5
DARKWATER HEADQUARTERS.
SOMEWHERE IN VIRGINIA.
“Is it safe to enter?”
John Benson peered through the half-open door that led to Nancy Sullivan’s office in the still-under-construction Darkwater Headquarters nestled in the Virginia woods. Of course, Nancy insisted her starkly furnished new office was only temporary, just like her return to Team Darkwater was just temporary. But Benson knew better than that. He’d thought he’d lost Nancy, and now she was back and he’d be damned if he was letting her walk away again. Putting her in charge of setting up the new Darkwater HQ would keep her busy for a solid eighteen months, Benson figured. And with the growing Darkwater family that was almost three dozen strong if you counted the babies, Nancy would be locked in by the sense of belonging to a community.
Locked in by Benson’s favorite trap.
Emotional manipulation.
“What do you want, John?” Nancy glanced up from where she’d been squinting at some new building blueprints from the government-contractor architects that did top-secret work for the Department of Defense. Her red hair shone like fire under the golden halogen lights that Benson had insisted on installing because he hated those white LED bulbs that were only good for interrogation rooms. “If it’s about the hunt for Diego Vargas or the cover-up after that car-bomb or recruiting some more Special Forces guys to your merry band of matchmaking mercenaries, I don’t want to hear it. I offered to help out until you recovered from your injuries and were back on your feet.” She removed her tortoise-shell cat-eye reading glasses, focused those sharp blue eyes on Benson’s grinning face, flicked her gaze down towards the shiny aluminum cane that Benson had been using while recovering from the shrapnel wound that left a nice long scar on his left leg. “Do you even need that cane anymore, John? Or is it just a prop to trick me into thinking you still need me around?”
Benson glanced down at his cane, then raised it off the static-free black industrial carpet and pointed it at the blueprints spread out on Nancy’s desk. “Darkwater needs you around. You aren’t going anywhere until we’re all settled into our new digs.” He strolled through her roomy office overlooking the dark Virginia woods, twirling his cane like a baton, then tossing it carelessly against the side-wall, grinning when it stuck the landing, resting upright against the wall like a warlock’s broomstick with a life of its own. “I saw that the bulletproof glass windows got installed last week. Good job. How are we doing on the underground levels beneath the new parking lot?”
Nancy sighed, rubbed her eyes, sat back in her swivel chair and crossed her arms over her dark blue sweater that went well with her red hair and matching blue eyes. “Why are we building a fortress in the middle of Virginia, John? You expecting an invasion?”
Benson dragged over a chair from by the window, parked his ass in the seat, straightened out a crease in his tailored wool trousers. “Darkwater is evolving, Nancy. We’ve got some serious enemies now. And the missions are getting more complex, leaving more loose ends. Dangerous loose ends like Diego and that mysterious IMG Corp that took over Northrup Capital after the Hogan-and-Hannah mission.” He shrugged beneath his matching wool suit jacket. “Darkwater is in the line of fire now, and I can’t risk any of our Darkwater families getting hit in their homes. Not with kids involved. Once construction is complete, this place will be our sanctuary. I want it to be bulletproof and blastproof, with accommodations to house all the families underground in case a mission gets out of control.”
Nancy raised a well-manicured eyebrow. “When has a Darkwater mission not gotten out of control, John.” She waved away Benson’s grin, then glanced up when Keller walked past the open door talking on the phone. She waited for Keller to get far enough away, then got up and closed her office door quietly before turning back to Benson. “Hey, listen, are you sure about this guy Keller?”
“You’re not?” Benson asked, his habit of answering every question with another question taking over with practiced ease.
Nancy shrugged, her jaw tightening like she was biting her tongue for letting on that she still cared about the Darkwater family, cared about the kind of men Benson was bringing into the community which included her own daughter Brenna and five of Brenna and Bruiser’s kids—Nancy’s grandchildren—the oldest of whom were already in first grade. “All right, I admit I checked out Keller’s file after Ice mentioned that some of the Delta Force veterans called him Keller the Killer.”
Benson shrugged, waiting for Nancy to dig herself deeper into the Darkwater trap of irresistible intrigue. “All Delta guys are killers, Nancy. They’re just on our side, thank God.”
“You know what I’m talking about,” Nancy said with a tight-lipped smile. “Something about an accidental death during Keller’s Delta training. Then a clean discharge, leaving behind a sanitized military record.” She pointed towards him with her reading glasses. “That only happens when the CIA quietly recruits a Special Forces guy.” She sighed. “Was it you, John? Did you run Keller when you were still with the Agency?”
