Chapter Thirty-Nine Alejandro
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Alejandro
“Nicole Kidman.”
That out-of-nowhere name from Reed’s mouth had me shooting him a funny look. “What about her?” I ran a quick memory lap trying to recall what I knew about the actress and why Reed was bringing her up now while we waited on my evil ex to appear on screen.
We were currently in the den, staring at a small room with a single chair, a spotlight overhead, and nothing else.
“That’s who Beth reminds me of. I don’t know why I never thought of that before.” Reed adjusted the sling holding his rifle across his body as he stood guard next to me.
He’d refused to let me lone-wolf this conversation despite my request to do exactly that. Something told me he had concerns Beth might turn into the girl from The Ring movie and crawl through the screen so he could finally kill her. Maybe that was why he was packing heat for a phone call?
When I continued silently staring at him like he was a few cards shy of a full deck, he scoffed. “You don’t think Beth looks like a younger Nicole?”
“Just when I think I have you figured out, you go and say something to throw me off.”
He kept his hands on his M4, casually shrugging.
It took two seconds too long for it to click. For me to understand what the man was actually doing. “You’re distracting me. Lowering my pulse rate before the call.” I waved him off.
Reed rolled his eyes and faced the screen. That was more like the guy I knew.
I dragged my hand across my chest, realizing my heart rate had noticeably slowed down, only to pick back up again the second I saw two bodies on-screen.
A guard was walking Beth toward the chair. A nightmare in orange.
Her blue eyes found mine as the guard cuffed her to a chair in front of a table that was bolted to the concrete floor.
My spine straightened at the mere sight of her, remembering I’d flatlined and died for a few seconds because of her.
The guard walked around and stood behind her chair. “You have ten minutes.”
“I’ll only need two,” I remarked, eyes back on the woman who’d ruined my life.
She angled her head while staring at me, and I held my breath, anticipating her to use her CIA mindfuck tricks on me. “Alejandro.”
“Don’t say my name.” There was only one woman outside my mother allowed to call me that, and she was in this cabin. “I know you’ve already been briefed by Secretary Chandler about what I want, and he’s agreed to meet your demands.”
“While I can make even a potato sack look couture, I’d prefer a new color and something a bit more pleasant to wear.
” She dropped her eyes down to her orange jumpsuit as if feeling the need to explain the first demand she’d made.
“And the typewriter . . . since they won’t give me a laptop .
. .” She met my eyes. “I’m going to tell my story. ”
“I’m sure the CIA would love to publish it,” I said dryly as she pivoted her attention to Reed.
“As for your last demand,” I hissed at the memory of what Secretary Chandler had said he’d agreed for me to do, “you want an in-person visit with me after this mission ends?” No Reed or anyone there to have my six per this demon-woman’s request. “Why?”
“I’m helping you without asking for my release, aren’t I? I know they wouldn’t say yes to that, but I do need to see you. They’ve turned down every request I’ve made in the last few weeks to talk to you in person.”
This was news to me. I’d had zero clue she wanted a one-on-one. I’d have denied her as well, but what was her endgame? No, don’t take the bait, don’t ask. Just focus up. Mission first.
“I’ll tell you when you’re here. And just so you know, I’d have told you what you wanted regardless.”
I didn’t buy that for a second, but I wound up asking anyway: “Why?”
“Because I’d do anything to help take down Mitchell Langston.”
From the corner of my eye, I spotted Reed stepping forward, his interest as piqued as my own. I had no clue if this was a mind game from her, or if Mitch was an enemy of hers now making this an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend situation.
“Talk,” I demanded, checking my watch, hating that we’d already used up one more minute than I’d wanted. When she didn’t do as I said, I quickly figured out why. “Yes, I’ll come visit you after this is over.” A chill beat down my back as I bit out what she was waiting to hear. “You have my word.”
She quietly nodded. “Mitch’s specialty is not only flying, it’s also blackmailing people. I was relieved when I heard he died. So trust me when I say I wasn’t happy when I learned from Chandler he was back in the land of the living.”
Trust you? Sure, I’d sooner trust eating gas station sushi or a cat with a laser pointer locating my target than I would her.
