Brother's Keeper V: Wylie (the complete series BOX SET): NEW RELEASE + Series Box SET included!

by Stephanie St. Klaire

  “Did you catch that?” Dace said from the other room, talking into his brothers’ earpieces. “He knows about our safe houses. He’s playing games here with subliminal threats.”

  “Who were you running from, Kimble? Who were you hiding your daughter from?”

  “I told you, the cartel. Look, I know you took down the biggest threat, Esteban Valdez, years ago. That was my case, and I was glad to see you handled him the way you did, but he was a small piece to a bigger picture.”

  “How so?”

  “The minute he went down, my job should’ve gotten easier, but it just got harder. Everyone else out there was hungry for his dynasty, the power. Until his daughter stepped in, that is. But then, you already know that too.”

  “He’s threatening us,” Dace said into his brothers’ ears. “He knows about Eva, and he’s threatening us. Play it cool.”

  “His daughter?” Wylie questioned. Eva was a sensitive subject with him, and he needed to know how much danger she might be in. “How so? She’s just some entitled rich diva. You know something we should know?”

  “Not really. Just heard things. Heard she took over Daddy’s business dealings.”

  “We only know about his legitimate businesses, and from what I understand, she’s doing a terrible job.”

  “That may be so, and I’m honestly glad to hear it. These people are powerful, and there’s been a resurgence out of nowhere. I’m certain that’s who came for us,” Kimble said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. I had teams staged everywhere, and we’d taken down some of the heaviest players. These newer small cells running rogue were just into small stuff and no threat to my family or me. I was in Moss Bridge to collect them, and…”

  “Them?” Luke asked.

  “My daughter and grandson,” Kimble said.

  “Ivy had a kid?”

  Kimble smiled wide. “Yes. He’s a bright boy, full of life. It’s been a joy to help raise him.”

  “That fucker is toying with you, Luke. Teams everywhere is code for eyes and ears everywhere. He knows I’m listening. He’s using Cash to get me to come in there.”

  “That’s great for Ivy and her husband.”

  “Oh, she didn’t marry. The boy’s father is her bodyguard of all people. Nice fella, not sure I like that it got personal, but it was what it was.” Kimble turned emotional again. “They’re missing. That’s why I’m here. I-I can’t do this on my own, and I can’t trust anyone else.”

  “What makes you think you can trust us?”

  “Lack of options. Common enemy. You knew my daughter. I don’t know.” The man dropped his head. “I don’t know where else to go, and they have them.”

  “Who? Who has them?” Luke asked.

  “Cartel. I don’t have any other enemies, and I was their biggest.”

  “Then why were you about to take Ivy out of hiding if they were still out there?”

  “I didn’t know they’d been resurrecting, not at the speed they were. I thought we had it under control, and she’d get her life back, be able to come home.”

  “You’re the fucking CIA, Kimble. You really want to play the card of I didn’t know after you just sat here and told us you have the highest security clearance possible?”

  “I know. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I really have no other theory here. This is why I couldn’t trust my team. Where do you think my intel comes from? Them. I’ve been played. There’s something much bigger than me and my clearance going on here. I need your help to reel it in and find my family before they hurt them.”

  “How do you know they’re alive?” Luke asked.

  “Because I’m still alive. They need me. The group that took me, took my grandson. Ivy was at the little market when this happened. I have no idea what happened to her. They interrogated me for days, looking for intel, but I wouldn’t crack. They threatened my grandson… Said they’d find my daughter…”

  That had Dace’s attention. If any of this were true, that means there was a good chance Cash had been harmed, and that didn’t sit well with him for obvious reasons.

  “Don’t buy it,” Dace said for the other room to hear. “He’s using Cash. He’s threatening him. He knows we have Ivy. Process of elimination – he knows we have her.”

  “How did they find you to begin with?”

  “A mole.”

  “A mole?” Liam asked. “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Had to be. The intelligence we were collecting required the highest security clearance there is – higher than the president – so it had to be someone on my team. I think…I think it was the boy’s father. Eli Clayton.”