Benson stroked his clean-shaved chin which was considerably less smooth than two months ago, when he and CIA Director Martin Kaiser had gotten pockmarked with shrapnel from Benson’s exploding Ford Crown Victoria. He shook his head, then shrugged, finally nodding in his trademark noncommittal way. “I didn’t personally recruit Keller from Delta. But yes, he was being run by the Agency. We crossed paths on a couple of covert jobs back when I was the Middle East CIA Station Chief. I’ve worked with Keller enough to trust the guy.”
“If you trust Keller so much, why did you pull him back into HQ where you can keep an eye on him, John?” Nancy’s eyes sparkled with a glimmer of that old excitement that Benson knew was more addictive than any drug. “He was out there working with Jack, but you ordered him to come back into the office.” She shook her head and smiled grimly. “You don’t completely trust him, John. I can tell. And I see why, after being around him these past few weeks. There’s something off about the guy. Can’t put my finger on it, but he’s not like the others. They’re all hot-blooded warriors with the ability to stay cool. But Keller . . . he’s just . . . cold. It’s unnerving. Almost eerie.”
Benson touched his left eyebrow, which had been burned off in the blast and wasn’t fully grown in yet. “You’ve still got it, Nancy. That sixth sense about people.” He took a breath, exhaled slow, checked to make sure the door was closed all the way, then rubbed his eyes and nodded. “You know the studies done by the military about the psychology of killing, right?”
Nancy nodded darkly. “All humans have a natural aversion to killing another human. About eighty percent of the human population will not be able to pull the trigger and shoot another person even to save their own life.”
Benson nodded, but with a businesslike precision. The military was in the killing business, and it made sense for them to be good at it—which meant they needed to study it like a science, putting aside prejudice caused by emotion. “Correct. Eighty percent will not be able to bring themselves to kill. Of the remaining twenty percent, eighteen percent will be able to kill, but will experience deep remorse—sometimes for the rest of their lives.” He leaned back in his chair, tented his fingers, narrowing his silver-gray eyes at Nancy. “Then there’s the remaining two percent.”
Nancy’s face paled to ghost-white. She blinked twice, swallowed once, maintained her composure admirably even though Benson could tell she was affected. “People who experience no remorse after taking a human life,” she said hoarsely. “The true psychopaths.”
Benson leaned forward, shook his head forcefully. “No. A true psychopath enjoys killing. There’s only a very tiny fraction of that two percent who actually take pleasure in killing. Keller is not one of them. He does not feel remorse, but nor does he get any sort of kick out of taking a life. He’s a textbook assassin, completely emotionless. He doesn’t feel remorse. Doesn’t feel much of anything else, either.”
“So that’s why you brought him into Darkwater?” Nancy chuckled dryly. “Because what, you think there’s some special woman out there who’s going to make an emotionless assassin feel something?” She shook her head, rubbed her eyes, groaned softly. “Oh, John. You’ve now moved on to conducting your own psychological experiments? Men like Keller are wired differently. They don’t have the capacity for normal human emotion.”
“Define normal human emotion,” Benson snapped, his eyes flashing cold with a sudden spark of defensiveness. He’d forgotten that Nancy was perhaps the only person alive who could see right into his coyote-crooked heart and call him on the questionable nature of his schemes. “Were you experiencing normal human emotion when you manipulated Alexei Yankov, turned him into a patsy for a Treasury Department undercover operation, then proceeded to have a child with him?” He grinned. “How is Brenna, by the way? She and Bruiser and the kids doing all right? How many grandkids now, Nancy? I’ve lost count.”
“You’ve also lost any sense of decency, John,” said Nancy, her hair looking redder as her temper flared. “If this is your way of trying to keep me in Darkwater, you’re losing your edge.”
Benson chuckled. “Just want to make sure you don’t forget what brought you into Darkwater to begin with, Nancy. Human emotion that is very much not normal.” He leaned forward, his wolf-gray eyes flashing like full moons. “None of us are fucking normal, Nancy. We were all meant for something bigger, and Darkwater is the vehicle that carries us there. To our destiny.”
Nancy closed her eyes, muttered an uncharacteristic curse under her breath, then shook her head and sighed through a resigned smile. “There it is. John Benson reminding me of my destiny.”
Benson laughed like the hyena-headed deity that lived inside him. “Speaking of which, did you turn up anything on IMG Corp, that mysterious offshore company which bought out Northrup Capital and now owns the Zeta Nation bonds that are financing Diego’s little drug-trafficking empire in South America?”
