Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Sterling stood in front of the whiteboard that had been rolled into the center of the main room. One of the three faces on it was Sterling's. Thinking he had a sense of humor, Cullen had clipped Sterling's employee photo up there like a wanted poster.
With an iced coffee sweating in his hand, Sterling studied himself the way he'd study any other subject. It didn't work. Objectivity was easy when the face on the board belonged to someone else.
A picture of Doyle hung on the left side of the board, and Granger Frost’s image was in the middle, under a Meridian Tactical letterhead Dove had pulled and printed.
"I've never seen a board with one of us on it." Cullen sat backward on a folding chair near the coffeemaker, forearms crossed over the top rail.
"At least it's not a murder board." Dove leaned back in her chair, feet up on the bottom drawer of her desk, both hands resting on the curve of her belly. "I'm going with a worry board."
"Worry implies I've got something solid to be concerned about." Sterling set the coffee down on the edge of his desk. "What I've got is a job offer from a guy who always drove me crazy and a gut that won't shut up about it."
Dove gestured at the board with her chin. "You came back from that café looking like you'd bitten down on foil. Tell us why."
He picked up the dry-erase marker and rolled it between his fingers.
"The offer, first." Under Frost's photo he wrote PRINCIPAL PROTECTION—FROST. "Meridian wants Aegis to subcontract—specifically—me.
Protection and threat verification on Granger Frost, chairman of Ashbourne Holdings.
" He tapped the letterhead. "Frost came out of the old Colombia–Panama–Miami corridor, paid his way through it back when he had to, got out and rebuilt.
Now the survivors from that corridor have supposedly resurfaced and they're hunting the people they think turned on them. "
"And you don't buy it?" Cullen asked.
"We only crippled the corridor. We didn't get everyone, and the corruption ran deep." He recapped the marker. "I had Mia dig into everything in preparation to ask Buddy if it's something we want to take on. He’s back in the office tomorrow."
Dove leaned forward and placed her hand on a folder. "And Mia's already sent over a preliminary report." She opened the folder and took out a thick stack of papers.
"You call that a prelim?" Sterling asked.
"You know Mia. She's thorough." She laughed. "How about we start with Granger Frost?"
"Whatever you say." Sterling leaned against the desk and braced for a lengthy dissertation.
"This is the easy one," Dove said. "Nothing really to report. He's exactly as he appears. He rebuilt here in the US with the help of our government and a few local backers after the corridor collapsed. One of them happens to be Harlan Koda, and Mia thought that was interesting enough to flag."
"It is." Sterling uncapped the marker and wrote Harlan's name on the board.
"Who's Koda?" Cullen asked.
"A rich asshole who sits on boards, invests money, and helps direct the political climate of our country.
" Sterling stared at the board. Koda was a prick, that was for damn sure. Last Sterling had heard, he’d sat on a couple of think tank advisory boards and continued to testify before Senate subcommittees.
He was definitely an asset when it came to protecting free governments and democracy in the western hemisphere.
But that didn't make him a nice guy.
"Why don't you like him?" Dove asked.
"I won't deny he's done good things for our country and for others," Sterling said.
"But he doesn't understand war, missions, or the dangers he often speaks about when he's discussing geopolitical risk.
He's a theorist that got lucky, made a shit ton of money, and in the process, he hasn't filled the gap between the country’s poverty and prosperity.
If anything, his ideology has only made it bigger. "
"Why don't you tell us how you really feel," Cullen said.
"I wouldn't want to offend Scutelet." Sterling went back to his desk and leaned against it.
"Call my child that again, and you'll have a baby gator in your desk drawer." Dove flipped the page. "Nothing more on Granger."
"And you didn't know Granger or his company from that op?" Cullen asked.
"I didn't." Sterling drummed his fingers on the top of the desk. "But that brings up an interesting question. Did Granger ask for me? Because I only asked Doyle if his boss did—not if the client did. Nor did I ask if Granger knows anything about me or what's in my brain. That would change things."
"That's one degree of separation too far." Dove set down the pages. "Why wouldn't Granger hire Aegis directly if that were the case?"
"Too obvious if he knows about me." Sterling snagged the marker and went back to the whiteboard, adding a note to Granger's column about wanting Sterling's mind.
He made an arrow to Doyle and then one to himself.
But then he added a third arrow, going in an opposite direction from Granger to nowhere with a question mark.
"However, if it turns out Granger is clean, that means someone might want what's in my mind and they could be using Granger's connection to the corridor, or Doyle.
And that's so convoluted it almost makes sense. "
"You're giving me a headache," Dove said.
"Me too," Cullen added.
Sterling filed all that away. "What else did Mia send over?"
"A bunch of shit on Meridian." Dove slid a fresh stack across the desk. "We need our own Mia."
"The new office out west is getting their own security person, and the Jacksonville office already has one," Sterling said. "We'll probably always share Mia. But she can handle it."
"She's the best," Cullen agreed.
"Now that we all agree. Give me what she found on Meridian because a Google search didn’t get me much."
"Small operation. Just one office in Charleston. Rutgers doesn't speak about it much publicly, or even privately. But Mia managed to locate a few people who said he likes to run a lean operation, and that's a quote."
"Where did she find that?" Sterling asked. "Never mind." However Mia discovered intel, Sterling didn't want to know. Better that way.
Dove laughed. "Mia listed out services. Risk mitigation, executive protection, threat work, etc." Dove ran a finger down the page. "Small client roster, but the ones they've got pay more than we charge." She leaned forward. "Good fucking lord. We need to increase our price list."
"Focus," Sterling said.
"Here's a pretty comprehensive client list." Dove handed over a stack of papers.
