License to Kill

by R. J. Blain

  “How much did this cost you?”

  “About five hundred dollars,” she admitted. “And I get paid if I make a few of them disappear. But the five hundred was their lowest fee for the intel. They could have charged me that per name, but they’re pretty pissed over it.”

  “And if these people are associated with the Greenwich case, it could be as little as five hundred to close that case?”

  Amelia chuckled. “And if I sink them and provide evidence, I get paid a cool quarter of a million dollars. I’ll split it with you, especially since you’ve been put out in the cold. That’s enough to get you started just about anywhere for a while. And if we make a good team, well, there’s more jobs like that available. The black markets always need someone to bring those who break the rules back into line.”

  As I’d run out of things to lose, I nodded. “It’s an option.”

  “People like you need options. If you’d had options and work to do, you wouldn’t be here right now. Well, not here under these circumstances. You probably would have ended up in that mess anyway.”

  I agreed with her, as I would have given a great deal to patch things up with my ma and pa. If things had been better with Jake, he wouldn’t have minded me going out with my ma, especially if he believed I could patch things up with my family.

  My pa still would have died, and I still would have been shot.

  The only difference would have been me working to return to him rather than working for a darker purpose.

  If walking out the door hadn’t killed what remained of our relationship, going rogue would, once he found out.

  “That’s quite the expression. What are you thinking about?”

  “How going rogue will definitely kill what was left of our relationship. He’s not very forgiving of that sort of thing.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  It was my turn to stare at her as though she’d grown multiple heads. “Why would you even think that?”

  “Fenerec don’t marry someone without loving them, and once they love them, they don’t give up. Fenerec tend to take the ‘till death do you part’ portion of their vows seriously. He’ll get his head out of his ass eventually, and he’ll forgive you anything because he’ll think you went insane without him.”

  “He already knows I’m at least a little insane, so that’s not a far leap,” I admitted. “But he’s not the kind to forgive that.”

  “As long as you don’t kill any law enforcement, he won’t care. They do tend to get upset about the murder of law enforcement. Unless you can prove they’re a traitor, in which case he’ll whistle while looking the other way.” Amelia went to the small refrigerator, dug out a soda, and handed it to me along with a pair of pills. “In two hours, you get dinner and the pills that send you back to nappy land. Until then, you’ll start going over our list of names and prioritizing them by who you think is the juiciest hit.”

  I cracked open the can and took a swig, popping both pills without caring what I took. “Two hours of work before a nap beats no time working before I nap, so let’s get to work.”

  “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

  Each day, I improved enough to please Amelia, and I worked on her list of names. Her drugs couldn’t ease the cold dread plaguing me, and since whining about it wouldn’t accomplish anything, I bottled it up and pretended I could handle anything she threw at me.

  The bitter truth ate away at me from the inside.

  I didn’t have to research at least five of the names on the list. Two belonged to CARD, and one had been on my failed team in the form of Andrew Linsc, the same asshole who’d ignored leads resulting in the death of a little girl. Had he ignored the lead out of pride, or had he been paid off to make sure she couldn’t be recovered?

  I could find out. All I needed to do was ask. “Amelia?”

  “What’s up?”

  “Can you look in that black market system of yours and find out if there was ever a hit on a kid?”

  “Sure. It’ll cost me a few bucks, but I can put in a request for that info. The black market ops don’t tend to like when people go after the kids, but they let it through. If I say the hit was for a kid, they’ll let me know if it existed, if that’s all I’m asking for.”

  “Michelle Gianni. She was kidnapped out of Pennsylvania. She was found dead. Andrew Linsc was on my team in CARD, and he ignored relevant intel I’d found, which resulted in her death. He’s on your list, so I want to know if he had ignored it to make sure the job got finished.”

  Amelia whistled. “I’ll make the request, and I’ll also inquire if he had any connections to that bounty. If so, that will lead to a burn order.”

  “Burn order? You mean eliminate and erase? That sort of burn?”

  “To a crisp, and we’ll be paid good money for it. Even black market ops have rules—and one of those rules? Don’t fuck around with active FBI investigations that can get the op sunk. And if the op involved the girl for the hit and a black market worker actively screwing the investigation, that breaks the rules. They don’t want to give the FBI direct reasons to go after them. Can I disclose your former status as an FBI agent?”

  “I don’t care. But if Andrew Linsc was involved, my rogue ass is taking the fucker down, and I’ll entertain accepting a paycheck for the work. If I can’t work within the law, well, maybe I’ll work outside of it for a while and clean up some of the filth I couldn’t catch while in the FBI.”

  “I’ll try to get a working arrangement set up for you, so that even if you do return to work in the FBI, they’ll tip you off so you can quietly close some cases that’ll keep the black market ops going without unnecessarily exposing them.”

  Before the Greenwich case, such an idea would have offended me. Times had changed, and so had I. “Pitch me.”

  Amelia smiled, retrieved her phone from the table we used as a desk for our laptops, and headed into the main bedroom to call her contact. As always, she closed the door behind her, which was her signal I shouldn’t snoop.

