breath.
Fuck. This was so much bigger than we thought.
If the director was the Kingfisher, who knew how much he had gotten away with, how many people he had hurt with no consequence, and if he was involved in human trafficking…
Fuck. I didn’t even know where to start.
“He doesn’t have people in high places; he is the person in the high place,” I repeated myself, trying to wrap my brain around it.
“That’s my working theory.” Dominic’s mouth curved, but his smile was humorless. “If I’m right, I can’t bring this to the FIA.” His gaze moved around the room, landing back on me. “And if I’m wrong,” he added, “I still need allies who aren’t compromised.”
I understood now the risk that Dominic was taking and why he was willing to trust me, trust us. This was his career. He couldn’t accuse the FIA director of being corrupt any more than we could. But if we worked together, we may be able to end this without anyone else getting hurt.
“I know this is a lot to ask of you, too much probably,” Dominic said.
Sebastian laughed, his arms circling me from behind. “You haven’t hung out with Evie much yet.”
Dominic raised his eyebrows at the nickname, and Izzy chuckled. “Don’t even try it. He’s the only one allowed to call her that.”
I glared at Izzy as Sebastian whispered in my ear. “Is that true? Are you my Evie?”
I ignored the shiver that ran down my spine. I needed to focus.
I stepped out of his arms, immediately missing the warmth of his body. “This is what we do,” I told Dominic, gesturing between Izzy and me. “Does this information change things? Yes. But we were always going to go after Director Keller, especially from what we found out this week.”
Dominic frowned. “What did you find out?”
“Judge Jefferson and Director Keller are involved in human trafficking,” Izzy said, pulling out her own file and handing it to Dominic.
“Wait,” Marcus said slowly. “Those emails, Jefferson, Keller, and Kingfisher. That’s three separate names. Doesn’t that complicate things?”
Izzy and I looked at each other and shrugged. “Not necessarily,” I said. “We’ve used that tactic ourselves to blur identities, split operations, and keep people chasing the wrong thread.”
Izzy nodded. “It’s usually pretty successful. Most people don’t dig deeper, and it’s a good way to segment out different operations.”