Hard to Let Go

by Laura Kaye

  Marz nodded, and the look on his and the others’ faces made it clear they knew this was a big deal, too.

  Right, then. Better to do it quick, like yanking off a Band-Aid instead of pulling it off a little at a time. Kat sat, flipped open her laptop, logged in to the machine—and suddenly remember she didn’t have her key fob . . . and wasn’t sure where she’d left it. Fuck. Heat crawled up her neck. And this was exactly why the thing with Beckett couldn’t happen again. “Sorry,” she said. “I left my security token outside. So dumb.” She rose, fisting her hands so no one saw that they were shaking. From embarrassment. From anger. From nerves.

  She was halfway across the gym when the door opened and Beckett walked in. “Hey,” he said, his tone casual but his gaze intense and loaded. “Found this. Any chance it’s yours?” The question was entirely for the benefit of the others, because she was almost certain she’d dropped the damn thing down in Hard Ink, where Beckett no doubt found it, thereby knowing it was hers.

  “Oh, yeah. Thanks, Beckett,” she said. “Just realized I’d put it down somewhere.”

  A whole silent conversation passed between them in one look, and she hoped he got the apology she tried to send him for being so careless.

  With Nick and Marz watching her from the front and Beckett walking behind her, Kat felt under a spotlight as she returned to her computer. Get your head in the game, Kat. Right.

  “Okay, second time’s a charm. I hope,” she said. And it was. She sailed into the virtual private network at Justice and from there into her own e-mail and files. Everyone gathered behind her, and a part of her wanted to tell them to go away and leave her to destroy her career on her own, thanks. But she got it. She had critical information they needed, and she couldn’t blame them for being curious about exactly what she had and eager to receive it.

  “The system records which documents I’m opening or downloading, so I can’t copy the entirety of the investigation files without raising a whole lot of questions. I’ll start out with the document types we talked about and anything I’ve already downloaded for other purposes. That okay?” she said. “I can always go back in.”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” Marz said, standing next to her and watching her work.

  “Don’t take any more chances than you have to, Kat,” Nick said in a low voice over her left shoulder.

  Just be smart about it.

  Her mind replayed Beckett’s voice from earlier. But instead of annoying her, as it had at the time, it reassured her. Because she was being as smart about the files she was grabbing as she could. You know, within the confines of violating her professional ethics and security clearances.

  Honestly, it was all rather anticlimactic. “Somehow, I thought breaking the law would be more exciting,” she said after saving the last of the files in question. She logged back out of her system and released a big breath she didn’t even realize she’d been holding.

  Well, that was that.

  Hands landed on her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. She looked up to find Nick standing right behind her and giving her a sad smile.

  “Well, don’t keep everyone in suspense,” she said to him, then looked to Marz. “Open those bad boys up and let’s see how what I got might help.”

  MARZ RUBBED HIS hands together and nearly dove into the chair in front of his computer. And as the others gathered around behind him, Beckett kept his gaze fixed on Kat’s face. If anyone knew what it looked like to put on a mask to hide what you were really feeling, it was him. And that woman was doing it. Right now.

  Beckett didn’t like it one bit. Because it meant she was upset. Because it meant she was burying what she really felt inside—and he knew all the ways that could fuck you up. And because he couldn’t do one damn thing to make it better.

  He also didn’t like it because it made his chest tight and uncomfortable, spilled a restlessness into his blood, and agitated the hell out of him to boot. It was all a helluva lot for someone whose usual status quo was somewhere in the neighborhood of numb.

  “I’ll, uh, I’ll text Jeremy and Charlie and tell them to come over,” Kat said. “I’m sure they’d want to be here.” She ducked her head to focus on her phone.

  Just then, most of the Ravens rose from the table on the far side of the room. Some left the gym, others made use of the weights, and one—the club’s president, Dare Kenyon—crossed to Marz’s desk.

