Chapter 36
Austin
When I asked, John didn’t hesitate to agree to meet me at the SSI office early the next morning, despite it being Saturday. I texted Gibson, telling him I’d pick him up early.
Was I surprised to find the entire SSI crew, sans Matt, when we arrived? No.
“I hope you don’t mind that I called everyone in,” John said.
“No, not at all.” I offered my hand, and he shook it. “I brought coffee and pastries. Can we talk in the conference room?”
Jamie, Jack, and Nathan set Emily and Ashley, along with the kids, up in the small downstairs conference room before joining us upstairs.
“First, I want to thank you all for your help,” I said.
I held up a hand when John started speaking.
“And second, I’d like to apologize for underestimating you.”
“Damn, Cuz, what’d Ma put in your coffee this morning?” Jay asked with a laugh.
Other than a friendly grin, I ignored his joke.
“As you know, this case is highly sensitive. Gibson and I are doing most of our research off the record. We’re leaving breadcrumbs along the wrong trail on the record.”
“Hence needing our help and system,” Jamie said.
“Exactly. Please understand, my reluctance to fill you in wasn’t an ego trip; I was following protocol.”
“And now?” Jack asked.
“And now I need your help. To protect Nina, we need to solve the cold case her parents were working on, the mystery surrounding her parents’ death, and the current case that ties them all together.”
“And we have to do it without leaving a trace, because whoever’s behind this has at least one guy on the inside,” Ryan added. “We can’t safely use our CIA access, so I reached out to a buddy to help with that angle.”
“Do you trust him?” John asked.
“I do. We served together in the Army; he’s a Ranger, and he has CIA credentials, despite not being CIA, for his work with a civilian black ops security team.”
“Damn,” Nathan said. “Even I didn’t have CIA creds when I was with Hawken’s.”
“You just offered that secret up?” AJ asked with a laugh.
“It’s not like they don’t know. I’m willing to bet Austin here knows how often we take a shit,” Nathan said.
“Not quite that level of detail, but yes, we have dossiers on all of you.”
“Just us?” Jack asked.
When I hesitated to answer, Gibson said, “On everyone associated with SSI.”
“Meg’s gonna hate that,” Jack whispered.
“I’m not doing anything with the information. Running background checks is standing operating procedure during an investigation or op.”
They didn’t need to know I’d done it long before then to protect my family. And connect with them the only way I knew how.
“You don’t have to tell her,” G offered.
“I won’t lie if she asks.”
I nodded. There was nothing I could say or do to make him lie to his wife. It was a trait I respected, despite how annoying it was that he didn’t give two shits about the NDA I’d made him sign.
“Let’s focus,” John said. “Tell us about your CIA contact.”
I nodded to G, since Rogers was his contact, not mine.
“His name is Mike Rogers, and he works for Shepherd Security.”
Eyebrows all around the room rose.
“I know, crazy coincidence, but at least he spells it differently.”
“The name sounds familiar,” Nathan said. “They’re headquartered in Chicago, right?”
“Only their operators know the exact location of the bunker,” Gibson answered.
We let them digest what that information implied.
Gibson hadn’t told me much, but I knew Shepherd Security was a global private security and “other” operation. I didn’t ask what “other” entailed, and he didn’t tell, but he reassured me they were legit. Shepherd Security only recruited active duty, special forces operators to their team.
Their missions could be so dangerous that every operative at Shepherd Security had a tracking chip under their skin.
“Rogers has Interpol contacts, so I’ve sent him the pictures of our targets. He’ll help us find information about the corrupt CIA officers and their hired help. He offered to ask Colonel Shepherd, the owner, to have a team on standby if we need help.”
“What kind of help might that be?” Jamie asked.
You could’ve heard a pin drop in the room as they waited for the answer.
They didn’t want to know, but they needed to.
“Extraction. They have their own jet and helo, and enough firepower to take over a well-armed small country,” I said.
“Shepherd Security is the trump card up our sleeve if shit goes south,” Gibson added.
“Why don’t we have a jet?” Jay’s question broke the tension in the room.
“Who’s gonna fly it?” Jack shot back.
“I could learn,” Jay said with a shrug.
“We don’t need a jet,” John shut down the conversation. Turning back to Gibson, he asked, “Any chance we’ll get to meet Rogers or Shepherd,” John shook his head with a chuckle, “before we need them?”
Ryan’s answer was short and sweet, but not what they wanted to hear.
“No.”
“I don’t suppose we can change their minds?” John asked.
“I can ask, but I wouldn’t hold your breath,” Ryan answered.
I didn’t have high hopes of the Sheppard clan conceding control to the Shepherd clan if shit went south. Not if, when, because if there’s one thing my military and law enforcement jobs taught me, things always went south.
With that settled, I asked, “Jack, did you find anything yesterday?”
“The problem is that I found too much, but nothing I’d stake my life on.”
“Start with the best candidates,” I ordered.
“Give me a second.” Jack tapped away at his laptop, and the big screen behind John lit up with a spreadsheet and a marked map.
Doug whistled. “That’s a lot of data.”
“Yeah, it is. And this is just Dallas.”
Fuck. There was no way in hell we’d have time to visit all the locations.
“You said to focus on banks and transitional spaces that have lockers, so they’re listed at the top.”
“What are the highlighted ones?” AJ asked.
“Banks that changed their names in the last twenty-five years. I crossed off any businesses that fit the search perimeters but are no longer open.”
