Chapter Twenty-Two Alejandro
Chapter Twenty-Two
Alejandro
By the time I’d removed the heavy weight of my vest, cleaned up the wound, and redressed it, Reed had returned, and Ryder had already synced his laptop to the TV screen in the den back by the primary bedroom.
Audrey was on the couch with a mug in hand, steam swirling out of it. More than likely tea, not coffee, unless she was like me and could have caffeine any hour of the day and still pass out five minutes later.
“You good?” Reed asked me, and all I could do was nod as Ryder connected the incoming call from an unknown number.
Wyatt and his wife, Natasha, appeared on the TV screen, sitting at a desk somewhere. Probably at the Pentagon or Langley.
“Welcome to my place.” Wyatt leaned back in his desk chair. “Good to see you safely made it there.”
“Thanks to your better half, we did.” Ryder locked his arms over his chest, tipping his head in thanks to Natasha.
“I won’t argue with you there. I’m bloody lucky to have her.” Wyatt still had his British accent even though he’d moved to the States several decades ago.
Natasha nudged him in the side while turning her attention on Audrey. “You hear from Beau yet?”
“He sent his deputies to Audrey’s to confirm whether or not her ring was taken.” Ryder opened his palms, revealing that they were empty. “Looks like we both have one half of the key now.”
“Shit.” Natasha pivoted, eyes back to Audrey now. “Sorry, I should have opened with asking how you’re doing. I can’t imagine.”
“My son’s okay, and we’re all okay, so I’m focusing on that. Trying to keep my eye on the positives so I don’t drown in worry.” Her voice was hoarse, and I wanted to go to her, but I kept my ass parked at a distance.
Ryder did what I wished I could do, sitting beside her. He didn’t say anything, just rested his hand on her knee.
“You can sleep sound there, I promise you. We’ve got the entire state lit up with layered surveillance,” Wyatt said.
“And there are about five hundred ways someone would trip the security system around my cabin or Maddox’s place,” he went on, as if realizing she’d yet to buy the safety he was trying to sell, “and no one is getting through a single one of them without us knowing.”
I had to assume that was a slight exaggeration on Wyatt’s part, but I’d heard rumors about how overprotective he was of his cyber-genius daughter, Gwen, and his younger daughter, Emory, so maybe not.
Audrey brought the mug to her lips but didn’t drink. Her fingers stayed wrapped around it, her gaze somewhere far off, as if she were trying to see through the layers of betrayal fogging up her life. “Okay, um, thank you.” She set the mug on the table and sat back.
“We’ve got you.” Natasha folded her arms on the desk like this was another briefing, not a nighttime drop-in at their vacation home. “Before you arrived, I sent someone over I trust with our daughters’ lives to stock up the place with a week’s worth of food. Clean sheets and all that.”
“Thank you,” Ryder responded as Reed circled the couch, his hand resting on his sidearm like it was his security blanket. Knowing that man, he slept with his piece. “What about our request to protect our families?”
“I lost patience in waiting on approval for you. I put in the protection orders myself,” Natasha said.
Wyatt side-eyed his wife, smirking. “Daddy’s girl. The admiral will do what she says. He’ll sign off on it. Don’t worry.”
“Like you aren’t also putty in Gwen and Emory’s hands?” Natasha rolled her eyes, fighting a smile before facing us again as if remembering she had an audience.
“Thank you.” Ryder nodded. “That’s one less thing we need to stress about.”
“Echo Team’s on standby to support you when we have more intel to go on as well. And Falcon Falls has your backs if need be, too,” Natasha let us know.
“That include Gwen?” Reed asked. “I assume she’s the one who sent Trevor those files on Mitch. She still on the case?”
Wyatt tipped his head, gaze cutting to Reed as if he might be interested in more than just his daughter’s computer skills. “She is, and she’ll keep us posted if she finds anything of use before we talk to my father-in-law tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Tension beat up my spine, landing firmly at the base of my skull. “He’s not going to brief us tonight?”
“We’ll tell you what we can. But the admiral’s yet to give us his side of the story, so we’re still in the dark ourselves.
He promised to brief us as soon as he lands in DC tomorrow.
He’s on Air Force One with POTUS right now,” Wyatt shared.