“I’m more than eager to help return him to the graveyard.”
“Why?” Reed with that question this time, as he stood next to me, hand still resting on his rifle.
She lifted one blonde brow. “Why do you think?”
“He was blackmailing you?” I huffed out a hollow laugh. Why am I surprised?
“The man collected dirt on people and kept it stored for a rainy day whenever he found use for it.”
“What do you know about him? What’s his connection to Will Hobbs?” I asked, folding my arms, waiting for her to confirm if Audrey’s theory was right.
“You know about Stratos, don’t you?” Her tone dropped low, almost soft and hesitant.
Out of character for her. “It was shut down in January of 2013. Will Hobbs was part of it. And yes,” she said with a nod, “I know about the new SEAL Teams formed afterward thanks to a late-night pillow talk with Will.”
She was outright letting me know she’d cheated with Will like I’d once suspected back in the day, and I had zero fucks to give about her faithfulness or lack thereof.
All I cared about was taking down Mitch and Stratos so Audrey would be safe and could get back to her life.
And here I was, doing the thing I promised I never would even if the fate of the world relied on it.
“Did Mitch force you to introduce Will to Trevor Sloane at the military ball in 2017?” I cut to it.
“No, I didn’t know Mitch at the time, but Will did. And Mitch presented evidence of our affair to Will, along with some other dirty laundry of his that Will didn’t want aired.” She angled her head. “It was just sex. I loved you, you know. I’m sure you don’t believe that, given everything.”
“You shot me. So no, I don’t believe you.” I looked up at the ceiling, my muscles tensing, angry at myself for letting her get under my skin. “Just keep talking.”
“Fine.” She waited for my eyes before continuing. “I knew Trevor Sloane, so Will asked me if he could be my guest at the event and make the introduction.”
“Because Mitch wanted Will to send Trevor on a mission that’d get him killed,” Reed said before I could.
“Mitch didn’t say why he needed Will to do that, but given the fact he married Trevor’s then-wife a few years later had me putting two and two together. Guy was obsessed and pulled a David and Bathsheba.”
“A David and what?” I blinked. Did she just refer to the story in the Bible about the king who sent a woman’s husband into battle to die so he could marry her himself?
Beth ignored my question and carried on, “I didn’t have to deal with Mitch for years after that, and I assumed it was because of what happened to Will . . . but then he called in a blackmail-favor, and I had to—”
“That’s why you were on that op with him?” I asked.
“Mitch was piloting a flight for a private security company that was running an op on behalf of the government two years ago, and he needed someone to cover up the fact there’d be a secondary mission taking place the military didn’t know about,” she explained, and I couldn’t believe she was playing ball so easily.
Then again, the one thing this woman hated more than anything was being betrayed.
“The son of a bitch blackmailed me into doing it by saying he’d tie me to that botched mission Will secretly sent Trevor Sloane and that other team guy on in 2018. I had no choice but to help.”
“And this security company,” I began, hoping we were finally getting somewhere, “are they a front for Stratos?”
“Stratos is operational again?” She looked genuinely surprised, and while she was a good actress—maybe even better than Nicole Kidman—something told me her shock wasn’t fake.
I swapped a quick look with Reed before focusing back on the screen. “The name of the company?”
“I’m assuming you already knew I was on that mission, which means you know the name.”
“How’d Mitch know Will?” I pressed forward. “You were dragged into Mitch’s games because of Will, so how’d they know each other? The navy?”
“Stratos. Will and Mitch were both part of the unit. They were the only two operators who didn’t have their deaths faked after it was shut down, so they didn’t have to go off-grid after.
That was the government’s mistake: letting a man like Mitch walk away with all that knowledge, not expecting it to come back and haunt them one day.
” She was quiet before changing directions.
“The government gave you my things after they locked me up, yes?”
I nodded.
“You destroy it all?”
“Unfortunately not.” Wyatt had already collected the boxes from the storage unit, but I wasn’t sure if they’d done anything with them yet.
