by Dianna Love
If their friendship meant anything to her, she’d never betray his trust again.
Sabrina’s heart was in the right place, but she needed to butt out of his personal life.
He was also going to tell Josh and Sabrina about seeing Rikker. They could decide whether anyone else knew. He would never hold out information on Rikker from those two.
Eyeing every agent in the room, Sabrina asked in a voice that could ice over hot coals, “Anyone want to tell me how someone got sniped with six of my people on site, and we have no suspect?”
All but Nick had settled around the table.
Nick stood just inside the door, over six feet of tension coiled tight from the look of his stiff shoulders. He let out a rush of breath and began spitting out a report.
“Two Warbucks guards on the roof prevented any Slye coverage there. Evidently one was the assassin. Dingo found him in the west stairwell dead. My guess is that whoever killed him was part of the assassination plan and simply clipping any loose threads immediately.”
Sabrina’s gaze ticked back in Dingo’s direction again, but wouldn’t stay.
What was that look all about?
Tanner leaned back in the office chair, still alert and ready to go. “Killer had scarring that I think is the Orion star configuration we discussed earlier. Ties this to the Bergman killing.”
Connecting a dot with the Bergman killer sent tension rippling around the room.
Sabrina asked, “Have you confirmed that marking as a hunter identification yet?”
“My source says the marking was on the elite agents of the Orion Hunters, but now that I have a photo I’ll get an absolute confirmation.” Tanner didn’t look happy about this connection with the hunters. He’d defied death to keep his resource and future wife, Soo Jin, out of the hands of Orion Hunters. But she was the best intel the team had on the elusive fanatics. Jin had been a captive research specialist in North Korea when she’d shown up unexpectedly on Tanner’s mission to extract two physicists from the country last month.
The physicists had been connected to an Orion Hunter terror plot and Jin had been instrumental in preventing it.
Dingo asked Sabrina, “Did you get a photo on the Bergman killer’s tat?”
Had he not been studying her closely for any change, he’d have missed the slight tensing of her shoulders before she shook her head and said, “The report I had was a visual ID. I’ve avoided asking APD in case there’s an Orion Hunter on the force. Based on everything we’ve learned from past encounters, we have no idea where they might have infiltrated.”
That figured. She just accepted Laughton’s intel as valid, but questioned everything Dingo did right now.
Josh leaned forward with his elbows propped on the conference table. “I fed every face that entered as a guest, security and wait staff at the event through our facial recognition contact and there were no suspicious hits.”
If Josh had seen anyone resembling Rikker he’d have told Dingo while the team was still on site.
That meant Dingo had been wrong.
But his gut still argued that he’d been right. Nick scratched his back against the wall then paused, arms crossed, deep in thought–or so he’d seemed–staring down at nothing. He said, “That entire scenario was off.”
“Because the assassin missed Perdido?” White Hawk asked from where she sat closest to Sabrina. She said very little unless she required information at that moment or had assimilated something she didn’t understand.
Ryder answered, “Maybe, but that would depend on the assassin being an amateur. A really bad amateur at that. Do we have anything back on the fingerprint?”
Josh cleared his throat. “It’s sent in and they’ll ping me as soon as they have something.”
“It’s one of two things,” Ryder went on. “If it was an amateur who blew the mission, that begs the question of why he stopped shooting, because someone without experience would panic and shoot again.”
“He did,” White Hawk argued. “He shot the guy who was down in the event who had a handgun.”
“That’s another issue. What I meant was that someone sent to make a kill who thinks he’s missed would try to take a second shot right behind the first one. It could be as you said, that Fontana knocked Perdido out of position for a second shot or if the sniper was a pro, then that means–”
“Shooting Fontana wasn’t an accident.” Dingo stated what they all had to be thinking based on the simple fact that the assassin had infiltrated Tinker’s security, which meant he’d been in place for a while and that his background check for that job had been above reproach. A freakin’ sleeper cell.
White Hawk tapped a finger on the table surface. “Fontana leaned toward Perdido just as he got hit and he fell, knocking her to the ground. That would explain not taking the second shot at Perdido.”
“Maybe,” Ryder conceded, but his tone said he didn’t think so and as the resident sniper on their team Dingo went with Ryder’s gut reaction.
“Then who was the target?” White Hawk said, pursuing the point without being obnoxious. “The initials were F.E.P. Francine Eva Perdido.”
“If it wasn’t Perdido, then the hypothesis we built around the initials is wrong,” Josh offered.
Dingo shook his head. “I have a feeling we were at the right place and the right time, but the intel is skewed in some way. There were players on stage that we weren’t expecting.”
Tanner rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms and slapped the table. “I suck at cryptic shit. We need Margaux. She loved damn puzzles.”
Sabrina told Tanner, “True. I tried to reach her but she and Logan are out of pocket for another six days.”
Margaux Duke, aka “The Duke” had been a Slye agent, and still was as far as the team was concerned, but she’d gone rogue to find the person who killed her FBI agent cousin and landed in a South American jungle prison with Logan Baklanov who had been after the same person.