Nancy shook her head. “Nothing more since my last update. IMG uses a complicated network of shell-companies based in all sorts of offshore banking havens from the Caymans to Cyprus. Haven’t managed to figure out who actually owns the damn company. I’ll get back to it once I’m through checking these blueprints for the Darkwater HQ and can get the construction guys started next week. There are gaping holes in the building right now. Not much of a fortress quite yet.”
Benson nodded. “IMG isn’t the number one priority right now. They probably aren’t even a direct threat, especially now that Senator Robinson is protected by the Secret Service. It’s already December, primaries will be done by the spring, general elections next November. If things go as planned, Marcus and Delilah Robinson will be in the White House in just over a year. IMG probably already sees the writing on the wall and might just exit the game, take the loss to their portfolio and move on when the Robinsons win the White House.”
Nancy smiled, her eyes lighting up with the same excitement that Benson felt when he thought ahead to what those two remarkable Americans could do for the country. A country which Benson understood had its own great destiny, a future mission even greater than the past two hundred years of shining the light of freedom into a world of darkness, It sounded hopelessly romantic and blindly patriotic, but Benson had an unshakeable faith that although the United States was by no means perfect, it was still the best they had as a human race, a nation that was the closest embodiment of the Good and the Right that humankind, with all its beautiful flaws, had created.
“Well, if that does work out, then you’re right,” Nancy said. “Once Robinson is President, he can issue an Executive Order to immediately close the loophole allowing hedge funds like Northrup Capital to use lobbyists to divert taxpayer money to fledgling countries like the Zeta Nation. Which means IMG Corp will just dump the Zeta bonds, and Diego’s cashflow will dry up like a raisin in the sun.”
Benson frowned very seriously. “Isn’t a raisin already a dried grape? Would it get dryer in the sun?”
Nancy tossed a pencil at Benson, who caught it before it marked up his snow-white Brooks Brothers shirt. “Get out,” she giggled, her face reddening to the color of her fiery hair. “Don’t you have a matchmaking mission to manipulate? Who’s next after Ice? Though technically your pattern has already been broken, because neither Hogan nor Ice are real names.”
“Oh, please. You know that a person’s real name is not necessarily the one assigned at birth. Names have power, and you damn well know who’s next,” Benson said with a snort. “Which reminds me.” He slid his Darkwater phone out from his suit pocket, swiped at the screen, tapped a few times, then frowned and stood up abruptly. He strode to the office door, yanked it open, stuck his head out, and yelled for Paige to get her butt in there immediately.
“Is something wrong, Mister Benson?” Anxiety streaked across Paige’s acne-scarred face when she hurried into Nancy’s office and saw Benson standing with his arms crossed over his chest and a frown crossed over his mouth.
“Many things are wrong,” Benson said gruffly. “First, I told you to call me either John or Benson. Nobody’s called me Mister Benson since my first-grade teacher, and she’s dead now. Of natural causes,” he added with a wink when Paige’s eyes went wide with childlike terror. “I did not murder my first-grade teacher, Paige. I was only six years old, for heaven’s sake.”
“You could have circled back later in life to do the deed,” Nancy pointed out chirpily from behind her desk. “Don’t believe a word he says, Paige. You do know that coyotes are considered trickster-demons in almost every ancient culture, right?”
Paige’s face lit up in a bright smile. Benson saw that she loved Nancy. The two of them had been working together for a couple of months now, ever since Benson stole Paige from the CIA’s technology team. She was the Agency’s star hacker, but after she’d been manipulated and played to perfection by the masterful Rhett Rodgers, Benson knew she needed to be in a place where she could heal those psychic scars, perhaps get stronger at the places where she was broken.
“Got it. John Benson. Coyote who did not murder his first-grade teacher. But just to be safe, do not call him Mister Benson ever again. Got it.” Paige nodded primly. “What else is on the list of things that are wrong, Mister Benson—I mean, John.”
Benson raised a stern eyebrow, then raised his Darkwater phone and held it so Paige could see the screen. “Why do I not have access to Jack Wagner’s Darkwater phone? I should have access to the camera and microphone of every Darkwater phone in our system. Is there a glitch? Some kind of problem with an upgrade? SIM card malfunction? Satellites blown up by aliens? Solar flares affecting the electromagnetic fields surrounding the earth?”
“Um . . . no,” Paige stammered, shooting a wide-eyed look at Nancy. “I . . . I asked Nancy if it was all right. You were still in the hospital, and so I asked Nancy if it was all right.”
Benson turned on his heel towards Nancy, the titanium plate in his reconstructed shin-bone hurting just enough to piss him off. “Asked Nancy if what was all right?”
