by S. K. Lessly
Luther Santini was smart, charismatic, charming with looks that met on the corner of pretty boy lane and ruggedly handsome street. Every female in her office pined after him everywhere he went. Izabella believed that, given the opportunity, she’d turn him out. Oh, who was she kidding? She needed to be real with herself. She was the shy type when it came to men. She was never the aggressor and in reality, if Santini would ever ask her out, she’d probably turn him down.
All talk and no action; that was who she was inside and out. Handsome men like Santini made her nervous. It wasn’t that she felt inferior to them; it had everything to do with being picked on and teased all through her childhood. The torture had left a lot of emotional baggage. The only man who had ever truly loved her and that she’d never had to be fake for, was her husband, Raul.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you, but I wanted to know how things were going here? Have you figured out what Diane was up to in the last six months of her life?” Santini walked further into her small office and sat in the only chair facing her desk.
Once her boss was seated, Izabella retook her seat and smiled. “I haven’t been able to completely narrow it down. I know she spent a lot of time before her death looking for Cupid, the number one bad guy on our hit list.”
Santini’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”
She nodded. “Yes. According to some of my sources in other overseas agencies, she’d recently been asking for his whereabouts. It looks like she was putting some fillers out there trying to get an idea on his location as well as indirectly letting him know she was looking for him. Apparently, and again this is coming from my sources, so it’s unsubstantiated of course, but word was she knew Cupid well.”
“Are you sure about that? And before you answer, Fuentes, you need to be sure. Diane was a decorated agent. Along these halls, she was a legend. To tarnish a legend, you better come with something solid.”
Izabella smiled. She was fully aware of Diane and her history with the agency. She also believed the woman was as crooked as all of congress in both chambers combined.
“Well, sir, from what we learned in just a few months, Diane was working on both sides of the fence. It’s actually data that we’d gathered from numerous agencies all over the world. The woman was working more for her personal interests than that of the CIA.”
Santini shook his head before Izabella could finish her statement. “All speculative, Fuentes. Think about the source. This whole time, all of these years in the agency, you don’t think she would have gathered her fair share of enemies? Enemies that wouldn’t have a problem with tarnishing her good reputation?”
“Sure, I do. I’m not naïve to that fact. But when credible allies are corroborating the stories that are being told to us by our enemies and when proof is presented to support the claims, you have to open your mind to the possibilities. Diane was part Russian, sir. Her grandmother still lives in a small village on the outskirts of Ukraine. She went there a lot and knew the language as well as she knew English. She had connections that ran deep. She did things for a lot of people of power in that country that kept her safe from the likes of the GRU. She also helped them in some instances against our interests and in other times for our interests. At the end of the day, the woman wasn’t loyal to anyone but herself.”
Izabella started typing on her keyboard until she got to her notes on this case. She looked at her boss.
“According to a few of my sources deep in the heart of Russia’s underground criminal world, it was known that she was protected by Cupid. I think she not only knew the man, I think she had worked with him on multiple occasions. Think of some of the hits she’s been credited with. Okiro, the man in charge of the Murle tribe responsible for heinous crimes in West Africa or Seung and the tyrant from North Korea are believed to have died at her hands. The two were heavily guarded in their countries. None of our top operatives could get close enough to get a sight of them and she was able to take them down? No, I think she had help. I’m not sure what she gave in return, but she definitely didn’t do these hits on her own.”
Santini studied Fuentes for a while, with uncomfortable silent seconds passing between them before he cleared his throat and spoke. “I see you have a lot of conjecture and nothing solid.”
“Yes, sir. I’m hoping to get some things cleared up within a day or two.”
Santini nodded and stood. “Be sure that you do. I would hate to see a promising career such as yours tarnished before you even get started.”
She stood too. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Santini looked Izabella up and down, not hiding his admiration before he nodded once, turned, and left her office.
Once he was gone from view, she plopped down in her chair and exhaled slowly. “God, I hope you come through for me, Jacks.”
Chapter Twenty
Shane
“Good morning, everyone,” I called out as I strolled into the large conference room on our floor. I found a spot between Malcolm and Curtis and placed my briefcase on the table in front of me.
It was Monday morning and I had called an emergency team meeting for eight o’clock. The only people who had been asked to attend the meeting were those who had directly worked on the kidnapping case of Kenya Frost a.k.a. Mrs. Kenya Cooper who everyone called Sweets. I regarded everyone in the room and quickly noticed that Misty wasn’t here. I was about to ask where she was when the conference room door opened and she stepped inside.
This woman was late to almost everything. I frowned, with every intention of giving her the blues about being late to my meeting. Except the moment my eyes fell on her, I couldn’t speak a sound. I hadn’t seen her in about twelve or so hours, yet it felt like an eternity.
God, she’s beautiful.
Misty was dressed in tight black pants that seemed to hug every curve of her legs and hips. The pants looked similar to workout pants that women wear casually sometimes, but the pair Misty had on looked softer in texture and more stylish. Her shirt of choice was her classic white form-fitting V-neck shirt. Nothing fancy yet my tongue was hanging out the side of my mouth.