  I checked the internet for information on Andrew Linsc. According to his social media, he still worked in the FBI, he was still located in New York, and on the surface, he appeared to be an upstanding agent. He played to the rules, putting only the information the FBI allowed agents to put online.

  As I preferred to maintain as much privacy as possible, I avoided social media like it would rise up and eat me. Jake did, too.

  Our lack of profiles and interest in the various platforms meant we couldn’t make a mistake and share something we shouldn’t—or reveal our location.

  If he worked with criminals to complete crimes from within the FBI, something as simple as his location could be used to help those the FBI wanted to bring to justice.

  A small part of me hoped the asshole was innocent.

  The rest, seasoned over the years and painfully familiar with traitors and betrayal, expected the worst.

  Amelia didn’t leave me waiting for long, and she bounced her phone in her hand. “Yes, he’s associated. Yes, my contact is interested in working with you either in or out of the FBI, and yes, they’ll protect you as they can. You’ll be assigned a code name, they’ll create a method to feed you intel that should fly below the radar, and you’ll be given only the jobs they need to be legally closed if you’re working within the confines of the FBI. Essentially, you’ll be a slightly better educated agent with access to clues you may otherwise miss—clues meant to sink people who have crossed the wrong lines.”

  It disturbed me how easy it was to become one of the bad guys, one of the dirty agents flitting through the system.

  Even a few weeks ago, I would have cared a lot more about having turned coat.

  Well, mostly.

  I could, at least, say I worked more for the side of the law than otherwise. Given time, I wondered if that would change.

  “Okay. What can you give me on Linsc?”

  “I’ll be sent that information within the hour.
If the ops have it, we’re getting it. They had not known Gianni was a kid when the hit was put out, and that goes against the rules of that specific market, which directly bars hits against minors. It draws too much FBI attention. So, the person who put out the hit request broke the rules, and then one of the workers, Linsc in this case, cooperated to make sure the hit happened from the inside of the FBI by misdirecting your team. What we don’t know is if Linsc was involved with being assigned to that case.”

  “He could have been. We were between cases, and he has enough seniority to request cases that interest him.” I sighed, regretting I couldn’t shrug like I wanted. Between the old and new injuries, it hurt, and I wondered if, given a few weeks and time to heal, I’d return to my old ways of expressing myself. “I was working as an anchor then, and most on the team didn’t like me. Wrong gender.”

  “Idiots, all of them. Anyway, hits on active-duty agents like Linsc are handled differently from what was out for you. He’ll get the full burn treatment. First, evidence will be submitted to various branches of the FBI through contacts similar to you. These contacts will make sure the paperwork gets to the right place to burn him out of the FBI. After he’s burned out of the FBI, he’ll be blacklisted in the market I called him out on. Other markets may follow. If he runs, that’s when the black market will issue a hit for him and anyone working with him to discourage anyone in the markets from helping. And since the markets have some cooperation between them, that’ll be US market wide. At that point, we’re free to take him out. We’ll have to commit the perfect murder, though.”

  “There’s no such thing as a perfect murder, Amelia. Everyone makes mistakes, and those mistakes are how they get caught.”

  “There may be no such thing as a perfect murder, but when enough people work together to cover it up, it may as well be—and nothing is as terrifying as when the black market ops decides someone needs to disappear because of their poor choices. Andrew Linsc will pay for his involvement in that little girl’s death, that much I can promise you. And so will the asshole who put the hit out. You don’t target little kids in that specific market. The operators of that one are family men, and they’re not the kind of family men you cross.”

  “Well, it’s nice to know the black market has some morals.”

  “Some markets, some operators. That market is generally a free-for-all except for a few things. No kids, no tainted drugs. A lot of the markets bar tainted drugs. They don’t care what happens to the drugs after it leaves their market, but while inside, those drugs are the best money can buy, and it’s a death sentence to fuck with them. And you better believe they quality check. Fail the test? Your ass is out, and you’ll be lucky to live through your eviction.”

  “Sounds harsh.”

  “Losing base clients because of shit practices is bad practice, and the operators have warned if their drugs get linked back to contaminated batches, it will be bad news for the dealers who made the purchases in the first place. It’s bad for business if the junkies fall over dead because of contaminated drugs.”

  “Right. Dead people can’t buy more drugs.”

  “And the higher the number of dead people who can’t buy more drugs, the more likely the whole operation will be busted. So, they’ve been cleaning up the ops. The contaminated drugs tend to come out of other markets.”

  “Other markets?”

  “Like the markets in Mexico and elsewhere. They’ll do their own runs across the border rather than wait for the market ops to bring stuff in. That’s the shit that’ll get you killed.”

  “This is surprisingly complicated,” I admitted.

  “We’re just getting started, Karma. But stick with me, and you’ll know the ins and outs in no time—and know which markets to avoid. It wouldn’t do to offend your delicate FBI sensibilities too much.”

