Cut to the Bone

by Ellison Cooper

  Whether it was 037 or some asshole connected to this case following her, she was done with their ridiculous cat-and-mouse nonsense. Plus, she wasn’t about to lead them to the hospital considering they could very well be the same person who just tried to kill her.

  For all she knew it was Miles Windsor himself on her tail and she could end this all right now.

  Sayer took a few breaths to clear her rage so she could think clearly. She realized she wasn’t far from her town house.

  Trusting her instinct, she casually leaned the bike off the highway onto the narrow grid of streets in Old Town Alexandria. Whoever this was clearly knew where her place was. Maybe she could fool them into thinking she was going by her burned-down apartment.

  The car exited behind her and hung back, hoping to remain undetected.

  As Sayer made the last turn before her old street, she gunned it so she could jump ahead a few blocks. Outside her apartment, she practically leaped off her bike, parking it just outside the shell of a building.

  Rather than head around back, she sprinted across the street. Her heart did the fox-trot in her chest as she managed to dive into the neighbor’s yard, concealing herself behind their low fence just as the old car rolled to a stop at the far end of the next block.

  Crouched low, Sayer moved as quickly as she could around the back of the house into the alleyway. Out of sight, she sprinted full speed along the alley toward the next block. Whoever was watching her would have his eyes on her town house and hopefully wouldn’t be watching behind him.

  Sayer made it to the house directly across from the Porsche and she slid her gun from its holster. She took a few more breaths before peeking around the corner.

  A figure sat in the idling car. She could just make out the low baseball cap and sunglasses through the slightly grimy windows.

  As expected, he was watching her town house.

  All she had to do was avoid his line of sight in the mirrors.

  Sayer texted Ezra what was happening and then ran, low and fast, toward the back of the car.

  She pressed herself against the bumper to prepare for a takedown. If this really was Miles, he was a Delta Force soldier. She had to be fast and aggressive to catch him off guard. Taking a moment to steady her nerves, she swung around the driver’s side of the car, gun up.

  She yanked on the handle. The door flew open and she shouted, “FBI!”

  The barrel of her gun connected to the side of his head.

  The man in the car jerked up his hands and turned to face her.

  Sayer stumbled back, gun faltering.

  “Jake?” was all she managed to croak out.

  IN FRONT OF SAYER’S OLD APARTMENT, ALEXANDRIA, VA

  Sayer aimed the gun into the face of her dead fiancé.

  Jake Pendleton stared back.

  “Sayer,” he said.

  Sayer didn’t respond, blinking back the earthquake of emotion threatening to literally knock her over. Grief. Anger. Confusion. Doubt. Longing. Joy. They all vied for primacy as she struggled to do something as simple as breathe.

  “Sayer,” Jake said again. “I…” he trailed off.

  His presence triggered a deeply primal familiarity that shook her to the core. How could the man she’d planned to marry, the man who died more than four years ago, be sitting here in front of her?

  Gasping at the tidal wave of feelings, Sayer finally said, “How?”

  “Can you put the gun down?” Jake said, reaching for her weapon.

  Sayer took a step back, still pointing her gun at Jake. “What’s going on?”

  “Dammit, you were always a better field agent than me.” He looked away before meeting her eyes again. “I can explain.”

  Sayer felt her well-worn internal walls crashing down to protect herself. Developed when her parents died, and perfected after Jake’s death, she knew they would transform every other emotion she was having into pure white-hot anger. The one emotion she was willing to feel at the moment.

  “Yes, I imagine you should start explaining now,” she said, surprised how calm her voice sounded.

  “Can you please put the gun away? We’re going to draw attention. Is there somewhere we can go?” His brilliant green eyes darted around.

  Sayer thought for half a beat before striding around in front of the car. She pulled open the passenger seat and sat down, gun still on Jake. “Drive. We’re going to Quantico.”

  “We can’t,” Jake said firmly as he slowly moved his hands to the wheel. The tips of his fingers were blistered. The hair on the back of his hands singed off.

  He’d been in a fire recently.

  She glanced back at the arsenal of guns piled on the seat, including a Bergara rifle of exactly the same caliber that killed the fake FBI agent at the Hearing Voices Institute.

  “I think you misunderstand the situation right now,” Sayer growled.

  Jake nodded. “What I mean is, it’s not safe there. For either of us. Please, if there’s any part of you that still trusts me, can you just take me somewhere else to explain. After we talk, if you still want me to go to Quantico, I will.”

  Sayer realized that, despite all reason, she still trusted him enough to listen. “Fine. The Wharf Marina by the Navy Yard. Go.”

  “Good idea, we can trust Holt.”

  Sayer didn’t respond. Holt’s boat was only fifteen minutes away and Sayer could use her help to figure out what the hell was going on, because she sure as shit wasn’t thinking straight right now.

  Jake shifted into drive and seemed to relax a bit once they were moving.

  “Talk,” Sayer said sharply. “Why have you been following me? Did you set the fire?”

  He winced at her harshness. “You think I would try to kill you?”

  “How in the fuck would I know anything about what you would do?” Sayer’s voice rose to a shout as she lost control.

