Chapter 7 Blackjack
BLACKJACK
Kingston found me in the corridor after dinner. “The boss wants to talk to us.”
I followed him down the hall to the study. Kingston’s pace was faster than usual, and he didn’t make conversation, which, from my brother, indicated the serious nature of what was coming.
Doc was inside with Gunner. Mercury sat in her chair with Henry on one side and Beacon on the other. Gunner stood near the fireplace. His posture was the same one I’d seen on base commanders before they delivered bad news. His feet were planted, and his weight shifted forward.
“Close the door,” said Doc.
I did, and my brother and I sat in the two empty chairs.
“We told you yesterday you weren’t safe here,” Doc said. “What we intercepted tells us exactly why.”
Gunner turned from the fireplace. “Mercury is Vasiliev’s primary target.
Whatever else the bombing was meant to accomplish, for him, it was always about getting to her.
She wasn’t in the building when the charges hit.
Which means he failed. And Vasiliev doesn’t leave unfinished business.
He took out an entire building to get to her and missed.
He knows she survived. He knows where she is.
Everyone on this estate is in danger, and he won’t stop at one bomb. ”
“I feared this,” said Mercury. “Before Eleanor died, she warned me about Vasiliev. I need to disappear.” Her eyes were on the window. “Completely. Take Mama and Polina somewhere he’d never think to look.”
“It can’t be you alone,” Beacon said. “He’ll go through every one of us to find you. We all move, or none of us do.”
“But where?” Mercury asked.
“Any location connected to the family’s known history is a liability,” Doc said.
Beacon leaned forward. “So what are our options? Any ideas?”
I started running locations in my head. K19 had properties, safe houses, and training compounds scattered all over, but primarily on both the east and west coasts.
“I know of a place.” Anna’s voice came from the hallway.
I opened the door, and she came in. Behind her, Polina followed.
“Forgive me for eavesdropping, but I knew the day would eventually come when we’d no longer be safe here.”
Henry was on his feet before she finished. He pulled the chair Kingston had vacated closer to Mercury and found a second for Polina.
“You said you know of a place. Where, Mama?” Mercury asked.
Anna looked at her sister-in-law. “You should tell them. It’s yours more than mine.”
The woman shook her head. “Go ahead. I’ll fill in what you leave out.”
“Onteora,” said Anna.
Doc raised his head as though the name was familiar to him.
“What’s that?” Gunner asked.
“It’s a great camp situated on an isolated lake in the southern Adirondacks. It belongs to Horatio and Polina’s family. Their grandmother’s family, the Wyndhams, built it.”
Mercury’s eyes widened. “I’d forgotten.”
“I never could,” Polina murmured. “Horatio and I spent every summer of our childhood there.”
“Did you say the southern Adirondacks?” I asked.
“That’s right,” Anna responded.
My eyes met Doc’s, and he leaned forward in his chair.
Anna turned to him. “What do you know of it?”
“I know the name. I assumed it was abandoned.” Doc pulled his chair closer to hers.
For the first time since I’d worked for him, the man who had a contingency for everything looked like someone had handed him a piece of a puzzle he hadn’t known was missing.
“Anna, you’re not going to believe this.
Our company owns two camps on Canada Lake. ”
She gasped. “If you know the lake, you most certainly know Onteora.”
“My wife and I have taken many canoe rides past it. The boathouse alone is beautifully constructed.”
“It’s not abandoned,” Anna said. “Julian Loxley has kept it for us. His family has looked after the property for decades, and Julian has been there himself for longer than I care to count. Nothing on that lake moves that he doesn’t know about.”
“How, Mama?” Mercury asked.
“There’s a trust for that property alone, named for the family.”
“The Wyndham Trust,” said Henry.
“That’s right,” said Polina. “And to connect it to this family, someone would have to search through three generations on our maternal line,” Polina said. “Those records don’t exist in any system.”
“Brilliant,” Henry murmured.
“While it’s been many years since we’ve been there, the man who cares for it says the buildings are in quite good shape.”
“How long has it been?” I asked.
Anna moved her hand to her cheek. “The last time was before the accident that took our Amelia.”
“It means leaving Europe, Mama,” said Mercury.
“This is not our home, my dear. It’s the place where we hid.”
Polina reached for Beacon, who stood and walked over to her. “Horatio and Mikhail spent many days fishing on that lake. We have good memories from our time there.”
“Tell me about it, Babushka,” Beacon said. “You said it’s a great camp? What does that mean?”
“Our great-grandfather Wyndham had it constructed during the era when wealthy families were establishing what they called great camps in the Adirondack Mountains. They weren’t single dwellings.
They were more often a collection of buildings spread through the trees—typically, a lodge or main house, smaller guest camps, and a boathouse.
In that part of the world, they call everything on a lake a camp, whether it’s a cottage or an estate. ”
“Polina knows every stone on that property better than anyone,” Anna said. “She spent more time there than I ever did. It was her family’s place long before I married into it.”
“What’s there now?” Beacon asked.
The door opened, and Razor walked in. “Sorry, the kids are giving Avarie heck. What did I miss?”
Gunner chuckled. “You are so far behind you might as well go home.”
Razor looked from him to me.
“I’ll explain later,” I told him.
“You asked what’s at Onteora,” Polina said to Beacon.
“There’s the main camp, which has ten bedrooms, if I recall correctly.
