Chapter Four #2
“Wasn’t trying to persuade you.”
“You don’t get to keep saying I’m not useful in the field and then reject the one field job that actually matches what I do.”
His arms unfolded.
“I don’t need to prove you aren’t useful. I need to decide whether putting you inside improves the operation enough to justify the risk.”
“It does.”
“You don’t make that call.”
“Then make the right one.”
Raven exhaled through his nose and pushed his chair back a few inches. Wolf turned on him immediately.
“Something?”
Raven looked like a man who had spent twenty-four years building a survival instinct only to discover it had failed him at the worst possible moment.
“Operationally?”
“That’s generally what we’re discussing.”
Raven glanced at me, then back to Wolf. “She’s right about the access problem.”
I almost smiled and decided I valued Raven’s life too much.
Wolf stared at him.
Raven kept going with the expression of a man who regretted every word before it finished leaving his mouth.
“I can monitor the perimeter. Hawk can see most of the exterior. Jackal and Viper can give us movement, Bear gives us extraction options, and you can control all of it. None of that gives me a microphone next to Bellandi if he starts talking to somebody useful. Mercer does.”
“If her cover holds.”
“Yes.”
“If she follows the route.”
Raven’s mouth tightened. “Also yes.”
Wolf looked at me.
“And if I tell you to leave?”
“Depends why.”
“Wrong answer,” he said in a slightly louder voice.
“Then don’t ask questions you already decided have one acceptable response,” I quipped, raising my own.
Wolf took one heavy step around the end of the table. Raven immediately looked at his screen again.
I held my ground.
He stopped on the opposite side of my chair, close enough that I could smell the faint trace of cigarette smoke still caught in his shirt.
He leaned forward. “If you’re inside, I decide when the operation ends. Not you.”
“If I’m speaking to Kade and you get nervous because somebody looks at me wrong, I’m not walking out before we learn anything.”
“If I say extract, you extract.”
“You are obsessed with that word.”
“Because people who argue about it after the problem starts tend to become the problem.”
I looked up at him and crossed my arms. “You really know how to motivate people.”
“I don’t need you motivated. I need you compliant when it matters.”
There was nothing sexual about the sentence, yet heat crept up the back of my neck before I could stop it. The slight narrowing of Wolf’s eyes told me my face had once again filed a report without consulting me.
Jackal shifted in his chair.
Wolf’s voice stayed flat. “Something you want to add?”
Jackal pressed his lips together.
“No, boss.”
“Good choice.”
For once, it was.
Wolf looked toward Raven. “Call Vale.”
Vale was the next step, which was close enough to yes that I kept my mouth shut.
◆
Commander Linda Vale appeared on the secure screen twelve minutes later looking almost exactly as she had on the call that sent me to Germany, right down to the black-framed glasses and red hair pulled so tightly away from her face that I wondered whether she had ever experienced a flyaway in her life.
Her office background was plain enough to reveal very little beyond a dark cabinet, a muted wall and the edge of another monitor.
She listened while Raven summarized the Aster link and Wolf explained the surveillance problem.
He did not soften the risks of sending me inside, which I appreciated more than I wanted to admit.
Vale’s eyes settled on me through the screen.
“You proposed this?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Your field qualification is current?”
“Yes.”
“Undercover work?”
“Limited. Source meetings, interviews under cover, translations, some surveillance exposure. Nothing resembling what this team does on entry.”
Wolf’s eyes flicked toward me at the last sentence.
“Languages?”
“Italian, French, Russian and Serbian are strong. I can work comfortably in all four.”
“And the cover?”
Raven answered. “Finance. We can place her adjacent to Bellandi’s social circle without inventing a résumé so impressive somebody wants to verify it over dessert.”
Vale’s mouth moved by perhaps half a millimeter. On her, I suspected that counted as amusement.
“Can you support her?” she asked Wolf.
He did not answer immediately. I turned my head toward him.
Wolf looked at the estate map rather than me. “If she follows instructions.”
My jaw tightened.
“Ms. Mercer, undercover work has very little interest in your pride. Neither does a bullet. If Wolf gives you a boundary while you are under his operational command, you follow it first and argue afterward.”
I wanted to object to the way both of them seemed to think I had arrived in Germany specifically to wander into gunfire out of spite. The infuriating part was that the rule itself made sense.
“Understood.”
Vale looked back to Wolf. “Then build it. If the cover doesn’t survive review, she doesn’t go. If it does, I approve the attempt. Observation only unless the situation changes enough to justify more.”