  “What the hell, old man?” Eli said, yelling at the screen. “He knows I’m not the boy’s father, and he knows I didn’t have the intel to trade.”

  “You’re unaccounted for,” Dace said. “He’s phishing. Let it go.”

  Luke had heard everything said in the other room and agreed with Dace and Eli. “Who is Eli Clayton?”

  “He’s an ex-operative. I worked with him on foreign stuff, he turned on his country and came to work for us as a confidential informant. He’s smart, savvy, and I trusted him. That will always be my biggest mistake because it may have cost me my family. He was the only one who knew where Ivy and my grandson were, and he was the only one who knew I was coming to town. This trip was completely off the books; the rest of the team had no idea. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  Dace looked at Eli with a questioning eye. “Ex-operative? C.I.? Traitor to your country…wherever that is?”

  “Oh please, did you think I learned my shit on the playground at school? Yes, I’m most of those things, but I’m no liar. And he is.”

  “I was ready to hand over the last of what we’d been working on so Homeland could make their arrests and I could retire. There are several pending cases with warrants and the like. You can verify that easily to know I’m telling the truth.”

  Carter looked at Dace. “He’s being truthful there. We do have several cases pending that are active, but I still feel like we’re being played here. He’s too detailed, well-rehearsed. He knows exactly what to say to get our attention. He knows we’re affiliated, and he’s playing on that.”

  “You think he knows you’re here too?” Dace asked.

  “Maybe. I was just up north handling a few of these cases when Eli contacted me. If Eli figured it out, it wouldn’t be hard for Kimble – at least to give a good story, anyway.”

  “This was all sabotage. I was completely infiltrated, and all those cases are now at risk. This is what they wanted. Cartel has the most to gain by this.”

  “How’d you get away, Kimble?” Luke asked, trying to catch the man off guard by switching gears.

  “It wasn’t easy. They interrogated me day and night, withheld food, beat me. I’d been moved to multiple locations in a short amount of time. I think they were afraid the cavalry would be coming. The last night, we were down south on some kind of farm. The small crew left to watch me had a little too much to drink by the campfire. Pretty cliché, really. I asked to go to the bathroom, and they let me go alone because, well…I told them I had to defecate, and none wanted to assist, as you can imagine. I took my opportunity to run. That’s how I got the gunshot wound to my arm. If not for the booze, I’m sure I would be caught or dead.”

  “And you just walked straight here,” Luke deadpanned.

  “No, of course not. I have my own places to hide with transportation. You don’t get this deep in the agency and not have your own collection. Trust nobody – that’s the CIA. I did what I could to gather information, but there wasn’t a trail to follow. That’s why I think Eli Clayton turned and started working for them. He saw to it there was no trail.”

  “The man’s lying. For Christ's sake, hand him the Oscar and call it a night.” Eli turned away from the screen and rand his hands through his hair in a huff. “How? How did I do all that when he’s the fucking agent with resources at his disposal?”

&nbs
p; Luke heard Eli’s question and thought it was a good one. “So this Eli guy…he’s an agent?”

  “Yes,” Kimble said. “He has to be. I think he was placed to watch me. I was getting to close to something. Something big.”

  “This is sounding familiar,” Dace said. “It’s like he’s reciting something right out of our playbook.”

  “If the cartel had this type of resurgence, they didn’t do it alone. They did it with help and resources, likely from our government if I’m this level of threat. This thing goes really high. I hate to say it, but our government has their hands all over this, and they’re in the cartel’s back pocket.”

  “What would our government stand to gain by getting into bed with the cartel?”

  “Everything. Drugs, money, power, their own off-book militia… Don’t underestimate the value of an outlaw. Our government is full of them.”

  “Okay. Why now?”

  “That, I don’t know. That’s where you come in. I know you’ve been running ops in the background of almost every mission I’ve been a part of. I know who you are, who you’re connected with, and what you’re capable of.”

