Covert Operations

by Sara Schoen

  Danielle cleared her throat, reminding me that she wanted an answer and wouldn’t wait patiently forever, but I didn’t have one. Sara had told her what happened, and then knowing Danielle, she had immediately turned around and repeated it to whoever would listen, whether she had told her the truth or not. She probably even told Camden. The second that thought crossed my mind, I mentally swore at myself. This wouldn’t be good news.

  “Does Camden know?” I asked curiously.

  “Yeah, I told him right after class.”

  I groaned. To Danielle, it would seem like didn’t want my partner know that I had been out with a girl. Maybe she thought he’d tease me for it or something. Instead, I knew he would see it differently. I had started to play dangerous game, and Sara and I had set it up by accident. Or had she?

  “And what did he say?”

  “He just laughed, said about time, and then said he had work to do. He’s supposed to call me later, but we’ll see. He’s close to breaking open a case he’s been working on for a while.”

  I blocked out the rest of what Danielle had said to try to piece together what happened. If she had called to tell him about the date, about whatever Sara had told her, then what could Camden be so angry about after that phone call? Danielle had said that he found it funny, and laughed it off. I had left during the phone call, so it could be possible he’d gotten another call, one that changed the plans around for a deal or the break in a case. But surely they would have told me if there was a break in any case.

  I paused for a moment. “Wait, what case is he working on?”

  Danielle shrugged. “I don’t know, he didn’t really say. Just that it was one that had been bothering him for a while. The person they were looking into vanished, but he said he had a hunch and was going to look into it.”

  Something in my gut told me this wasn’t good news. He had found something that angered him, but I knew it wasn’t on me. CIRA had covered all of my tracks thoroughly, and that meant something else had gotten under his skin, but I wondered how much trouble it would cause.

  Too bad I would find out too late to save her.

  Chapter 26

  On the day of the weapons trade with the Son Reyes Cartel, Camden and Miguel left me alone once again. The warehouse where we were meeting the Son Reyes was on the outskirts of town. It had once been a huge storage facility until the Cardozas bought it. They kept the old storage units because it was safe to keep some of the product here. We so rarely came here that there would be no reason for police to search it. Anything they wanted, if they ever got smart, would be at the compound. For now, the team I had brought with me was at the small warehouse at the end of the plot of land waiting for the Son Reyes.

  I hoped it wouldn’t end up like last time, with guns pointing at me. This time, we had thought about that, and had the shipment all in one setting so they could inspect and pack it up for themselves. A lift-up garage door gave them the option of pulling their car in and taking it with them easily. Nothing else in this room provided any distraction. The place was big enough that I wondered if it had once held planes or cars. It had been checked a few times by our people and all seemed to be in order. I had even run a last check over everything before the Son Reyes pulled up outside the warehouse door we had open.

  “Marco, comrade,” Alejandro, a runner for the Son Reyes Cartel and the one who threatened to kill me for not having his entire shipment ready for him last time, called out to me with a fake Russian accent that was less practiced and fluid than mine.

  “Alejandro.” I sighed. “It’s been a while. I can’t say that I missed you, though. I wish I didn’t have to see you again at all.” I instigated our usual banter, which most would’ve called a pissing contest.

  “I see the accent is mostly gone,” he observed as his men went to inspect the shipment. “Did I scare it out of you during our last encounter?”

  “No,” I said, not finding the humor in his words. “I drank it away.”

  Alejandro grimaced. “How…cultural. Must have felt like you were back home.”

  “No, it’s not nearly cold enough for that, and I can’t kill you for coming on to what’s mine.” A smirk took over my face before I added, “It would have been a pleasure to shoot you upon your arrival in my territory.”

  Alejandro fell silent for a moment. He glanced around at the team Camden had ordered with me, and I knew who he was looking for. He just wouldn’t find him.

  “Where is your boss?”

  “He had better things to do,” I stated. “He bids you and your leader a fond hello, or should I say hola.”

  Alejandro muttered something that sounded like gringo under his breath at my botched pronunciation of his native tongue. I turned my attention away from him as his men started to load the shipment into their vehicles, and made sure my people were keeping a watchful eye on them as well. A few gave me a nod to say that everything was going fine, and I hoped it would stay like that.

  “Where is your boss, Alejandro?”

  He smiled. “Probably at another meeting. He didn’t think yours was the most important. He had, as you say, better things to do.”

  “That explains why even the heir didn’t come,” I mused, thinking about Camden who had turned down coming for a different project. “Camden didn’t want to waste his time either.”

  Once the last of the cases had been loaded into the vehicles, Alejandro passed me the envelope for our payment. I skimmed through the hundred dollar bills until I got the allotted amount. When I turned my back to leave, I waited to hear the sound of guns cocking. It never came.

  They drove off, and immediately everyone around me relaxed. With the deal done for the day, I sent them home. They had nothing else to do, and I knew everyone wanted to go home to call it a day.

