by Juno Rushdan
Vincent was his Omega.
And there’d never be another.
“What are your orders?” An edge laced Rho’s voice.
“Do whatever is necessary to find Cobalt’s insurance. Start by grabbing the family.” Daedalus squeezed the shaver in his hand, trying to keep the anxious fury contained. “Bring in the others to help.”
“How many?”
“All of them.” It should’ve been obvious.
“Sir.” Rho crossed the threshold, brows knitted. “Cobalt is probably camped out at that impenetrable fortress, the Gray Box, and if so, unlikely to take the bait. It’s my understanding the sub-facility can withstand a nuclear explosion. We should leave. This move isn’t worth the risk.”
This move was all he had left. He’d see it through to the end.
Rho let out a deep breath, like he didn’t want to share what was on his mind but planned to anyway. “Vincent wouldn’t want this. He’d tell you if he could. He’d never allow himself to be taken alive. If he hasn’t checked in by now, he’s probably dead.”
Rage sparked hellfire in his blood. “I know.”
If the tide didn’t turn in his favor, he’d at least get payback for Omega and take out those Gray Box agents in a firestorm. They couldn’t hide in their compound forever.
“We should cut our losses. Forget Cobalt. Bring in just enough men to help tie up the loose ends we can and escort you to safety. More can be here in an hour by helicopter.”
Daedalus threw the electric razor against the wall, smashing it to bits. “I said to bring ALL OF THEM!”
* * *
Somewhere over Florida
Monday, July 8, 2:15 p.m. EDT
In the front cabin of the Gulfstream, Gideon stood, watching Willow run into one dead end after another. The Judas Iscariot company was managed by another shell company, which was managed by another.
He bit back frustration while plotting his contingency plan. Perched in a leather seat across the polished hardwood table, Maddox kept her shrewd gaze locked on both of them.
“The owner of the shell corporations is buried. Deep,” Willow said.
A fist smacked flesh in the rear of the luxurious cabin, where Ares worked over the merc for information. Willow cringed at the sound and Gideon rubbed her back.
She pulled out her noise-reducing earbuds and put them in. “There are too many layers. Setting up an elaborate financial network for the sole purpose of adding a beneficiary on one offshore account is overkill.” She grabbed a pen and started doodling on the notepad beside the keyboard.
“Do you think the shell companies are being used for something else?” Gideon asked.
“What if I’m looking at this wrong? What if the LLC wasn’t created by the mole? Maybe Daedalus funnels money through these shell companies to our mole and perhaps to others, to hide the source,” Willow mused, drawing a circular maze, a labyrinth, with the head of a bull at the center. “We don’t need to know who owns it. We need to know where the money from the companies is going.”
“Wouldn’t the forensic accountants have caught payouts?” Maddox’s gaze swung between them.
“Not necessarily. It wouldn’t have been flagged if it was a stock distribution. Say dividends below ten thousand dollars and taxes were paid, making it look like it came from a legal source.”
“How does this help?” Gideon asked.
Willow dropped the pen and opened a second secure laptop. Her fingers clicked across the first, bringing up a different screen on the system, and typed mind-numbing lines of symbols and text. “Those corporations have tax identification numbers. I just have to hack into the most antiquated system of the federal government. The IRS. They’re at least two generations behind in the Windows operating system they use, making them vulnerable to a common hacker, much less someone with my skills.”
“That’s terrifying,” Maddox said.
“Isn’t it?” Willow nodded, her fingers tapping on the second computer. “I’ll cross-reference those tax ID numbers with the tax returns for Gray Box personnel and personal associates from our records.”
“How long will it take?” Gideon asked.
“It’s a small, narrow query—shouldn’t take too long.”
Another wet smack of flesh came from the cabin. Willow didn’t flinch this time, absorbed in her work.
Hopefully, Ares would get the intel needed to find her sister, and Gideon wouldn’t have to step in. Willow might know what he had done in theory, but he didn’t want her to see what he was truly capable of.
One laptop dinged. “I got a hit.” Willow eyed the screen with a frown. “But it’s not someone who works for the Gray Box. I don’t recognize the name. I’ll have to go back into the Gray Box records. It must be a family member.”
Gideon peered over her shoulder. The name didn’t ring a bell with him either. “Who is Mary Johnson?”
The blood drained from Maddox’s face. “That has to be a mistake. Run the query again.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the query,” Willow said. “Mary L. Johnson has two tax returns—married filing separately—showing dividends from the shell companies.”
“Who is Mary Johnson?” Gideon asked.
“It’s a mistake,” Maddox repeated, her tone and posture turning defensive.
Gideon stepped closer to her, and their eyes locked. “Who is she?”
A genuine look of confusion washed over Maddox. She just sat there, blinking, waiting so long to answer Gideon thought he’d have to ask her again.
“Amanda’s mother,” Maddox said. “Johnson is her maiden name.”
The response hit him like a sucker punch.
Maddox was right, this was some mistake. Amanda was one of them, part of the black ops inner circle. Not a traitor.
“Amanda is the mole,” Willow said softly.