Paige looked petrified. She pulled nervously at her blonde ponytail, which was already tight enough that it hurt Benson’s scalp just to look at it. “Jack Wagner asked me if there was a way to override that setting in the Darkwater phones,” Paige said in a trembling whisper. “Some kind of hack he could use so nobody could listen in without him allowing it. I said I couldn’t do that without your permission, but you weren’t around and so he asked Nancy, and Nancy said it was all right, and you were in the hospital, and . . . and . . .”
“And nothing,” Benson barked, glaring at Nancy, then looking back at the shivering Paige Anderson. “Fix it, Paige. Now, please. I need eyes and ears on whatever the hell Jack Wagner is up to. Has he picked up his bike from where Diego very politely parked it after stealing it while Jack was shaking off his overexposed dick in a gas-station outhouse?”
“I . . . I’ll get right on it,” Paige said hurriedly. “It might take some time, though. Those phones aren’t easy to hack.”
“Well, clearly you are easy to hack,” Benson grumbled. “You work for me, Paige. Not Nancy. Certainly not Jack fucking Wagner. Where the hell is he, anyway?”
Paige gulped, her cheeks reddening with embarrassment. Benson cursed inwardly at his outburst, reminding himself that Paige was still recovering from the burning humiliation of being manipulated by Rhett Rodgers into doing some very bad things. He was about to apologize, but held his tongue when he saw Paige straighten up and shake off his harsh comment about how she was easy to hack.
Good, Benson thought with a secret smile that he hoped Paige couldn’t see. She’s toughening up. She’s going to be stronger than ever soon. She’ll be ready when fate calls her number, when destiny whispers her name.
Keller called Paige’s name from outside now. She glanced at Benson, who grunted and nodded for her to get on with tracking Diego. Benson would catch up with them once he was done with Nancy.
Paige left, and Benson flipped the door shut, making sure it closed hard, just shy of a slam. “That was out of line, Nancy.” He strode back to her desk, placed both fists on the polished pinewood, leaned his broad-shouldered body forward. “You know damn well that I need access to my guys on these missions. Especially when they don’t want me to have access. That’s the entire fucking point. You made a decision that puts every Darkwater man in danger, Nancy. What the hell were you thinking?”
Nancy didn’t flinch even as Benson’s shadow loomed over her. She met his forcefully intimidating posture with a sharp gaze that Benson thought was new, like perhaps all those years together had taught Nancy more about the Darkwater way than Benson had realized.
“Firstly, it’s only Jack’s phone,” Nancy informed him. “And it’s partly your fault Jack was so insistent. Apparently, you humiliated his big brother Ice with your phone-eavesdropping during the last mission.”
“Ice humiliated himself by getting hog-tied by a woman half his size.” Benson fumed for a bit longer, then took his fists off Nancy’s desk and sighed. “Well, it’s done now so there’s no point in throwing a tantrum. Paige will fix it soon enough. She’s damn good.”
Nancy nodded. “She’s amazing. Whip-smart, and she’s toughening up. You see the way she shook off your rude comment about how she was easy to hack?”
Benson grunted in approval, sat down heavily in the chair across from Nancy’s desk, took a moment to gather his thoughts.
It didn’t take long for those thoughts to circle back to Darkwater’s number one priority at the moment.
Diego Vargas.
“I’m surprised he’s still in the country,” Benson said. “Diego’s smart enough to know that the Senator is out of his reach now. With the Secret Service involved, Diego can’t pull off an assassination without getting caught or killed. And he’s not the suicidal type.” Benson smiled, his eyes shining as his mind flicked back to Mercy and Cari, the mother-and-child hostages the CIA had rescued from Rhett Rodgers’ basement after the Ice-and-Indy mission. “Especially now that he’s got something to live for.”
Nancy frowned. “You think Diego stayed in the country because of Mercy and Cari? Is that why you’ve got Cody, Edge, and Dogg doing round-the-clock surveillance on her convenience store in Baltimore? You expect him to show up there?”
Benson shook his head. “I do not expect him to show up there again. He knows we’ll be staking it out for months, if not years.” He took a breath, exhaled slowly. “But they matter to him. Diego compromised his entire Zeta-Nation mission to save their lives after Rhett took them hostage to blackmail him into killing Kaiser and me. Diego should have walked away from Mercy and Cari, let Rhett kill them—hell, Diego would have known that a snake like Rhett would never have let them go anyway, even if Diego fulfilled his end of the bargain.” Benson smiled. “You see how Darkwater pulls all the players into its vortex, Nancy? You think a cold-hearted bastard like Diego Vargas would ever make a decision like that before he got mixed up with Darkwater?”
