Shift

by Sidney Bristol

  Tori patted her pocket. “You just gave me peace of mind. Thanks.”

  She turned and walked between the server racks toward the front of his workshop. A dozen excuses to keep her there flew through his mind, but each one would delay his search for the Russian threat. In the scheme of things, keeping her safe was more important than keeping her near. He watched until she slipped through the front door and by the time the locks reengaged he’d turned, bringing the images from his external cameras onto his main screens.

  Tori strolled past the pool, glancing away from the camera. Was she aware of the move? As often as he’d observed her, he’d noted the seemingly ingrained reaction to avoid cameras, keep her head down. The old spy must have passed along some of his tricks to the girls, which was a good thing. For their sakes. Still, he treasured these glimpses of her.

  He continued to stare at the monitors until she reversed out of the drive and pulled onto the street. Even then he could pivot the camera on the fence to watch her all the way to the four-way stop sign at the end of the street. More importantly, it told him there wasn’t a soul lying in wait for her.

  Who was the blond woman in the photograph? He hadn’t been able to copy the image, with her watching him so closely, but he could recall the features and pose enough to do a quick sketch.

  Emery had each team member’s files on hand. He was tasked with keeping them up-to-date, but even then they only went so far. Each file covered the highlights of a person’s history, but there were holes big enough to drive a ’67 Chevy Impala through. Tori and Roni’s files in particular were missing chunks of information. He was reasonably certain the FBI had it but wasn’t sharing.

  Did he dare to hack the system to find out more?

  What if the key to the new threat was buried in her history?

  Before he could think better of the urge, he spun to the monitor set as his FBI terminal. His security clearance could get him a lot of things, but his record kept his hands tied in some areas. In a time of need, well, he didn’t have many qualms about hacking the government’s systems.

  After a precursory search on Tori’s name provided no further information, he switched to a different monitor. While he might be sitting in Miami, Florida, a handy piece of code made it appear as though he were accessing the systems via the Quantico offices. A direct search for the information would set off red flags, so he set a program to crawl the database for entries with a list of key words. Those key words would serve as doorstops to areas he wasn’t granted permission to see, allowing him to then access the files associated with his search.

  He wanted to watch the results as they slowly dropped into his queue, but he had a Russian to find and one to protect.

  * * *

  Tori pulled into the parking lot at her apartment complex. From the security feed at Emery’s, she estimated she was on the very edge of the monitor. Was he watching? Did he notice her comings and goings? It took every bit of her control not to wave when she got out of her Lancer and strolled to her front door. He probably wouldn’t appreciate her pointing out their security measures, on the off chance someone from the Eleventh or Evers’s operation was watching. It was a sobering reminder that they weren’t safe. They were just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  The lights in her unit were on, leaking around the blackout curtains. No doubt Roni was inside packing for her trip. Tori hated that she was going. There were too many uncertainties and potential threats to divide their team. If their father were still around, he’d tell them it was time to split. Make a clean start. God, they’d run so many times it was her first instinct.

  It literally made her sick to her stomach to think that Roni would be away, where Tori couldn’t watch her back. They’d always been close, maybe because they had to be or because that was just how twins were. It wasn’t like they could trust anyone else. Except these last few years had given them a respite. A team who actually cared about them.

  She slid her key into the lock and tapped the door twice with her knuckles before twisting the dead bolt.

  “It’s just me,” Tori said, stepping quickly into the apartment.

  Miami might be the place they’d been able to live in peace the longest, but it didn’t mean it would last. They lived with the constant knowledge that someday the knock on the door wouldn’t be a friend, and they’d have to hit the road again. Just the two of them.

  “Where have you been?” Roni stood in the doorway to her bedroom, several shirts thrown over her arm.

  “I had a few errands to run and I stopped by Emery’s.” She wanted to stuff that little detail back into her mouth.

  “Seriously?” Roni rolled her eyes and stepped into her room.