“I know that’s not what you want to hear, but what’s important right now is that you’re all safe and no one knows where you are. No one outside our circle, at least.”
“Circle of trust,” Audrey murmured. “I once trusted Mitch and now . . .” She shook her head and looked up. “Sorry, I wasn’t insinuating you can’t be trusted.”
“We get it, don’t worry.” Natasha waved her hand. “As for what we can share now, we don’t have too much. Unfortunately, the pool of suspects who might be working from the inside is larger than I’d like it to be. We’ll work on narrowing it down.”
“But we did find something interesting when we ran facial recognition on the photos you sent over,” Wyatt noted. “We got a strange hit on the guy you questioned.”
Natasha clicked a remote, and the face of the man from the lodge—the same man I’d dragged from the woods—filled the screen, only he was in a tropical shirt and not tactical gear.
“He’s a fisherman living in the Maldives,” Natasha explained.
“Address and information check out. I even have footage of him there as of a week ago. No red flags aside from bad interior decorating. I hacked his internal security cameras to view the live feed. Nothing is recorded, so I couldn’t rewind and have a look back into the past. But everything looked normal. ”
“Please tell us how this innocent fisherman wound up working for Mitch and attacking us today?” Ryder pressed before I could.
“His cover was good. And when I say good, I mean too good for me to realize it wasn’t real.
” Natasha visibly cringed as if mortified by that fact.
“Thankfully, Gwen’s better than me and better than whoever created his legend.
” She clicked a button, and a younger version of the so-called fisherman popped up.
This time in a uniform. “Real name is Rhett Robeson. Was a naval pilot like Mitch. Joined around the same time he did.”
“Was a pilot?” Ryder’s chin jutted forward. “So he’s no longer active duty and living under an alias in the Maldives, you mean?”
Natasha shook her head. “No, ‘was’ as in is dead. As of 2011.”
“Clearly someone forgot to tell him,” I hissed. “It appears we’re having a real problem with dead men that keep on walking.”
“What about Arlo, that friend of Mitch’s that died two months before Mitch and was rumored to be a traitor? He happen to be one of the men we killed today?” Ryder asked.
“No, he wasn’t,” Wyatt answered, arms tight over his chest. “Whether he’s also among the living and not really dead, though? No bloody idea.”
“Rhett’s our only confirmed former serviceman that hit the lodge.
” Natasha turned off the screen behind her.
“The rest of the bodies were all guns for hire, from what we can tell. Easily identifiable, too. Long rap sheets. Looks like everyone else out there was disposable to Mitch. Not the brains behind anything. None of them would be able to bypass Trevor’s security.
My guess is someone else was hanging back in the woods opting to remain unseen when you went hunting. ”
Great. “So we’re either trapped in a ghost story, or someone’s pulling the strings on a whole damn graveyard.” A chill flew up my spine and curved right around to my side. No longer phantom pain from being shot, but real pain from having my flesh peeled open.
Audrey eyed the screen. “Mitch was a pilot like Rhett, not some spymaster. He doesn’t have the background to pull all this off.”
My blood boiled again as the thorn of Beth in my side faded and a new one took hold by the name of Mitchell Fucking Langston.
“Someone’s definitely helping Mitch. Probably whoever must’ve pulled your files is responsible for Rhett’s fisherman persona.” Natasha’s eyes narrowed. “Either Mitch is aligned with someone, or he’s just a pawn like Rhett probably is.”
“Pawn?” Wyatt grimaced for some reason. “Not a word I want to think about after everything we went through with that asshole.” That sidebar conversation was lost on me, and from the looks on my teammates’ faces, them too.
“But why would Mitch send someone to the lodge that we could tie to him? Unless he believed Rhett’s alias would hold up?” Audrey’s soft voice and questions brought our focus back to her. “Also, why out himself as being alive with that text?”
“Mitch wants you to know he’s alive. He doesn’t want you doubting him. He needs you to help him,” Natasha proposed. “He believes you’ll do anything to protect your son, as most mothers would. And it’s possible he really did try to start this quietly on Friday.”
I couldn’t help but speak up. “I think it’s more than that. I think he’s masterminded everything from the start, right down to the break-in.” I swiped the back of my hand over my stubbled jawline as I continued to work through my thoughts.