  “There!” Eli said ecstatically. “Right there. That’s what I’ve been telling you all along. He knows who, what, and why when it comes to you. You’re the threat here, not the cartel. He’s just trying to speak your language.”

  “Noted,” Dace said.

  “The way I see it is, we have two common interests and can help each other. I have access to areas you may not, and you have the ability to offer protection and a safe haven while we figure this out.”

  “What are our two common interests?” Luke asked.

  “Cartel and my daughter.”

  “What does Ivy have to do with this besides the fact she’s missing?”

  “I looked for her. She wasn’t there when I went back to Moss Bridge. No one was. It was cleaned out as though nothing happened. The cartel said they would find her. Not we have her but that they could find her. They have no idea. Where did she go? Where did Eli go? They haven’t been seen since Moss Bridge. She left for the farmers’ market alone but never came back, and then Eli turns up gone too? Awfully convenient. My grandson was taken when I was, but I never see him after that? He was put in the vehicle behind me.”

  “You think Ivy and this…Eli asshole are in bed with the cartel? Is that what I’m hearing?”

  “I don’t want to say the words out loud, but I have no alternate theory. The three of them disappeared. For all I know, Ivy and Eli were in the vehicle behind me that my grandson got into. It’s the only thing I can make sense of.”

  “Why?”

  “The same reason everyone does. She’s always blamed me for her mother’s death. Money. Power. Spite. Revenge. The biggest mistake I made was trusting Eli to watch over her. He brainwashed her, changed her, groomed her if you will.”

  “Hmm. This all sounds familiar, Eli. Isn’t that what you said about her father?” Dace asked.

  “If you believe this bullshit…”

  Dace put up a hand to silence him so he could listen to David.

  “I took her away from her life here to protect her. She’d just lost her mother not long before and then her fiancée. I did that. I took Dace from her the day I made her leave town. I don’t think she ever forgave me for that either.”

  “I think he’s bragging,” Dace said. “He’s telling me he did this, took her from me, took my son from me. He’s trying to break me, and I’m not even in the fucking room. He wants a reaction.”

  “Dace is on his way,” Luke said. “Maybe you should discuss that part with him.”

  “I do owe him an apology. I’ve always felt guilty for what I did, and it killed me that I couldn’t tell him. He was like a son to me…hell, he almost was my son.”

  “And that’s my cue to enter. Hang tight here with Carter and watch the show,” Dace said as he headed for the door.

  “Kick the old man in the balls for me, eh?”

  Dace stood outside the door where David Kimble was being held and took a deep breath. It would take everything he had to maintain composure and play his hand right.

  When he walked in, he took a seat next to Luke and looked Kimble in the eye. “Long time, no see.”

  “In all fairness, that was the plan, Dace. It is good to see you, though. I mean that.”

  “Uh-huh. So what’s the story? What did I miss?”

  “He was ambushed, CIA behind it, other branches behind it, cartel behind it, Ivy is missing, has a kid, and she has a boy toy. Oh, and she’s in bed with the cartel,” Luke said, standing up and sliding his chair away.

  Dace let out a slow and low whistle. “That’s a lot of bullshit. Is there truth in there anywhere, David?”

  “It’s all true.”

  “Uh-huh. Did you kill your wife?” Dace fired a shot right to the gut.

  “Of course not. She was the love of my life. She died in a car accident – a staged car accident. She was murdered because of me.”

  “Because you covered it up?”

  “I did that to protect Ivy. If word got out, we would have appeared more vulnerable than we already were. Every enemy, past and present, would have come to pick a fight. That’s why I put her under protective custody.”

  Luke chimed in to cover Dace. “I thought you said you hid her because you were receiving threats.”

  “I did. That’s a pretty big threat, wouldn’t you say?”

  Dace leaned in and spoke in a low voice. “Maybe your wife was someone making good on her own threat.”