  Tori followed, trying not to bristle. She would not take the bait. Wasn’t happening.

  “What were you doing at Emery’s? Tell him you want his hot bod yet?” Roni tossed the shirts onto her bed in separate piles that appeared to be outfits. She glanced over her shoulder and winked at Tori.

  She wasn’t going to engage. It was just the smart way to go.

  “I had some questions about how to rewire the Lancer and wanted to get his opinion on an idea.” Okay, so she hadn’t actually asked him—yet. She was saving that for a really low point when she needed an Emery fix and didn’t have a better reason.

  “Really? You’ll have to tell me about it. I could do with some tweaking on my car. I think the acceleration is off a bit. Think we could speed that up?”

  “Before tomorrow?”

  “Nah, it’s still fast enough to win.”

  “Okay.” Tori shrugged. She might not agree with her sister’s every decision, but that was why Roni was the driver and Tori the mechanic. There wasn’t anything that said they couldn’t flip their roles, they simply chose not to.

  “How was Emery?” Roni purred his name. Tori wanted to punch her. Why had she ever confided in her sister? Worst idea ever.

  “Fine.”

  “Come on, give me more than that. What was he wearing?”

  Tori could recall every detail of each outfit—and the span of moments in between where he’d only been halfway dressed.

  “Shut up,” she said, refusing to fall victim to her sister’s seemingly innocent question.

  “You could just tell him you like him, lapochka. Or get him drunk and fuck him. Might be better that way. You could tell him it was all a happy accident afterward and go on with it. I really think you need someone with a bit more spunk. I mean, I think I get why you like him. He’s safe, part of the team, knows our history more or less.” Roni shrugged. “You could do worse.”

  Tori squeezed her hands into fists. Emery wasn’t safe. Still waters ran deep, and tonight she’d glimpsed a bit more of who he was. Those scars were a story she didn’t know yet.

  “Here. I picked up your necklace.” Tori pulled the chain from her pocket and handed it to her sister.

  “Thanks, I was going to pick it up in the morning.” Roni studied the locket and saint for a moment before fastening the chain around her neck. “Julian’s not going with us tomorrow. He’s got a gig.”

  Tori’s stomach fell. Again? So soon?

  Julian and Aiden were the coleaders of their little operation. While the majority of the crew were contract employees of the FBI, Julian was basically the Hoover’s bitch. They’d coined the term for their government overlords in the beginning because the red tape bullshit was a waste of time, and it had stuck. For Julian, though, whatever trash they needed cleaned up, whatever dirty job had to be done—the Feds sent him in to end things.

  “Roni, I don’t like this.” Tori pushed the clothes aside and sat on the edge of the mattress. “You guys in Orlando, a couple of us here, and Julian—God knows where. We’re too spread out. I mean, we don’t know shit about why we’re still here or what’s going on. I have a bad feeling about this.”

  They were quiet for a moment, neither speaking while Roni went about her packing.

  “I know, it’s not ideal, but
whatever.” She folded a pair of pants and tossed them into her small suitcase.

  Their contracts with the FBI for this gig should be over, except it wasn’t. They’d nabbed Michael Evers like they were supposed to and now . . . No word. No orders. Not a peep.

  “I think it’s weird Evers’s people are basically silent. It’s like they just disappeared.” Roni spoke staring at the wall.

  “I’d have expected one of the mid-level bosses to try taking over or something.” They’d gone through the list of things they expected and suspected a dozen times, and yet they never came closer to a real reason for the lack of traction on the case. They were stalled. Spinning out. Stuck in the mud. Something had to change.

  “I need to drive.” Roni tossed the rest of the clothes into her bag and turned to face Tori. “Want to ride shotgun?”

  “Where we going?”

  “What does it matter? Come on.”

  It was late and Tori would be doing the job of three people for the next few days—but it didn’t matter. A drive always put things into focus, even if she was only focused on their lack of a plan.

