Chapter 12
How the fuck do I keep them safe when I don’t even know where the fucking danger is coming from?
“Hit me.”
Remi dropped his head between his shoulder. “Do ya think there might be a connection between Dwight and The White Shadow Collective?”
Ice slithered into his veins. “I fucking hope not. Why?”
“Call it a gut feeling.”
Well fuck.
When Zipper had a gut feeling there was something there that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but it was enough for him to mention it.
“Throw me files, I’ll go through them.”
“Already ahead of you, my man.” Remi popped the tab on a can of Monster one-handed. “Cross references are running now.”
“You already found something?”
“Nope. I just wanted you to be prepared, because your team did a hell of a lot of missions with Dwight. It stands to reason if there’s something hiding in the background it could be connected.” Remi lifted one shoulder, “or I could be talking out of my ass.”
“But you don’t think you are?”
“We’ll see.”
Damn it, he hated when Zipper hedged his bets like that. “Pass me the files anyway. It’s been a while, but something might twig on my radar.”
“Doubt it, Zorro. Your radar has been on the frizz since Iraq, never mind Afghanistan.” Remi handed him a tablet. “File’s open. Don’t touch anything but the scroll button.”
“Sure.” His fingers drummed against the war-table, the rhythm jagged, out of sync with the methodical click-click of Remi’s keyboard. The tablet in front of him glowed with lines of redacted text and grainy surveillance photos that all bled together as he scrolled.
Focus.
He forced himself to look at the data as an observer.
The White Shadow Collective wasn’t just some two-bit operation.
They had been ghosts with bank accounts, and untouchable until they had targeted the Four X’s Group and Jorja found the right thread to yank.
It was maddening that every fucking thread they were pulling today led to dead ends.
Goddammit.
“You’re gonna crack the screen if you grip that thing any harder.” Gunnar’s voice was a low growl from the other end of the table where he had his phone pressed to his ear. The boss man was in full Grizzly mode, all clipped syllables and controlled fury.
Is he talking to me or to whoever is on the other end of that call?
Tyrone shot Gunnar a pointed look, but his attention was already back on his call.
Tyrone scrolled again, eyes narrowing at any mention of Dwight’s name or call sign buried among the redactions, looking for a breadcrumb that could lead them to the truth.
The tension in the room was palpable, thick enough to slice through, and he could feel it coiling in his gut like a serpent ready to strike.
This is fucking useless. We’ll never find it.
If we don’t find it, we won’t know if Kelsey is safe or not.
“I’m going to call Sullivan, to see if he knows any connection to the White Shadow Collective.”
“You sound like you’ve got something.” Remi’s eyes were still glued to his screens.
“Maybe… maybe not.” His fingers drummed faster against the table, the rhythm matching the pulse of his thoughts. “Sullivan might have the answers. If anyone knows which ops we need to look at, it’s him.”
“I’d bet on it.”
He punched in the number and put the phone to his ear.
“Sullivan.”
"It’s Rone, Sir.”
“You employing clairvoyants over there now, Power? I was just about to call you.”
That can’t be for anything fucking good.
“I'll tell Grizzly you recommended he employ one from here on out. What’ve you got for me, Sir?” Tyrone moved to the edge of the room.
A heavy sigh crackled through the line, the kind that carried the weight of things better left unsaid. “How the hell did Qasos find you, Zorro?”
“Qasos?” Jeez, that was a name he hadn’t heard in a while. “Kunar Valley, that Qasos?”
“One and the same,” Sullivan’s voice rasped. “A lot of that shit is still classified, and I know it’s not in the files you are searching. Brace yourself, Ty.”
Fuck.
Tyrone’s mind raced, the pieces clicking into place like misaligned connections snapping into focus, revealing a path he hadn’t seen coming.
The White Shadow Collective hadn’t targeted the Four X’s group just for shits and giggles, not when Qasos had left their fingerprints all over it. “Anything else?”
Shit, did they target the McKinleys because of me and my old job?
“Lay low, Zorro. Not everyone appreciates skeletons crawling out of their closets.”
Not a fucking chance in hell.
His grip tightened around the phone, a silent promise hardening in his chest. “I’ll consider it.”
“No, you won’t. You always were a stubborn bastard.” Sullivan’s tone held grudging respect. The line went dead.
The bastard hung up on me.
Remi glanced up. “Did he give you a thread to pull?”
“Yeah, and you’re not going to like it. Qasos.”
“Spell it.”
“Q-A-S-O-S.”
“That’s Uzbek for vengeance.”
“Wanna guess who the HVT we were hunting in the ‘Stan when Dwight got killed?”
“Someone connected to Qasos?”
“Their spiritual leader.”
“Fuck.” Remi scrubbed his hand down his face. “There’s our thread to the Shadow Collective.”
Remi expanded a window on his laptop. “I’ll start digging into Qasos. We encrypt everything—scramble our locations so tight they won’t find shit. When they look, they’ll hit nothing but dead air.”
“Let’s make sure they don’t find even that.” Tyrone returned to the table. “They’ll learn we’re not as easy as they think.”
“You should tell Glenna and Kelsey that they’re going to be staying for a while.
” Gunnar ended his call. “We cannot send them out with their asses swinging in the breeze. Especially if Kelsey was trafficked on the orders of whoever Qasos is.” He glanced at his brother.
“Pull me everything you can find me on that org, Remi. Everything. Get as dirty as you have to down in the dark web if needed.”
“Bro, you’re gonna need to triple my therapy budget at this rate.”
“Har, har. Get to it, Zipper. You know you love fucking with the assholes who live online down there.”