  Beckett had first met Dare when he’d brought the club to Hard Ink a few weeks before to help the team run simultaneous operations against the Church Gang. Dare had simply been a hired gun. Now, he and his guys were full-on, equal partners. And though Beckett might not have ever thought he’d say this about an outlaw motorcycle club, Dare’s guys were clearly motivated by a lot of the same values that Beckett and his teammates were—loyalty, justice, duty, honor, even if their take on that last one was sometimes a bit skewed.

  Tall with longish brown hair, Dare managed to strike a look that was both rough around the edges and completely in control. The loyalty he commanded from his club seemed borne of respect, not fear, and Beckett had to admire that.

  “What’s the word?” Dare asked, coming up to the far side of Marz’s desk. He wasn’t wearing his cut—the cutoff jacket that bore his club patches and identified him as president of the Raven Riders. None of the guys were. Given that the Ravens had some sort of tradition of protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves—women and children mostly—Dare had decided the rest of the club would be safer at their compound west of the city if they weren’t flying their colors. And damn if all of that didn’t give Beckett another reason to give these guys their due.

  Nick stepped around and clasped Dare’s hand in greeting. “We picked up some new intel. Just getting our eyes on it now.”

  “The guys are itching to see some justice for their brothers,” Dare said, his tone neutral, but his words full of threat, or promise. The Ravens were following the team’s lead for now, but the idea of a partnership meant they did so by choice. By the sound of it, that choice came with an expiration date defined by the Ravens’ need for vengeance. On the one hand, Beckett totally got that. On the other, it made them unpredictable. And unpredictability got people killed.

  “That’s understood and appreciated,” Nick said. “We’re on it. I promise you that.”

  Dare nodded, seemingly appeased. “All’s been quiet on the perimeter, but given the rain and fog, I’m beefing up our presence out there tonight. In case you’re wondering where everyone went.” Dare had made it clear that things would go better all the way around if he was the one giving his men orders, so after they’d all worked together to nail down basic needs and schedules, Nick had turned over a lot of the day-to-day to Dare to handle at his discretion.

  “Need more bodies?” Nick asked.

  “Not tonight, but we’ll need a little extra relief in the morning. Let my guys get some shut-eye.”

  “Roger that,” Nick said, clasping Dare’s hand again.

  Dare gave a general nod to the group, then turned away and caught up with some of the guys on the other side of the room. A few minutes later they all left together, once again reminding Beckett of how vital the Ravens’ assistance truly was. Their protection made it possible for the team to conduct their investigation the way it needed to be conducted.

  As the Ravens left, Jeremy and Charlie crossed the gym and joined the group behind Marz.

  “What’s up?” Jer asked.

  “Kat got us some new files to work with,” Marz said. He pointed to the monitor. “This document is Seneka’s phone records. Friggin’ huge.”

  Beckett followed Jeremy’s gaze as it landed on his sister. Her face was a careful neutral.

  “It goes back about eighteen months,” Kat said. “So, it’s definitely not a light read.”

  “Which means a better approach than just reading would be to search for specific phone numbers,” Marz said. “So, let’s start with that contact phone number Frank left us on the chi
p.”

  Beckett stepped closer as Marz opened up a search function and typed in the number. The results returned quickly, marking dozens of instances of the appearance of that number making and receiving calls.

  “Well, that’s moderately better, I guess,” Marz said. He clicked Next to scroll through all the results and sighed. “Hey, wait a minute. We know this contact number isn’t in service any longer because we called it, but look at this.” He pointed to the number’s last appearance. “The last time it was used—and, I’m guessing, about the time it went out of service—was less than a week after our team was ambushed.”

  “Less than a week after Merritt died,” Beckett said, rubbing his jaw. “So the line of communication to his contact at WCE, whose number is a Seneka extension, dies with him.”

  “Pretty much,” Nick said, looking from the monitor to Beckett to Kat. “Already useful.” He winked at her, and she gave him a small smile. Nothing that made Beckett think that mask wasn’t still in place, though.