  Chapter Three

  Emery rubbed his knuckles over his eyelids and silenced the incessant beeping of his phone as he rose to consciousness.

  Fifteen minutes.

  It would have to do.

  Besides, the guy he needed to speak to would be sitting down at his desk in a matter of moments. At least this time Emery wouldn’t have to pretend to be someone else.

  He’d had several successful hits on his data crawling program, but he hadn’t reviewed his list until it was so late some might call it early. To say it was a night of discovery was an understatement.

  Emery knew Tori’s history was a hall full of locked doors she couldn’t talk about, but he’d never realized just how much she and Roni kept back from everyone. Now he had many of the keys and knew what was behind some of those doors. They were the things nightmares were made from. Like the time CPS was called out to their rural home in upstate New York because the girls bore marks from their father’s weekend “training.” Considering the Russians were known for making their special forces trainees wade through pools of blood while fighting off seasoned Spetsnaz, he could only guess at what Tori had survived.

  To start with, Tori wasn’t Tori’s real name. It was Viktoriya. And this wasn’t the first time she’d changed her name, but for some reason both she and Veronika had gone with derivatives of their birth names.

  There were more questions where Tori’s family was concerned, but now he knew who the blond woman was. Her mother. Olga. Emery also felt reasonably certain the Russian hit team was being called in on some sort of retaliation hit job against the girls’ father, Alexander Iradokovia. Unless the spook had faked his death, he was long gone, but the mafia had an even longer memory. Emery also knew where the girls’ new surname came from. Chazov was the maiden name of one of Olga’s aunts.

  The girls’ lives had woven in and out of the FBI records since they were babies, first as footnotes to Alexander’s files, then later because the girls were proving useful. The details about their early work were vague, usually pertaining to information they could provide, often missing chunks of time or reports that should have been filed, but the FBI had used Tori since she was a girl. And now she was a contracted employee. It was a miracle the girls hadn’t been killed, considering all the FBI had asked of them.

  Their history was fascinating, but it didn’t give him the window into Tori’s life he’d secretly wanted. It was merely a road map that told him the when and where, but never the why. Guilt gnawed at him. Though it was part of his job to know, he didn’t have to pry. Would Tori be upset at him for digging around? He couldn’t tell. The good thing was, he had a lead. Or at least a place to start.

  Special Agent Tony Cardno was stationed in New York and worked on the FBI’s mob task force. If the Russians were shifting people around, he was the one to ask. He was also the source of Emery’s most informative data hits of the night.

  What exactly was the agent searching that would return results that included Tori’s history?

  The last time he’d had to call an FBI source, Emery had made up a name and a bullshit reason to get the information he needed. At least this time he’d met Tony.

  Emery grabbed a cup of instant coffee and settled in at his desk. It took him a few moments to route a call through Washington, D.C., for good measure. By the time he slid his headset on, the line rang.

  “Pick up,” Emery muttered.

  “Cardno.”

  Emery almost sighed with relief.

  “Tony, it’s Emery down in Florida.”

  “Hey, what are you doing calling me?” Tony’s tone brightened. Emery had almost expected the man to have forgotten him.

  “Hey, man, is this your work I’m hearing all over the news?” Emery sipped his coffee and waited. For the last few days Emery had caught snatches here and there on all the major channels about the Russian spy ring and their method of passing information along in seemingly innocent items. Hats. Umbrellas. Sporting tickets. It was all very Cold War, and they’d been quite successful with it for a while.

  “I can’t talk about that, man.”

  “All right. Well, give my congrats to whoever is busting that spy ring. That’s some crazy stuff.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, man, but that’s not why I called. I was hoping I could ask you a few questions. I’ve got an asset I think some mob boys are about to target, and I was hoping you’d know a bit about the current Russian movements in and out of the state.”

  “That’s not specific at all. Remind me, what op are you running?” A door closed, shutting out the ambient noise of an office in the morning.