They survived when Dingo wouldn’t have given either of them more than single digit odds, and she was now part of Logan’s Hamr Brotherhood operation.
“What about the other guy with a weapon,” Blade inquired of the room.
Tanner frowned. “That clown on the ground?”
Blade lifted a finger. “That one.”
Dingo gave his opinion. “I’m with Nick. I think this whole thing was shonky.”
“Shawn-kee? What the hell is that?” Tanner Bodine’s deep Texas drawl purred around the room.
“Shonky is Aussie for only-an-idiot-would-consider-the-evidence-as-it-appears,” Josh explained. At least he pronounced Aussie correctly as Ozzie, the way Dingo had taught him when Josh was just a punk.
“Back on point,” Sabrina ordered everyone.
Dingo arched an eyebrow at her short fuse when she normally would have ignored the occasional jab or quip to break the tension.
She sent a subtle look back at him that said, Don’t push me right now.
Yep, they had to talk soon for the benefit of everyone.
Dingo got them back on track. “I’m saying I think the shooter on the ground waving the gun might have been there as a distraction.”
“As part of the hit?” White Hawk asked.
“Right.” Dingo caught a nod of agreement from Ryder and continued. “Plant a handgun long before the event. Buy him a ticket and send him in convinced that he’d be snatched out with the assassin then paid well.”
White Hawk said, “Killing him on site would have been part of the plan from the beginning.”
“Right.”
“Then who killed the assassin?”
Nick snorted. “There’s the sixty-four-thousand dollar question.”
White Hawk cocked her head, looking totally confused by that old saying.
“What else do we know about the assassin’s death?” Sabrina asked, keeping the debriefing moving along.
“Dingo found him first,” Tanner replied.
Nick added, “Assassin ha
d been popped twice and looked like he knew who killed him, because he had his rifle packed in a case, but he also had a Glock on his hip that never got drawn.”
Blade slouched back, listening in quiet speculation. “Basically someone double crossed someone and double tapped him in the head. Sounds like a professional hit.”
“Not the forehead,” Dingo corrected. “Shot him through each eye.”
Sabrina wasn’t often surprised, but from the way her face lost its sharpness and her eyebrows bounced up for a second, she clearly hadn’t expected to hear that.
Why? Dingo had never had this tough a time reading Sabrina.
“And there was a second tat,” Nick concluded.
“What was that one?” Sabrina was shifting her attention between Tanner, Nick and Dingo.
“It was a satanic ink design on the shooter’s forearm with three letters. S. G. C.” Dingo met Sabrina’s stare, daring her to stop him from protecting Valene.
“How sure are you it’s related to Satan’s Garden Club?” she asked.
Here we go. Dingo said, “That would be a reasonable assumption based on those I saw years ago.”
Josh had covered his eyes with his hand as if he didn’t want to see the blood bath building.
In for a penny... Dingo added, “If I hadn’t been ordered to return immediately, I could have stayed long enough to gather more intel.” Dingo could have hunted for Rikker.
Sabrina unfolded her arms and dropped her hands down on the table to support her body when she leaned forward. “What specific intel?”
He wasn’t about to admit seeing Rikker in front of the team. He’d tell Sabrina and Josh later. “Hard to say since I didn’t have the opportunity.”
Her jaw flexed. Furious.
She stood up. “Nick, please take everyone except Dingo and Josh to the other war room and let’s get started on figuring out what our next step is and take another look at all three sets of initials. Clearly there will be more than one assassin going after targets at this rate.”
Nick said, “Will do, but before I leave, I picked up a tip tonight on one of the artifacts the Orion Hunters are after.” Sabrina’s gaze whipped over to Nick. “You had a resource at the event? Was it someone inside the hunters?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know the information is reliable?”
Drawing in an uneasy breath, Nick said, “You don’t want to hear this, but we’ve had help from this person on a number of missions and the only way I’m given intel is by protecting the identity of this resource. This person suspected something was going down at the event, told me what could be shared and offered to share more later if new information became available.”
Sabrina’s chin moved like she was grinding her teeth. She said, “Thank you. We’ll discuss that later.”
That was Sabrina’s way of saying she expected Nick to come clean about how much he was sharing of Slye Temp intel in return.
Once everyone had vacated the room and the door to the hallway snapped shut, Dingo waited on Sabrina to get her piece said first.
He’d learned back during his early years that remaining quiet often meant being spared a beating. He had no fear of Sabrina, not physically, but words were often more deadly than getting slashed with a knife. They would both regret anything said in anger. He sat back, the vision of cool and calm.
The door to Sabrina’s private quarters opened and Dingo knew right then that it was going to get ugly.
Gage Laughton walked in.
Chapter 20
Josh glanced over at Dingo, then back at Sabrina. “What the fuck is he doing here?”
Glad to see that Josh wasn’t in on this, Dingo muttered, “Took the words out of my mouth.”
A mix of emotions formed in Sabrina’s face, but worry and guilt stood out the strongest. She held up a hand. “You know that Gage has helped with intel in recent months. He gave us the image of Rikker in DC. He’s also the person who told me about Bergman’s killer being an Orion Hunter so it would be wrong for me to ignore his intel.”