“Maybe everything that’s happened this weekend is how Mitch wanted it to play out, right down to us escaping today,” Reed tacked on in agreement.
“Maybe Mitch sent his people for the key, but his goal wasn’t to have you taken on Friday.
He wanted to send you into Trevor’s arms.” He squeezed one eye closed as if regretting his phrasing. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“He knew Trevor would bring Audrey to his place after the break-in,” Ryder said with a nod, sounding as though we were on the same sick page. “Rhett confirmed as much, right? And Mitch also knew exactly who Trevor would turn to for help, because he knows who Trevor’s cousin married.”
Gray Chandler, son of the secretary of defense.
“Not just that.” Natasha gave us an uneasy look before stealing a glimpse at her husband, and he gave her a nod of what felt like permission to share something. “I take it Audrey’s yet to sign an NDA?”
Ryder shook his head. “But she already knows plenty at this point, so you might as well spit it out.”
“Yeah, okay.” Natasha blew out her cheeks. You know, great sign to see from an experienced officer. “Your ex-husband knew my dad before my brother married Trevor’s cousin, Tessa. Not just because Trevor was SEAL Team Six and my dad was an admiral.”
Wyatt dropped the news on Audrey fast. “Secretary Chandler asked me to recruit Trevor to run Charlie Team. This was a few years back.”
“Wait, what?” Audrey’s words echoed my own shock.
What were the damn odds?
“Trevor said no.” Wyatt gave Audrey a moment to continue wrapping her head around the news. “He said secrets destroyed his marriage and he wouldn’t let secrets be the downfall of your friendship, too. And he knew if he were to run Charlie, he’d only be able to tell you if you were his wife.”
Audrey covered her mouth, eyes falling to her lap, visibly shivering. It was becoming increasingly harder and harder to dislike Trevor. Hell, he sounded like someone I could hang out with on the regular. Even operate with.
“Any chance Mitch knew Trevor has been in tight with your dad for longer than we thought?” Ryder asked Natasha.
“No clue. It depends on how closely Mitch was paying attention to Trevor over the years. Did the two know each other before you started dating and married?”
“They weren’t friends, no. But they were both in the navy and attended a few events at the same time,” Audrey shared.
Wyatt stood, pushing his chair back. “Well, let’s assume the worst here, and that’s Mitch was aware Trevor had a friendship of sorts with my father-in-law long before Gray married his cousin, and he was banking on that close relationship for some reason.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Audrey asked pointedly.
“It’s clear Mitch wanted to make sure there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he’s the one behind all this,” Natasha said. “Which is why he sent Rhett today, so we’d discover Rhett is also supposed to be dead. Then Rhett could give us a direct line to Mitch with the phone.”
“So Rhett more than likely planned on being caught, which is why he hung back on the edge of the property waiting for what he expected us to do,” I said in agreement with Natasha.
“He put up a decent fight for show, then surrendered on purpose. He told us what Mitch wanted him to say and gave us the phone, so then Trevor would go to—”
“My father,” Natasha finished for me. “Mitch wanted this to get back to the secretary of defense, to the man who faked his death in the first place. He’s either framing my father, or he’s forcing him to step into the deep end right along with him.”
With Audrey and all of us now, too.
“This is . . .” Audrey stood and turned toward her brother, and he pulled her into his arms, catching my eyes over her head as he held her.
“We’ll put a stop to this,” Natasha said firmly. “Mitch has no idea what he’s done by dragging us into this mess with him.”
“He’s made this personal for all of us, and he’ll realize his mistakes fast,” Wyatt added, fire in his voice.
He let his temperature cool off faster than I’d be able to, and switched gears from war to rest. “Just head to bed, get some sleep for now. We’ll figure out the full picture when we talk to my father-in-law in the morning.
” He pushed away from the table and stood, signaling the conversation was coming to an end whether we wanted it to or not.
Silence passed between us as Audrey freed herself from her brother’s hold to look around at everyone.
“Dead men walking. Secret ops and ghosts.” Reed shook his head, eyes locked on me like I had all the answers for some reason. “What kind of mission is this turning into?”
My stomach squeezed as I gritted out, “One that I’m afraid is just getting started.”