It sits at the tip of Sandy Point and has a view of all of Canada Lake.
There are at least twelve guest camps in the trees behind it, and the boathouse is on the northernmost side of the property. ”
“Wait a minute,” said Razor. “Did she say—”
“Canada Lake,” Gunner answered before Razor finished his sentence. “Remember that great big old place on the west side, near the island?”
Razor’s mouth gaped. “Am I the only one who thinks this is an incredible coincidence?”
“No,” said Gunner, nudging him. “You’re the last one.”
Mercury stood and held her hands out to Anna. “I think it’s time we take my mother and Aunt Polina home.”
“For what it’s worth, the Adirondacks are spectacular,” said Razor.
“Oh, I meant to ask, what is Onteora? Does it have a special meaning?” Beacon asked.
“Land in the sky,” Polina answered. “It’s a word used by the Native Americans who once lived there.”
Beacon squeezed her hand. “It sounds amazing.”
“It’s even better when you’re there,” Polina said.
The conversation the next morning took less than five minutes. Gunner explained the danger facing not only Mercury but everyone associated with Minerva. Beacon talked about the plan to relocate, where, and when.
The departure time was set for forty-eight hours, unless we could make it happen sooner.
Beacon divided the work. Kingston and I took the equipment—what to bring, what to destroy, what could be replaced on the other end.
Hornet and Delfino handled the travel route and ground security.
Amaryllis and Magnolia coordinated with Doc’s team on the aircraft and vehicle staging.
Dagger arranged cargo, and Razor handled the Johnstown arrival and the ground team until we reached Onteora.
“The European contact notifications are mine,” Beacon said, looking at me. “My sources. My calls. I need to personally reach every one of them before we leave the continent.”
“Understood,” I responded.
After the room cleared, I set up in the dining room and started on the housing layout for Onteora based on what Polina had described as well as the arrival sequence and ground-team handoff.
Each piece fed the next. I was in my element, doing the kind of work I loved.
Fieldwork would always come first for me, but this was a close second.
Beacon was in the study, with the door closed. I could hear her voice through the wall. She spoke in French, then English, then French again. Each conversation was with a person whose relationship had been built over years.
Eleanor had been feeding Vasiliev information for a long time.
Some of what she gave him may have come from Beacon’s sources, which meant some of those people didn’t know they might be burned.
Beacon was the only one who could warn them to go to ground before whatever was coming reached them first. The new location and new channels were practical. The warning was an obligation.
Nobody else in the house could make those calls. Her contacts would hang up on anyone who wasn’t her.
Which meant the secure channels needed to be ready when she finished.
The encrypted system her contacts would use to reach the Genesis Consortium at Onteora would need layered access and structured databases.
If those weren’t built before the calls were done, she’d be making promises with a delay in being able to keep them.
I could build it faster than anyone else in the house. So I did.
I had the channel architecture mapped and the access layers designed when I no longer heard her voice in the study. Moments later, she came into the dining room for water and stopped behind my chair.
“Is that the communication system for my European network?” she asked.
“The channels needed to be ready before you finished the calls.”
“I didn’t ask you to build them.”
“I know. I—”
She set the glass down with more force than necessary. “Next time, find me first.”
She poured her water, picked up the glass, and returned to the study.
Beacon appeared in the doorway. She’d changed into a sweater, and her hair was down.
She crossed the room, and when she leaned over my shoulder to look at my laptop screen, her hair fell forward and brushed my arm.
She didn’t retreat. She stayed where she was, with her face close enough that I could feel her breath.
“Beacon.”
“Don’t talk,” she said, barely above a whisper.
She straightened and turned my chair so I faced her, then pulled me to my feet by the front of my shirt.
I grabbed her nape as her mouth hit mine.
She kissed me like she’d already decided how this was going to go, and it was up to me to catch up. Her fist twisted tighter in my shirt, and I stopped thinking about what this meant or what came after it.
She made a sound against my lips, low, almost pissed off, like she was angry it felt this good. I tightened my hand on her neck, put the other on her waist, and pulled her in, then caught myself, remembering her bruises.
She felt me ease up and yanked me closer.
I kissed her harder and moved us until she hit the table. She bit my bottom lip, and when I growled in response and did it to her, I felt her smile against my mouth.
She broke the kiss but pulled away too fast, and her knee buckled. I reached for her, but she grabbed the table and waved me off.
My hands were still out like an idiot’s, and I dropped them to my sides.
My shirt was wrecked, and my pulse was somewhere north of a cardiac event.
She pressed her palm flat against the table, the same hand that had been fisted in my shirt five seconds ago, and I watched her pull herself together piece by piece.
Her spine straightened first, then her chin came up, and then every bit of vulnerability I’d seen ten seconds ago disappeared behind a look so composed I might have imagined the whole thing.
Except my hands were still shaking, so no, I didn’t imagine a goddamn thing.
She grabbed her crutch. “I’ll take the communication channels. The architecture is solid, and I’ll adapt it for my contacts.”
“Okay.”
“The housing layout needs my input before morning.”
“Okay.”
“Good night, Blackjack.”
“Good night, Beacon.”
The crutch tapped down the hallway until I couldn’t hear it anymore.
That’s when I came out of my stupor and went after her.
If she thought that was how the night was going to end, she was fucking wrong.