Chapter 10
KING
I ’d been away from Stella for a fucking month, and it was killing me.
But at least we had shit to show for it.
Joseph and I had code words that were just between the two of us in case an operation went to hell. Similar to a word that a parent would give a child so that they would know a person was safe for them to interact with.
Wizard had scoured the dark web for nearly two weeks before finding evidence of the code word in a phishing email sent to a defunct address.
The email had been set up on a public server with no evidence leading back to anyone and was quickly disabled.
But any messages sent to the address were bounced to a server where they were stored indefinitely.
The code word he’d used told me that he was alive and underground. Most importantly, he wasn’t being held by the enemy.
Once we’d handled the situation within The Company, Wizard would get a message back to him that would let him know he was in the clear. Until then, he would remain invisible.
Weston and Alex Shaw had concocted a plan for me to “rejoin” the CIA.
I went through the proper channels so that nothing led back to the director, and we could pretend we’d never met.
It was imperative that the traitors thought they could get away with taking me out without getting the attention of the head of the CIA.
He researched and watched from his end so that we could narrow down suspects from the top and bottom, hopefully meeting in the middle at the same person.
The story for my return was that I’d regretted leaving after taking out Trailblazer and felt it was my duty to come back to the fold.
As a former operative who had received countless commendations—not that anyone outside The Company knew about them—and a reputation for getting shit done with as few casualties as possible, my request to work in the Directorate of Operations, overseeing undercover agents and covert missions, made sense.
It was unlikely that the buck stopped with any of the mission centers or field offices. Someone had to be high enough in the food chain to access the information collected for a NOC list.
I would subtly look into questionable operations and hint to people that I felt Trailblazer hadn’t been working alone.
If everything went to plan, then I would be given a special assignment and asked to reactivate as an operative for one “off the books” mission.
The ball should already be rolling to burn me, and the notice would go out while I was in the field, with word being sent to the higher-ups only after it was issued.
There would be plenty of evidence that there had been no time to go through channels before I betrayed the operation and got people killed.
After a week in the office, I’d opened an untraceable backdoor to let Wizard into the system. He watched for suspicious money trails that would come down the line to case officers, analysts, or specialists.
The call had finally come twenty-four hours ago. My superior asked me to meet with him, where he laid out all kinds of patriotic bullshit to convince me to take on this onetime operation.
It had been obvious that he was reading from a playbook and was a little bewildered as to why he was issuing this order. This meant he was being used as a tool and, despite being a trained intelligence officer, was clueless to his own involvement in the conspiracy.
I put Wizard on the trail to find where the directive had come from, but so far, he hadn’t been able to unravel the convoluted chain.
He’d been passing the financials off to Ace, who was doing some forensic accounting magic. Through the money trail, he’d confirmed that my boss wasn’t in on the scheme. Somehow, it was trickling down to a case officer and an operative who were completing sales of operative names from the field.
“You know what to do when you reach the safe house?” Weston asked me for the third time. We’d met up for “coffee” so he could give me some information passed along from Alex Shaw before I went dark.
I was leaving for Switzerland in a few hours. The impartial country had popped up in our records as a possible place for the handoffs, and when I found out it was where my op would go down, we knew we were on the right track.
I nodded.
“And you memorized the numbers and codes Justice gave you?”
My eyes narrowed in annoyance, but again, I nodded.
“And you?—”
“Stop fucking treating me like this is my first time in the field, Davis,” I growled. “It’s been a while, but I spent eight fucking years leading operations. I know what I’m doing.”
He blew out a breath and ran his hand through his hair. “I know, but you’re not the one who will have to face your badass woman if you die.”
I smirked. “Yeah, Stella would kick your ass. Probably put you in traction for the rest of your life.”
Weston’s scowl was deadly. “And then my wife would be fucking pissed, King.”
I winced. “Okay, yeah, feeding you to two she-wolves would be a truly fucked-up thing for me to do.”
