Dangerous in Action (Aegis Group Alpha Team, #2)

by Sidney Bristol

  Success.

  She scurried across and twisted the flimsy lock into place.

  Isaac and the others would be foolish if they gave her unrestricted internet access. Just because they’d shared something didn’t mean she could blindly trust him.

  “Tanya? Is that you?”

  “Brett. I don’t have a lot of time, but I need your help.”

  “The hell you do.” The sandy haired man in the grainy image shook his head. “I’m ninety-nine percent positive I know where this is going, and I can’t help you.”

  “What? But—”

  “Just listen, okay?” Brett stared at her, those steel gray eyes of his slicing her deep. “What I know is that a highly-classified op has collapsed. We have an informant who has turned on us, and agents feeding the same CI intel.”

  “Orlando. You mean him?”

  “No names.”

  “What if I can give you evidence?”

  “Don’t. Whatever you give me goes up the chain of command, and then he knows.”

  “But, Brett, what do I do?” Her hands shook. He’d been her last resort.

  “I don’t know, but the woman I met three years ago was a resilient, intelligent woman. I’m sure she’d have friends who could help her out. I’ve got to go. Don’t call me again. Whoever his informant is, they’re in my office. It’s not safe for you here.”

  The screen went dark.

  Tanya swallowed and watched the chat interface blip back to the default screen.

  For a moment she sat there staring at the carpet. The claws of panic sunk their nails into her so deep she gasped, her whole body shuddering.

  The CIA couldn’t help her. Robert and Interpol were out of the question. She had no other direct contacts to tap into. Unless Isaac and his friends pulled through and did what she couldn’t.

  What had she learned? What had Brett said?

  It was public Orlando had turned. That was a start.

  She stood and began pacing the room.

  If people were wary of Orlando, he’d have less chance to do something awful. On one hand it would ding his reputation if it got out he’d worked with various intelligence agencies. On the other, it lent credibility to his name.

  What was his end game?

  Tanya had identified early on that Orlando’s primary goal was revenge at any cost. He was patient, willing to set up the perfect trap, but in the last few months she’d seen a decided break with reality.

  What would an unhinged Orlando do?

  He’d had three potential buyers.

  A Middle Eastern group of zealots.

  A politically-motivated activist group.

  And a home-grown group of dissenters.

  The Middle Eastern group was too obvious. With Orlando’s reputation and their clear ties to known terrorists, it would be near impossible for them to move around freely and set anything up.

  The home-grown group were a bunch of hillbillies. They were likely the most passionate and personally invested in making a statement, but their skills were lacking.

  That left the political activists. What better way to enact change than create a disaster? It wouldn’t be the first time Orlando had aided in such a campaign, but this one was special. He had plans for the chem-weapon.

  Tanya needed to know where it was. She hadn’t checked its location since she’d left Berlin. She picked up the tablet and navigated to the web address she’d committed to memory. During Quade’s rebuild of Orlando’s on-line database, Quade had built them a backdoor. It gave them real time access to his inventory, contacts and intel. Whatever Orlando knew and committed to the database, she knew.

  She plugged in her login credentials. Her screen blipped.

  She was in.

  Tanya would have fist pumped for joy if she had the time. Instead, she clicked through the root menu. Quade hadn’t been able to get a lot of time to show her how he’d laid everything out, but he’d made sure she knew how to use a number of features. Like where he’d programmed several primed and prepared tracking devices. Orlando dealt in highly dangerous merchandise. If they could put hands on it, track it, they could warn people. It was still a theory. They hadn’t tried it, until the night of the auction. It’d been their dry run before everything went wrong.

  She tapped the active tracking device.

  The screen changed and she stared at a topographical map with a single, blinking dot.

  She counted off the longitude and latitude like she’d been taught as a little girl. In South America, they hadn’t had fancy toys. Technology was the tool of the devil, after all. She’d learned to navigate and plan using paper maps and pencil.

  At a glance, the tracking device didn’t appear to have moved, but it had. Not much, maybe a few miles, if her calculations were right, but it was on the move. Orlando had decided on a plan and had moved into executing it.

  She swallowed and her blood went cold.

  The clock had begun. Every second sitting here was another gone. The only reason Orlando would move the weapon was if it’d been purchased. He wouldn’t risk having it out of the facility he’d built for it with no financial gain. Even the auction had been risky enough. If what Tanya understood was true, it was too unstable for that. Something was going to happen, and it wasn’t going to be good.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, but her legs gave out and she slid to the floor. She needed Quade or Rob. Someone who would know what to do better than her.

  She was the distraction, not the true spy. They’d taught her to blend in, how to read a room, fighting and how to protect their team. She didn’t have connections or the kind of skill to track this thing without the gadget. She’d been the warm body and the backstory they needed to protect Quade. And now she had to do it all and it was beyond her ability to handle.

  Tanya was the only one who knew what was going on. Just her.

  Where did she begin? What questions did she ask?

  She sucked down a deep breath and closed her eyes. Quade would have handled this easily. What would he do?