  Jake hunched forward and nodded. “No, you’re right. I’m sorry.” He glanced at her with pleading eyes. “Please just let me explain.”

  Sayer nodded, not trusting her voice.

  “I pulled you and your friend out of that fire, Sayer. I’ve been watching you because you don’t know who you’re up against.”

  “And you do,” she said flatly.

  Jake winced again. “I do.”

  “And who might I be up against? Are you talking about Miles Windsor, or is there something else I need to know?” Sayer barked a harsh laugh. “I mean, obviously there’s something else I need to know considering I’ve been mourning your death for the past four years … yet here you are. Alive. I should’ve known the autopsy was a lie.”

  Jake took a deep breath. “And I should’ve known you would figure out it was Miles Windsor. They thought they could throw you off, but I told them you wouldn’t be fooled so easily.”

  “They?”

  “Let me start from the beginning?” Jake said.

  Sayer grunted a yes, eyes burning.

  “Four years ago, I was approached about a job…”

  “While you were working for the FBI?”

  “Yes, this was a secret, off-the-books gig. Since I’d done so much undercover work, they thought I would be ideal.”

  “Okay,” Sayer said.

  Jake continued, “I was going to say no, because one of the requirements was that I would need to be completely off the books. Permanently. As in, gone forever.”

  The pieces fell into place. “They wanted you to fake your own death. Just like Miles Windsor.” Sayer had heard rumors about such things, but never inside the FBI. Even among international intelligence, the idea had always seemed far-fetched to her.

  “Exactly. But why would I take a job like that just when we were starting our life together? I was so happy.” Jake’s voice cracked. “I said no. Until the Justice Department came to me and asked me to accept.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the group I was asked to join was conducting black ops around the world that were entirely unsanctioned.
They’ve slowly been placing their people in key positions within every intelligence organization in D.C. With very few exceptions, they now control U.S. intelligence. You know what kind of power that means.”

  Sayer let that thought sink in. While the political machinery of Washington had a great deal of power, the president, Supreme Court, and Congress were under intense public scrutiny. Even the military wasn’t free from that scrutiny. But the intelligence community is designed to operate in secrecy. And there is a vast network of more than a dozen American intelligence agencies that primarily report to the director of National Intelligence, though some report directly to the president or Congress. Even with that patchwork of oversight, there is plenty of room to maneuver freely. That, combined with the fact that intelligence agencies controlled literal armies of highly trained operatives and have access to the latest technology and to highly classified information, gave them a dangerous amount of power. Especially if someone managed to bring them all under one umbrella.

  “What kind of stuff are we talking about?” Sayer asked.

  “Everything you can imagine. Fomenting civil war, assassinating world leaders. They were responsible for the CIA director.”

  Sayer remembered the murder of the CIA director in his own home three years ago. “They killed the director of the CIA? Jesus,” she whispered.

  “He was getting suspicious.” Jake’s face pulled into a mask of tension.

  “So the Justice Department came to you,” she pressed Jake to continue.

  He pushed back his hair in a painfully familiar gesture. “They asked me to infiltrate. They knew someone was building the organization, but they had no idea how high it went up the ladder, or how widespread it was.”

  “So you did,” Sayer said with sad finality because she knew it was true.

  Jake just nodded, eyes on the road.

  “Whose body is buried in your grave?”

  “I … don’t know. They promised me it was someone who accidentally died at the right place and the right time.”

  “Jesus,” Sayer whispered. At least this explained why she’d hit nothing but dead ends when she tried to find out how Jake really died. She couldn’t figure it out because he hadn’t died at all.

  They sat in silence for a long time while Sayer tried to decide what to say next. Her anger dissolved into something far more visceral, grief mixed with intense betrayal. Her grief had been so painful. How could he have let her mourn for so long?

  Jake glanced at her a few times, maneuvering the car through afternoon traffic. When she didn’t say anything, he tentatively said, “When this case overlapped with mine, I knew I had to keep an eye on you…”

  “You were the shooter across the river at the Hearing Voices Institute.”

  “I was,” he agreed.

  “And you dragged Tino from the fire,” Sayer said, putting all the pieces together.

  “I did.”

  She thought about Miles Windsor. “Miles was one of your guys. He faked his death and joined this same organization.”

  “That’s right. Though they aren’t my guys. Remember, I’ve been undercover for four years building a case against them. Working my way up the ladder.”

  “And how’s that going?”

  “It’s slow. Things aren’t going quite as smoothly as I hoped. When this is all over … I … I … could come home.” Jake stumbled over his words.

  Sayer didn’t respond. Rather than even begin to process that idea, she focused all her attention on the case. “So what? Miles faked his death a year ago in Iraq, joined your little organization, and then he went rogue a few months ago?”

  “Four months ago, Miles was on a solo assignment in Egypt and he was in a terrible car accident on a back road there. By the time someone got there to pull him out, he’d disappeared. We know that he made his way back here to the States but we couldn’t locate him after that. One of his specializations was covert movement.”

  Sayer tried to imagine Miles Windsor alone and injured in Egypt. Maybe he forgot that he had faked his own death and made his way home only to find out that his loved ones all believed that he was dead. “Jackie Windsor says that a homeless man broke into her house but didn’t steal anything. She thought it looked like Miles.”