Misty had accentuated her look with a sleeveless denim vest that stopped just above her waist, jewelry around her wrists, and carefully applied makeup. She wore gloss on her luscious lips and her hair was pinned up in a curly messy bun. In a nutshell, she looked mouth-watering good. I literally had to bite my tongue from saying something completely inappropriate. Apparently, a few people in the room weren’t as disciplined as I was at maintaining professionalism.
“Damn, woman, I swear you be killing them when you walk in a room. I bet they be fighting to get close to you,” Curtis drawled out slowly, appraising Misty up and down.
Jesse decided to throw his two cents in as he also eye fucked my woman. “Looking good as always, beautiful. When are we going to hang out again?”
I did not see Misty’s reaction to their words nor did I hear her reply that seemed to brighten both men’s faces. All I heard was the sound of my blood pressure, elevating to an alarming level and pounding in my ears. I watched her walk further into the room smiling at them and I started counting down in my head, trying to get a hold of that evil jealous streak of mine.
I was usually fine dealing with my alter ego. For some reason, when it came to Misty, my jealousy was stronger than ever. I didn’t like the lewd or indirect sexual comments made by other men no matter where we were. I didn’t like the looks they gave her either. And I definitely didn’t like the replies she had always returned.
Misty was a flirt. I knew that, so it wasn’t a shock or a secret. She wasn’t overt with her flirtatiousness; she was subtle. Sometimes anyway, however, the point for me or the reason why I was teetering between a calm rage and blind fury was the fact that she’d engaged.
Having enough of the flirting going on between those three I said, gaining some composure while planting my eyes on Misty, Curtis, and Jesse, “Can we get started or do you guys need a minute?”
&nbs
p; The smile that was on Curtis’ face froze in place and died quickly when his eyes met mine. Jesse sat up in his chair, cleared his throat, and kept quiet. When my eyes settled on Misty, she had found her seat and had this sly smirk planted on her beautiful face.
“That won’t be necessary,” she answered. “Please continue.”
I held her gaze a little longer than I probably should have before I opened my briefcase and pulled out a stack of manila folders.
“I called this meeting to finally bring everyone up to speed on what I’ve been working on for the last few weeks.” I met everyone’s gaze briefly, including Jacks who had finally returned from Russia a few days ago.
“It’s about damn time,” Malcolm retorted, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded in front of him.
I ignored him and slid the folders to my left in his direction. “Pass these around when you’re done.”
Malcolm opened the first folder and his eyes widened as he looked at the first picture of Diane’s dead body. “Oh shit,” he said low but loud enough for everyone to hear.
Everyone’s eyes fell on him briefly and then shifted to me. With everyone’s attention, I began the meeting.
“After everything settled with Sweets’ kidnapping, I immediately began the process of finding Diane.” I few murmers sounded throughout the room and I waited a beat before I continued. “I wasn’t too happy with the information we had received from the CIA as I’m sure you all weren’t either. They were cagey, as usual, and I didn’t like it. So, I had Nickels look into her sudden but convenient disappearance.”
I nodded in Nickels’ direction and continued. “Nickels learned that the CIA was as clueless to Diane’s whereabouts as we were. They started looking for her the day they believed she disappeared. I had Nickels start from the day everything went down at that warehouse where we found Sweets. Nickels started checking every airport, train station and bus station in the U.S. and abroad. He used facial recognition software and had it running every day all day. We kept an eye on her finances, hoping to catch a break. After a few weeks of searching day and night, we had nothing.
“I told him to continue looking for her. It was time consuming and a very long and tedious process. You can imagine there were sightings of the woman or the likeness of her all over the world. However, about three or so months ago we got a hit.”
“Where?” Josh asked, the muscles along his jaw notably tense.
“In South America,” I responded.
“What was she doing down there?” Malcolm asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, looking at everyone in their eyes. “We tried to narrow the location, but we lost her scent somewhere in Brazil.”
“Then we need to get down there and search for her. Why didn’t you send someone down there?” Josh butted in.
I raised my hand to stop him. “Josh, who says I didn’t. I sent a team down there just to get her location only. They weren’t to engage or speak to her. But the search came up empty. We used satellite imagery, video feeds from every source we could find, cell phones, security cameras from local businesses, traffic cameras, and everything in a two hundred block radius of where she was last seen, but we came up empty.”
I could feel the air in the room dissipate as if everyone had gotten gut punched at the same time.
“So that’s it? We’re done looking for her?” Josh asked.
“No, I kept Nickels on it and we caught another break. She popped up again about three weeks ago in Russia. And before you ask, I sent someone right away. Someone with the skills to search discretely as well as carry out anything else that needed to be done once she was found.”
My eyes fell on Jacks and so did everyone else’s in the room.
Jacks cleared his throat and looked at everyone before he spoke.
“Right, it was a son of a bitch getting in the country undetected, but once I did, I followed Diane’s trail. I visited her grandmother’s place and staked out her residence for a few days. The woman lives in a piss poor neighborhood in some small town, so paying off a few people was nothing to get the information I needed.”