  For starters, Quade would know who the buyer was. He could trace payment back to the buyer’s accounts. Without that vital piece of knowledge, Tanya had three different targets and no way of figuring out which it could be or what their purpose was.

  People were going to die if she didn’t do something, but she didn’t know what came next. All she was, was a bit of scenery with legs and a brain. Quade was the one who knew the ropes, but he was dead.

  The bedroom door banged open.

  Isaac stepped over the threshold, bracing the door with one hand and his gaze on her.

  Tanya locked eyes with him, unable to look away. She sucked down a breath, then another, her head pounding.

  “What is it?” Isaac asked.

  She didn’t need to wonder what it was.

  Tanya set the tablet on the floor next to her and buried her face in her hands.

  Think.

  She needed to think.

  She wasn’t just the diversion, she had a brain.

  What should she do?

  Rob, and to some extent Brett, were her only line back to the real world. It was supposed to be that way so her identity was protected. Orlando had worked with enough intelligence organizations he knew the people, their faces, how they were sourced. Her history was like giving the CIA a blank slate. They’d turned over operational control to Interpol with the hope it would insulate her and wiped any record of her application from their database. She’d devoted years of her life to getting that far, and in one keystroke it was gone.

  She’d never even met Rob directly. It was all layers to keep them safe from Orlando’s people, his connections. If it weren’t for a random series of events she’d never have met Brett either. He didn’t technically know she was an undercover agent, but he’d coached her through the application process.

  Without Rob’s testimony and records, if she went to any authority, they’d only see her as an accessory to a criminal.


  “Tanya, answer me right now,” Isaac said.

  She peered up at him, her mind working a mile a minute.

  He’d knelt, one hand on the bed, looming over her. He was going for threatening, intimidating, and it might have worked had she not seen him smile. Isaac didn’t scare her, he gave her hope.

  Until the moment the tracker moved, she’d had the luxury of time on her side. She could have waited. But not with the weapon in transit.

  If she went to the authorities, they’d arrest her because of her ties to Orlando. No one would believe her. Everything she said would be second guessed. They’d punch holes in her story whenever possible. It would be too late before they believed her.

  The only people who could vouch for her besides Rob and Brett were the ones who’d trained her. But that would take too much time. She only had a vague idea as to what organization they hailed from. Her training had been a joint effort across several countries.

  Going public could mean a disaster. If she leaked the intel on the weapon others would go after it. Those in control of it might prematurely use it. Exposing them might do as much, if not more harm, than waiting out their plans.

  Tanya needed Isaac and the others. They had resources. They knew people. And they at least suspected what she was.

  Isaac continued to stare at her, waiting her out.

  “What do you think I am?” she asked.

  “You’re either very bad, or very good.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Me?” He pressed his lips together and studied her another moment. “I’m biased. What I think doesn’t count.”

  “Because you think I might be one of the good guys?”

  “I want you to be.”

  “What if I told you I was?”

  “I’d say ‘prove it.’”

  “That’s my problem.” She laughed a bitter laugh. “I can’t, and the only person who can tell you without a shadow of a doubt who I am isn’t picking up the phone.”

  “Is that the burner you keep calling?”

  “No. That’s Agent Jones.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And he says the CIA has a mole. Someone in his office they know is informing Orlando about the D.C. office operations.”

  “Who are you then? Is Tanya Graham real?”

  “I’m real. I am Wilson Graham’s daughter. I was a forced member of his cult until I was fourteen. I was engaged to two different men three times my age.” She let her gaze drift away from Isaac for the next bit. “Because I didn’t marry when I was supposed to, I was put on the team that managed the incoming brides. They were women, kidnapped from their homes, mostly from Taiwan. Like my mother. Do you know she refuses to even speak to me? She prefers to carry on like I don’t exist. I can’t say I blame her much. What was done to her was horrible, and I helped. I was one of three people in charge of running a trafficking ring, and I was a kid. You said you read reports about a young woman responsible for bringing in the joint task force?”

  “Yeah...”

  “Those reports are about a young, transgender woman. The people who kidnapped her didn’t know she still had boy parts. They were going to purify her, which was code for starving someone to death. I wrote a note, made a map and let her go. It took her two weeks to get from our location to a town that could do anything with the information. And then they came.”

  “I don’t doubt that part of your story, Tanya. I have enough evidence that I think I can believe you. What I want to know is, who did you grow up to be?”

  “A spy. Or something like one.” She turned her head to look at him. “I graduated with a degree in psychology and criminal justice because I thought it would make me look like a strong candidate. Then I applied to the CIA. I also applied to start my doctorate, just in case things didn’t work out. I guess they didn’t, in the long run. Technically, I am not CIA. I never went to the academy. I passed the tests, thanks to Agent Jones, and was waiting on my interview when they came to propose a special team to me. When I accepted, my name was scrubbed from their applications and they hid my second degree. I was trained by a joint task force, brought together to eliminate the threat that Orlando poses. They know what a danger he is, and Quade and I, we were supposed to be the silver bullet that put him down. A team he didn’t see coming because we were the people he trusted the most.”

  “Wow. Were you a practicing...therapist? Counselor?”