“Don’t accuse her of that,” Maddox snapped, leaning forward. “This could be another decoy. A plot within a plot conspiracy to frame someone else in case the plan with you failed.”
“The money doesn’t lie,” Willow said.
“You have a million dollars sitting in a bank account. Are you saying that’s not a lie?”
“Calm down.” Gideon put his hand on Maddox’s shoulder, but she flinched away from him. “I don’t want to believe it either. We all care about Amanda.”
“I never touched the money in that bank account,” Willow said. “How do you explain regular payments to her mother over two years? Possibly longer? And why under her maiden name if not to hide it?”
Maddox’s gaze fell and she shook her head. “It can’t be her. It can’t.”
Maybe there was another explanation. Something they were overlooking. Gideon trusted Amanda. Maddox trusted her, everyone had…for years. How could she be guilty of conspiracy, espionage? How could she be the type of person they were trained to hunt? The enemy who had manipulated them all?
“Damn,” Maddox said in a defeated whisper, forehead creased.
“What is it?” Gideon asked.
Pressing her lips tight together as if the words were too terrible to utter, Maddox looked stricken. Almost heartbroken. “I overhead Amanda ask Nicole Tully how the power was shut off to the observation room the night Novak was killed. When Nicole mentioned the server room, Amanda asked if the entry records had been checked.”
“She baited Nicole to find that evidence against Willow,” Gideon said.
Maddox nodded and dropped her head back against the seat.
The stab of betrayal went deep and twisted. Amanda was a field operative—or at least she had been before switching to analysis—and understood the magnitude of this. She’d jeopardized national security, but this was also personal. Amanda had endangered the lives of every operative and had burned one of their own.
Besides that, she had more t
o lose than anyone. More than her career or her future behind bars. Her son, Jackson, meant everything to her.
No way she’d risk not being there for him, watching him grow up—not for money, and she was no ideological nutjob on a crusade.
“Daedalus must’ve compromised her somehow,” Gideon said.
Maddox sat silent, now expressionless, staring out the window, but a pang of sympathy still went through him for her. She’d recruited Amanda from the DEA. They were best friends, and she was Jackson’s godmother.
“How could she have fooled everyone for so long?” Willow asked.
Maddox drew in a strained breath. “You mean, how could she have fooled me? Lied to me every single day without my knowing? Pretend to be my friend without me suspecting?”
“No, I didn’t. I meant all of us. I admire her…admired. How she managed to juggle so much as a single mother. She was always patient and nice to me.” Willow stroked her throat as if searching for her pearls. “But she planted trackers on me, framed me. She tried to kill me.”
Had Amanda also been responsible for the brake failure on Gideon’s truck that killed his wife? He thought he’d be relieved to learn the truth, like finally scratching an itch that plagued you. Instead, his stomach churned with disgust.
He didn’t want to believe it. That Amanda was capable of such things.
But Amanda had done a lot of deep undercover work, pretending to be someone she wasn’t for years. Her first day out of the DEA academy, she’d said she was making a buy as part of a sting to bring down a drug lab. And Sanborn had thrown her into the deep end the moment she signed on the dotted line to work for him. It wasn’t until she got pregnant with Jackson and wanted something less hazardous that she’d ever pushed papers.
“She fooled all of us,” Gideon said.
Ares tapped him on the shoulder. “That guy won’t crack. So tightlipped, you’d think he didn’t have a tongue. I can’t get him to break, but I’m sure you can get him to crack like an egg.”
A watery sensation sloshed through Gideon’s gut. He looked at Willow, dreading the words forming on his tongue. What would she think of him, once she saw who he really was? How ruthless, how pitiless he had to be sometimes?
The horror she would witness, the terrible things she’d see him do in the next hour would forever define him and color the way she looked at him. This moment was inevitable. Sooner or later, whatever they shared had to come to an end.
Willow glanced up at him with tenderness radiating from her, and the sick feeling inside him intensified.
If she didn’t consider him a monster now, she would by the time he was finished.
“Ares, lay down plastic so we don’t ruin the carpet. I’ll break him.”
41
Grand Cayman International Airport
Monday, July 8, 1:30 p.m. EST/2:30 p.m. EDT
Omega took his first-class seat on the flight from Grand Cayman bound for Dulles International. He’d sent the helicopter back in lieu of the faster commercial option. He clutched the burner phone in his palm that he’d bought in the airport, dreading the call he had to make like a coward.
Defeat was a corrosive burn in his blood, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. Shame was the only thing keeping the killing edge of his temper in check. He’d be dead if not for instinct and sharp reflexes that had saved his ass.
Would Daedalus be happy to know he was alive even though he’d failed?
There were many days when their empire seemed more important to him than anything else. As though he were willing to sacrifice Omega, all they shared, and all they could have in the future if it meant that Daedalus would get to keep his crown.
Omega hated the ache in his chest. It wasn’t so much that he’d fucked up the mission as it was that he was about to break Daedalus’s heart with disappointment.
The flight attendant asked everyone to please turn off and stow electronic devices.