Sterling scanned the words on the pages, committing them to memory. It wasn't hard. Not for him, and this was the blessing of his memory. At least today it was.
Most of the names meant nothing. Regional money. A shipping concern out of Savannah. A defense subcontractor. The usual client list for a firm like Meridian. But there were three names, spread across two pages, that twisted his gut into a knot.
Devlin Pace. Tallie James. Khalid Nazari.
He set down the pages on the desk, smoothed them flat with his palm, and picked up the marker.
The names by themselves mean nothing. But when all three of them hired the same security firm, Sterling had to wonder why. It could be something. And it could be nothing.
He wrote the names on the whiteboard under Meridian Tactical.
"Who the hell are those guys?" Cullen asked.
"Devlin Pace." Sterling capped the marker and tapped it against the board.
"He owns a tech company. He spent a year in front of lawyers over how his company ate its competitors.
" Sterling moved to the next name. "Tallie James.
Smart woman. She moved a fortune that wasn't hers and somehow ended up cleared of all potential charges, and no one really knows how she did it. "
Sterling shifted his gaze between Cullen and Dove. Neither one said a word, so he kept talking. "Khalid Nazari. A foreign national who was charged with funneling money, but two weeks after his arrest, the case was dropped and never really spoken of again."
To most, these were three people who had nothing to do with each other. Different worlds. Different money. Different sins. There was no reason to draw a line between them.
"Interesting cluster, but why are you pointing them out over others on that list?" Dove asked. "Were they all hired for the same reasons? At the same time?"
"No." Sterling reached for the paper. "Pace hired Meridian to run a digital threat assessment on a quarterly basis. James has them on retainer for bodyguard assignments during public appearances. And Nazari uses them for the same when he comes to the US."
"Spit it out," Dove said. "Because you're making me want to shove my boot up your ass."
A long time ago, Sterling had promised that he'd never speak of this unless something came across his desk that forced his hand. And then, only to those he trusted with his life.
Both criteria were met.
"What I'm about to tell you must remain between us, and Buddy." He tossed the papers back on his desk and pulled out his chair, planting his butt in it. "I know I don't need to say it, but we've always had that unwritten rule."
"You have my word," Dove said.
Cullen came forward off the back legs of his chair. "And mine."
"You both remember my buddy, Nick Colter," Sterling said.
"I've met him once or twice," Cullen said. "He's a good man."
"Saved my ass more times than I can count." Sterling pulled out his cell and placed it on the desk. "Nick and a few others—myself included, have been conducting a rogue investigation on an organization, if you can even call it that, on the Shrike Collective."
"Never heard of it," Dove said.
"Not many have." Sterling tapped the page. "A buddy of Nick's stumbled across it, years ago while working on a joint task force. It was presented to the government but considered a low-level threat because it was barely a whisper of a name."
"You're being unusually vague," Cullen said. "Is it a terrorist group? A homegrown agency of some kind? What?"
"That's just it. We don't know." Sterling rubbed the back of his neck.
For years, Nick's buddies have been digging into the Shrike Collective and coming up empty.
"It's been like playing whack-a-mole. Something pops up, and you think you've nailed it, but nope, disappears only to pop up somewhere else. "
"What exactly does this org do?" Dove asked.
"Anything. Everything," Sterling said. "Buy foreign government missions for the US. Sell our missions and secrets. Move drugs, arms, people. You name it, this collective seems to do it."
"So, it's about money and not power," Cullen said.
"No idea." Sterling pinched the bridge of his nose.
"But what makes me nervous now is I've never been associated with Shrike, outside of the fact that I've worked with Nick.
But now, Doyle, who we've both worked with, is employed by a company who has been retained by three people who have been flagged as having a possible Shrike connection. "
"You're suggesting that Shrike wants you and your mind and are using Doyle to get it," Cullen said. "What about Rutgers?"
"Low profile, good reputation, runs a tight ship." Dove flipped a page. "But worth a second look, though. From what Mia pulled from his cell, it appears he's having an affair. Some woman down in Savannah."
"Mr. Rogers? He doesn't seem the type."
"He's a man. He has a penis. He's the type," Dove said.
"That's stereotypical." Cullen glared. "And you do know you're describing your future husband, right?"
"Trent's excluded from that statement." Dove rubbed her belly. "As are the two of you, and Buddy, and okay, a few others in this town. Must be something in the water. But any man, or woman, for that matter, is capable of cheating. Just like anyone is capable of pulling the trigger, if they had to."
"That is the worst analogy I've ever heard," Sterling muttered.
"Yeah, well, whatever." Dove tapped the page. "But here's the part that's worth reading. The woman Rutger's having the affair with works for one of those small security outfits like his. But what's questionable is how easily Mia found it."
"Not really." Cullen frowned. "When a marriage is over, but no one is willing to admit it, then whoever's doing the cheating is more willing to take chances." He arched a brow. "Just ask my ex about that."
Sterling picked up the marker, moved to the board again, and wrote, under Rutgers, AFFAIR—SAVANNAH—WHO IS SHE. "Ask Mia to dig on that one."
"Already did," Dove said. "She's working on a name."
"I have to call Nick." He set the marker gently under the board and picked up his cell, checking the time. "And then I'm gonna go have some dinner and see if a pretty lady wants to have some ice cream with me after."
"I'd love to." Dove jumped to her feet.
Sterling glared. "Go home to your future husband."
"I'd rather spy on you." She smiled.
"Me too." Cullen stood, spun the chair, and shoved it behind the desk. "I'll call Harley. We'll all go to Juniper's for dinner."
"Do that, and I'll have all of you fired," Sterling mumbled, but he knew it was hopeless.