“Actually, I do.” Nancy smiled tightly. “I’ve read Diego’s CIA file, got the grisly details that you divulged to the rest of the Darkwater guys. I know Diego lost his young wife and baby daughter in the worst way possible, was forced to watch them brutalized and murdered. It’s what turned him into a savage monster with an insatiable bloodlust. But it’s also a psychological vulnerability that got exposed when he coincidentally crossed paths with Mercy and Cari. They reminded him of his own lost wife and little girl. Sorry, John. Not everything is because of Darkwater’s mystical vortex of eye-rolling woo-woo energy that twists the trajectory of time and shifts the sands of space.”
“Eye-rolling vortex of woo-woo energy? Aw, I missed you, Nancy Sullivan.” Benson smiled with exaggerated affection that he hoped would mask the real affection which stirred deep in a way that troubled him sometimes, exposed his own vulnerability, that raw psychic wound created when he lost Sally on that first Darkwater mission. “Point taken. Sure, it was a coincidence that Diego crossed paths with Mercy and Cari, who perhaps reminded him of his own lost family. But remember that coincidence is how the universe plays its games, Nancy. You’ve looked into Mercy’s past, I presume?”
Nancy shifted uncomfortably, adjusting the neckline of her navy-blue sweater. She took a breath, sighed it out, then nodded with quiet grimness. “Mercy was raped five years ago. Her daughter is the child of that violent act. She chose to keep the child, was strong enough to get past the memories of her attacker. Mercy’s a special sort of woman, I admit.” Nancy’s face tightened. “Not so different from the special sort of women who seem to be drawn to this Darkwater circus, I will concede.” She scratched an imaginary itch on her pale cheek, flicked a serious gaze in Benson’s direction. “Her rapist was killed in prison. What do you make of that? Another coincidence?”
Benson stroked his jaw thoughtfully, then shrugged, deciding to let that one go without comment. No, he didn’t think it was coincidence. The guy had been taken out in a classic prison-gang hit. Which meant somebody ordered that hit. There was no indication that Mercy was in any way connected to the prison gangs. She was squeaky clean, a textbook immigrant success story, somebody who’d come into this country legally, waited her turn to get approved for a work-visa, earned her shot to reach for the American dream.
But still, there was something dark and dangerous swirling in the emotional depths of that woman Mercy. Benson had spent some time with her during the few days Mercy and Cari had been sequestered in a CIA safehouse after being rescued from Rhett’s basement. Mercy had insisted that she barely knew Diego, didn’t even know his real name until Rhett Rodgers broke into her store that fateful night. Mercy admitted that she’d invited Diego to dinner at the store that night, but it was the first time they’d spent any time together other than the brief interactions when Diego would come in to buy groceries and supplies. She agreed to immediately call Benson if Diego attempted to contact her in any way, but Benson detected a hint of hesitation in her promise, like this woman had understood what Diego had done for her and Cari.
Still, that was a far cry from actually breaking the law to protect Diego if he contacted her again, Benson thought now as he felt the uneasy intuition that this amorphous energy of sex and violence had drawn Mercy and Diego together, would continue to draw them together.
And if that happened, Benson would be there.
There was too much goodness and strength in Mercy for Benson to allow her to be drawn into Diego”s dark shadow. That would never happen. Not while Benson was still playing the game.
A game that was getting harder and harder to play, Benson reminded himself as an uncharacteristic shudder of uncertainty went through his body which had still not fully recovered from the aftershock of that violent explosion. There were still so many unknowns, loose ends from the last two missions that needed to be tied up.
Tied up quick.
Before the whole fucking thing started to unravel.
Now a sudden anxiety streaked through Benson when he thought about Jack Wagner out there on his own. The guy was a cocky, confident former Delta hero with a dossier that included as many broken hearts as confirmed kills. Sure, many of the Darkwater guys had that swagger, that confidence which sometimes bordered on arrogance. But just like the expanding universe, Darkwater was always changing, always evolving, always growing. Eight years and nine missions was a lot of history, and there was no ignoring the patterns now. Certainly, all the new Darkwater guys were primed to believe, which, ironically, made things shaky and dangerous when you played the great game.
Because fate isn’t for sure.
Destiny is never decided.
You can’t be certain of the ending until you actually make it there.
And not everyone makes it there.
You can’t keep drawing aces from the deck of destiny.
Can’t keep rolling sixes on the dice of fate.
Yeah, you need faith to stay the course.
But too much faith can lead to overconfidence and complacency, a feeling that the battle is already won before you even step into the arena.
That’s why cocky motherfuckers like Jack Wagner needed Benson looking over their shoulders. And that’s why Benson was pissed off—and perhaps a bit puzzled—at Nancy telling Paige to go ahead and give Jack control of his own phone.