  “We confirmed that was Miles.”

  “After the accident, he didn’t remember faking his own death. So he shows up at his own house only to find his ashes and a memorial photo of him above the fireplace…”

  “And his family all believes that he’s dead,” Jake continued her sentence. “We almost caught him just after he broke into his place, but then lost him again.”

  Sayer thought about Dr. Lilenhammer interviewing Miles. How ironic that Miles had been right; government agents really were after him.

  “So,” Sayer said, “he’s got a head injury, he manages to sneak back to the States. When he gets here, everyone thinks he’s dead, triggering his Cotard’s syndrome. Miles becomes convinced that he’s some kind of spirit caught in limbo between the living and the dead. With his Egyptology background, he maps that onto the Amduat and thinks he has to create the twelve chambers of the afterlife to be released to his eternal rest. And so he resurfaces here kidnapping and killing children to make that happen.” As the implications sunk in, Sayer’s anger rose to the surface again. “And you didn’t tell us who we were after. Instead, you let your goons interfere with my investigation while they tried to what? Find Miles on their own? At least I assume the false bus sighting and fake FBI agent were yours.”

  “I told them you’d never be fooled by the fake bus. I mean, it might distract you for a few hours, but I knew you’d figure out what was going on.” Jake smiled at her and Sayer’s heart twisted. “It’s even worse than you think,” he told her. “They’ve not only been throwing you false leads, they’ve also been purposefully trying to make you look incompetent. The agent who took the false bus witness statement—”

  “The one who should’ve confirmed that the statement was even possible before sending it up the line?” Sayer interrupted him.

  “Yeah, he’s one of ours. He knew the statement was false. They wanted it to look like you were screwing up, wasting a bunch of time and resources on something that was clearly false.”

  Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “Becky Blane’s mom … the press conference.”

  “Yeah. They’ve been feeding her information, pushing her to publicly decry the task force. Basically taking advantage of her fragile state of mind. But you’ve stayed one step ahead of them. They literally have a team of covert agents working against you and you’ve kept the investigation moving forward. Pavel, that’s the man who was pretending to be an FBI agent, he called you an investigative juggernaut. Which is why I can’t let them see me with you. If they knew I was the one that killed Pavel…”

  Sayer frowned. “What was Pavel’s plan with the boy at the hospital? Were you going to let him drag Declan away and kill him?”

  Jake paled. “I believe his plan was just to scare him, make sure he didn’t really know anything.”

  “How did you even know Miles was the killer…?” Sayer stopped midsentence. “Oh, you’re the ones that wiped him from the system. You had a flag on his DNA and fingerprints. It came up as no match to us, but it sent a message to you.”

  Jake nodded ruefully. “When you entered the DNA and fingerprints taken off the first victim, we knew you were after Miles. The organization needs to bring him in before you get your hands on him. If you find him first, he could destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to keep hidden.”

  “So, to recap, you along with this organization, even though you knew who Miles was, decided to let him continue his plan so you could catch him first? All while interfering with my attempts to stop him. A. Man. Who. Is. Murdering. Children!” Sayer’s voice rang in the car as she shouted the word “children.” “He has girls trapped somewhere and will kill them one at a time over the next week. And you were just going to let
that happen?”

  Jake didn’t answer. Sayer knew exactly what he would say. He would argue that they’d been working on this case for four years. That he couldn’t throw everything away just to save a few lives when thousands of lives were at stake. That undercover work required horrific compromises.

  Sayer also knew why Jake wasn’t actually verbalizing any of those things—because she would vehemently disagree. It had been a dividing line when they dated, but it had seemed like nothing more than an abstract philosophical difference back then.

  He stopped at a red light and looked at her.

  She stared into Jake’s familiar eyes. His faint sandalwood scent, the curve of his face, even the timbre of his voice, all triggered the profound sensation of coming home to something familiar and safe. Sayer had spent so many years longing for this, focused on their love, their joy, that she hadn’t let herself remember anything that was less than perfect.

  What a strange filter grief had provided for her memories.

  Jake was somehow both the man she remembered and this man beside her who had made so many horrific choices.

  “I’m sorry something I did almost destroyed you and your career,” Jake whispered.

  The comment sent a new wave of anger through her. He was right. She had almost destroyed her own happiness by refusing to move on from his death. How terrible to learn now that none of it was real.

  Another piece clicked into place.

  “They’re the ones who have been trying to get me fired,” Sayer said, genuinely shocked. She had known there were people in D.C. trying to get her fired, but she had always just dismissed it as a political power play within the FBI.

  “And Holt. She wouldn’t play ball, would she?” she asked.

  Jake nodded again, mouth pressed in a thin line. “They know you and Holt are … incorruptible. Holt running Quantico prevented them from gaining control of that asset. And you … well, you’re you. You would never work with them.” Jake looked at her with such love that Sayer felt sick. All her grief and longing hardened into something cold in her chest.

  “But you managed to hang on to your job,” Jake continued. “And when this case came up, I knew I had to keep an eye on you. Miles is truly dangerous.”