  “Let’s do a reverse look-up on some of the other numbers calling or being called by the contact number,” Charlie said, waking up the screen beside him and pulling up a website.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Marz said, doing the same.

  As the two men entered numbers, Nick grabbed a legal pad and wrote down the identifying information the search results returned. Many of the numbers connected to the kinds of results you’d expect from a defense contractor and security services provider—government agencies, military bases, some of Seneka’s subsidiary businesses.

  Marz’s fingers froze on the keyboard. “Whoa. This goes to the switchboard at Chapman.”

  Beckett, Nick, and Shane exchanged loaded looks from behind Marz. Chapman had been the forward operating base in Afghanistan, FOB in Army-speak, out of which they’d been running missions at the time of the ambush that ended their careers. Located in Khost, an Afghan province that bordered Pakistan, it was important for controlling trade routes out of the country and policing the still-Taliban-infested Paktia province to the north-northwest.

  “Guess Merritt’s request to be transferred to SAD makes sense now,” Shane said.

  “Fuckin’ A,” Nick said, raking his hand through his dark hair. FOB Chapman was also the headquarters for the CIA in Afghanistan. Merritt had requested a transfer to their paramilitary unit called, in typical CIA understated euphemism, the Special Activities Division. It appeared their commander had been trying to get clear of his team before his cover got blown. He hadn’t made it. And that shit had exploded in the faces of a lot of damn good men.

  “Question is,” Beckett said, “whether calls to Chapman represent a call to Merritt, legit calls to the base for contract-related services, or calls to contractors stationed there.”

  “Yeah,” Marz said. “But brick-by-brick the evidence that Seneka and WCE are the same is falling into place. Even if some holes still remain in the wall.”

  “Fair enough,” Beckett said, his gaze ping-ponging between the screens of the computers Marz and Charlie worked on.

  A few minutes passed in tense silence as everyone hovered, hoping for more useful revelations from Kat’s information. “Wait, guys. The Singapore bank. This is the Singapore bank,” Charlie said, his blue eyes wide as he made a sweep of the group.

  Wary hope slithered through Beckett’s gut. A definitive connection between Seneka and WCE would go a long way to ensuring they weren’t unnecessarily making an enemy out of an organization as powerful as Seneka.

  “The same bank as Frank’s account?” Nick asked, leaning in.

  “Exactly the same,” Charlie said. “God, I called this number myself when I was trying to figure out what the bank statements I was getting were all about.”

  “And, look, there are calls in both directions between the bank and the contact number,” Marz said, tracing his finger over the screen.

  Kat stepped up next to Nick, seemingly engaging in what they were doing for the first time. “The bank account information you have—the documents that show all the deposits by WCE,” she said. “Can you see if there’s any correlation between deposit dates and calls?”

  Damn. That was smart. Beckett nodded. “That would definitely nail things down more if so.”

  “Where are the statements, Marz?” Charlie asked.

  After what seemed like a lot of shuffling of stacks of papers on his desk, Marz produced a collection of documents held together with a black binder clip. “Right here.” He scooted closer to Charlie and together they pored over them, their gazes pinging back and forth between the statements and the screen.

  “Fuck me running,” Marz said. “There’s a call from the bank to the contact number within forty-eight hours of every deposit into Merritt’s account.”

  Murmurs of surprise and cautious celebration all around.

  Beckett wanted to throw a fist pump. If that was actually the sort of thing he did. And while he was thinking of out-of-character ways of celebrating this really fucking good development, he wanted to kiss Katherine Rixey, too. Without her, they never would’ve gotten their hands on this information. Not easily and not in the time frame they needed, anyway. “Seneka and WCE are connected, then. Have to be. Either they’re one and the same absolutely or WCE is a rogue player inside Seneka. Either way leads to the same result.”

  “We have our proof, baby,” Marz said, turning around and grinning.