“Exactly, so watch your ass and come home in one fucking piece.” He passed me a sheet of paper with three names scribbled on it. “These are your contacts. And these two”—he tapped each name—“have received unexplainable lump sums in offshore accounts that Ace and Wizard traced back to them.”
I memorized the names and other pertinent information, then passed the paper back to Weston so he could destroy it.
“Number two has a familial connection to someone in your directorate, but it’s a stretch to connect those dots into stepping stones for the sale of the list. Number three has no connections to anyone in any of the directorates or higher departments.
Not family, friends, or even six degrees to Kevin fucking Bacon, which is why he is most likely your man. ”
“I’ll be in touch,” I muttered as I stood, then I gave him a chin lift and exited the diner, heading straight to the airport.
I entered a boring building with no distinguishable features almost nine hours later.
Inside the safe house, I dropped my bag onto an unmemorable couch and glanced around a living room decorated in an everyday, typical style.
Anyone trying to tell someone about it would basically be describing what every other house in the world looked like.
“ W?chter .”
A man with dirty-blond hair and pale-green eyes walked out of the back room, greeting me by my code name in German.
I was familiar with everyone connected to this op, so I knew this was Andres Weiss, code name—Shepherd.
“ Schafhirte. Schon, Sie kennenzulernen ,” I replied. “Am I the first to arrive?”
He shook his head. “But Pilot and Centurion arrived only hours ago. Olsen”—Pilot’s alias for this op—“is meeting up for coffee with the asset.”
Olsen’s part in setting up the op had been to create a trail between himself and a local girl.
It looked like they’d been flirting online, and he’d come to meet her in person.
Gail was our asset, an operative we’d had in place for three years as a secretary in a security company, which in this case meant arms dealing.
Intel had pegged them as mercenaries, and there was an “official” mission directive although the op was technically off the books.
My job was to ferret out the person who was in possession of the list and who the person or persons who would be purchasing it were.
From our research, the “security” company was the most likely buyer.
“I assume Larson”—Centurion’s alias—“is setting up surveillance?”
Shepherd—who was going by Daniel for this mission—nodded. “If everything goes to plan, we’ll pick up the target tonight and set things in motion.”
Which meant they’d be snatching a high-value employee to hold for ransom. “Great. And the asset?” It was my job to extract her and get her to safety.
Since Olsen was most likely our traitor, the director specifically picked him to be the one involved with Gail. If the snatch-and-grab was successful, he would stay with her until I took over her safety.
The worst part of operations was the waiting. Sometimes it took weeks of sitting around a safe house before taking action. At least this time, it was only a matter of hours.
I was drinking my third cup of coffee when Olsen walked into the safe house. Frowning, I waited until the soundproof door was shut and locked before I growled, “What the fuck are you doing here? Where’s Sariah?” I asked, referring to “Gail” by her real name.
Olsen shrugged. “Said she needed to go do some shopping or some shit and would meet me later for dinner.”
I was pissed as fuck that he’d broken protocol, but that wasn’t what was setting off warning signs in my head. “Have you heard from Daniel?”
Olsen shook his head.
Daniel had left to grab us some food half an hour ago, and the microscopic tracker I’d put on the back of his neck had clocked him at the market and was now moving back in the direction of the safe house.
But there was a tiny possibility that he’d found it and was buying time by making it look like he was still in the area.
“And Larson?”
Olson’s head tilted as he shot me a confused look. “Sitting on surveillance, I’d guess.”
Something didn’t smell right.
“I need a shower, but let me know when Daniel’s back with the food. I’m fucking starving,” I muttered before dumping my coffee mug in the sink and heading to the bathroom.
After turning on the shower, I removed a flesh-colored patch of silicone from the side of my ribs, revealing a small device that worked similar to a cell phone.
It only sent and received encrypted messages, and even though it was supposedly undetectable, I wouldn’t have used it if this wasn’t an emergency.
I shot off a text to Alex, asking him if we had any chatter about a relationship between Centurion and Gail. Then I replaced the device and hopped into the shower.