Chapter 32
Hadley and Cole ran into each other at the back gate to their yard and blurted, in stereo, “Franklin is Stella’s ex-husband!” Then, “Wait…how did you know?”
It only took a few moments to suss out how each of them had pieced the truth together about Franklin’s personal connection to their unauthorized mission. Figuring out the rest of the plan would take a bit longer.
“The only thing I don’t know is why Stella didn’t realize immediately that Franklin was the one who’d sent an agent into her neighborhood. Shouldn’t that have been a red flag?” Hadley asked.
Cole shook his head. “A lot of field agents who are married lie to their spouses about their jobs—especially when they’re involved in dark ops.
It’s just easier that way. Eric said Franklin told her he was a police detective who did undercover work, so she could never contact him at the station or ask too many questions about what he was doing when he wasn’t home. ”
Which only left one other question that had been bugging her. “How the hell did a fuckwad like Franklin pull a woman as hot as Stella?”
Cole’s mouth frowned, but his eyes were smiling as he said, “I love how you’re always quick to ask the truly important questions.”
Hey, what could she say? It was a gift. And a curse…
Tenley opened the front door, phone in her free hand, and raised a brow at them. “Look, I can keep figuring this whole thing out for you, but that’s not going to teach you anything. So, care to come back in and contribute something other than good looks to this plan for a change?”
“I really don’t like her,” Cole muttered.
Tenley rolled her eyes. “Oh, boo hoo. You’re breaking my heart, Broody McBroodypants. And here I was thinking we could braid each other’s hair and talk about our feelings when this is all said and done.”
OK, that was funny, Hadley was willing to admit to herself. She wouldn’t admit it out loud, because that would undoubtedly encourage Tenley and Cole already looked ready to choke her out. So, for the sake of Tenley’s elegant neck, she said, “We found out that Franklin is—”
Tenley waved her off. “Yeah, yeah, he’s Stella’s ex.”
Spilling the tea to someone who already seemed to know everything was so deflating. If Tenley had been sent in on this mission, the whole thing probably would’ve been done faster than she could’ve had a pizza delivered.
“Come back inside,” Tenley said. “I’ll tell you what Ren found out and we can plan our next move.”
When Tenley had turned on her expensive-looking heels and disappeared back into the house, Hadley glanced up at Cole. “I’m glad she’s on our side.”
“With friends like that, who needs enemies?”
Hadley snorted. “At this point, I think we need all the help we can get.”
He offered her his hand with a sigh. “When this is all over, I say we disappear for at least a month and avoid all other humans.”
“Now you’re just talking dirty to me.”
Cole, Hadley, and Tenley—with Ren on speaker phone—sat around the kitchen table like they were in the Pentagon war room for a senior advisor’s session.
“OK, so here’s what we know,” Tenley said. “Eric was a Russian sleeper agent. He retired himself and faked his own death in spectacular fashion. He met and married Stella, who was relatively fresh off a divorce from Franklin, your friendly CIA blackmailer.”
“It was not an amicable divorce,” Hadley murmured.
“Stella said he fought her every step of the way for nearly a year before the final papers were signed. And he only signed because she threatened to report him to the cops for hitting her during their last argument. But before that, he’d been actively stalking her, running into her everywhere she went, showing up at her job.
Sounds like he made a real nuisance of himself.
She was legit scared of him toward the end. ”
“I’m not surprised,” Cole said. “He was always a loose cannon on the job. Why would he be any different at home?”
Tenley’s nose crinkled up. “Poor Stella. Is this enough to blackmail him with? I mean, we can already prove to his bosses that this entire mission was off the books with no authorization because he wants to ruin his ex-wife’s happily ever after. Seems like that’d be enough.”
Oh, how Cole wished Tenley was right. He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “It would be…if what Franklin had was anything less than murder charges on Hadley. And if those murder charges wouldn’t put her on the bad side of the Irish mafia.”
Hadley frowned. “He was probably bluffing about the mutually assured destruction, right?”
If it was only his life on the line, maybe Cole would take that chance. But with Hadley on the line? No fucking way. “I’m not willing to bet on that. We need something big if we want him out of the way and not just out of a job.”
Ren cleared his throat. “I have—”
“Ren, I swear to Jesus,” Tenley interrupted. “If you say you have a bunch of lye, I’m going to junk punch you. Dissolving a body is not the answer to every problem.”
“Could be if you were more open minded,” Ren grumbled somewhat defensively.
Cole wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss lye as a solution if Tenley and Hadley weren’t sitting here, looking so horrified at the suggestion. But as it stood, he supposed they should probably look for a way out of this mess that didn’t involve flesh-eating substances.
“So, how do we get better dirt on him?” Hadley asked.
Tenley shrugged. “We could destroy his credibility with the agency. I’m assuming he doesn’t have much since he’s been in the same job with no upward mobility for this long.
But if we got rid of whatever he did have, he could accuse you and Hadley of whatever he wanted and no one would believe it, including the Irish.
Hell, the Irish might even think Franklin killed their guys if we play our cards right. ”
“That’s beautiful,” Hadley said. “Poetic even.”
Poetic. There was something about that word that got Cole’s mind racing. Poetic justice. Turning his own methods against him. Blackmailing the blackmailer. Poetic…
Lightbulb moment.
“We could frame it so that the agency thinks Franklin is the Russian sleeper agent.”
Hadley blinked at him. “Is that…can we…do that?”
“Not on my own,” Cole admitted. “But with all of us? Hell yeah, we can.”
“Ren? What would we need?” Tenley asked.
“Falsified communications between Franklin and a Russian contact. I can fake the communications, but we need an actual KGB contact to make the digital forgery undetectable. It’d help to put some sensitive Russia-related files on Franklin’s home computer, and to set up an offshore account with small, regular payments that look like handling fees from the KGB.
That’d probably be enough, but to make sure he was truly and deeply fucked, we’d need an investigative agent in the Office of the Inspector General to “discover” unusual requests from Franklin’s work terminal, maybe after receiving a good, anonymous tip. So, not easy, but very doable.”
Hadley frowned. “It’s a little scary how quickly you came up with all that.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Ren agreed.
“I bet Eric can help with the Russian contact,” Cole said. “And if he’s still there, I met a guy in the OIG who was so good no one would question him if he rooted out a Russian sleeper agent.”
“Planting the right amount of evidence without making it an obvious frame job will be the hard part,” Ren said.
“How quickly can we get this done?” Hadley asked.
“Assuming Eric can put us in touch with a Russian contact soon, I can get most of it done in two days.”
Two days. They could potentially be free in two days. Two more nights with Hadley and she could go back to her regular life. She was no longer going to be forced to run away with him and assume a new identity. These were all positive things.
So why did he suddenly feel like he was about to lose the only good thing he had going for him?