Again that uncharacteristic uncertainty that had plagued Benson since the end of the Hogan-and-Hannah mission dug its claws back into him, whispering that maybe Nancy was playing her own game. After all, Nancy Sullivan had been a masterful manipulator even before she ever heard the name John Benson.
Was she trying to sabotage Darkwater, came the shockingly offhand suggestion from Benson’s subconscious. He watched her put those tortoise-shell cat-eye reading glasses back on, studied her focused blue eyes as she turned back to her blueprints of the new Darkwater campus. Nancy had been warning Benson for almost eight years that sooner or later the law of averages would kick in and his luck would run out.
Was Nancy trying to nudge things in that direction?
Was she secretly hoping for one of Darkwater’s missions to fail?
Hell, Nancy had a personal stake in this Darkwater game too, didn’t she, Benson thought now as his doubts began to dig deeper in a way that worried him, damn near terrified him. But he couldn’t stop that runaway thought-train, couldn’t stop his scheming brain from warning him that Nancy’s daughter Brenna was part of Darkwater, as were Nancy’s grandkids—Brenna and Bruiser’s adorable cluster of twins and triplets that Benson had lost the ability to count.
Had these loose ends with Diego Vargas and IMG Corp made Nancy scared for her daughter’s safety, worried about her grandchildren’s future? After all, Darkwater’s enemies might strike at any Darkwater family—and obviously kids were the most vulnerable.
Shit, Nancy had every emotional incentive to see Darkwater shut down, to just go away, disappear.
And the best way to make that happen would be if the great John Benson finally crashed and burned. Broke that perfect streak of “successful” Darkwater missions.
Lost a Darkwater man.
Was Jack Wagner a sacrificial pawn being played by the red-haired Queen to make sure her own bloodline survived the undeniably escalating danger that hunted every Darkwater man, woman, and child?
“You all right, John?” came the red-haired Queen’s voice now, her blue eyes shining like she’d been studying him harder than those blueprints. “You still grumpy that I told Paige to go ahead and give Jack control of his own phone?” She smiled with an edge that once again struck Benson as new, like something had changed in Nancy Sullivan during their time apart. “You’re pissed that I gave him control of his own fate,” she whispered, her tone almost taunting. “His own destiny. That’s the game, isn’t it, John? Control. Well, how does it feel to not have control? Are you worried that this whole thing will blow up in your face if you aren’t watching and listening like some spirit in the shadows?”
Benson’s jaw tightened, his gut wrenching with a strange mix of defensiveness and anger. He wondered if Nancy had seen the wheels turning in his own jaded mind, had guessed that decades of being a double-crossing snake was finally taking its toll, making it so that Benson was losing the ability to trust even those closest to him.
He snorted in Nancy’s general direction, refusing to take the bait and respond hotly to her taunting teasing words. “Look, Nancy. You know damn well I’m thrilled to have you back. But you ever do something like this again, and I’ll haul your butt back to the retirement home myself, settle you into your armchair by the fire so you can get back to knitting wool booties for your precious grandchildren. Got it?”
Nancy reddened, her eyelids fluttering rapidly as panic streaked across her face. Benson’s heart leapt with the thrill of victory when he realized that damn, she loved being back here, didn’t she?
Of course she did.
Because Darkwater was her family too.
Not just Brenna and the kids, but every man, woman, and child of this travelling circus called Darkwater.
She was thrilled to be back, happy as a mother setting up a new homestead. Benson was an idiot to doubt her, a fool to let suspicion dig its claws into his spy-trained mind.
“I . . . I’m sorry, John,” Nancy said softly, her gaze darting down to the table, then back up towards his taut face which was trying its hardest to stifle a grin. “I don’t know why I allowed Paige to do it. I know it’s dangerous, but there was something perverse and childish in me that flared up. Shit, maybe there’s a part of me that subconsciously wants you to fail, John. Maybe I’m jealous that you’ve been right every time and I’ve been wrong. Maybe I’m—”
“Oh, shut the hell up, Nancy!” Benson waved his hands to make her stop. “I trust your instincts better than my own sometimes. If some intuition in you whispered that Jack needed some free rein on this one, then I’m glad you followed up on it and gave Paige the green light.” His face settled into a warm smile when he saw the relief wash over his precious Nancy. “Look, Darkwater is evolving, learning from itself. The new guys know the details of all the old missions, and that changes how we handle the new missions. More importantly, it changes how the new guys handle their own missions. This thing with the names and the coincidences . . . hell, I know as well as anybody that it can fuck with a man’s mind. And with confident, cocky-ass men like Jack . . . where the hell is he, anyway?”