“Understood,” Wolf said.
Vale’s eyes returned to me. “Do not make me regret hiring you, Mia.”
“Trying not to.”
“Try harder.”
The screen went dark.
Jackal waited approximately one second.
“That’s my type.”
Wolf turned from the monitor. “Nobody asked.”
“That’s never stopped me before.”
“We know.” The answer came from Viper, which made Jackal look personally wounded.
“You’ve been mean to me all week, Vipey.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“Exactly. No stamina.”
Wolf ignored all of them and looked at Raven. “Cover.”
Time to work. Over the next several hours, we built a woman who was close enough to me that I would not have to remember how she held a fork.
Her first name stayed Mia because Raven said changing the name that people would use to get my attention created an unnecessary failure point. Her last name became Morgan.
She worked in client strategy for a small American family office that had recently started placing European capital through a Zurich advisory firm.
The firm existed and the Zurich relationship existed.
What did not exist was Mia Morgan’s employment there until Raven and two people I was not allowed to know about created enough documentation to survive the level of scrutiny a bored security contractor might apply at a pool party.
I was not going to claim I managed billions or knew heads of state. I was employed and socially adjacent to exactly the kind of people Luca Bellandi liked talking to when there was alcohol nearby.
Raven put a profile on the screen.
“You met Bellandi once at a private-capital conference in Milan. Briefly. He may not remember you, which helps because he never actually met you.”
“And if he says he doesn’t remember me?”
“You laugh and tell him you’re offended.”
Jackal looked over from the couch. “Then touch his arm. Men lose half their processing power if a pretty woman touches them.”
I glanced toward him. “Is that based on intelligence work?”
“Personal research. Peer reviewed.”
Bear looked up from an equipment case. “By who?”
“Women.”
“That’s not how peer review works.”
“Depends how good the night goes.”
I caught Raven smiling before he turned back to the screen.
The party itself gave us an easier opening than I expected. Aster had reserved a block of discretionary invitations for sponsors and finance contacts with late additions from the host’s business network. One of Bellandi’s associates had submitted three names and only two had confirmed.
Raven did not have to break into a government database or perform whatever magic Jackal believed he could do with a laptop.
A vendor account reused a password from an older Aster event, and that credential opened the guest-management portal long enough for Raven to add Mia Morgan to the unused slot, after which a normal confirmation email arrived in the inbox he had built for me.
“That feels illegal,” I said.
Raven looked offended at the observation. “We’re investigating human traffickers.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
“No, it was context.”
Wolf came around the table.
“No-go areas.”
The satellite image returned.
He pointed toward the main house. “Upper floor is out. You don’t follow anyone through a private interior door.”
His finger moved to the lower garden. “Cabanas are acceptable if Raven has signal and Hawk has enough visual to track your position. Beyond this hedge line, you’re too deep for clean support. Don’t cross it.”
“And the house?”
“Public rooms only.”
“If Bellandi invites me somewhere else?”
“Decline.”
“Subtly.”
“I don’t care if you use interpretive dance. Decline.”
Wolf’s finger moved to the service side of the estate. “Extraction phrase is ‘I left my charger.’ You say it naturally in any language Raven can understand and we start moving. If you cannot speak openly, touch the transmitter twice in quick succession.”
Raven lifted the device from the table. “I’ll feel it.”
“You’ll feel it?”
“The system will register the taps. Please don’t make this weird.”
Jackal sat forward. “Too late.”
“Why are you still here?” Raven asked.
“Because nobody has formally removed me.”
Wolf did not even look at him. “Jackal.”
“Leaving.”
He stood, made it four steps, then turned toward me.
“Morgan. Rich finance woman. Pool. Just checking, is the cover wardrobe tax deductible?”
“Get out,” Wolf said.
“That sounded like a yes.”
Bear caught him by the back of his shirt as he passed and redirected him toward the garage.
The door shut behind them and Raven watched it for a second. “I sometimes envy people who work alone.”
“No, you don’t,” Viper said from the other workstation.
Raven considered it.
“No. I don’t.”
Wolf looked at me again. “If comms drop, you move back toward open space immediately.”
“Even if I’m talking to Kade?”
“Especially then.”
“If we finally have him in front of us, I’m not walking away because Raven’s Bluetooth gets moody.”
Raven looked appalled. “Bluetooth?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I absolutely do not.”