31. Smith
Chapter 31
Smith
C alista stares up at me, confusion and mistrust on her face. “I don’t know…”
“We both want the last of the Collectors gone.”
“I want to ruin them financially, hit them where it hurts,” she says.
Her and me and the Knights. “Work with me, then. Jon Trenton’s dead. I know who killed him and this guy, Mercer, he doesn’t fuck things up. He delivers… always. But we can still take down the son. We can take down all the ones he’s in bed with. He’s sneaking around, probably hiding behind his mom, Felicity, and?—”
“No.”
She steps back.
“No?” I ask.
“No. I mean…” Her tits under the big, boxy hoodie rise and fall quickly. She looks so young right now, her hair still dark, face makeup-free, and those stormy eyes wary.
I should feel guilt scraping at my senses.
Guilt for fucking her, for wanting her, for wanting to do it again. And worse, I should feel deep, gutting guilt at being the one who’s going to lie and manipulate to get what he wants.
She’s too fucking na?ve and too innocent for her life to end up where it’s going. Under lock and key. It doesn’t matter if they put her somewhere nice; she’s too gifted for the CIA to let her live freely somewhere. She’s way too good at what she does to work for anyone but them.
I don’t need the money for the job of bringing her in. I just fucking like money. And I could have just used the information she gave me as a way to shut down a flow of money into the Collectors and their nasty, twisted little schemes. Close down another avenue of theirs.
She’s already handed me a way to connect this group, the ones who are using Bolivia to move girls and indulge in depravity by helping to move and sell stolen blueprints and new weapons parts.
But I got even more than all that. I saw something she missed.
Her agent Johnny didn’t skip town. He’s here, watching, waiting, teasing leads.
There was a dinner from two nights ago, just a receipt on a deep dive electronic list, but I recognized the company name. It’s the fake one Johnny used in Miami.
He went out with Trenton Jr.
And she didn’t connect those dots.
I lift my gaze back to her face.
If Johnny’s here, wining and dining, then he knows she is, too.
To me, it explains why the CIA hasn’t come looking for her. He disappeared, set her up, and now they’re waiting.
Until the big fish are reeled in.
And my girl goes down for her incidental part.
I’m filling in blanks, but I spent enough of my life tethered to the CIA, enough of it in the wilds of intelligence outside the CIA, and now within the walls of the Obsidian Knights to make these connections with confidence.
“I mean,” she says again, “it’s treason.”
“You’re right, but I can get that to the right authorities.”
“But you’re handing me in to the CIA. Or to the someone who hired you.”
“Actually, they hired a friend who passed the job to me, but,” I say, “I see your point. You found the connection, Calista. Between the sex traffickers and the people trying to sell the weapon. I need the information. I need your trust. And I can make heads roll.”
“By getting it all to the CIA.”
“Partly.” I send a text to Jones and one to Reaper. “But what if I could make it so you disappear, along with your freedom?”
She doesn’t say anything for a long time. I don’t know what I expect… scorn, excitement? What I don’t expect is the blank look on her face and it twists a knife, ice-cold, in my stomach.
“I’d ask for the hidden agenda. The clauses that draw blood.”
The knife twists harder. Even as I said the words, she knows I’m feeding her a lie. And fuck, I would change her course in a heartbeat if I could.
Smart, funny Calista with a razor-sharp bite and a soft, sumptuousness that goes beyond flesh can’t be saved.
She takes a breath and nods. “I wanted… I wanted to avenge my mother’s death but the asshole who raped her or groomed her or whatever it was, he knocked her up, sent her off to have his little bastards, and then lured her back in for fun and games with other men until they were done and threw her out with the trash. ”
She sits on the sofa, drawing her knees up beneath her chin.
“She never recovered. Never got to be a good mom. Henry hated her because he mourned her loss, and hate’s just easier. And… When I got that text in Germany, it gave me purpose. Like I might actually find the guilty and make them pay.”