“Because he’s so bloody honest, right?” Dingo quipped.
“At least I don’t lie to Sabrina,” Gage countered.
Josh said, “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Hold it!” Sabrina’s black eyebrows pulled tight at the bridge of her nose and her voice turned hard as granite. “Gage has some disturbing information and I want him to get it out first then we’ll talk. Give him a chance to explain what he told me just before everyone returned.”
How long had that bastard been camped out in her private area? Just the fact that he was here, this close to the team and the mission soured Dingo’s stomach.
When Dingo caught Gage and Sabrina exchanging a quick look, hair danced along his neck. He had that hinky feeling, the kind a person got right before they stepped on a land mine.
Standing with hands in the pockets of his black cargo pants, Gage lifted his chin and fixed his gaze on Dingo. “I heard what was said in here during the debriefing. I’ve gone through all the videos up to ten minutes ago. I know who killed the sniper or who wants credit for the killing.”
That was definitely news and from the lack of surprise on Sabrina’s part, she knew too.
Josh jumped on Gage’s words. “Who?”
Sabrina said one word that cracked the silence. “Rikker.”
Josh stared in disbelief. “No fucking way. We’d have seen him.”
Gage argued, “He had to already be inside the event before any security or your team was on site. Whatever exit strategy he had was the same one the assassin had intended to use, because he didn’t come out of the hallway to the stairwell after he killed the sniper. And you don’t have that surveillance tape, do you?”
“We did but–”
“Your camera died,” Gage finished. “Don’t you find it odd that one of your cameras was out of commission at a critical time?”
All through this, Dingo watched Sabrina whose eyes wouldn’t meet his. “Why aren’t you surprised to hear Rikker’s name right now, Sabrina?”
She drew her chin up and held her body as if fortifying her backbone. “Rikker was here ten days ago, but there was no sighting of him again until now.”
“Is that what Gage told you?”
“Yes.”
Josh was a ball of energy waiting to burst. “Is this another Rikker crumb thrown our way?”
Dingo said, “Because we aren’t in the loop.”
Sabrina’s voice was on edge. “He’s sharing information with me that the agency isn’t getting.”
“Why?” Dingo asked, sending that straight at Gage.
“Because of all that’s happened recently to convince me that the Orion Hunters are a dangerous group and I have no way of knowing where they might have infiltrated the government.”
Dingo lifted his hand and counted off fingers in Gage’s direction. “You knew Rikker was in LA as recently as ten days ago, but we’re only just now finding out.” He paused to check Sabrina’s rigid mask that didn’t change then continued. “You’re now saying there’s a connection between him and the hunters, but even if that’s dependable intel we don’t know if Rikker’s behind these killings or working against the hunters and last, but not least by any means, you’ve insinuated the camera on the hallway was disarmed intentionally.”
When Sabrina did not say a word, Dingo pinned her with a hard glare. “Have I got that about right? If so, now you can clear up the muddy parts like who you think disarmed a camera when I was the only one dealing with it, and why Gage is here now, since you could have told us all that?”
“He’s got more to show you,” she offered.
She’d said “you,” as in for Dingo and Josh.
Gage waited while Sabrina also said, “Valene Eklund was at the event.”
Dingo was so busy trying to pull these crazy threads together in his head that he said, “Valene? What’s she got to do with this?”
“But you know sh
e was there, right?” Sabrina questioned.
“Sure. I saw her.”
“Did you know she’d be there?”
“No, but it’s not that surprising. LA is her stomping ground.” But now that Gage had pointed out Valene to Sabrina first, he’d kiboshed Dingo’s chance to tell Sabrina and Josh about seeing Valene tonight. In fact, he wasn’t about to admit to seeing anyone in front of Gage-fucking-Laughton.
Gage’s eyes narrowed, judging Dingo and questioning his words with a steady look. “Did Eklund tell you why she was at the event?”
Dingo dodged that question by countering, “Why should she? Last I checked this was a free country.”
“Did she meet with anyone while she was there?”
“What is this, a fucking inquisition?”
“Just answer him,” Sabrina pleaded softly.
“Why? When did he become part of our missions?”
Gage said, “When I started filling Sabrina in on what her people were hiding from her.”
Josh shoved up to his feet, all semblance of the cultured veneer disappearing under a whip of fury. “So this fucker has you convinced that we’re lying to you?”
Sabrina was quick to say, “No, Josh.”
Dingo caught the single reference. “Not Josh, but what about me, Sabrina? Do you think I’m lying to you?”
She hesitated a second before looking at Dingo. That had been all the answer Dingo needed even though she was shaking her head and saying, “I just want you to tell me what’s going on with Valene.”
“What the hell do you think is going on?” Dingo asked right back.
“Stop answering me with a question,” she snapped at him. Her phone buzzed. She eyed it and made a sound under her breath then looked at Dingo. “Do me one favor, Dingo, and listen to what Gage has to say. He’s helped us out in the past when it counted.”
“If that’s all the criteria you need then what about Valene? She pulled markers everywhere to help us stop a terrorist attack. Doesn’t that count for something?”