“And they were trustworthy?” Curtis Frost asked. A valid question something that I had asked the second I landed in Russia. Curtis looked around the table and added, “You would think, a stranger coming to them wanting information on a big name like Diane’s that someone would have ratted you out.”
“That is true, but it wasn’t that type of scene. Believe me they gave me the information that I needed and I paid them handsomely. Think about the worse fucking part of D.C. or even Baltimore. This place I was in was ten times worse than all of those neighborhoods combined.”
Everyone seemed to let the visual Jacks had created sink in; sitting quiet in their own thoughts.
Jacks continued, his British accent coming in more with each syllable. “While that was playing, I learned from a contact given to me by Shane that Diane had a contact in the GRU. So, I found him and had a little conversation. And what I found out was quite disturbing.” Jacks stopped and looked at me.
He wanted me to give him the go ahead, to continue, knowing what he was going to say wasn’t going to be received very well. I took another deep breath and did my best to calm my anger. I knew how I had reacted to this news, so I could only imagine how it was going to be received in this room. I nodded to Jacks to continue.
Jacks looked at Sweets and Josh before he said, “It seems as though little Miss CIA has put out a hit on our very own Joshua Cooper.”
The chorus of shocked gasps and expletives were drowned out by the ‘Oh God’ that came from my sister-in-law. Sweets placed a shaky hand to her mouth and looked wide-eyed at me.
Josh turned to face his wife and put his hands against each side of her face. “Baby, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to be fine. We’re going to be fine. We’ll get to the bottom of this. It’s why we’re here. Shane called this meeting so we could handle this.”
I could see she was starting to lose it. I said to Josh, “Maybe you should take Sweets—”
“No!” Sweets interrupted. “Shane, I’m fine. I need to hear this.” She then looked at Jacks and added, her voice but a whisper. “Please continue.”
Jacks looked at Josh first and Josh gave him a small nod.
“Okay, once I found out that bit of information, I asked him if he knew where she was and how I could find her and he told me.”
“And, you went after this bitch, right?” Curtis asked him, not hiding the venom he felt through his veins.
Jacks nodded. “Oh yeah, I did, but it didn’t matter none. He had told me she could be found in Moscow at the morgue.”
More gasps and mumbling filled the room, and Jacks had to raise his voice over the commotion to continue. “The GRU guy told me she was discovered about two weeks prior to my arrival, which meant that she was killed shortly after we saw her on the surveillance tape.”
“Murdered?” Curtis asked.
“Yup, murdered.”
“By the GRU?” Jesse asked.
“No, someone else,” Jacks replied.
A hush fell over the room, so I took over.
“I’ve been spending all of our efforts to find out who she hired or attempted to hire to take out Josh. I’ve put out fillers and called in numerous favors, but so far, I have nothing.”
“Typically, this type of thing would be easy to locate in the Black Web, being as though the target is well-known like Josh is,” Junior announced. “I spent a lot of time searching every crevice of the web, hoping that I could find something that would link Diane to dealings of any known or unknown assassins, but I came up empty.”
“Well, let me ask you this?” Misty leaned into the table and looked from me to Jacks. “Did this GRU guy say Josh’s name specifically?”
“No, he didn’t,” Jacks replied. “He mentioned that Diane wanted to get rid of the bloke that was responsible for getting her ostracized from her own country. Word was that Diane was left with no
thing. She couldn’t use any of the funds she had saved. The agency had disowned her. They told her to hide out until the shit blew over and they would have her back. But as we all know that didn’t happen. The CIA had orders to eliminate her on sight and she knew that. It was why she fled when she did in hopes of hiding away until she could get her revenge.”
“So, we don’t really know if she’s actually put the hit out?” Josh asked.
I looked at my little brother and shook my head. “Do you want to take that chance and assume she didn’t?”
Haunted quietness fell over the room; one that bothered me to no end.
“Shane, was that why you took the recent trip to Russia?” Ivan asked.
I nodded my head. “Yes. I wanted to dive in and help Jacks any way that I could. We had a lot of information to work through and theories we needed to white board out. I wanted to speak to this GRU guy myself, but not because I didn’t think Jacks had handled the interrogations well. I wanted to see if his story fluctuated or changed any. It didn’t. I visited the morgue and asked questions there too, but that well was dry.”
“What are we going to do from here?” Stan asked. “And why the hesitation on telling the team what was going on? We could’ve assisted with locating Diane or we could’ve helped Jacks in Russia.”
“Yeah, you’re right. You could’ve helped, but think about the implications. The one thing that we couldn’t afford to do was play our hand. Keep in mind, the CIA is supposed to be looking for Diane too. I’m sure now they have found out that their search is futile, but at the time, I didn’t want them to know we were looking. And the more people I had on this, the more attention would’ve been on us. Remember, everyone, no one knows about this agency. They think we are DIA. The DIA has no viable reason or justification to search for Diane. She wasn’t connected to anything dealing with the military at all. We had to do this very quietly.