Gunnar grabbed a detailed map of Afghanistan and spread it out before him on the table. “Talk to me. Show me where the compound was.”
Tyrone tugged the map closer, and turned it to orientate himself.
“We climbed his mountain, it was ‘burn your glutes pain’ the whole way since it’s mountain-goat steep.
Then we hung a right here just before the ridge and dropped down into one of these valleys here.
I think it’s this one, but I’d need to see our intel packet or iTak readouts to be sure. ”
“Remi?”
“Even I’m not that fast.” Remi’s fingers danced rapidly over the keyboard. “Like I said, Qasos is Uzbek for vengeance. Well, well, well, would you look at that.” He paused and glanced over his shoulder at them.
“Don’t make me beat the intel out of you, Zipper.”
“Hold your horses, Zorro,” Remi grumbled and put the intel on the screens.
“The White Shadow Collective was one of their fronts,” he laid out.
“How did I miss them before?” He paused, scribbled a note on a Post-it, and stuck it in the center of Jorja’s screen.
“That’s not a now problem; Jorja can look when she’s back from town. ”
A satellite image illuminated the screen. “This was their primary op center in the Kunar Valley. The same shithole where Dwight took that final hit.”
“That’s the compound.” Tyrone felt his jaw tighten. “We took out the leader, but they hit us on the way out. Almost every fucking inch of that place was laced with IEDs,” he ground out, anger lacing his voice like barbed wire.
“Not a place we want to run an op then,” Gunnar deadpanned.
“Definitely not.” The last place he ever wanted to go was back to was that hellhole, but for Glenna and Kelsey’s safety, he would. He’d hate every fucking second of it, but he’d go.
“That HVT you took down, he’s got a brother, and it looks like he’s got the resources to pull something like this off.
” Remi's expression took on a more serious tone as he pulled up a complex web of financial data. “Shell companies, offshore accounts, but the money’s moving. In the last six months, they’ve been on a buying spree around every major Four X’s safehouse. ”
Gunnar’s voice dipped, a dangerous growl escaping his lips. “They’re hunting us.”
“Worse.” Remi tapped a key, and a grainy, menacing photo bloomed on the screen—a man with sharp features clad in an immaculately tailored suit. “This is Asad Zadran. Former Taliban financier, now masquerading as a philanthropist. His pet project? Reuniting lost children with their families.”
Tyrone’s stomach twisted as a cold knot of fear intertwined with molten rage deep inside him. “Kelsey.”
“Bingo.” Remi dove deeper, zooming in on a sinister trail—a transaction log pulsing with life.
“Foster care records in Portland were hacked three weeks before she disappeared. Same signature malware Qasos uses. They’ve been running this operation under the radar, and I’ll bet my career we’re on the chopping block next. ”
Gunnar straightened up, every muscle in his body taut. “They took her to draw us in?”
“It’s what I’d do.” Tyrone’s fingers curled into fists, each joint locking with fury.
“If they know about Kelsey, then how? I didn’t even know about Kelsey.
” An icy dagger of rage sank deep into his gut; the stakes had just escalated to a level where they could not afford any mistakes.
Not only were the four x’s a target, but it appeared their children were, too.
Remi nodded—his expression grave. “Qasos doesn’t leave threads hanging.” The silence that followed was heavy and thick and humming with the gravity of the revelation of the dots they’d just connected together. “What about the other members of my Team and their families?”
“If you still have numbers for any of them, then you should give them a heads-up to go to ground today. Not tomorrow, not take time to get their affairs in order. Their families need to disappear, stat.”
“On it.” Tyrone picked up his phone to call Sullivan but hesitated.
What if he’s involved? He is the only one who had all the intel.
He hated being paranoid about some stuff. But on this could he really risk innocent lives?
Gunnar raised an eyebrow, “What’s wrong?”
“Outside of boots on the ground, there was one person who had all the intel,” Tyrone said slowly, his brain working overtime. “What if that person did know Dwight had a daughter but kept it off the records and lied when I asked him about it?”
“Sullivan?”
“Yeah, boss. Sullivan.”
“Shit.”
“Exactly.”
Suddenly, Remi’s screen flickered, yanking them back to the present. “Incoming. Encrypted channel, but the signature screams Qasos,” he said, focus sharpening.
That isn’t one bit suspicious at all.
Gunnar hit the speaker. Static crackled with the promise of danger lacing the air. Then, a voice surfaced—smooth and taunting, a melodic baritone layered with menace.
“Zorro. I’ve been waiting for this.”
Tyrone’s pulse spiked violently in response, adrenaline coursing through his system like fire. He glanced at Gunnar who nodded.
“Who the fuck are you?”
A chuckle echoed from the other end, darkly knowing and filled with a sense of twisted satisfaction. “You always were direct. Very well. Glenna Harper and Kelsey Jennings. Two names, one problem. You have forty-eight hours to deliver them to me. Or I deliver you to your gods in pieces.”
The line went dead.
Gunnar exhaled sharply, the sound laced with a mixture of determination and fury. “Well. That doesn’t simplify things at all, does it?”
“Nope.” Remi cracked his knuckles with a determined look on his face. “I’ll scramble our signals, reroute the feeds,” he said. “If they’re watching, they’ll see ghosts. No way we’re giving them anything they can use.”
Why them and not me?
Tyrone remained frozen, tension radiating like electricity in the air, aware that the clock was ticking down with every second.
For the first time in years—perhaps for the first time ever in this life of lurking shadows and death, he wasn’t merely fighting for his team’s survival. He was fighting for hers.
In the back of his mind, a mantra took root, holding steady against the storm of chaos around them: Protect them. No matter the cost.