  ***

  “Hello?” I called when I walked in, placing the envelope of money on the table for Camden to take to his father in the meeting tomorrow morning.

  I stopped dead when I realized the loft was completely silent. Danielle usually had music playing, or Camden would have the television on. Even when those devices weren’t going, someone would have responded. While Camden would at times not respond, I could always find something to alert me to someone being there.

  “Anyone home?” I called a little louder, but my voice only echoed through the empty house. The echo left an unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach. Strange, they hadn’t left me here alone since Danielle had shown up, and there wasn’t a guard outside watching me. If Camden wasn’t here with me, Miguel typically sent someone else to watch me. Something wasn’t right.

  I made my way slowly around the loft, checking each room to see if anyone could be here. No one had shown up in the first few rooms, and with only one room left to check I had a feeling no one else was here. I wandered toward Camden’s office, wondering if he could be working on something and had failed to hear me come in. As I got closer I could see that the door was slightly ajar, which wasn’t typical, but when I looked in I noticed something that sent chills up my spine.

  There was a file and its contents spread along the desk in the low light provided by the lamp, but illuminated enough of his desk to show the photos lining his work space. Even in the distance I recognized someone who looked oddly familiar, which screamed nothing but bad news. I pushed open the door enough to slide in and went to look over the photos. A blonde girl smiled brightly for a high school photo. Some pictures showed her without the tattoos I had grown accustomed to seeing on her arms, and a few showed her with friends who also looked too familiar for this to be a coincidence.

  I picked up one with her and two guys, one with short blond hair and the other with long black hair that almost covered his eyes. She had her arms around them as they smiled together. Demon and Whip Lash stood proudly with Sara between them at what seemed to be a party from a few years ago. I’d guess they were high school age. I glanced through a few more photos to see them in a lot of her photos. It shouldn’t surprise
me since they said they’d trained Sara for years without telling her. They had befriended her and seen her talent firsthand, then honed it for their own use.

  I put down the photo before I picked up a file from the corner of his desk. I didn’t understand why Camden had these photos, or where he’d gotten them. I knew that he wanted to check her out since she and Danielle spent a lot of time together, but I didn’t think he would be this thorough about it. He had somehow found out who she was, even though CIRA had tried to cover it up. I skimmed through the information in the file before I realized André had the same on the girl’s family, the one who had supposedly died on a hiking trip.

  This must have been the case he told Danielle he cracked. He’d found Sara. That’s why he was so upset. He had found out exactly who Sara was, and now he had to get rid of her before she called in the other agents.

  I flipped through the papers and started searching through the information on his desk. I could see that he had started making connections from Sara to the agents who had taken down the Sandtown base from the eyewitness accounts. He had placed her as the one who killed Jax, and had discovered she’d broken into the file room. She looked different, but it was her.

  From what I could tell, he hadn’t connected Demon to the black haired guy from the reports. In his notes, he’d written that witnesses described a taller guy, lanky, but the same dark hair. They had seen him on top of the building, but he would vanish a second later, as if he’d never been there. I decided that must have been Demon’s partner I saw at the hospital who had assisted Sara in the Sandtown raid. I didn’t know what talent he had, but clearly they’d all been working together, and gotten too close.

  On the far side of Camden’s desk, a map of the Sandtown base showed Sara’s path through the compound. Accompanied with the notes he had on his desk, I followed Sara’s movements the night at Sandtown, as well as her partner’s locations on top of buildings. She could have easily made it from building to building unnoticed, but she had slipped up during her entrance. She must not have noticed the motion sensitive camera, two actually. One camera could be seen, but the other was well hidden from sight. No one would know it was there unless they were told about it. She must have alerted them to her presence by tripping the second camera.

  Camden noted they’d lost sight of her a few times, but according to his notes she’d been seen stealing files, one that held information on Ash Crest. I followed through a few of his notes, just skimming along to look for relevant information, but stopped when I saw my name. Jackson Reeves was scribbled into the corner of Camden’s notes, with an arrow leading to Danielle and one arrow pointing to Ash Crest.

  My hands started to shake with anger as I realized Camden had been hiding the fact that he had figured out who killed my family. I knew now that if I had gone after Ash myself then Camden would have suspected that Jackson had come back from the dead. I was suddenly thankful someone else had taken my revenge away from me. Though as I looked over his notes, Camden seemed to think Sara was the one who took away the justice I’d searched for, and ruined four years of trying to get close to him. I ripped the paper in half before crumpling it together. My body trembled with anger. They had hidden it from me, let her go, and she’d done what I had waited years to do. They guarded her secret, and I protected her identity from everyone around me, but not anymore. I wanted to know what happened, from the source herself. I couldn’t be sure if Camden was playing a game by leaving this for me to find.

  I needed answers, and I refused to wait a second longer.

  I threw the remnants of the paper into the trash before swiping the photo of her, Demon, and Whip Lash from the table. I would need proof, some kind of leverage to show her that I knew exactly who she was. She’d better answer truthfully, or I may not be able to control my anger anymore.