  The whole group engaged in a small celebration. Clasping hands and offering congratulations.

  “What happens after the contact phone number goes out of service?” Nick asked, his expression still serious. He wasn’t yet joining in the celebration.

  “I was wondering the same thing,” Shane said, arms folded across his chest.

  “Let’s take a gander at that,” Marz said, shifting around. “I’ll search for the bank’s phone number and see if it pairs up with any other Seneka extensions.” His fingers clipped over the keyboard. “Nothing.”

  “So someone at Seneka was in regular contact with the Singapore bank at which Frank Merritt received the dirty monies from his op, around the days on which he received payments. But once Merritt died, that communication ceased,” Shane said. “Anyone else feeling like that goes way beyond coincidental?”

  A round of slow, wary agreements rose up. No one wanted to rush to an unfounded conclusion, but this seemed more and more certain.

  Beckett nodded. “I’d say that’s as close to a smoking gun as we’re going to get. Now the question is exactly how we go after an organization as big as Seneka.”

  Chapter 8

  “Wouldn’t the next step be to identify who or what WCE and GW are? Look at the personnel files. Gordon Wexler is the chief operating officer, so I know for sure there’s one GW employed there,” Kat said, her stomach finally calming down from the stress of having done something so, so wrong. Even if she knew in her heart that she’d done it for the right reasons.

  And at least it was turning out to be useful to the guys. Because the whole thing probably would’ve felt a hundred times worse if she’d violated her professional ethics for nothing.

  “That’s a plan,” Marz said, minimizing the phone records and opening the personnel document. “This is just like Christmas morning,” he said, excitement plain in his voice. “What could it be?”

  As everyone chuckled, Kat smiled and stretched her neck, trying to work out the tension that had built there. Probably a losing proposition. Especially as she could almost swear that she kept feeling Beckett’s gaze skate over her. Like he was keeping an eye on her.

  It didn’t take Marz long to work through the list. “Okay, we’ve got a Gene Humphreys Washington, Greta Marie Wendell, and Gordon Andrew Wexler,” Marz said. “And, for the sake of thoroughness, I’m throwing in a George Winston Albert and Gail W. Saunders as two other potential GWs. No one with the initials WCE, though.”

  “Five potentials,” Nick said, a deep frown on his face.

  Kat leaned her hand
s against the cold metal on the back of Marz’s folding chair. “Scroll down. There’s a list that notes date of employment and position. That might help rule the five in or out as your GW.”

  As everyone watched, Marz moved to that part of the list and checked each of the names. “All the GWs meet the time criteria,” Marz said after a minute. “Washington is listed as a security specialist. Wendell is John Seneka’s executive assistant. And, like Kat said, Wexler is Seneka’s chief operating officer.”

  “Two of those people essentially sit at John Seneka’s right hand,” Beckett said, crossing his arms across that big chest. The one that had felt so good to lean against.

  “Yup,” Marz said.

  “So now we have some new names to research,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah,” Marz said. “These are leads we’d never have gotten without Kat.” He peered over his shoulder and looked up at her, then winked. “You Rixeys are good people.”

  Kat’s cheeks filled with heat. It was a bit awkward to graciously accept appreciation for having done a not wholly good thing. “Well,” she said, clearing her throat. “Some of us Rixeys are better than others.” She turned on the sass and returned Marz’s wink.

  “Dude,” Jeremy said from where his hip leaned against the desk. Hands out, he shook his head. “Don’t diss your own blood.”

  Such a screwball. A lovable screwball, to be sure. But a screwball all the same. She stuck her tongue out at him for old times’ sake.

  Jeremy rolled his eyes, but a smile played around his mouth. “Good comeback.”

  Kat couldn’t help but chuckle, and she appreciated the bit of levity.

  Nick smirked and then heaved a deep breath. “All right, people. Then what’s the plan? Because we need to make some serious headway on this Seneka issue before the Ravens decide they’re too damn impatient to keep waiting for us.”