“Good. The teddy bear you won for me on our third date at Six Flags . . . inside is a flash drive. When Will was sleeping, I downloaded a copy of his hard drive. You just never know who you can trust, and in case he ever turned his back on me, I needed something to hold over his head. He never betrayed me, so I never had the need to try and decipher what I’d downloaded.
Everything is heavily encrypted. You’ll need the best cyber expert out there to make sense of the files. ”
I called her out on that. “Bullshit. A woman like you doesn’t sit on leverage like that. The file may be encrypted, but like hell would you not have taken a look yourself.”
She lifted one shoulder, trying to act innocent.
“Check on the story,” I asked Reed, but he didn’t budge. Hesitancy crossed his face. The man was afraid to leave me alone with her. “It’s fine, go.”
“Time’s about up,” the guard said once Reed had finally left. He circled her chair and unhooked her cuffs from the table before forcing her to stand.
I was waiting for the moment when she’d try to escape. That moment didn’t come, and that made me more uneasy.
“Alex,” she said, thankfully not using my full name that time. “I do hope you take that bastard down, but don’t die doing it. I still want that meeting.”
“Why?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Why do you need to see me in person?”
Now that she was closer to the screen, I could see something there I couldn’t before. Something that didn’t make any sense. Either my eyes were playing tricks on me, or the ice queen was—
“To apologize to the only man in my life who ever actually gave a damn about me.” There was a touch of humanity in her tone I wasn’t sure I could believe.
“It took me being thrown in here to remember the woman I was before I became jaded by work. And now I remember the girl I was on that date when you won that bear. And while I don’t think I deserve your forgiveness, I’m hoping that maybe because of that big, trusting heart of yours, you just might do it anyway. ”
“You’re sure?” Ryder paced the living room by the fireplace in front of the couch where Audrey was sitting, raking a hand through his hair.
“It looks like Mitch was part of the Stratos reboot. In fact, he could have provided this security company everything they needed to kick it off, since he was part of the original group. It may have been all his idea.” I thought back to what Beth had shared.
“That’s, of course, assuming what Beth said checks out. ”
Ryder stopped walking and faced me, but he remained quiet. Not ready to believe my ex—and who could blame him? I couldn’t believe I was standing there doing exactly that myself.
“Helix International is on the list of PMC’s Gwen and Natasha drew up as possibilities, and Beth was on that mission with Mitch along with Helix,” I pointed out.
“Mitch is clearly good at collecting dirt on people and using it to apply pressure to get what he wants. If Beth didn’t lie, it looks like Mitch was manipulating people into helping Helix when they couldn’t buy them off.
And since this wasn’t funded or run by the government, they couldn’t erase identities of operatives and send them on their own missions. ”
“Mitch would’ve had the list of ghost operatives from the OG Stratos and could’ve dragged some out of retirement as well. Like Rhett,” Reed pointed out, shockingly sounding as though he was on the same believing-Beth page as me.
Had the woman Jedi mind–tricked us? “But whatever Arlo told Mitch before he died changed things and made Mitch paranoid. Had Mitch wanting out before he wound up dead, too, even if he did hand Stratos over to Helix on a silver platter.” I dropped down into the armchair by the couch.
Reed propped a hand on the mantel, eyes on me. “That’s what happens when you create a monster—eventually it turns on you.”
“We need to have Natasha and Gwen confirm if Helix is truly our mark. My guess is, Mitch is baiting them down to New Zealand like he is with us,” Ryder said.
“If Beth was telling the truth, then there’s a good chance Mitch not only has intel on Stratos, both old and new, but he might have—”
“The identities of everyone on Bravo and Echo teams since he’d been blackmailing Will back in the day,” Ryder said, cutting me off as that horrible news sunk in.
“This mission is now about protecting them, too.” He removed his phone from his pocket.
“If their identities get released, then they’ll be forced to go off-grid. ”
“We have to do the plan we talked about, then,” Audrey murmured as I got my ass back to standing. “We have no choice.”
“And what plan might that be?” What conversation did I miss while I was dealing with my own past?
Ryder looked at me, ordering, “You’ll need to sit for this.” He closed his eyes. “The plan includes Audrey going with us to New Zealand, and you going as my sister’s husband.”