  The sounds of normalcy hit Emery in the stomach. He’d pretty much been on his own since his indoctrination into the FBI. Granted, he worked best without distractions, but there was something about being near enough to a buzz of human activity that was comforting.

  “Did I lose you?” Tony asked.

  “No, sorry, still drinking my coffee.”

  “I hear you. You caught me between my second and third.”

  “I’m in deep cover with a team here in Florida. Couple of field agents and assets working in a front business. It’s a long-term type deal. We’ve got someone on our team with a family history of being on the wrong side of the mob. Picked up a couple of jewel thieves who were trying to scramble their way out of town before some badass Russian touched down. I’m hoping this won’t impact my team, but . . .”

  But he was afraid their luck was up and the walls were about to come crashing down.

  “Damn.” Tony sighed. “I was hoping word on the street was wrong. Give me a sec.” Keys clicked on Tony’s end and Emery turned his attention to his still active data aggregator. Tony’s search results returned in real time on Emery’s end.

  He had a name.

  “Matvei Kozlov is a sick son of a bitch. We know he’s the big dog’s go-to hit man, but we can’t pin him for anything. He doesn’t leave anything behind. No evidence, DNA, or bodies. The guy is a spook. His targets just disappear. The last job we think he did was the family of a mid-level boss who was about to turn informant. He wiped them clean off the face of the planet.” Tony’s tone changed once more, and Emery got it. There were times when the injustice of what they couldn’t fix was depressing.

  Emery had latched on to the FBI as a way to do the right thing. To fix his wrongs. But sometimes it felt like they couldn’t do anything to change the downward spiral the world was in.

  Tony continued speaking over Emery’s momentary lapse. “I hadn’t heard Matvei was on the move, only that one of his associates was, which usually means Matvei is about to be activated. He works with a team of three men, really bad guys.”

  “Figures.”

  “Who’s he after?”

  “Heard the name Chazov before?” Despite Emery’s searching, he couldn’t get a full list of the twin
s’ prior aliases, but he’d seen them referred to by half a dozen different handles.

  “No.”

  “What about Iradokovia?”

  Silence.

  “The twins?” Tony sounded surprised now.

  “You know them?” Emery sat forward. Was that good or bad recognition?

  “They’re not my biggest fans. They’re assets now?”

  If Tony hadn’t accessed the twins’ records, who had? Of the hits Emery had seen on their info, a few were direct searches. As in someone out there was actively digging into their past. Emery had hoped it was Tony, but there was no way to tell without setting off alarms and bringing the wrath of the FBI down on his head.

  “Yeah. They do a pretty good job.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear they’re still alive.” His voice rang with sincerity. Whatever their history, Tony was genuinely glad they were breathing. “Last I saw them, they bolted after one of their dad’s old buddies found them in protective custody. Can’t say I blame them. It was a fucked-up job. They doing good?”

  “Good enough.”

  “Good to hear. All right, so . . . I don’t think you have clearance for this, but fuck it. I want Matvei’s ass nailed to a wall and I don’t care how it’s done or who does it. I’m sending you some files and my notes. He’s slippery, smart, and some god has given his blessing or else we’d have caught him by now.”

  Good thing for Tony, Emery’s crew didn’t have to follow the letter of the law.

  “I really appreciate that, Tony.”

  Emery gave Tony a remote server to send the files to. Emery would have to remember to repay Tony in some fashion. Before they ended the call, the files hit Emery’s end. He dug into Tony’s gift immediately. The information was extensive, and more than he had time to go through, so he focused on the more recent reports, opening and scanning the documents before going to the next. One of the most recent included a set of telephone numbers recently associated with two of Matvei’s associates.

  Either Emery could undertake the long process of filing for permission to locate the cell phones based on GPS capability—or he could use the completely legal means of tracking their social media accounts. It was the same way Emery kept tabs on many of the Eleventh Street gang members.