Fuck me. I rub the palm of my hand between my ribs, where that cold pain’s moved toward. But I push it down because this is it, and the best I can offer. A lie wrapped in truth.
She’s funny, fucking smart, and she’s got skill. I know why they want her in. Skill like hers is dangerous.
For the first time in my life, first time since being an adult, I don’t know what to do.
“I just… I just want to destroy the pricks and now?”
“If you give me that info, you’ll get the chance.”
Calista rubs her cheek against her knee, then looks up. “We both know I had no chances since before I met you. Me escaping, me living free, it’s not an option. They have my brother.”
“Actually, I put Reaper on your brother. No doubt he’s got people who can disappear him if it comes to that.”
Her eyes narrow. “You better mean disappear as in a new identity. The CIA would do it very differently.”
She doesn’t need to say I used the exact same threat on her.
“Calista, I need that stuff. Whatever you have. If I can use it, then I’ll bring down the sex traffickers. I’m sorry the ones directly involved with your mother are gone or lost to us. But I can bring the rest down and make it look like you were a hero. Maybe I can barter your freedom.”
“Maybe.”
I know she doesn’t believe me, but she does something. She holds out her hand, palm up and open. “I’m assuming you’ve got a thumb drive. ”
“Calista—”
“Let’s pretend I believe you. Maybe I can pretend I’m on the job. Just… just promise I can see my brother. Please?”
“I promise.”
It’s a lie.
She rubs her hand over her face, then puts her feet on the ground and picks up the computer. It takes five minutes, but she finally finishes and hands me the drive. “You can check. It’s the real deal. The unreleased apps I hid things in, the cloud I actually stored things in.”
“I’m going to have to believe you, too,” I say, realizing that’s true. “Because I wouldn’t be able to tell.”
“You won’t, but the CIA? That’s a different story, and I’d rather be handed over and not be hung for treason. This way… if you let them know I gave it to you to give to them…” She cocks her head. “Is that na?ve? It sounds like it, but… you have power.”
“I work with powerful people. I can do that.”
“Like I have a choice, which is why I choose to be na?ve and pretend to believe you.”
“It’s the truth. Stay here, I’ll be back.”
And I lean in over the computer and kiss her hard.
It’s another lie. I kiss her like it’s not a last kiss but a prelude when we both know exactly what it is.
I head for the door and as it closes, I hear her voice behind me, and I think it actually breaks my heart.
“Where would I go, Smith? I’ve got nothing at all now.”
Fuck.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Johnny’s good, a CIA veteran, but he’s not me, and the surprise blows apart his cover in little ways he doesn’t even notice.
I hold up the thumb drive from Calista just out of his reach. Not that he goes for it.
I sit down in the desk chair and nod at the group of men with the girls we hired on the screens behind him.
Johnny’s brown hair is mussed and he looks seedy, like he hasn’t slept in a week. I suspect only part of that is the act for his job at hand.
“Sit.”
He does, and he looks around briefly, maybe for our little Calista, to see if she’s hiding, but he then focuses for a few seconds on the screen.
Finally, he looks back at me.
“The only one who’s missing back there is Eric Brown.” I point at the screen. “But his boss, the not-so-good CIA agent turned Senator Riley, is having a great time.”
The man on screen is balls deep in the ass of a twenty-two-year-old seasoned veteran, a girl we rescued who liked the money and dick as long as that dick paid her.
And the beauty of the young girl is she’s also a vengeful creature. She’ll fuck and then let us knife someone to death if they trade in girls.
I don’t think her moans are fake, though. I think she actually likes the senator.
I’ve got my eye on one guy in particular, a rich asshole tugging his small cock as he watches two girls dressed as schoolgirls make out and finger each other. He’s a Collector. One who showed up on the intel Calista found. One who didn’t make the island party that my daughter was lured to, but who I found out wanted to destroy Dakota once he got his hands on her .