  David paused. “Perhaps. Perhaps I let her know too much. Perhaps her knowledge is what put her in danger, and that’s a mistake – oversight really – on my part, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life. I may as well have killed her by letting her in. But not this, not this time, there’s so much more at stake.”

  “Why? You got a deal about to go bad?”

  “Deal? What kind of deal?” David was anxious. “Do you know something? Please. If you know something…”

  “The kind of deal that puts you and the agency smack dab in the middle of a conspiracy…”

  “I came here for help.”

  “Right. Can’t trust anyone. Bad guys out to get you and all that. Then there’s the daughter who’s somehow involved with the cartel.”

  “I need help finding my grandson, Cashel O’Reilly.”

  This was the part they’d been waiting for. They all played along with looks of surprise when he said the child was one of their own.

  “Ivy…her son…he’s your son, Dace. I didn’t buy that he was Eli’s. The kid…he looks just like you – even acts like you. I-I didn’t want to risk that information. You deserved to know first.”

  “With a room full of people. Makes sense. How do we know all this to be true? How do I know I have a son? How can we trust you? When you lied about Cash only minutes ago and are already changing your story?”

  Kimble tilted his head and glared while holding up his bound hands. “What do I have to gain by coming here for help? I have everything to lose. Whether Ivy is a victim or a player in this, that boy is purely innocent. I can’t and won’t fail him.”

  Dace stood and made his way to the doorway. “And how are we going to do that, David?”

  “By finding Ivy.”

  Dace guffawed. “Pfft. Get him into holding and let the doc in to to see him.”

  Before he let David Kimble leave, he grabbed him by the collar, his face mere inches from David’s. His anger so pronounced he spat between clenched teeth as he spoke. “If I find out you are behind any of this – any of it at all – I will fucking hunt you down and kill you.”

  David blinked quickly as he jutted his jaw out and put on a weak grin, lips quivering, “That’s precisely why I came to you for help. Remember that seething rage when you look for my grandson, and you use it to bring down the people who took him from you.”

  30

  “I can’t believe he
said that,” Ivy said after watching the playback of when her father was accusing her of being the enemy.

  Dace shrugged. “I can. He’s desperate. Something went wrong somewhere, and he’s looking for a way out, even if it means sacrificing you.”

  “The stuff he said, though, about Eli and me? None of it’s true. Even if it were, he’d have nothing to base it on. He wasn’t around, not like that, until more recently. And Cash? Why would he use him that way?”

  “I don’t know that he was.” Dace looked out the window of his apartment, looking for the words he needed in the view. “I don’t know that he knows where Cash is. I have nothing to base this on but instinct, but perhaps that’s the part of the deal that went wrong. He’s setting you and Eli up as potential fall guys and using us to find Cash.”

  Ivy covered her mouth in shock. “Oh, my God. Cash is being held as leverage? By the cartel?”

  “I don’t know. I think he’s leverage whether it’s by the cartel or your father. We need to find him. Your dad is the way to Cash.”

  “So you’re going to work with him?”

  “So to speak…” Dace said. “We are on to him, and he knows it. I believe he was here looking for information either way. I hate to say it, but his points about Eli were all valid and oddly, nearly identical to what Eli said about him when he first arrived. Something isn’t right there, and I don’t know which one of them is right or wrong. The only difference is Eli is your biggest defender, and your father is pinning it all on you.”

  “Eli would never…” Ivy stopped herself. “People aren’t always as they seem. That’s the lesson here. I feel like complete shit saying this, but I understand why you’d question Eli’s position in all this. I don’t want to believe it, but I understand.”

  “It may not be entirely sinister. Eli has continued to withhold information from us time and time again, and now we find out he’s an ex-operative who turned on his country as a double agent? That’s something to consider. It’s clear his role in this is definitely not allegiance to your father, but it is possible your father is on to something, and he is benefiting in some way. Maybe he turned on your dad. Maybe he’s in it for the fat cartel paycheck because we know their pockets are deep. Or maybe…he works for the feds, and they’re on to your dad.”