Chapter 10 #2
There was a knock on the bathroom door before it opened, and someone stuck their head inside. “ Ich bin zurück mit dem Essen ,” Daniel called out, letting me know he was back with the food.
I grunted an acknowledgment in German, and the door quickly shut with a click. A tiny prick poked at my side, and I hopped out of the shower, drying off before I once again revealed the small device.
Müller not Centurion.
Fuck!
Müller was the mercenary target. How had we missed that shit?
Money tracks. Found source. Get out.
That wasn’t fucking happening.
Not until it’s done.
I put the communicator away and dressed, then strolled out to the front room.
“Olsen, call Gail and tell her the timeline has been pushed an hour and the pickup will happen on the opposite side of the street. Then tell her you’ll meet her at the corner across the street from the original meet.”
Both operatives frowned at me, but neither argued since this was my op. Olsen made the call, and I sent word to Centurion through an untraceable cell to pull surveillance and get his ass back to the safe house.
Staring hard at Olson, I asked, “Do we have any other assets in Zürich?” There were two. I was testing him.
“Ja. One with Kantonspolizei, and the other is a banking clerk.”
It was a good sign that Olson had been honest. It gave credence to my suspicions that he wasn’t our man.
Grabbing paper and pen, I wrote down an address and passed it to Daniel. “Get word to the banking employee to meet me there in an hour.”
“What’s—” Daniel began to ask, but I interrupted him while putting on my jacket to conceal my firearm.
“Just do it. And don’t leave this place until I get back.”
I didn’t wait for them to argue before stalking out the door. It was twilight, and the farmhouse was on a hill, so the city lights sparkled below us, but I didn’t even notice as I yanked open the door to a nondescript sedan and slid into the driver’s seat.
It took twenty minutes to arrive at the bank—a different branch than the one our operative worked at. I slid into a parking spot, shut off the engine, and waited.
Less than five minutes later, the mission target walked out of the bank and hurried down the street.
In another ten minutes, Gail came around the corner and glanced around before slipping into the building.
It wasn’t long before she reemerged and wandered back around the corner, disappearing from view.
A few minutes before my scheduled meetup with the bank clerk, he walked out of the building and looked around before heading in the same direction I’d seen the target go.
I was about to start the car up again when a man strolling down the street caught my eye. He was wearing a cantonal police uniform, but it wasn’t the operative from my research.
What the fuck? It couldn’t be.
Then he veered over to my window and rapped one knuckle against it. “Sir, steigen Sie aus dem Auto ,” he said, ordering me to exit the vehicle.
I rolled down the window and glared at him. “I’m not going to take orders from an off-duty cop,” I snapped.
He glared at me, then pulled out his weapon and pointed it at my forehead. “ Rücken .”
Staring at the gun as if I was afraid, I swallowed hard and scooted over so he could get into the car.
“Going to fucking kill you, Wayfarer,” I grumbled when we were both inside.
“’Bout fucking time you got here, Guardian,” he snapped. Then he started the car and pulled out of the spot before giving me a concerned glance. “Stella?”
“Safe and sound at my club’s compound,” I assured him.
His shoulders slumped in relief. Then he was all business again. “I take it you’ve figured out this fucking mess?”
I nodded. “I don’t know how Gail kept her relationship with Müller a secret.”
“She wouldn’t have if her contact in DC hadn’t been covering for her.”
“And the clerk? He’s in on it?”
Joseph shook his head. “Idiot doesn’t even know he’s being played.”
“Gail is sleeping with him, too,” I surmised.
“Bitch gets around, that’s for sure.”
I felt another ping in my side and lifted my shirt to get to the communication device.
Burn notice issued. OIG. Identified, not contained.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. “The asshole is from the Office of the Inspector General.”
“You’re fucking kidding me,” my friend growled. “Explains how they’ve been burning people on the sly.”
“Justice says they know who it is, but they haven’t let him know they’re on to him yet.”
“He’d call off the trade.”
“Here we go,” I muttered.
Joseph and I were officially on our own. Luckily, we were both damn good at our jobs because the next several hours were a clusterfuck that ended up with only one of us shot and the traitors taken care of.
“Stella is going to kick my ass,” I grumbled as I worked on the bullet wound in Joseph’s thigh.
“It’s a fucking flesh wound.” He tossed out the movie quote to lighten the mood, but he couldn’t hold back his grunt of pain as I extracted the bullet from inside his leg.
“Yeah, that won’t stop her from blaming me for letting you get shot.”
Joseph chuckled. “Stella my bella has the big, bad biker shaking in his boots? That’s my girl. Bet she was a handful to protect. I owe you, Connor.”
I stayed silent, figuring it wasn’t the right time to tell him that she was more to me than the daughter of a friend who I’d sworn to protect.
Hopefully, our extraction would be there any minute, avoiding further conversation on the topic of Stella and me. I finished patching up the hole in his leg just as we heard the whomp whomp whomp of helicopter propellers.
We weren’t in danger from the co-conspirators anymore.
In fact, Gail and the bank clerk were dead, and Müller was being transported to a CIA black site for interrogation.
But it would take time to have the burn notices on Joseph and me retracted.
Which meant every intelligence, military, and police force in the world had us on their “no-fly” list…
for lack of a better term. So I was relieved as fuck when I spotted the chopper approaching with a familiar face in the pilot’s seat.
Weston landed the bird, and I helped Joseph across the field and up into the back.
“It’s done?” I yelled as I climbed into the co-pilot seat.
Weston nodded and handed me a pair of headphones.
“Justice shut it down, and the motherfuckers are in custody.” He glanced at my empty hands and raised an eyebrow. “Where is it?”
I took off my boot and showed him the bottom, where remnants of an electronic item had clearly been smashed to bits.
“There’s gonna be hell to pay for not bringing it back with you,” Weston said, grinning.
“What are they gonna do? Fire me?”
I’d just saved their asses by making a loud mess so that the CIA could claim that the conspiracy went no further than the assets in Switzerland. Plus, Joseph and I had planted evidence and shit that made it appear as if the NOC list had been a fabrication and the shit show had been all about money.
Weston laughed as he took the chopper up into the air. “Maybe you’ll get another nonexistent commendation.”
Awards given to employees of the CIA were celebrated in a small ceremony, then the certificate or pin or whatever was kept in a vault on-site and there was only an internal record of the award.
“Don’t give a fuck what The Company does as long as the burn notice disappears. I’m going back to my girl and leaving all this shit behind for good.” I wasn’t opposed to using the situation to my advantage, though. “Instead, you can make sure her job offer is rescinded.”
“Consider it done.”
Joseph had put on a pair of headphones as well, and I heard his low chuckle. “King got himself a woman? Never thought I’d see the day when you dropped your guard enough to find someone who’d put up with your grumpy-as-fuck ass.”
Weston shot me an amused glance, and I glared at him, daring him to say anything.
“Never thought I’d see the day when you got your ass chewed out by a little thing like Stella.”
Joseph laughed. “Now that you’ve met her, you understand.”
“I do,” I murmured. “I can’t wait to see what happens when you tell her about your next assignment.”
“Nope,” Joseph sighed. “I’m done.” Then he pointed at me and glared. “And Stella is never to know about me getting shot.”
Thinking about how happy that would make my girl, and the shit he was getting me out of by keeping his wound a secret, I muttered, “Thank fuck for that.”