Benson was about to storm over to the door and holler for Paige again, but then Nancy reached out and turned her computer screen in Benson’s direction.
“So much for staying away from Darkwater missions,” said Benson with a sideways grin when he saw that Paige had already set up Nancy’s computer to track everything from her office. There was a screen showing all the text-messages between Jack and Keller. Another screen with a live map tracking Jack’s location via his phone’s GPS, which thankfully hadn’t been turned off along with the microphone and camera. “Why is Jack moving so slow on I-95? Barely at the speed limit. Isn’t he on his crotch-rocket of a motorcycle?”
Nancy shook her head, tapped a few keys on her keyboard. Black-and-white video from what appeared to be security cameras outside a strip-mall popped up on the computer screen.
“Interesting . . .” Benson muttered as he leaned forward and watched a grainy image of Jack Wagner emerging from what appeared to be a somewhat beat-up Honda hatchback. The video showed Jack snatching his keys from his parked bike’s ignition, then squeezing his big body back into the little Honda’s front seat. The car turned and drove away. Benson couldn’t make out the driver from the video. “You manage to get footage of the license plate so we know who’s driving that car?”
Nancy shook her head. “Not a lot of traffic cameras in that small urban center. Paige is running some scans from the speed-detection cameras on I-95. She’ll get the plates sooner or later.” She smiled. “But don’t worry, Jack isn’t being kidnapped by a new Darkwater villain. He texted Keller to say he’s found a way to get into the Bobby Carmine wedding in Philly, where it appears Diego might be headed for a secret meeting with someone.” Nancy raised an eyebrow at Benson’s quizzical frown. “Wait, are you not up to date on the burner phone that Diego called before he tossed his own burner? He called someone whose phone just came online near the Carmine Estate outside Philadelphia. There’s a big mafia wedding this weekend, beginning with a cocktail party that’s starting right about now.”
“No, I most certainly am not up to date. Been in physical therapy all afternoon.” Benson flashed a grin, but it didn’t last long as he listened to Nancy rattle off the latest news—which was not all good. The Carmine Family was a relatively small player in the East Coast Italian Mafia, but it wasn’t a good sign if Diego Vargas was getting connected to them.
“Diego’s Zeta Nation owns a tiny bit of oceanfront land between Colombia and Guyana on the Northern coast of South America,” Benson said slowly, thinking aloud after quickly processing Nancy’s excellent summary of the day’s developments. “They’ve used some of the millions siphoned to them by Northrup Capital and IMG to build a small but sophisticated seaport on the coast. Chinese container ships have been coming and going from that seaport. CIA surveillance-drones and NSA spy-satellites haven’t been able to identify what’s in those containers. Some of it is probably basic low-cost supplies and products that every country in the world imports from China. But we suspect some of the containers are loaded with cheap Chinese-made Fentanyl or the precursor chemicals to make Fentanyl.”
Nancy’s breath caught, her face paling at the mention of the notorious synthetic opiate drug that had been designed to be used in tiny doses as a last resort to help cancer patients experience some relief at the late stages of the disease. Now the drug had a multi-billion-dollar underground market in the United States, thanks to dirt-cheap Fentanyl produced in China making its way across the border from Mexico after being shipped to ports in Colombia and now apparently the little Zeta Nation seaport.
“You . . . you think Diego is going into business with the Carmines?” Nancy asked softly. “Selling them Chinese Fentanyl in bulk so the Carmines can sell it on American street-corners?”
Benson nodded grimly. “It would make sense if Diego knows that within a year Senator Robinson will be President and will end that financing loophole which Northrup and IMG have been using to funnel taxpayer money to the Zeta Nation. He’ll need a new source of income for his nation.” Benson took a heavy breath. “Philadelphia is a port city. And the Carmine Family will have connections with both the dockworkers union and the port-authority customs guys.”
Nancy sat back in her chair, her face tight and drawn. “So that’s why Diego is connecting with someone linked to the Carmine Family. They’re going to make a deal where Diego gets Fentanyl shipped directly by sea from his Zeta Nation port to Philadelphia.”
Benson nodded. “Much easier than transporting it all the way to Mexico, then smuggling it across the land border. Those border crossings are all controlled by the big Cartels, who charge a hefty percentage for access.”
Nancy sighed. “And Diego would rather cut off his left hand than do business with the Cartels that murdered his wife and daughter.” She glanced up above her reading glasses, her expression grave. “John, these drugs are destroying millions of American lives. We can’t let that deal happen. We need to bring in the federal Drug Enforcement Agency. You can’t just let this play out with whatever Jack thinks he’s going to do on his own at that wedding. DEA has the manpower to flush out Diego and his contact at that wedding this weekend.”