Regrettably, I’m not going to get to cut the tiny-dicked man’s cock off slice by slice.
Orion’s in the wings.
Waiting.
And I’m just happy they’ll finally be taken out.
None of them touched Calista. So I’m okay with others killing them.
“Good or not-so-good’s sometimes about perspective,” the man says.
I shift my gaze to Johnny.
“I’m guessing you’ve worked out I’m not who I said I was, Johnny CIA.”
The guy says nothing.
I turn the computer toward him and bring up some of the extra things Calista dug up. Mainly on Eric Brown. “Down there on the screen behind you are most of the people you want. Sex trade assholes and gunrunners. I assume you want the shit you gave to Hendrix. You know, the reason why she hasn’t been taken and locked up yet?”
“She’s smart.” He shifts. “I knew if there was pressure, she’d find the missing pieces.”
“I have those now.” I flash him the thumb drive again.
And fuck. It’s killing me. Keeping up this facade as a sex club owner and power player is perfect for a lot of the Knights’ work so we’re keeping the place as is. But sitting in this chair, acting like I’ve got the power when… fuck.
When I don’t. Not where it counts.
Somewhere between leaving Queens and landing here, I realized something.
I like Calista. Too much, maybe. And enough I want her to live, to be happy.
So I’m going to bargain, something I never fucking do.
“What’s it worth to you?” I ask .
“Her life, you mean?”
“Calista’s worth fighting for. Begging for. Bargaining for.”
“She ran.”
“She uncovered something huge. Bigger than what you know. She uncovered an underbelly of vile sex trade that’s hiding in the shadows. And we’ll destroy it. This arm of it.” I pause, tapping the drive on the desk. “It is brilliant, using the cover of the weapons. Everyone’s looking at the weapons, and when the gun sellers and mercenaries fall, no one’s digging into some smutty porn. She found the connections. The ones everyone else would have missed. And more than that, she found names you weren’t even after. Like the senator.”
I slide the drive into the laptop and show him what we have, then I pull it out.
“Calista’s brilliant,” he says quietly. “But the senator… that’s different.”
He’s either telling me they have a deal, or I got it wrong about Riley’s guilt. But that doesn’t concern me at fucking all.
Calista concerns me. Calista and her freedom.
“Consider the senator yours,” I say. “You’re going to go down there, sign your deals, and when they leave, they’re all quietly going down. Let me guess, something small, FBI arrests, and then…”
“They’ll do deals, flee, and we’ll get them the moment they leave US soil,” Johnny says.
“And Riley?”
“He’ll be wanted in DC.”
Yeah. I don’t ask about that one.
“Calista’s saved your ass. Let her go.”
“Wish I could.” Johnny nods and his hand closes over the drive. “She’ll get a nice place to live.”
“But no freedom.”
“She poked at it, didn’t break into the important stuff, didn’t decode it. And you helping us to catch some of the more slippery actors in this? It’ll help get her a nice place and work?—”
“Under lock and key.”
“Better than a black site. It’s all I can do.”
I want to kill him.
“She’s just a cog?”
“Collateral damage.” Johnny stands. “She’ll be under the CIA until she dies.”
And I watch him go.
Until she dies.
I switch off the feed as Jones comes out of the side room and hands me a glass of whiskey. He drops into the chair.
What happens with those people, the ones the CIA wants, is out of our hands. Anyone who is left will wish they died quickly.
“You know,” he says, “the girl of yours is a find. She’s not just good, she’s phenomenal.”
“Yeah, except the CIA’s going to rob her.”
“Unless she dies.” He looks at me and sets down his glass. “It’s the only way.”
The only way.
I’d hoped… It doesn’t matter what I’d hoped. I nod. Then I pick up my whiskey and drain the glass.
In a perfect world, she’d have real freedom. But…
“I’ll set it up,” he mutters. “Unless you have a problem.”
“No. We agree,” I say to Jones. “She has to die.”