He needed them to know his status and decided to text Rho.
Stone and Harper are alive. Proceed with exit plan. I’m flying commercial to Dulles. O.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to power down your phone now,” the flight attendant said.
He needed to wait for acknowledgement first. “In a minute. It’ll be off before we taxi.” He threw in a glare for good measure.
Her smile fell, and she took the hint, moving on to nag another passenger.
The phone rang. He didn’t need to look at the number. It was Daedalus. Rho would’ve texted in return.
After the things Daedalus had said to him the last time they’d spoken—conveyed the imperative to kill Stone and Harper—he wasn’t up for going another round with him. Not yet.
The ringing stopped. A text chimed.
Quitting is beneath you. This can be salvaged. We need to go to war, or we’ll lose everything.
They wouldn’t lose each other, but Daedalus wanted to have it all.
Omega ground his molars.
Another text came through.
Will send helicopter to Dulles for you.
Walking away from everything they’d built would be like chopping off a limb. Neither of them wanted to do it, but this was triage. Daedalus was going to get them both killed.
A third chime on the phone.
None of this means anything without you. Come back to me. D.
The viselike tightness in Omega’s chest eased, and the heated sting in his blood lessened.
Love was a fool’s game, but it was the only one he wanted to play with Daedalus. He was the only person Omega had ever hit all six cylinders with. They’d been together many years, were a part of each other, and Omega knew Daedalus would never accept retreat. Not when they could still win, no matter how slim the odds.
And Omega would risk everything for him, time and time again. The strategy wheel in his mind started spinning.
He sent one last text before powering off the phone.
I can’t seem to deny you. Bring more men. Arm up heavy gear. We go to war.
* * *
Somewhere over North Carolina
Monday, July 8, 3:33 p.m. EDT
Soul-shredding screams filled the cabin of the plane. The sound was filtered through Willow’s earplugs but not muted.
She should’ve listened to Gideon and Maddox and not looked, but without work to focus on, how could she not?
The situation was surreal. She sat in a plush leather chair, thick carpet beneath her feet, polished surfaces of the cabin glinting with soft light, but her stomach churned as she watched, horrified, while Gideon did one of the things he did best.
Interrogation.
A mechanics tool chest was open beside him. Ordinary devices turned into instruments of pain were spread out on one of the plastic-lined seats. Gideon asked the mercenary a question. If he didn’t get an answer, he used one of those tools. With shocking precision and gut-wrenching imagination.
The rest of the team didn’t appear fazed. Alistair slept, stretched across a leather sofa. Reece read a comic, The Walking Dead, sipping a prepackaged protein shake.
As Gideon ripped out a man’s teeth with pliers—an evil man who’d tried to kill her—Maddox filed her fingernails, rounding each tip into a perfect oval, rubbing a peachy-smelling oil into her cuticles. Giving herself a freaking manicure!
Oh my God. Willow would never be able to stomach the scent of peaches again.
With earbuds also tucked in, Sean—or rather, Ares—nodded to the beat of whatever music played from his iPod, but like Castle, he never took his eyes off what Gideon did.
They acted like torturing a man for information was normal, another day in the field, protecting and serving the country. But this was…
Extreme.
Violent.
Nauseating, yet necessary. This craziness was their basel
ine.
The last few days had shown her the true depths of danger that came as a package deal with Gideon’s job. She’d been inches from death today and shot a man in the head in self-defense. A terrifying man trying to kill her, yes, but she’d taken a life. Acid roiled in her gut.
Gideon wasn’t just trained as an interrogator. He had done this, exclusively, for months with the CIA. She understood the ugly nature of what transpired at black sites where prisoners were grilled, where he’d done his work.
But knowing a thing and bearing witness to it were worlds apart.
The information they needed was vital. Her sister’s life depended on the answers this mercenary provided. Yet no amount of rationalization stopped bile from burning her throat. The man wailed, handcuffed to a seat. Blood-chilling screams broadcast through the cabin, and the agonized sounds twisted her insides.
“Daedalus!” The merc spat out a gob of blood. “Daedalus has her.”
Gideon stood motionless, but Willow reared back, taking the blow of surprise for him.
If Daedalus was alive, then Gideon killed the wrong man three years ago. Amanda must have tampered with mission details somehow to protect his identity.
“Is he on-site with her?” Gideon’s voice was tight as a whip.
“Yes. He wanted to handle things in person.”
“Where are they?”
The battered man shook his head, sniveling. “He’ll kill me. I-I can’t tell you.”
Gideon held out his latex-gloved hand, smeared red with blood. Eyes ice-cold, body taut with a honed hardness.
Castle slapped a power drill into his palm.
Squeezing her eyes closed, she couldn’t take anymore, but she also couldn’t sit fifteen feet away and not look. She pried her eyes open.
Gideon pressed the spinning drill bit to the mercenary’s kneecap.
Her gut convulsed, slushing up the breakfast in her stomach. She flipped the buckle of the lap seatbelt and dashed to the bathroom, legs quaking like toothpicks. Inside, she slammed the door shut and retched into the toilet.