He did all that in one afternoon? I really had underestimated my cousins.
And I had to respect his work/home life boundaries, because he hadn’t mentioned a thing the night before. I could learn a thing or two from him. Only I didn’t have a family to go home to.
You could, if you tried harder. Having siblings wasn’t the same as having a wife, kids, and the white picket fence, but they were my family.
“Thank you for being so thorough. Any of them seem like a good place to start?” I asked.
“They’re listed in order, best matched at the top.”
“G, can we get a certified copy of the Singer’s death certificate?”
“On it.” He opened his SSI loaner laptop and started typing.
Humbling myself wasn’t something I did often, but if I had to do it, I was glad it was with people I trusted.
“Can G and I get an escort while traipsing from bank to bank?”
“You expecting a tail?”
“We already have one.”
So did they, or had he forgotten the guys that had followed Matt yesterday.
“Jay?” John asked.
“Matt and Nathan are on Nina and Mrs. Novak duty, so that leaves Cate and me.”
We needed Cate to keep working with her FBI contacts, so she was off the list.
“Boss,” AJ said, “I wrapped up my case and finished my paperwork.” There’s a story to that admission. “So I can be the second escort for Winchester and Gibson.”
“That works for me. Jay?”
“Works for me.” Jay turned to me. “When do you want us to be ready?”
“ASAP, the sooner we pick up the death certificate, the better.” And Dallas was ninety minutes away.
“They have it for us within the hour,” Ryan said after putting his phone down.
“Must be nice to have Uncle Sam’s authority,” Doug said. “Makes things faster and easier.”
“And legal,” I said. Doug’s hacking skills weren’t exactly a secret.
Doug laughed. “I admit nothing.”
“Jack, can you print out the list?” I asked, changing the subject.
He slid a folder across the desk.
“Thanks.” I should’ve known.
The contrast between the men and women I worked with at the CIA and the men and women of SSI grew with each passing day.
Communication sucked at the CIA, and just about everything was on a fucking need to know basis. I understood the need for secrecy given our jobs, but the lack of communication went too far and caused more problems than it solved.
At SSI, there were no secrets. No professional secrets. As a result, the team worked like a well-oiled machine.
At the CIA, requests had to be made in triplicate, and approval took forever.
SSI granted most of my requests before I asked for them. John offered a loaner car for safety. They gave us laptops and space to work. Jay offered to stay and help Ryan, cutting into his personal time.
Two things they had in common: their work ethic and the desire to do good in the world. The stages we performed on differed dramatically, but our goals were the same. Save lives.
The CIA had a bunch of fancy sounding goals and gave missions important sounding names, but at the end of the day, it was about saving lives.
“Ready to go on a wild goose chase?” I asked Ryan.
“You mean a wild sun and moon chase?”
“We can call it whatever you want. Are you ready?”
“Yes, sir.” He saluted me with his middle finger, causing Jamie to bust out laughing.
“Glad I’m not the only one who gets that salute.”
My curious human side wanted to know more about Jamie getting middle finger salutes when half the company was family, but the logical operative side of me ignored my curiosity and carried on.
Fucking robot.
“How soon can you be ready?” I asked Jay.
“Give us fifteen.”
“To be fully armed and ready to go?” Gibson didn’t hide his doubt.
AJ stood, looked at Jay, laughed, and said, “Give us twelve.”
Jay followed him out, letting his smug grin do his talking.
“You really have to stop assuming we’re not up to the task,” John chided us.
We deserved it.
“Sorry.”
“I’d get moving if I were you,” Jack said. “They won’t let you live it down if you take longer to get ready than they do.”
G looked at his watch. “We have eleven minutes.”
“Let’s not keep them waiting.” The last thing I wanted to do was hand Jay and AJ ammunition.
Because Jack anticipated my needs, he’d printed several copies of the list. I handed a copy to Jay, who was now dressed in black with a plain black baseball cap.
His soft body armor was barely visible under his T-shirt, and the thin black leather jacket he wore hid the pistol on his right hip and the two extra magazines on his left.
AJ looked the same.
“How are we doing this?” Jay asked. “One car escort, or two?”
“One is enough. We need you to gather as much intel as you can on anyone you suspect is tailing us.”
“Good thing I brought my camera,” AJ said with a smirk.
Jay handed us comms. “So we don’t need to use our phones.” Once again making my life easier by anticipating our needs.
“Thanks. Let’s go.”
Jack descended the stairs two at a time. “I’m coming with you. Give me five.”
“Why?” Ryan asked.
“Working off maps and images and public records is two dimensional, in the field, I may see something that clicks.”
“What makes you think we won’t?” G didn’t like being on the receiving end of being underestimated.
“Because I’ve been staring at this data for hours, so it’ll likely to click faster for me.”
Not wanting to waste any more time, I said, “Go, get ready.”
Once Jack was ready, he kissed Meg goodbye, and we headed to our cars. Jack would ride with us.
“Our first stop will be the county clerk’s office in Dallas. Then we’ll tackle the list.”
“The top two are near each other, so that’s a good starting point. From there, it’d make more sense to follow the course I marked on the map.”
I glanced at my watch, grateful most banks stayed open until at least three on Saturdays.
“He’s right,” G said. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
“Because we work for the government…”
“Did he just make a joke?” Jack asked.
“I think so,” G answered.
“Fuck off,” I said.