  “Therapist, and no. There was so little time between graduation and being recruited I never had time to practice outside of course hours and odd intern work here and there. In theory it makes me more adept at putting together a profile.”

  “Who trained you? They can verify who you are.”

  “I don’t know. That was the whole point. Except for Quade, no one else used names. Just letters. Mrs. A, Miss G, Mr. X. I can’t tell you who I work for.”

  “That’s why, when everything fell apart, you turned to Orlando’s enemies?”

  “The only life I have is working with criminals, so I had to continue to pretend to be one. There was no contingency plan for Quade dying and our only point of contact going silent on me.”

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Really?”

  “You can’t be twenty-eight. That’s too young for everything you’d have had to study and do to get here.”

  “Isaac, it wasn’t entirely new to me. I was forced into running a human trafficking ring when I was fourteen years old. This is the life I was born into, but it’s not the life I wanted to live.” Tanya continued staring back at him. She had to win him over. If she could get him on her side, to believe her, then everything else didn’t seem so impossible.

  “What’s this then?” He tapped the side of the tablet.

  “It’s a tracker I put on the chem-weapon. It’s been moved about five miles from where it was stored and that worries me.”

  “How’d you get a tracker on it?”

  Tanya laughed bitterly and shook her head.

  “Last week, Orlando took part in a black-market auction. The weapon was rolled out, but no one bid high enough. I was able to get close and plant the tracking device on the outer case so we would know where it was hidden. Before Quade could alert our handler, he was killed. He did it at dinner, right in front of me. Someone must have tipped Orlando off about Quade, but he didn’t suspect me.” She stared at the carpet, the memory of Quade’s blood on her skin, the shock, all still so fresh she half wondered if she was still trapped in that seat.

  “Why’d you run if he didn’t suspect you?” Isaac asked.

  “I was terrified that night. I didn’t sleep. I just paced around, so scared. The next day it was business as usual, but...different. I decided that since Rob wasn’t answering me, I’d get out of there while I still could. Hide. I was scared. The way Orlando was looking at me, I didn’t have long.”

  “What do I do with you?” Isaac sat back on his heels studying her.

  “You can turn me into your preferred law enforcement branch, let me go, give me up—”

  “Don’t be stupid. I’m not doing any of that.” Isaac grasped her hand, his warmth reminding her that she was still alive. “Abigail is coming here. She has contacts and resources who can hopefully verify your story. All of it. And then we can figure out what to do. Until then, I hope you understand if I don’t let you keep this.”

  He picked up the tablet and tucked it under his arm.

  “When’s the last time you tried to contact Rob?”

  “The day I left Berlin. I figured if he hadn’t responded to my calls in days, then he was compromised.”

  “Smart girl.”

  It might have been the smart thing to do, but she felt wretched and alone.

  “Come in here. We’re going to figure out what’s going on with Rob. Abigail won’t be here until morning, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get some answers now.”

  “You think Rob’
s involved?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “How would Orlando have gotten to him? What did I miss?” Tanya had been Orlando’s shadow almost all the time. He treated her like furniture or a servant, and she let him because it gave her all the inside information.

  “Come on.”

  Isaac pushed up to his feet and held out his hand.

  Tanya took it and let him haul her upright. He slid his other hand around her waist, holding her close.

  “I’m trusting you. Don’t make me regret it,” he said softly.

  “I’m trusting you, too.” She stared into his eyes, willing him to see the honesty of her words.

  “You have to prove it, now, cupcake. And not just to me. The others, too.” He cupped her cheek, a tender gesture that gave her hope. “Come on.”

  She followed Isaac out of the room and down the hall.

  The others were assembled around the suite’s dining table, their faces grim.

  “What’s going on?” Isaac asked before she could.

  “One of our sources just got this.” Shane turned his phone toward them.

  It was a picture of Tanya’s face followed by text.

  “Let me see.” Isaac took the phone from the other man.

  Tanya peered over his shoulder, skimming the words.

  “It’s some sort of dark net bounty listing,” Shane said.

  “That’s this address.” Tanya pointed at the most recent entry under her name. “How did Orlando know where we are?”

  “Really good tracking skills. Do you think Rob could be involved?” Isaac asked.

  Tanya swallowed.

  “Who is Rob?” Kyle asked.

  “Her handler, and from the sound of it, the one who turned on Tanya and her partner.” Isaac set the tablet on the table.

  “What?” Felix stared up at her.

  “You want to tell them, or shall I?” Isaac turned to look at her.

  At least he’d asked.

  She swallowed and glanced over the collective faces of his team.

  “Go ahead,” she said. Maybe it would sound better coming from him.

  “Tanya was—is—a joint task force undercover agent. She was trained outside of the normal academy specifically for this op with Orlando, and things have gone sideways. Her partner was killed and her handler is my best bet for who was responsible. The people who do know her have warned her against reconnecting with her parent agencies because of a mole in the CIA. There is a weapon of some sort that’s been stolen and now sold to someone looking to transport it and use it.” It all sounded so simple when Isaac boiled it down. He used fewer words than she did, that was for sure.