  Time to talk to the thief who stole my revenge from me.

  Chapter 27

  My anger increased as I approached Sara’s apartment. I couldn’t get all the information out of my head. It swirled around, confusing me even more as I continued to think about it. I couldn’t be sure if Camden had been grasping at straws, trying to frame Sara for Ash’s murder or if she was truly the person who killed him. It didn’t help that Demon and Whip Lash were so secretive. No wonder they wouldn’t tell me a lot about her. They probably knew she had killed him. That would explain why she had been under house arrest, and why she would proudly tell me whatever she had done to end up there. That’s if she had truly done it. I just couldn’t be sure until I heard it from her, and right now I was more worried about her safety. They had found her, and that meant she was a target.

  André must have kept digging into her case after they discovered she had been found dead. Since Sara had only recently been recruited to CIRA, and hadn’t been in hiding as long as I had been, details on her were easier to find. From what I could gather from the information on Camden’s desk, they matched her face to security footage and then saw her from the clips at Sandtown. They then used that information to find out about her past, subsequently finding Demon and Whip Lash. She should have been more careful. If only she knew who would be tracking her down, maybe then she would have been more careful, but it wouldn’t have stopped me from trying to take down the Cardozas either. I would have hunted them down no matter who came after me, and I would have done the same to Ash Crest. Even if Miguel himself hunted me.

  I could feel someone watching me as I stormed down the street, ready to confront my teammate. Maybe Miguel sent a guard after me. I didn’t care, and it wasn’t going to stop me from confronting her. I wanted answers, and I wouldn’t wait for this mission to get started any longer. She had been wasting valuable time, and done what with it? Nothing. There had been no forward motion, and now Camden knew exactly who she was, what she did, and who she worked for. It was only a matter of time before he made the jump to her working on this mission as she had in Sandtown, and tracking her down. Then I would be called in, if they hadn’t already figured out who I was, when they needed a permanent solution to make sure the agents never came back.

  If we were lucky, she would be able to figure out my true identity when the time came, and could break free, but if not, I wasn’t sure if I would maintain my cover or blow both of them. I would do whatever it took to get answers, even if it meant interrogating her. Luckily they were the same questions the cartel would want to know, such as if she was the person who went after Ash, why she killed him, and what she took from our offices. We knew nothing about what happened at Ash’s home in South Carolina because no one had been left alive. No one except the person who did it, and Camden wouldn’t waste the opportunity to figure out everything she knew, and who else had been a part of her team. He would want details, and so did I.

  I wanted a detailed explanation, starting with anything I could use to clarify Camden’s notes, hopefully leading into who had passed along information to her on Ash, if she was truly his killer. I would deal with them later, if they were even in the cartel anymore. Rats had a habit of running when they passed on information, but I would track them down and make sure they knew that giving away information got them killed. I just wanted to know who’d ruined my plan after I had spent years trying to get close enough to him so that I could kill him myself. I wanted to get revenge for what he’d done to my family, and I wanted to know why he did it. For now I just had to check on Sara, make sure she was still alive. I could question her later, but I needed her to be breathing in order to do that.

  “Sara, are you home?” I called as I knocked on the door. I waited impatiently for the door to open, but it never did. “Sara, just let me know you’re there.” I could hear the light padding of footsteps inside along with a soft voice. “Sara, I can hear you. Open the door. We need to talk.” I glanced over my shoulder, contemplating calling her by her code name but thought better of it. To whoever was watching me they would think I was visiting her. There was no immediate danger, yet.

  I waited a few more mo
ments, listening to the silence on the other side of the door. Either she had made a run for it or she stood on the other side of the door debating if she should answer. She’d better be determining whether or not to open the door, because I wasn’t going to remain patient much longer. I mentally began counting down from ten before I broke the door down and got the answers I wanted when I heard footsteps approaching the door. It opened slightly, but instead of seeing Sara’s dark blonde hair and blue eyes, I saw Danielle’s bright blonde hair and green eyes peeking out of the slit in the door.

  She looked at me in shock before pushing the door back a little further. “Marco, what are you doing here?”

  “That’s none of your business,” I said, pushing the door out of her hand as I walked in. “I’m here to talk to Sara.”

  I glanced around the empty living area, knowing she kept it empty because she didn’t actually live here. Frankly, it looked as if she had just moved into a furnished apartment, because I didn’t see anything personal, not even photos. It seemed strange since Danielle had once said that Sara kept photos of her family, and artwork she had done over the years as decorations, but I ignored it and continued looking for her.

  “Where’s Sara, Danielle?” I asked, stomping through her small apartment in search of her. The apartment was empty except for Danielle. The kitchen, empty of any sign of her, as well as the living room, bedroom, and closets. So either she could become invisible or she had made a run for it when I came in.

  “I don’t know,” Danielle said as she followed after me. “I came here to talk to her, but she wasn’t here when I arrived.”