  “For some reason, I think my delicate FBI sensibilities have already been laid to rest. The fucker helped kill a kid.”

  “We all have lines,” the woman replied. “And going after a fucker that went after a kid beats the moping, so let’s get to the murdering part of our plans efficiently, shall we?”

  “Should I be concerned?”

  “Only if you don’t want to murder the fucker.”

  “Let’s just murder the fucker cleanly. I’m not into torture, no matter how much the fucker deserves it.”

  “You have a deal.”

  Four

  Do I look like I’m available for questioning?

  Armed with the knowledge Andrew Linsc had aided and abetted the murderer of at least one child, Amelia and I busted ass to gather the evidence required to burn him out of the FBI. Closure would be a bitter pill for the Gianni family to swallow, but with the help of the disgruntled black market operators, within a week, we had everything we needed to fully lay the little girl to rest.

  Her death had begun with an irate business partner wanting Mr. Gianni to focus more on his business and less on his family. Eliminating the girl, who took up more time than the business-driven assholes liked, had been viewed as a small price to pay for wealth.

  From bank accounts to pay for the kill to a full disclosure of Andrew Linsc’s activities in and out of the FBI, I prepared it all, cleaned the laptop of all evidence of my involvement, covered Amelia’s tracks as well, and followed the black market operator’s recommendations on how to best deliver the intel in triplicate. From solid evidence to mountains of circumstantial evidence that might become admissible should the FBI and other branches of law enforcement take the correct steps, I provided everything needed for the prized conviction.

  If all cases panned out so well, there wouldn’t be a need for so many investigators working the streets.

  “You’ll be brought up as part of the case,” Amelia observed while I meticulously finished erasing our tracks from any digital systems we’d touched, including a complete wipe of the laptops, overwriting both hard drives until they were full to the point they crashed, only to wipe them again to mitigate any chance of somebody resurrecting information on our activities.

  “That’s fine. Do I look like I’m available for questioning?”

  “No, but they’ll question if you were involved in the hit.”

  “Unlikely.” I wrinkled my nose. “My ex-boss’s boss was pretty aware of my feelings about that fucker and the way that case panned out, but I’d been among those fairly convinced it was going to be a cold case. Considering my inability to do anything other than walk the straight and narrow? No, I really doubt anyone will think I’ve decided to switch teams.”

  “More like batting for the same team in an unconventional method. I mean, you’re definitely going rogue, but you’re doing so in a way that closes a murder and cleans the FBI up. It might get you transferred to a different section of the FBI if you show just how good you are at ferreting out the shit stinking up the bureau.”

  “So much shit, so little time,” I complained.

  Amelia chuckled. “While you have been working on that project, I’ve gathered what I do have on the Greenwich case, from the names of double agents and traitors to enough black market intel to make the bureau cry when they find out how much of the government’s supposedly secret information has fallen into the hands of crooks. Since you’ve done such a good job burning Linsc and handling the intel for that girl’s death, the ops have rewarded you with what they have on the weapon system in question.”

  “They have information on the software security for that weapon system?”

  “Oh, they have so much more than that, Karma.” Amelia handed me the latest laptop acquisition, the one dedicated to the Greenwich case. “It’s in the folder named Software. Start with the debriefing doc and follow the instructions. While you do that, I’ll work on getting the trailer ready for our drive to South Carolina. You’ll drive the SUV for the first leg, and once we’re in an easier place, I’ll let you have a turn with the trailer if driving isn’t bothering you too much. It won’t be fun, but you should be able to hand
le it now.”

  Driving with holes through my leg wasn’t my idea of a great time, but I’d graduated to being able to walk as needed and being able to function for eight hours without any painkillers at all. “That sounds like a plan.”

  “Good. That’s settled, then. Work until it’s time to hit the road. The fun begins.”

  Her definition of fun didn’t match mine, but I didn’t complain. For the moment, I had a purpose, and that would have to be good enough.

  Driving while full of healing holes hurt, but I managed. I even got my chance to drive the truck, which went a long way towards convincing me I enjoyed having a place I viewed as home. I wondered if that had been part of my problem.

  Jake’s home was nice, but it hadn’t really felt like home despite living there for months. I’d formed habits, I even liked the master bathroom, but I hadn’t established the place as mine. Jake had something to do with that.

  Had things been a little better between us, I may have felt differently.

  For the next three weeks, home was a campground in the heart of some rolling hills, far enough from civilization that Amelia took her time making sure her RV was fully stocked for our entire stay. According to her, the campground was decent enough, but if we wanted any creature comforts, including firewood for evening fires, we needed to bring it ourselves. The only comfort we would get would be a half-decent internet connection and sewer hookups.

  Apparently, campers whined when they were deprived of half-decent internet.

  I gave the campground credit. It defined remote, and I couldn’t spot the other campers through the trees despite knowing there were at least forty RVs scattered somewhere nearby. Amelia handled the work hooking up the RV, although I watched and learned so I could help the next time we moved.