Chapter 29 #2
“Total bullshit. The reason he came was you.”
Tyrone frowned and squinted at the screen when Remi pointed at a timestamp. “When you called Sullivan after Kelsey recognized the tattoo, you told him enough to let him know Dwight’s daughter had resurfaced.”
Tyrone felt something ugly settle behind his ribs. “I told him we found her.”
“Exactly. Sullivan thought she was gone. Sold, moved through the pipeline, and no longer connected to him. Suddenly you call him from Italy and tell him Kelsey Jennings is alive, sitting inside Mason del Tempio with the same group that tore White Shadow’s French operation apart.”
“Fuck,” Levi muttered.
“Yeah.” Remi leaned closer to the table.
“Sullivan needed to know what we knew. That’s why he came in person.
No phone record, no message traffic, nothing discoverable later if he could manage it.
He sits down with Zorro, tells him Dwight was the gambler and Dwight sold his own daughter, then watches how Tyrone reacts. ”
Tyrone remembered the café, Sullivan watching him, waiting, testing every answer. “He was assessing the damage.”
“Exactly.”
“Then why take Kelsey again?” Talon asked. “If Sullivan thought his cover story worked, why not leave her alone?”
“Because it didn’t matter whether Zorro believed him.” Jorja turned her chair toward them. “Sullivan had already reported that Kelsey resurfaced.”
Tyrone’s head snapped around. “When?”
“Before he met you.”
Jorja sent the data to the main screen. A call. Short. Less than two minutes. Routed through a number Tyrone didn’t recognize.
“Who?”
“Eric Palmer,” she said.
The bridge between the foster family and WestBridge.
Tyrone’s teeth ground together.
“Palmer contacted the White Shadow network after Sullivan called him,” Remi continued. “Petrovic crossed into Italy four days before the second kidnapping, so he was already in-country before Sullivan physically arrived in La Spezia.”
That caught Tyrone off guard. “Then Sullivan didn’t bring him in.”
“No.” Remi shook his head. “Looks like White Shadow had already started covering loose ends after the French operation went down. Sullivan’s call confirmed the loose end they needed to deal with was sitting at Four X’s.”
“And Kelsey getting taken right after Sullivan showed up?”
“Opportunity.” Remi took over. “Petrovic had been watching the compound. We found his burner pinging intermittently off towers around La Spezia for two days before Kelsey went through the gate. He couldn’t get inside so he waited until she came out.”
That made sense. More importantly, it didn’t turn Gunnar’s security into a fucking joke. Tyrone sat back. “So Sullivan didn’t order Petrovic to take her that afternoon.”
“No,” Remi said. “What Sullivan did was tell the network Kelsey was alive and where she was. Everything after that started moving.”
He’s still fucking guilty.
And he’s damn sure still responsible.
Tyrone preferred ugly truth to convenient bullshit. “Where is Sullivan now?”
Remi looked at Gunnar again.
Gunnar answered this time. “Stateside.”
Tyrone’s pulse slowed instead of speeding up, which was usually a bad sign. “Where?”
“North Carolina.”
“Lejeune?”
“Near enough.”
Tyrone rubbed his jaw. Sullivan had flown through Dover after leaving Vicenza, then apparently kept moving. “Why?”
“He’s attending a retirement ceremony for one of your former teammates three days from now.”
Recognition hit immediately. “Ferguson.”
Gunnar nodded. “That’s the one.”
Of course Sullivan would attend. Men like him loved rooms full of people who remembered the version of them that deserved respect. Tyrone stared at Sullivan’s photograph.
Three days.
“Military investigators know?”
“They do now.” Gunnar rested both forearms on the table.
“We’ve turned over copies of the financial trail, the White Shadow archive, the mission identifiers and the communications tying him to Palmer.
The minute investigators started pulling at the official records, they found enough discrepancies around Dwight’s mission to keep digging. ”
“Are they arresting him?”
“Not yet.”
Tyrone’s head came up. “Why the fuck not?”
“Because now that we know Sullivan kept an archive, they want everything before they tip him off. Accounts, other operations, other assets, anybody else he sold. They’ve got surveillance on him.
He isn’t going anywhere.” Gunnar’s expression turned into the kind of smile that usually meant somebody else was about to have a very bad week.
“Nobody said you couldn’t attend Ferguson’s retirement ceremony.
I mean, it would be a damn shame if you called that fucking cunt out in front of all the people who he wants fawning all over him. Wouldn’t it?”
“I think I fucking love you, Grizzly.”
“Hey, he’s mine.” Jorja shot back before Gunnar could answer. “Your better half is asleep in your bed. Go find her if you want to be dropping the warm fuzzies.”
“That’s the plan as soon as we wrap shit up here.” Tyrone grinned at his boss’s wife, “Anything else?” Jorja hesitated, and he caught it. “What?”
“It’s not operational.”
“Then why are you hesitating?”
“Because we pulled his full background while I was digging. Wife’s dead. Cancer, four years ago. One adult daughter.”
That was it.
No photograph. No name. No reason for the information to matter beyond the fact Sullivan had spent years telling Dwight family was a vulnerability while having one of his own.
Tyrone let the hypocrisy sit there for half a second before dismissing it. Whatever Sullivan’s daughter knew or didn’t know wasn’t his problem. Children didn’t inherit their parents’ crimes, and he wasn’t enough of a bastard to pretend otherwise. “Anything tying her to him?”
“No.”
“Then leave her out of it.”
Jorja and Remi shared a glance and started closing files on the screen.
Gunnar looked around the room. “That closes what we can close this morning. Go sleep. Tonight, we work logistics for the States.”
Tyrone frowned. “States?”
“You thought I was sending you into Sullivan’s backyard without backup?”
Colt started laughing. “Jesus Christ.”
Gunnar stood. “You’ve got three days before Sullivan walks into a room full of Raiders who still think he’s one of the good guys. By then, they expect to have everything locked down.”
“And then?”
“Then what happens to Sullivan depends on the evidence.”
Tyrone looked back at the mission identifier still sitting on the screen.
Dwight’s op.
The proof he had spent years not knowing he needed.
“No,” he said quietly. “What happens to Sullivan depends on what happens when he looks me in the face and fucking lies again.”
Tyrone pushed his chair back and stood, exhaustion hitting him so hard now the room briefly shifted beneath his feet. His body had finally figured out Kelsey was safe, and apparently it had decided remaining upright was no longer a priority.
Gunnar caught his arm. “Go to bed, Zorro.”
“That’s the plan.” He left the war-room and went back to his girls.