“No.” The word popped out almost involuntarily past Benson’s tight lips. He blinked twice, then shook his head and doubled down on whatever instinct told him that he absolutely did need to let this play out with Jack Wagner. “If we call the DEA, they’ll have agents hiding under the damn buffet tables at this wedding. If there really is a deal in the works, it might spook the Carmines into backing off. Diego will disappear again. He might cut a deal with some other mafia family or drug-dealing gang on the east coast, and we might not get wise to that until it’s too late. The whole thing might backfire if we bring in the DEA right now.” Benson’s face darkened when he thought back to Darkwater’s last interaction with the Drug Enforcement Agency. “Hell, they might send us another Maggie Malone. You remember her, don’t you?”
Nancy took a deep breath, let it out slow like a pressure cooker trying not to explode. Maggie Malone had been a crooked DEA agent who’d almost derailed the whole Cate-and-Cody mission—which was the first Darkwater mission after Nancy joined the team. Yeah, she remembered Maggie Malone damn well, Benson thought.
“Yes, I remember, John.” Nancy’s eyes narrowed. “But I also remember that it was Martin Kaiser who brought in Maggie Malone without giving you or Cody a heads-up.” She blinked twice, her gaze softening. “How is Martin, by the way?”
“You tell me,” Benson said gruffly. “I heard you’ve been spending quite a bit of time at the Kaiser homestead with Martin and Alice and the new twins.”
Nancy frowned at his tone. “Wait, are you still upset about me telling Alice not to invite you over that weekend when the twins arrived from Iceland?” She sighed, rubbed the bridge of her nose. “John, it was too soon after I’d left Darkwater. I just couldn’t be around you. I knew you’d try to manipulate me into coming back, and I . . .” She sighed again, shook her head, then shrugged, slumped back in her chair, and smiled up at him. “Oh, wait. Here I am. Back in Darkwater. Shit.”
Benson’s gruffness faded as he listened to Nancy talk herself into circles—all of which led back to Darkwater. Yeah, it had hurt to be left out of the welcome party for the twins—after all, Benson had been the one who convinced Kaiser to adopt those orphaned twins after Fay’s sister died in childbirth. But Benson was also secretly relieved he’d been excluded from the invite list. These sorts of occasions made him uncomfortable. He just about tolerated the Darkwater weddings, had long since given up attending baby showers and baptisms and the zillion other baby-related milestones that seemed to be infinite—just like the fertility of the Darkwater women appeared to have no biological limit. Those couples were producing twins and triplets like it was a game to see if they could change the genetic makeup of the entire human race.
Which just might happen if those Darkwater babies grew up to be anything like their parents . . .
The thought stayed unfinished because Keller knocked on the office door and strode in with Paige on his heels carrying a black laptop which looked tough enough to survive the apocalypse.
“Jack’s not taking my calls,” said Keller, his tone expressionless as always, a scruffy light-brown beard hiding the disarmingly boyish features of this stone killer. “His phone is still on, though. Probably turned his ringer off. Last text says he’s got it under control, that he can get into the wedding events, scope out the crowd while Paige tries to narrow it down to help him zero in on Diego’s contact.”
Benson glanced at Paige. “Can you trace a cell phone signal that precisely? Down to where you can pick out one person in a crowd of hundreds?”
Paige shook her head. “We can trace it to a particular section of the mansion, maybe even a specific quadrant in a large room. But after that I’ll have to monitor the phone for calls or text messages. Jack will have to watch to see who checks their phones around that time. We might get lucky and narrow it down if Jack is alert enough.”
“Will he be alert enough?” Benson asked the question to nobody in particular. “Who’s driving that car? Do we have the license plate and registration yet?”
“We don’t need it,” Paige declared breathlessly, shooting a quick look at Keller, whose robotic expression betrayed nothing. “Jack’s phone GPS has stopped moving. They’re at the Winchester Hotel a couple of miles from the Carmine Estate.”
Benson raised an eyebrow. “He’s got a room there?”
Paige shook her head. “It’s booked solid for the Carmine wedding. We figure whoever’s driving that Honda has got a room there.” She smiled. “So I hacked into the hotel computer system to see who checked in at the exact time Jack and his mystery driver got there. That gave us the identity of Jack’s unknown . . . um . . . friend.”
“And?” Benson drummed his fingers impatiently on his chair’s armrests, shooting a grin at Nancy before turning back to Paige. “Spit it out, Paige. What’s her name? Tell me her damn name.”